Weekends = Love

The weekend, the weekend, oh how I love the weekend. I know what many of you are thinking: "How can the weekend be any fun in a place like Sackville? A place they've nicknamed Bagtown? Come on now." Well my friends, you are mistaken! It's actually quite wonderful when you think about how many great things there are going on MTA on the weekends. Some times there are just too many, in fact! (Crazy, I know.)

Friday night was the much anticipated Harper floor crawl titled 'Harper Evolves'. Running from fourth to first floor we covered the caveman era, the 60s, modern city times, and the futuristic. The decorations were awesome and the costumes were prettttty interesting. I think I distinctly remember seeing a guy in a pink blazer with no shirt underneath, a girl with a pom pom for hair and a girl wearing nothing but a sheet of sparkly material fastened together with safety pins. Yikes. But, other than those slightly sketchy costumes the party went off without a hitch. Well, except for one thing - I was on duty. It was, however, a fun party to be on duty for because there were mainly Harperites who attended so it was fun to hang around with all of them while they go their dance on and whatnot, haha. Next weekend is the famed Mardis Gras party put on by Windsor Hall and I'm sure it will be a great time (though not as great as Harper Havoc, obviously - I mean how is that even possible?)

I however, shall be missing it as my sister and I are heading home for my dad's 60th birthday! It's supposed to be a surprise, but I think I'm safe by putting on here as I don't think he quite knows what a blog is, let alone how to find mine, haha. Oh, that's mean, but well, true. Anyway, it's going to be a great weekend, I can't wait to see how he reacts to see my sister and I show up at the door on Friday night, haha. We're going to take a family portrait, go skiing, decorate the house, bake delicious cake... such fun :) I'll let you all know how it goes next week!

Saturday was a fun evening as well - I went to see Cinderella, put on by MTA's Garnet & Gold musical theatre society. One of my good friends Laurie was the lovely Cinderella and some of the high school kids from the Swing Society were in it as well (one of them, Justin, was the prince, actually!) It was fun to watch, I hadn't seen Cinderella in a long, long time. The last one I remember watching was the real film with like Whoopi Goldberg an Brandi in it, haha. Annnnyway, later on that night I went to my friend Sam's apartment to celebrate our friend Haley's birthday and then we went out to the Pub. It was a very enjoyable evening, I even made some new friends while getting back in touch with the old, how nice :)

Ah, and today was a lovely day. I haven't left the building and the day is over, hahaha. One of the many advantages of living in Harper, being attached to meal hall, it's such a bonus. I wrote to all my e-mail buddies today which was kind of fun, I hope I hear back from them sometime :) Oh my, it is quite late, and I am quite tired, even though I've done very little today... There is talk of a big snow storm coming tonight and tomorrow morning... Ohhhh I hope there's a ton of snow and it's real messy and they cancel classes... I could get so far ahead in my work - I can't believe I already have a proposal for a paper due this week :( Anyway, it's been a pleasure, as always, and I'll be writing again soon, promise :)

Much love,

Sue

sjhumphrey@mta.ca

Back in the fast lane

Well it certainly hasn't taken very long for me to get back into the swing of things here at Mount A. Already I seem to be uber busy with school work - so busy that I've managed to put off my blogging... again. Man, I wish I had made that my New Year's resolution... Maybe I'll make it my January 21st resolution. Okay, here is it guys. I, Susan Joan Humphrey, resolve to blog more regularly starting today, Monday, January 21, 2008. There. Hopefully that will help me stop being such a dink and putting off this blog when really, it should be one of the first things I do. I mean hey, what normal person wouldn't rather write about their life than memorize German verb conjugations or read about Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth for the fifth time? Come on, Sue, do what's fun - blog!!

So yes, I've been bad, as per usual (If I'm consistently bad, does that make me bad? Or is it then considered normal to be bad, which makes it not bad? Bah, I see why I'm not in philosophy now.) But yes, things have indeed been very busy here in the bustling metropolis of Sackville and I'm gonna tell you alllll about it! Huzzah!

