I awake in the middle of the night from the sounds of the extremely obnoxious night owls that appear to live in the lounge. By night owls, I mean students, who apparently don’t have early classes or respect and consideration for others. I fall back asleep for 3 hours until my roommates begin to awaken.
So I begin my day with little sleep. After attempting to eat breakfast and finally putting away the Frosted Flakes, I begin getting ready. Sweatpants, sweatshirt, brush my hair and teeth, and I’m out the door. After avoiding the swerving bikes and hoards of students on the sidewalk, I make it to class with little to no interruptions.
After attending classes, I make it back to my room in time to grab lunch from the commons. I get something different every day, whether it be pasta, a salad, or a sandwich. I do a little bit of homework during the day, until it reaches 4 o’clock.
At 4 o’ clock, I go to the gym for an hour. The gym in the Intramural Building is close to the freshmen dorms, so mostly freshmen workout there. After the gym, I shower and get dinner with one of my many roommates (someone’s always around and hungry).
After dinner, I finish all the homework I have for the day, and now it is my time to relax. I could watch a show on my laptop or finish the book I’ve been reading since the summer. I climb into bed around 11, and look through all the various social media sites for about a half hour. I put my earplugs in my ear, and hope that they don’t fall out so I don’t wake up to the night owls. Thanks for taking a walk in my shoes!
One of the things that I want to do the most at Penn State is join a THON committee. I didn’t join this year because I believed that I was going to be overwhelmed. I didn’t want to over-commit. Thinking back, I believe I could have handled the extra-hours, but I didn’t want to push it. A committee is like a tiny family within the huge THON family within the ever bigger Penn State community. I can’t wait to join.
Another thing I want to do is attend a play on campus. I love going to Broadway shows and plays, and Penn State has this little play scene that I don’t think many people know about. I’d be really interested in going to a few a year.
Another thing I want to do during my time at Penn State is climb Mount Nittany. I am a city girl all the way. I have never been camping and have never trekked through the forest before. But I think this is something that a lot of people do and get really into it, and I think it would be a very rewarding and breathtaking (literally) experience.
One last thing I’d like to do before I leave would have to be actually knowing where shops and restaurants are downtown. I feel like I don’t know about so many little shops and restaurants and I feel bad about it. I think I should have some sort of grasp for downtown life before I leave.
These are just a few things I’d like to check off my bucket list before leaving Penn State.
What did I expect out of freshman year? I think a better question would be what DIDN’T I expect? I over-think everything, so naturally I stayed up late at night those few weeks leading into fall semester just thinking about college. Thinking about what it was going to feel like to actually be a college student. Late nights studying, trouble with roommates, and scary exams are just a few expectations I had. After my first semester, I have concluded that my expectations were a lot different than reality.
After discovering that I was placed into supplemental housing on the first floor of Hastings Hall in East, I had to immediately find out what exactly was supplemental housing. Then, with much horror, instead of having to get along with one other person, I found out I had to get along with five. Yes, five. So my expectation of my dorm room was very low. I was ready to spend long days at the library or anywhere else to escape that overly-cramped room.
However, my room actually turned out GREAT. One roommate left, so one less person filled the room. In addition, we have our own kitchen AND a bathroom with its own shower. Pretty awesome, I’d say. But the cherry on top of it all is that I actually love my roommates. We all get along so well and have so much fun together. Most of us are living together next year.
I also thought that I would have to be studying all the time to maintain good grades. But, this isn’t necessarily true. If I keep up on my work and complete things on time, I find that I do have free time, where I can relax or hang out.
So all in all, my expectations turned out not completely true. Finals week did bring those scary exams, but everything else I was worried about… wasn’t scary at all.
