My Own Little World

Recently, I asked you, my readers, for some questions you'd like answered in my College Life series. I got some free time last night, so I'm going to answer one of them for you. Today's question comes from my aunt, Sue Langhoff: "How many times a week do you go to Starbucks?" Ouch. I didn't think I was that much of a white girl to be asked that question. There is a little bit of backstory here, though. Last semester I was having trouble writing papers in my room because I got distracted by the environment on the floor. Late in the semester, I decided to find another place to work on them. One Saturday, I realized that I had a lot of Starbucks gift cards and was just a few stars away from being able to get free refills on coffee and tea. I went over there and worked for four hours before my laptop died and got a lot of my work done for the weekend. The next day and the next weekend, I went back and did the same thing. During finals week, I spent many ho...

I know I’ve missed the past few weeks of College Life, but I’m pretty sure the reason will come out in the words that follow. I’m changing the style to more of a recap of the week instead of a list of tips, as I feel that stories are a better way to do things. This week was Broadway Revue. For those of you who don’t know, it is a show put on by the theater club, Green Room, here at Olivet. We did several numbers from a variety of shows, including “No One Is Alone” from Into the Woods, “In My Life” from Les Miserables, “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof, and “Pandemonium” from The 21st Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. This was a blast to put on for our audience, and we all had a great time rehearsing the show for this past week. That being said, as you probably could have guessed, it sucked out a lot of my time. Every week before we got into the auditorium, I spent six hours a week in rehearsals. During tech week, it was that much a night. Yeah, it was a lot of time. I h...

Well, one more week has passed on the Olivet campus here in Bourbonnais, Illinois, and I have a few more observations about college life. This week, I'm going to give some tips about staying in touch with home while also being heavily involved in campus life: Whatever you do, stay in touch with your family.  No, you don't have to call them everyday, even if they'd like you to. However, even if you only call once a week, they'll appreciate it a ton. Besides, it can be nice to see how things are going at home. Make sure you set aside time to call home, and respond to any texts you get. Don't shun your family. And especially... Don't let the first thing that tells them how you're doing be your blog.  Oops. Didn't do a great job here. Sorry Mom.  Keep in touch with at least a few good friends from high school.  I haven't done a great job of this yet, mostly because there's an asterisk to this one: don't get stuck with doing so. If you spen...

One week ago today, I moved onto the campus of Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois. In light of this recent change in my life, I'm going to start posting five observations about life on a college campus every week. That being said, here's my top five things I've noticed about college life in my first week here: Dining halls/block parties/etc. are not for introverts...or ambiverts. I'm not a strict introvert, but I really don't like large group events all that much. Large crowds of people I don't know intimidate me. There's a lot of those on a college campus, especially in the first couple weeks of school, so be prepared to be pushed out of your comfort zone if you're at all like me. That being said... Get to know your floor and force yourself to hang out with them. This is a big way to help fix the issue of #1. I've found a lot of cool guys on my dorm floor who like to have fun. It also gives you someone to eat lunch or dinner w...