Sophmore Year

In less than a week I will be returning to Rockhurst to begin RA training and my sophmore year. I'm truly excited to meet the incoming freshman class and get to know the guys on my floor--2-West. In addition to returning to Rockhurst I look forward to finishing up my summer work with Delta. I feel that it was a successful summer even though I didn't get to work with the enviornment as I had initially planned. I want to thank Delta for providing me with a job in these difficult economic times. Manual labor, while difficult at times, can be extremely rewarding. It will be nice to get back into a routine at school.

Home Run Derby

The annual Home Run Derby will be held tonight in Anaheim, CA. When I was younger I loved watching the biggest stars hit the longest home runs--(enhanced) sluggers like Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa hit ridiculous shots into upper decks and completely out of the park. It seems as though this annual event has been changing over the years, however, and tonight appears to be a prime example of a new attitude towards the derby. This years field exhibits players such as Nick Swisher, Chris Young, Hanley Ramirez, Corey Hart, and Vernon Wells. Who exactly are these guys? Certainly they are not the premiere power hitters in the league. They are an eclectic group of above average hitters who were chosen only because those deserving to be in the tournament declined to participate. These true power hitters declined because of the growing belief that participating in the derby will alter their batting mechanics, resulting in a poor second half performance. Much has been made about former derby champion Bobby Abreu's comments on how the derby altered his swing and caused him to have a poor second half of the season. As an avid Cardinals fan, I recall both Albert Pujols and Jim Edmonds' performance in the derby. Edmonds hurt himself during it and Pujols' batting average significantly tailed off in the second half. Both sluggers declined to participate a second time. I can't blame the players for opting out of an event that has proved itself detrimental to second half performance, but I still wish that more would sign up. In the meantime I suppose I'll watch a shortstop with 13 homers square off against the Yankees ninth place hitter.......

Cable?!

After a day at work I came home in the hope of wasting an hour or two in front of the TV before I went out to swim. Something happened to change all of that however, as I slouched deep into our couch and began channel surfing. For all my life our family has gotten a basic cable package that does not have the two tv essentials: ESPN and Fox Sports Midwest. I could sorta get ESPN if I didn't mind squinting at the fuzzy black and white display without any sound. As I approached the elusive channel 42 everything appeared normal--Cash Cab on the Discovery Channel, celebrity trash on E, reruns of some not-so-funny sitcom on TBS, and Sportcenter on ESPN in color. SPORTCENTER IN COLOR WITH SOUND?!?!?!?! I did a double take. And a triple take. Somehow we now had the full cable package. I ran around the coffee table a few times, made a couple celebratory howls, and began my quest of making up for nineteen years of lost time.

Heat Advisory

These last couple of weeks at work can only be described as HOT. Work aside, my crew has been working in weather with heat indexes consistently above 100. The work has been rewarding and safe so far, and I cannot thank my employer enough for giving me a job this Summer. Today I got to use a jackhammer and a pickax for the first time. Hopefully it will have cooled off enough to go swimming later tonight.

Part of my job also involves driving the crew around in our rental minivan. I was excited to find out that the minivan came with satellite radio--something I have never listened to before. The first few days of driving to work were spent flipping through the many available stations. After a couple weeks however, I found myself returning to good ol' National Public Radio.

Softball

A couple days ago I played in a softball game for the "Saint Mary's Rubber Ducks". I believe we're the only co-ed team in the church league which consists of several hardcore softballer teams. The double header we played in on Friday was against one of the most serious teams in the league. They had on wrist bands, arm bands, head bands, knee bands, high socks, belts, sliding pants, and jerseys from when they played high school baseball. Since I was cut from my high school team I showed up in a tee shirt, shorts, and worn out sneakers. They fielded nine professional looking men while we had a ragtag group of five guys and five girls (one of which was still in grade school). Now that I have created this scenario where we appear as the lesser team it would make perfect literary sense to do a complete 360 and surprise the reader by informing them that in fact we were the superior team--and that is what I shall do. We won by the ten run rule 15-5 in the first game and 17-12 in the second game. However, the humbling of our hardcore opponents did not go without conflict. Midway through our second walloping of the Lynwood Baptist Church, their coach announced that he was going to protest both games because we used an illegal bat. In addition, our head coach and the last player to use the bat should be ejected. Fortunately for us, the head coach and last player happened to be the same person. Our "illegal" bat (which also happened to be about fifteen years old and sounded dead on contact) was thrown away and we had to get an acceptable bat from the opposing team. Oh church league...........