It was great to get back to Sackville after being away for so long. My room actually felt a little bit foreign when I walked in for the first time, but it wasn't long before I felt right at home again. It was awesome to have everyone on the floor start arriving and now we're all back together as a cozy little 2nd East family :) We actually just had a new person move in, Zan, from Pakistan. It should be great to get to know him as well - he'll be part of the family soon enough!

The first week of classes went really well. My classes are all very interesting and I think they're going to be a lot of fun. Here are my classes for the semester for those of you who are interested in seeing what a second year IR student might be taking:

• GERM 2000 - Intermediate German (Dr. Desmarais)
• GENV 1201 - The Human Environment (Dr. Fox)
• GENV 2221 - The Developing World (Dr. Reiffenstein)
• RELG 3701 - Islam (Dr. Darwish)
  
• RELG 3941 - Religion, Revolution & Violence (Dr. Darwish)

The course 'Religion, Revolution & Violence' is a seminar class and they are such a pleasure to attend. It only happens once a week and runs for three hours instead of being three times a week for about an hour each time. Yeah, it's a bit long, but the way it runs is really cool. So far we've all been sitting in a large circle, Dr. Darwish throws out questions, comments or ideas and we discuss them. We'll watch movie clips to illustrate points, but mainly, we discuss, challenge and question one another. It's so cool, I think it's the way that I learn best. There are no tests in the class - there will be two presentations that each student will give, and a major research paper, but that is much preferable to midterms and final exams in my opinion. Wooo, seminars!!

After the first week of classes we all celebrated like it was our job by heading to Cancun Campbell, definitely one of the best house parties I've been to! As you can tell from the name, it was a 'Cancun' or tropical-ish theme, which involves everyone getting into shorts, running through the cold to Campbell Hall, wearing a dozen leighs and dancing their butts off in the main lounge to some sweet tunes. It was a great time and the decorations were awesome. They even had a tiki hut where you could get drinks! Saweeeet.

Hrmm, what else has been going on? Oh yes, of course! Stereophonic! For all you music lovers out there, you'll be more than pumped to hear about this one. Stereophonic is an annual music festival that is put on by MTA's campus radio station CHMA and involves a ton of bands coming from all across the country (but mainly the Maritimes) to play at a number of venues around Sackville. I went out to the famous George's Roadhouse on Saturday night and they had some wicked acts for the last night of the festival. Dog Day, The Stance, Two Hours Traffic and The Tom Fun Orchestra were there and they were so awesome!! The Tom Fun Orchestra was particularly amazing - they really are an orchestra of sorts. They had all sorts of instruments - trumpet, fiddle, electric guitars, banjo, acoustic guitar, drums, upright base, base. It was nuts, so so cool definitely get their album or download some of their music. I'd never heard the stance before but they were really entertaining and Two Hours Traffic was awesome, as per usual.

Wow, this is a pretty long blog... Oh well, maybe it makes up for the ones I've missed...? Haha, oh well. Enjoy, keep smiling and as always, let me know if there's anything you'd like to see on here or if you have any questions. Cheers!

Much love,

Sue

sjhumphrey@mta.ca

So I'm a little late...

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Holidays. There, those are all the greetings I’ve missed and failed to wish you in my recent disappearance as a Mount Allison blogger. I am a bad, bad blogger – well, not bad (at least I hope not), just late. Really late. But hey, now I get to write one big (well, maybe two), fun, exciting catch-up blog(s) – huzzah!

