It must be said...

It was the first week of school when it happened for the first time. For some reason, there is a bit of an obsession for pulling the fire alarm in the middle of the night this year. I live in centennial, and it is always around 3 AM when it happens here. I remember the first time, waking my roommate up, putting decent clothes on, contacts in, trying to find our shoes and still get out of the building in a descent amount of time. We waited outside for about a half hour. We had to wait for the volunteer firemen to get a call, get out of bed, and check the *whole* building. Within the first month, there were 13 prank alarms pulled. Last year at this time there were ZERO. The college posted signs that (I believe) say falsifying a fire alarm is punishable by up to $1000 and six months in jail. They finally stopped!!!

So fast forward to last night. I was up till about 1 studying and was going to get up the next morning around 7. Wouldn't you know someone decided to pull a fire alarm once again. Three AM, as usual. So far, no one has been caught. I wish some people would start talking!! I know our senate has looked into possible solutions. Problem is, the fire alarms are everywhere, so even if a solution is found and is reasonably cheap, there are like a hundred gazillion fire alarms you need to take care of. I also happen to know that our security is looking into solutions. We asked about the specifics, and they weren't comfortable telling us the details. It makes sense, why would they tell the students what precautions they are taking. The point is for those students to fall into the trap. I hope it happens soon!!

** Fall Weekend **

Another great weekend!!! Last week was week 7. That may not mean anything to you yet, but if you come to Hiram it will. Hiram has a cool set up for there semesters. Instead of a normal 15 week semester, we have a 12/3 program. We take an average class load of three classes during the 12 week and one class during the three week. I am really looking forward to the three week parts, but I’ll talk more about that when it comes. The semesters are somewhat intense, but isn’t that what Hiram is all about? My classes are definitely moving along, as you can tell by how stressed I seemed about my chem. test. At the end of the 7th week, we get a fall weekend. We have no class on Thursday or Friday. Most students go home, and for students that live far away, this is often their first trip home. I absolutely loved it. It was so wonderful, first of all to have a shortened school week, but most of all to have the time off. I went home and spent the majority, ok basically the whole weekend, with my boyfriend. I was really in the mood to celebrate autumn this year. I never really had a favorite season before, but this year I decided it is fall. The campus is really pretty in the fall, which first put me in the mood. But I was really in the mood to take advantage of the apples & pumpkins & fall goodies time of year. I got online and looked for different festivals. I found some cute ones around here, but Zak wasn’t up for any of them. My favorite would be the apple butter festival. We decided to spend the weekend home instead. To keep in line with my fall festiveness, we went to my uncle’s fruit farm and got pumpkins. We then proceeded to spend our Friday night drinking apple cider and carving pumpkins. My mom cooked us wonderful meals all weekend! I have gone home a lot, probably at least every other weekend. But this weekend made me realize exactly how much I missed being home. I miss my mom – she is like my best friend and it is hard to be away from her. I miss how cozy my home is. I miss having quite time. It was nice to wake up and have the whole morning to myself, in a completely quite and deserted house while my mom was at work. I miss good food. It’s amazing how my mom can make like one thing for dinner with two side dishes, and it is sooooo much better than Hiram’s 25 different options. I came back and spent most of today being sad and frustrated. I sometimes feel that my dorm is my bedroom/closet/bathroom/kitchen. I miss having a whole house. I am so much more relaxed at home. Sometimes I get stressed just by walking into my dorm because of how little it is. This is my little home. One little mess makes the whole room look messy. I just get frazzled about all the things I have to do – clean, homework, call this person, do that. I just haven’t found that system that works for me yet. I need to get into a grove; develop a schedule. Being home was such a contrast to this. I had to consciously stop dissing the dorm and stop telling myself that a home is better. I do like the dorm, it’s just a bit of an adjustment. It really helps that I still have very supportive people around me, namely my mom and Zak. I’m sure eventually I will love being here more than at home.

This weekend was homecoming and it was a blast! Starting last Wednesday, there were homecoming activities. They had a dodgeball tournament, a comedian on thrusday, and a bon fire on Friday. There was a parade Saturday morning and then the dance Saturday night. The theme was Hollywood nights. I heard they were having an outside company come in to decorate. When I got there, I was a little disappointed in the decorations. It doesn’t matter tho, cuz it’s not the decorations that make the dance. I also heard that they had limos for us. It sounds kind of corny, but they had 3 limos picking students up in front of the kenedy center, driving them maybe ½ mile to the coleman center, the athletic center. My boyfriend didn’t see the purpose of waiting like 7 minutes for a 2 minute ride, but it was part of the experience. We went down early for dinner. The dinner is free to the first 400 people to go get tickets. It was delicious and the deserts were great. The dance was so much better than my high school dances. The dance floor was packed tight. At my high school, there people were always very spread out, and probably only half the people there were dancing at any given time. Not this. It was really fun. Originally, I was going to wear one of my fancier prom dresses, but ended up opting for the little black dress per request from my boyfriend Zak. I think that I may have felt out of place if I had worn something super fancy.

Homecoming was a big relief for me. I had spent the whole week before studying for my chemistry midterm. (I’m not sure how homecoming and a chem. test fit in the same blog, but I’m doing it anyway.) I actually didn’t participate in many of the homecoming activities during the week cuz of the upcoming test. I have Professor John Andrews. He is very competent and moves kind of fast. Don’t misunderstand me, he is not a bad teacher moving too fast for you to keep up, you just have to make a conscious effort to stay ahead. It all worked out tho, cuz Katrina, who is in that class with me, and I dominated the test. I guess a week of hard studying returns good rewards, homecoming and a good grade.

Meet my roomie!

These are pictures of roommate Katrina and me. We met when we were both here for a scholarship competition. We talked online for a while and then started talking about all the “big questions” you would want to know before rooming with someone. It seemed like we would be compatible so we decided to be roommates. As it turns out, we get along great! We turned into best friends. It’s really weird, even after a week, we would sit here talking as if we had been friends for years. I was a little bit nervous about living in a dorm since I am an only child. It worked out fine for Trina and I. We hang out together all the time. Basically, we are inseparable. I have seen some roommates like this and I have watched some problems emerge for other people. One girl went home for the weekend and later found out there was a party in her room and a few couples may have ended up on her bed. Needless to say, she switched roommates. There is an RA on each floor (an upperclassmen that kind of controls the floor). They are wonderful and are very helpful whenever you have a problem. We also have an RD, resident director, in the building that is a grown man living in a 4 room apartment. His full time job is solely to take care of the problems in our building. Both the RA and RD will help anyone having problems with a roommate. It seems like the majority of people do not have many problems. They may not be best friends, but they get along just fine. As long as you are a descent person, your roommate should be too. It seems like communication and courtesy may be the key. I live in Centennial, which is an all girls building. It is connected to booth, which is co-ed. I love my building! Everyone is friendly, for the most part. It is a calm place to live, not to mention in smells *much* better than anywhere there are guys, haha.