Summer Fishing

My favorite hobby during the summer (besides running/swimming/biking) is fishing. Since school let out I have already gone to Montauk State Park to catch rainbow trout and the Saline Creek for smallmouth bass. Both trips were major successes as I caught my limit of trout at Montauk within a half hour of the opening horn and landed three beautiful bronze smallies on the Saline. One of these three is shown in my picture--a sixteen inch smallmouth that I caught from my favorite spot on the creek. I'm partial to smallmouth and trout over the traditional freshwater fish such as largemouth, bluegill and catfish. This is most likely due to the fact that I prefer to fish in clear streams. These two species of fish are less tolerant of pollution and require water with higher oxygen content than other freshwater fish (IE you will find trout in cold clear fast moving streams). Hopefully I will find time this summer for similar successful fishing trips.

Summer Job!

I have officially gotten my work for this Summer figured out. After receiving twelve polite rejections for the various positions I mentioned in past blogs, I have finally been hired to work for Delta Companies this summer as the foremen of a seven man work crew. Interestingly enough, the sea turtle position I applied and initially did not get accepted to, came back and offered me the position a couple weeks before the job began in June. Unfortunately I could not accept on such late notice. Perhaps I can work there next summer. My job with Delta will last all of June and July while still allowing me to return to Rockhurst on August 4th for RA training which works out wonderfully. I was with Delta last summer and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My crew gets to work outside for 40 hours a week and the work is visibly rewarding after we finish up a project.

FINISHED!!!

As of today, I am officially finished with school for the Summer. I feel that my finals went well and hopefully my GPA will be in good standing with two semesters left before I apply for early admission at UMKC's dental school. Overall my first year of college was definitely a positive, learning experience from moving away from home to working my way through two semesters. I'm looking forward to many things next year including:

1.) Being an RA (thus having a dorm room to myself)

2.) Continuing my pursuit of a Biochemistry degree

3.) Training for a triathlon.

4.) Volunteering at a local dental clinic

5.) Getting acquainted with the incoming freshman class through programs like social mentors

6.) Running the KC half marathon once again

7.) Only having to get up for 8 o'clock classes three days a week instead of five.

Before I get to do all these fun activities I have the entire summer laid out before me to do pretty much whatever I please. Hopefully I will get a job working for the Parks Department (I'm still working on it). Besides that I will shadow some more dentists and continue blogging weekly! And sleep. Lots and lots of sleeping........

Crimson Ball

Last night I had a wonderful time attending ASA's Crimson Ball with Kim Patterson who thoughtfully asked me along. The ball was held in Kansas City's Hyatt Hotel which left me extremely impressed. At the top (40th floor) of the Hyatt is the "Skies" restaurant which slowly rotates to provide diners with a complete view of Kansas City. (It can be seen at the top of the building to the right). Kim and I slipped away from the dance for a few minutes to ride the elevator all the way to the Skies and take in the awesome view. Dinner was great and desert was even better as I (proper etiquette aside) couldn't help but finish off the leftover cheesecake from other people at our table. It was a fantastic night and the perfect distraction from the steadily approaching finals of next week.

One Week Left!

There are officially seven days of classes left.

This news doesn't really excite me as much as it might some others because I know that it means I have a ton of work to do in preparation for finals. Once that last final is done, however, I will be just as ecstatic as the everyone else. I finally got back some of my marathon pictures and I was not surprised to see that all of them after mile sixteen look like I am.....well....running a marathon.

With two weeks left of school I still have no idea what's going to happen this summer. I've come to terms with that but it doesn't mean I'm done trying to throw something together last minute. In the event that I don't manage to find a job (which is likely) I'm still going to hopefully have some adventures this summer. I'll still blog over the summer for those of you who are interested. For now I think I need to focus on Biology II and Analytical Chemistry.

