The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

Today is the last day of my 23-day winter vacation back home in the Bay Area. Tomorrow I get up ridiculously early to fly back to DC (via Chicago-Midway and Baltimore), get settled back in over the weekend, and then start classes on Monday.

This is about the first time that I can actually say that I’ve had an actual vacation in the real sense of the word. After a long and difficult semester at school, getting to come home, relax, and spend time with family for three weeks has been wonderful. Granted, it hasn’t been entirely about relaxing, as I did get a number of things done over the past few weeks:

• Completed a phpBB Weekly website renovation and edited another “best of” clipshow
• Getting more work done on ATV’s website (though I’ve still got a lot more to do)
• Our family’s harp/flute/cello trio had a great (albeit abbreviated) season playing our Christmas music, playing at a potluck on Friday 12/18, playing at the park each day during 12/22-24 (under awesome weather conditions, for winter), and recording ourselves the following week
• Getting to meet again with friends from church, from 17th District PTA, family, and others
• Getting to pay a visit yesterday to my high school, which was wonderful
• And overall, just having a chance to relax for awhile back in my old pre-DC living routine

But all good things much come to an end, as yet another semester is now coming up right on the heels of the last one. Again, my class load this semester consists exclusively of general ed courses, and I’ve still got an undecided/undeclared major. However this semester’s schedule of classes is much more diverse in its range of topics compared to last semester, and its timing is much more consistent–not all over the place like last semester’s was.

• Psychology as a Natural Science — Mondays and Thursdays, 9:55-11:10 AM — 3.00 credits
• Psychology as a Natural Science Lab — Thursdays, 5:30-8:10 PM — 1.00 credits
• Honors English II — Mondays and Thursdays, 2:10-3:25 PM — 3.00 credits
• Contemporary Media in a Global Society — Tuesdays and Fridays, 9:55-11:10 AM — 3.00 credits
• Transformations of Shakespeare — Tuesdays and Fridays, 11:20 AM-12:35 PM — 3.00 credits
• Schools and Society — Wednesdays, 11:20 AM-2:00 PM — 3.00 credits

So why do I like this schedule so much more than last semester’s? First of all, I found that one of the hardest things for me last semester was how every single day’s schedule was completely different in terms of its timing. My first class would be a really-late 11:20 on Monday and Thursday, a really-early 8:30 on Tuesday and Friday, and nothing on Wednesday. Which was very annoying for someone like me who functions better under more consistency and structure. This semester, I start at 9:55 AM across the board, except for Wednesday which is 11:20. (So what, my high school also had later starts on Wednesdays.) This schedule is also much more respectful of my free time: last semester I had classes scattered throughout the day on Tuesdays and Fridays giving me only small, fairly-useless patches of free time on those particular days. And with the exception of the Thursday evening lab, only two classes per day should be much more manageable as well. And speaking of the Thursday evening lab, it doesn’t go till 10-11 PM like my Thursday night class last semester did!

And my classes score a bit more variety than last semester’s. I indicated in a post last August that my classes seemed a bit Political Sciencey. That omen proved to be accurate, as I kind of found out that political sciencey stuff might not be my forte after all. And having three of my classes relate to it got kinda dull kinda fast. This semester I’ve got a science class (the one general ed area that I didn’t delve into last semester), a class that comes from the School of Communication (which I might possibly be leaning towards), a class that comes from the Education department (another interest that I’ve had), a class about Shakespeare (because it sounded more interesting than the other choices, plus I’ve got some experience with Shakespeare), and English.

So far only my Contemporary Media has a syllabus available, and it’s looking pretty interesting, potentially involving trips to and reports on media events in DC. So maybe this semester I’ll get to delve into some of the political fun happening just blocks away from campus. English is also sure to be interesting: this semester is the semester where each section of English breaks down into a different theme that is focused on for the semester–the one I selected is “the New Yorker course,” which essentially means (to my understanding) that we subscribe to and study The New Yorker magazine as a basis for studying English. Of course I will have a better idea of what we’re doing there once the syllabus gets posted.