So, I am currently in the back seat of my family’s Ford Edge, about an hour outside of Moncton on our way home from Freeport, Maine (yes Ben, you’re hometown!). The end of the Holiday Break is fast approaching as I’m heading back to Mount A on Sunday morning. I think I’m ready to go back – I’ve been doing a whole lot of lazing, eating, reading (the fun stuff, not of the academic kind), and some may even say, too much sleeping. The days feel pretty short when you’re only crawling out of bed between noon and one o’clock in the afternoon, but hey, I am one well-rested teenage girl. I think I’ve finally established my natural body rhythm – up around noon, bed around 2 AM, a solid 10 hours of sleep – nice. But yeah, the point is, I’ve been doing a whole lot of pointless stuff and I’m about ready to get back on track with a purposeful life. It’s been oh so nice and very necessary for me to have a good long break, but it’s time to get back to my wonderful home at MTA :)

If I’ve checked correctly, my last blog was in the middle of November (oh goodness, that’s bad). But this time (like I say every time I’m late with a blog), there has been good reason. Maybe not so much reason for not having been blogging over the Holiday Break, but definitely good reason for not blogging during the final weeks of the semester. Just after my midterms finally wrapped up, I remember being in such a great mood – no work for a while, midterms are over, that’s wicked! Then, I thought I’d be a good student and take a look at my calendar to see what work I had coming up in the next few weeks, you know, get ahead of the game a little bit. That’s when I realized that the next few weeks were the last weeks of term. No work for awhile, huh? “Funny, this calendar is telling me I have three final papers to hand in and an in-class debate to prepare for during the next three weeks,” I thought to myself. That’s when my shoulders slumped, face darkened and high-spirits faded. Boooooooooo. But then, oh, then I thought, “Well, as long as I can get through these next three weeks, I’ll be fine after that.” Um... not entirely true. I kept reading the calendar – “Okay, last paper due here... three days of classes after that and then... finals. Finals. Oh my god. Finals. When the hell am I going to study for those?!?!?!” Minor panic attack occurred at this point. Mild feeling of hopelessness ensued. So I was going to go into major paper writing mode for three weeks, have three days off and then go hardcore into exam study mode for two and a half more weeks? “Hmm, well, maybe my exams will be nice and spread out and I can study for most of them in between each exam.” Load up MTA Connect on my laptop, log in, bring my exam study schedule up onto the screen. “Okay, no exam for German, knew that, awesome. Topics in IR on the 12^th, Global Governance on the 11^th, two in a row, that sucks... Canadian Federalism on the 13^th and Economic Growth on the 10^th. So that’s 10, 11, 12, 13. Wait a minute. 10, 11, 12, 13. That’s four exams in four days... THAT’S TERRIBLE!!!”

Needless to say I survived, as is obvious by my writing to tell you about it. But man, was it hard. I’ve definitely never worked as hard as I did during those five/five and a half weeks and I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it. I never realized how many hours I could work in a day, how many words I could write in an hour or how much information I could retain all at once. There were a few scary/depressing/panic-filled moments during these weeks, my favourite (looking back on it now, definitely not at the time) being when I met with a friend to go over Canadian Federalism at 9:00PM the night before the final and he asked me to explain a very basic situation and I couldn’t do it because I hadn’t had the chance to really look at it yet. Tears in my eyes and heart in my throat I buried myself in the 2^nd basement of the library (the most quiet and isolated place in the library), worked until they kicked me out and then crammed until 3 AM in the study room in Harper. Next morning, 9 AM, I was nervous as hell, flipped over the exam and kicked it’s butt. It was my last exam and I couldn’t have been more happy when I left that classroom in Avard Dixon. Freedommmmmmmmmm!

This is how my friend Hanna reacts to large amounts of studying and stress. (Don't kill me for posting this picture, haha.)

The papers came back with good marks, the debate was awesome, most of the exams went through without too many shaky parts and my final marks came back over Christmas. That’s when I really, truly realized that hard work pays off. Had I not worked as hard as I did for as long as I did, I wouldn’t have gotten the marks that I did and would have been really disappointed. I really hope that I’ll never have to go through a period like that again, but deep down I know I’m pretty much guaranteed to during my undergrad and/or what comes after. Well, at least now I know I can do it.

Much love,

Sue

sjhumphrey@mta.ca

Oh, and the two photos of Mount Allison after the first snowfall are courtesy of another one of MTA's bloggers, Maria Maute. Thanks Maria! :)