Two weeks......

There are only two full weeks of school left until finals. Although most of the freshman I talk to say "It's gone by soooo quickly" I am of the opinion that time has taken its sweet time to go by. I'm definitely ready for the summer but not until I've put as much effort into my Biology II and Analytical Chem. finals as I should.



Last weekend I finally ran my marathon. I promise to put up a picture or two in my next post once they become available from the photographers at the race. It was a pretty brutal experience but an enjoyable one at the same time. I was fine until mile 23 when everything seemed to fall apart. My quads and calves started cramping and it felt like it was a hundred degrees outside. I had to finally walk at mile twenty five for a few minutes. Towards the end, however, I was able to feed off the crowd and shuffle jog my way to within a hundred meters of the finish. Once there I looked up to see that my time was 3:59:20. I had not just run 26.1 miles to see my finishing time in over 4 hours so I took off "sprinting" as best I could for the final hundred and finished in 3:59:50. It was not until later that night I realized that my actual time was 3:58:20 due to the lag of time between when the clock started and when I actually crossed the starting line. Either way I had beat my goal of 4 hours and it was an awesome experience. Thanks to Christiana Troupe, Kim Patterson, and my family for coming out to support me!



On a more somber note, I was not selected to work on the Hawksbill Sea Turtle Recovery Program in Hawaii this summer. That makes for my tenth job rejection already in this early year. Positions in California, Florida Keys, Isle Royal, Virgin Islands, and Hawaii among others have all officially rejected my applications, leaving me with one small hope to work in the Missouri State Parks this summer. So much for finding a fun Summer job (or even volunteer position) to help improve the enviornment instead of flipping burgers or gushing partially hydrogenated soybean oil onto people's popcorn. Oh well, there's always next year.

Easter Break

I've just returned to campus from a four day Easter break weekend. As I sit down to write this blog, I realize that I don't have much to write about--this is good.

It's good because next weekend will be a crazy, hectic, fun, draining one. I should hear about my status with the Hawksbill Sea Turtle project by next Monday, a day after I finally run the Saint Louis Marathon that I have been training so long for. There are also several tests, presentations, etc. due towards the end of this week and the beginning of the next, so I'm sure I'll look back on this boring Easter weekend with some envy when the time comes.

Baseball season officially began today!!!!! I'm a huge Cardinals fan and an even bigger baseball fan in general. Thankfully Rockhurst does not televise Cardinals games or else I would probably struggle to get my homework done. With Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright, Albert Pujols, and Matt Holiday healthy, I expect great things from my team this year. Go Cards!

Persistence

Persistence pays off. Supposedly.


After recently receiving rejection notices to environmental internships in California, Isle Royal, Florida National Sea Base, and about ten others that I tried to apply for but was not even considered, I have decided that a new approach is necessary. My latest strategy is simple enough: be persistent.

Somewhere, hundreds of miles away is a park ranger sifting through piles of applications from teenagers who want to work for him. He or she hardly knows the applications other than what it says on their piece of paper. In order to make my paper more personable to them, I decided to call and ask about my application process. In the case of the Hawaii Hawksbill Sea Turtle project, I just got a voice mail. Undeterred, I called again the next day, and the next, and the next....finally, on the 18th try, I decided to have someone else try and call them. Success!

I was able to put a face to that piece of paper in some park ranger's hand somewhere and let them know how badly I wanted that internship. By April 15th I will know whether or not my two remaining applications (Hawksbill Sea Turtle Project in Hawaii and Missouri National Park services) have come to fruition. I'm hoping for the best as always and expecting the least as usual.

The Henry Doorly Zoo

After consecutive tests in Analytical Chemistry on Wednesday and Biology II on Thursday, I was ready to take a short respite from school this weekend. Kim Patterson and some other fellow Omahaians took me and some friends up north to see their hometown. I have a vested interest in Omaha because of Creighton's dental school and the possibility that I might attend graduate school there. I'll save that tour for another day though since our group wanted to focus on the highly acclaimed Henry Doorly Zoo. Since I have enjoyed my past experiences at the Saint Louis Zoo, I was curious to see how they compared. The following is my general opinion on both:

1.) Saint Louis Zoo does not have much of an aquarium to speak of. The Henry Doorly Zoo has an incredible marine aquarium and an entire building dedicated to it and other "fishlike" creatures.