Nevertheless, I am very confident that this second semester will be much, much better than first semester was. The main reason: I’ve already done this once. When I left for DC back in August, I had no idea what my life was going to become or what kinds of things I was going to get involved in. I had never lived on my own for so long before, and the dynamics of college classes are 100% different from the dynamics of high school that I was used to. Now I’m heading back to AU with a better idea of how to do well there, and everything is starting again completely fresh. And as such, I’ve got a couple of goals for this next semester:

• Do a better job of keeping up with my classes. I’ve alluded to the fact that I got behind on my reading by the second week of classes and never caught up. But quite frankly, while all of my classes had a lot of reading, only about two of my classes had an insane amount of reading to accomplish, and my generalization wound up being a bit unfair to my other classes. So next semester I’m hoping to do a better job of at least staying on top of the reading assignments, even if I don’t completely get to every single word. Oh, and let’s hope that I won’t beat out the 20 papers that I did last semester.
• Budget EVERYTHING. Money, meals, sleep, daily schedule, studying, free time, you name it. My efforts at doing this failed last semester because things kept changing so much and so fast. This semester, I’ve got a better grasp of the dynamics of being at college, and so I need to start planning and budgeting so that I can keep up with everything this semester. Not having to do late-nighters and stuff would be nice too…
• Get out and about more. AU has a free bike lending program which I didn’t take advantage of last semester, but I would definitely like to as there’s supposed to be some great places to bike in around DC. Or even just taking a walk every once in awhile; the day before I left DC for home I had a nice walk around northwest DC which was very enjoyable and refreshing. I need to do that more; getting off-campus doesn’t have to mean sitting on a shuttle or Metro train. Plus, three places I want to visit in DC this semester: Rock Creek Park, Eastern Market, and the Capitol.
• Learn everything I can about ATV. I’m already about 60% of the way there, but I really want to be able to learn how everything at ATV works so that I can know the place inside and out. In addition, I’m going to be working with them to make a lot of new things possible this semester–pushing the envelope, so to speak–such as Skype interviews and much more. Plus there’s always more stuff that can be built for their website…
• Make Tech tAUk the best show on ATV. Okay, maybe not the best show; I’m not that narcissistic. But I definitely want our show to be the most cutting edge show on there. Our first three episodes have laid a solid foundation for the show, but we’ve got a long way to go to really make it look awesome and professional. And a lot of it will be based on how well I can develop my editing skills. Now that I’ve reached the “experienced beginner” stage of Final Cut Pro, it’s time for me to get even more experience and delve deeper.
• Find a job. I’m getting kind of tired of mooching off of my parents to support myself, though that probably won’t stop before too long. Actually I’ve got a couple of things that I want to be able to do this summer, and I want to be able to set aside some money of my own to help fund those goals.

I’m also entering this semester not completely sure when I’m coming back from DC. My winter break flights were already booked at the beginning of August, weeks before I took off for even my first semester. That’s not holding quite as true this semester. For one thing, I’m not coming back home for Spring Break. The reason is that my family’s spring breaks are around the time of Easter, which is April 4th. My Spring Break is March 8-12. See a problem here? If I came back for Spring Break, my family would all be at work and school, the only time I’d really get to spend with them would be on the weekends, which is (oh yeah) when I’d be flying. Given the cross-country distance, it’s not worth the travel expenses. Of course the other side is that Spring Break will be a lot like Thanksgiving Break was: an almost-completely-abandoned campus, very few food places open on-campus, and an insane amount of free time with which I’ll wind up being ridiculously productive. Meh, I’ll probably be able to suffer through it without too many problems.
As for summer, I’m not entirely sure yet if I want to opt for a summer class or an internship or something. Or I may decide to fly right back to San Francisco and find something to keep myself occupied here. At the very least I do plan to come back to the Bay Area at some point in order to be able to do things like OSCONvasion 2010, etc. The nice thing is that I’ll have a very early and long summer break. My last final is on Tuesday, May 4, and classes won’t start back again until August 23 (I’m assuming based on last fall’s schedule). But I’ll let a bit more of the semester go by before I start worry about any of that.

So here’s to the start of what will (or better) be a much better semester!

P.S. Yes I know that it’s now freezing in DC, and yes my cold weather gear is all ready to go. I actually have a bit too much cold weather gear, if such a thing is possible.

This is the third part of a three-part blog post looking back at my first semester at American University, and the challenges and accomplishments that I have had to face in the marathon that was this past semester. This third part looks back on aspects and thoughts on my first semester of college life in general; see also Part 1 and Part 2.

I’m typing this blog post right now on a plane somewhere over the midwest, ultimately bound for Oakland (via a stop in Albuquerque, of all places), and finally ultimately bound for home. I probably would have preferred to have written this post back in DC; unfortunately packing and dorm-cleaning got in the way of accomplishing that goal.

Ultimately though, today is a proud day for me, as today marks the end of my first semester in college. I don’t think that I’ve ever anticipated a day as highly or for as long as I have anticipated today. (Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I’ve been counting down the days on there for the past four weeks.) I actually was here for a relatively long time this semester: a full 123 days. I got here on Saturday, August 15th, the earliest possible move-in date, two days before freshman welcome week, and stayed through today, December 15th, a day before the latest possible move-out date, and four days after my last final. Most AU students got here between 3-9 days after I did and left up to a week before I did, and most of them also went home for Thanksgiving Break. So by AU standards, I was here for a LONG time.

This semester was also significantly long for me in other ways. Never before had I spent more than ten nights way from home in one sitting, and this time I spent 122 nights away from home. In fact, I even went back through my memory and tallied up the total number of nights that I had spent away from my family in my entire life (all of them within the past seven years): the tally before I left in August was 83 nights. Today my tally is 205.

And in some ways my extended length of time away from home was a good thing. I repeatedly told people this semester that I saw this first semester at AU as a marathon: the goal was simply to make it to the finish line. While there were a number of good things about this semester, there have also been many, many times when it has–not surprisingly-felt like the semester from hell.
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This is the second part of a three-part blog post looking back at my first semester at American University, and the challenges and accomplishments that I have had to face in the marathon that was this past semester. This second part looks back at my participation in extracurricular activities from this semester; Part 1 focused on my classes, and Part 3 will be written on the airplane and posted retroactively once I am back home.

School isn’t just about classes, or at least it shouldn’t be, and that’s why I’m very happy about the extracurricular activities and organizations that I’ve gotten involved in this semester. That’s actually what made this past summer and the start of this semester so tense, because so much of my life had been dedicated to extracurricular organizations that I left behind (hopefully temporarily) to come over to AU, and I didn’t really know what I would be doing when I got here. Fortunately, the various groups I have been a part of have been overall a pleasure to work with and have really helped me get through this semester. So in this blog post (which will be much shorter than yesterday’s was), I wanted to take a look at the various activities I’ve been in and what I’ve accomplished.
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This is the first part of a three-part blog post looking back at my first semester at American University, and the challenges and accomplishments that I have had to face in the marathon that was this past semester. This first part looks back at my classes from first semester; the remaining two parts will be posted before I depart for home on Tuesday.

Everyone has a different experience at high school, and no two high schools are exactly the same. Overall, my high school experience was one that I most definitely enjoyed and treasured (even if I didn’t always say so at the time, after all, hindsight is always 20/20), while some of my classmates and floormates here hated high school, and most are rather indifferent. I found my high school classes to involve a good amount of work and commitment, but I generally didn’t have too difficult of a time making good grades, graduating high school with a 3.96 cumulative GPA. Though I wouldn’t come close to characterizing myself alongside some classmates whom have said that they never really did any of the work in high school, just took the tests and got As in the class. But after my four years at Aragon, I would say that it would be rather difficult to get through with all As by never doing any of the work; even if you were miraculously genius enough to pull that off, the teachers and counselors there would be sure to push you towards a more challenging course load.

But regardless of how one’s high school experience was, or how their high school classes were organized, there is no comparison to classes at the university level. The transition from high school classes to university classes literally feels like running head-first into a boulder because it’s the middle of the night and you have no idea where you’re going. And then try adjusting to the different dynamics of a full-time university course load while you’re just beginning to wrap your head around the fact that you have been away from home for two weeks, are living on your own, are starting to figure out that you’ve got to support yourself, and oh yeah, you’re going to be here for another sixteen weeks.
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Yes, it has been almost two months since I last made a blog post. I don’t know what took so long, but I’ve either been really busy or haven’t had enough to blog about. The former is probably the more accurate assessment.

But today it’s Thanksgiving. And for me, this Thanksgiving is far more bittersweet than in past years, because I’m still here at AU, not with my family. Today is day 2 of a five-day weekend where 80% of the campus has gone home and nothing on campus is open except for the dorms (and that includes any and all places to eat). I know that I’m not the only one that doesn’t get to go home during Thanksgiving, but the first time can be especially difficult to get through, especially when practically the entire campus is gone.

And yet, after over 100 days here at AU (with only 19 to go, as anyone who follows me on Twitter will already recognize), I’ve sincerely come to better appreciate a number of blessings in my life that I had previously taken for granted. And at some point a few days ago, I realized that rather than spend Thanksgiving break feeling lonely, I should instead take the time to do something that I have routinely ignored during Thanksgiving: count my blessings. And so, here are the top things that I am thankful for during this Thanksgiving:
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