2.) HD Zoo costs $11.50 to get in. STL Zoo is FREE.

3.) HD Zoo has most of their exhibits indoors, St. Louis Zoo has around half indoors and half outdoors.

4.) Saint Louis Zoo is replete with a variety of flora covering much of the trials between houses and exhibits, giving the visitor the feeling of truly being outdoors. HD Zoo does not have the outdoor landscaping and plants to compare with STL's.

5.) HD Zoo has many new exhibits, including a "Sky tour" while the STL Zoo has an aged look and feel to it.

In conclusion: I feel that both Zoo's are exceptional for their own reasons. However, since my personal favorite zoo experience is marine life (besides butterflies which both zoo's have), I would have to say that I prefer the Henry Doorly Zoo SLIGHTLY over the Saint Louis Zoo, depending on the kind of zoo experience I am looking for on any given day.

Organic Cereal

Before I left home over spring break I made sure to stock up on some of my favorite cereals for the weeks ahead. I purchased the smallest meal plan from Sodexo which allows me to spend approximately 12 dollars a day on food. In order to have a full meal at lunch and dinner, I have to eat breakfast in my dorm. As part of the organic kick I'm on, I focused mainly on brands such as Kashi, Full Circle, and Cascadia Farms. These cereals lack the powerful sugar kick that you might find in name brand products, but that's what makes them appealing to me. The subtle sweet taste these organic cereals do have comes from either sugarcane (usually in the form of suganot or turbinado) or naturally raised honey. You still get the same amount of fiber (oftentimes more) from organic cereal; however, you will not get many of the vitamins that come in regular cereal. This is because the brand name companies "enrich" their cereals with vitamins that would not normally be contained within the cereal.

Spring Break

I am officially on Spring Break. Many college students have made elaborate plans for this week long respite from college. For some reason I chose to do more work. My parents are making plans to sell the house in Cape so I have been landscaping for the past few days and will continue to do so until break is over. In addition I can't resist studying for my analytical chemistry test next Wednesday. Throw in an independent research project, an ongoing summer job search, training for a marathon and I find that this hardly feels like a break at all. Maybe I should have gone to Florida.......

Florida aside, I'm looking forward to getting a job away from home this summer (wherever that may be). I'm fairly certain that this "new home" will feel nothing like home at all, which is part of the reason that I have applied to locations such as Hawaii and California. I look forward to the time when I can truly escape my books/new house/people I know and meet new people who know nothing of me. I can't wait for the REAL break to begin.

Fighting Cabin Fever

As Spring Break draws tantalizingly close, I find myself eager to escape dorm life and get out into that Spring weather that should be here anytime now. Dorm life definitely has it's positives, but being shut indoors during long winter weeks is not one of them. In order to combat the sweeping epidemic known to some as "cabin fever" I have prescribed several remedies for myself. *Note: These remedies only treat the symptoms of cabin fever, not the disease itself. Cabin fever can only truly be cured by copious amounts of sunshine and 50 plus degree weather.* My remedies are as follows: Running, leisurely reading, Flight of the Conchords, working out, doodling in my assignment notebook, playing basketball when possible, and taking naps. The most successful of these prescriptions has been Flight of the Conchords (season's one and two) which successfully alleviates stress within five minutes of inserting the dvd into my laptop. These two clever men from New Zealand put my disease into remission for sometimes up to three hours, depending on when the next class is.

Retreat on the Rock

This weekend I attended Campus Ministry's "Retreat on the Rock". For those of you familiar with Kairos, it is close to the same thing. I would recommend anyone looking for a weekend away from the nagging stresses of college life, (and who isn't?), to attend this retreat. I find myself refreshed, reorganized, and like my laptop--refurbished. Only any given college campus, no matter how great, students will find themselves under more stress than usual during these cold months in the dorms. Retreat on the Rock helped me to deal with this stress. Only two more weeks till Spring Break! I still have not heard back from any of my job applications unfortunately, but hopefully I will be able to post some good news soon.

I Won a Drawing!

Finally. For the first time since my arrival at Rockhurst I have won a drawing. Often at campus events there will be drawings for various prizes like gift cards. Even when the odds have been heavily in my favor, (I recently found myself with three tickets in a room of forty people and ten of them won), I still managed to come home empty. All of that changed, however, last week at a small presentation on dating relationships. Only four people failed to win something and for once, I was not one of them. Ticket number 14673131 was called and I had myself two tickets to see the movie "Valentines Day" (see happy accompanying picture). Of course I have no interest in seeing this movie but that is completely beside the point. What matters is that, for the first time and hopefully not the last, I have won a drawing. As a side note I ran 13 miles in 18 degree weather today. Less than two months till marathon day!!!!

Cool Runnings

"Feel the rhythm! Feel the rhyme! Get on up, it's cross country time!" In the 1993 movie "Cool Runnings" four natives from Jamaica leave their tropical homeland to compete in the winter Olympics. After leaving my home in Cape Girardeau to resume my training here at Rockhurst, I felt a certain connection with the Jamacian bobsled team.
The month of January marked the official beginning to my marathon training. Typical temperate weather of Southeast Missouri was not an issue during Christmas break, but once I came back to Kansas City I had to deal with consistently sub-freezing temperatures. The cold itself is more of an annoyance than a roadblock to my training since I wear multiple layers of clothing and employ the use of a "balaclava" (see the light blue thing in the picture). However, snow, sleet, ice, slush, and any manner of wintery mix as the weatherman says, does make running difficult. When there is snow on the ground, as there is today, I am forced to the confines of a treadmill. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with treadmills, it's just that I feel like a hamster on a never-ending wheel of misery. In this picture I was able to get my run in before the sleet really began to come down and escaped with only two eyelashes literally lashed together. Only nine more weeks of training! And I little warm weather wouldn't hurt.

My Plant

Residentency Halls on Rockhurst University's campus do not allow for people to keep pets in their dorm rooms, (with fish being an exception). In order to comply with this rule but still have something to care for I decided to bring a plant with me to college. This plant and I go back a long way, over two years, to a hospital reception party where I took him from the centerpiece of the table. Luckily he needs only a limited amount of sunlight to survive, otherwise he probably would have perished living in my room all alone over Christmas break. When I got back after break, my plant looked rather sickly and I immediately began the revival process of watering and giving small doses of limited sunlight. I believe he is on the fast track to recovery, and even managed to sprout two new leaves out of the top. I'm not sure what this next semester holds in store for me, but I hope that I can persevere and flourish the way my plant has in the face of adversity.

Back to School, Back to School.....

As of Wednesday, January 20th, I am back to my ongoing job as student. I spent my six weeks of Christmas vacation relaxing with the family, visiting old friends, shadowing dentists, and playing miniature ping pong with my little brother. After all that down time I was definitely ready to get back to school. This semester I will be taking Analytical Chemistry, Honors Biology II, Oral Communications, Global Business, and an intro Theology course for a total of 17 hours. I'm especially looking forward to Honors Bio II because I get to conduct an independent research project. I'll write about that later on.

Most recently I have began applying for Summer jobs in an attempt to get ahead of the competition. My job finding experience last Summer was a tedious one to say the least. I applied to 20 different local restaurants and was rejected at every last one of them until I got hired by a concrete company. Although one restaurant did hire me temporarily then dumped me before I could begin work and Outback Steakhouse gave me an full interview then said I failed the questionnaire/intelligence test. I was not aware that it took intelligence to work "Down Under." Keep that in mind next time you eat at Outback; all of the employees must be geniuses. But I digress....

So in order to avoid certain rejections of local Cape Girardeau companies, (at least in the dining sector), I applied out of state. I currently have applied to: Hawaii's Hawksbill Sea Turtle recovery project (they're an endangered species, pictured left), Florida Sea Base in the keys, and I entered a general application to Yellowstone National Park. Will any of these places hire me? Based on past experiences, probably not. But it can't hurt to try.