The Palmer Museum of Art is just as impressive inside as it is outside. For three months, I have walked past that building with its huge paws on the front steps and have been intimidated. The intimidation didn’t end as I entered the building on this surprisingly cool Sunday afternoon. With its high ceilings and clean atmosphere, the Palmer exuberated classiness. A long hallway heading towards the exhibit included wall-length windows on one side and a gift shop on the right. Through the glass doors, the art sprang up on all sides. Many pieces featured bibical tales, such as David with the head of Goliath by Louis Finson in the 1600s.
One such piece grabbed my interest above all the others. It was a painting by Giovanni Domenico Ferretti called “The Brazen Serpent.” The so-called Brazen Serpent laid across the top of a wooden cross. As I learned in class from the book, This Means This, This Means That, Ferretti purposefully placed the cross and serpent way above the heads of the humans below, almost as though it was in the dark gray, gloomy clouds. This painting reminded me of an end to the world, such as the end predicted by the Mayan calendar that is slowly but surely approaching. Though I don’t believe in that, I do find it odd that I should see this painting at this specific point in time.
Another work of art fascinated me as well. A few pieces were made in the 1900s, but many were from before the 17th century. One rather large piece was hidden under a window by a staircase. It definitely looked like it didn’t belong. This piece, called “Peacock Blur and Yellow Seaform Set with yellow lip wraps”, was created in 1942 by Dale Chihuly. It was vibrant, and bold, with an interesting shape, almost like an underwater coral. It was a good choice by the curators to not place this piece in the large room adjacent from where it was, because it would have been very out of place amongst the pots and ceramic plates. This piece would look even better in the beginning of the exhibit, in order to draw in perspective admirers.
The Palmer Museum of Art opened my eyes to a yet another culture at Penn State University. Whenever I begin to feel like an uncultured member of society, I know I can go back there to appreciate the various works cultivated over the years by those working within The Palmer Museum of Art.
To be honest, I had no idea what would happen during Fresh START Day of Service. I was always involved in community service back home, and I felt like this was a chance to meet people who shared the same values as I did. I signed-up by myself and I felt nervous. I had just met my four (yes, four) roommates and made a few friends, but not alot. As I walked around that huge, hardfloor room in the HUB where they coralled all the freshmen into their corresponding groups, I got excited. I wanted to be friends with at least one person in my group and I prayed someone normal would be there.
After wandering aimlessly with my obnoxious yellow Fresh START t-shirt for a few good minutes, I found the group headed to Shaver’s Creek and took a seat on the floor. I was welcomed by my group leader, and after introducing myself, I glanced around. Everyone must have been really interested in their orange juices and bagels, because no one was talking. It was awkward. I could tell the other group leader was ready to jump in with some ice-breakers, but the first speaker had taken the stage. After a very good performance by an all-male acapella, I said to the girl next to me, “Wow, they were so good! Too bad its like 8:30 am…” and just like that, we began a conversation.
Claire and I sat next to each other on the bus as we made the bumpy 20 minute ride. The rain came down sideways as the buses windshield wipers struggled to keep the glass clear. Most of the girls donned their free ponchos immediately, while the boys attempted to be tough, but before long, everyone had theirs on. For reasons unknown to me, I was assigned the task of spreading woodchips over dirt. The man was never clear as to why I was doing this.
After a while, we were forced to call it quits, and everyone dried off inside. The director of Shaver’s Creek thanked us for working in the rain and if we wanted, they would put on a show featuring their famous collection of owls. The show room was brightly lit, with windows on three sides. Four cages sat on a table in the corner, each a different size and covered with a towel. The man was very knowledgable about the different owl species, and fun to watch. Surprisingly, I was sad to leave. I wanted to see more animals, I think they had a vulture!
Immediately after Fresh START, I joined a special THON organization that Claire was involved in, called Pillar. I even managed to drag two of my roommates! Community Service is something that I believe everyone should be in involved with at some point in their lives, if not all their life. It is one of the those experiences that can make you feel truly happy, because you know you are helping someone less fortunate. Every little bit helps.
Rae Armantrout Poetry Reading
Sitting in my seat in Foster Auditorium on September 11th, 2012, I awaited the beginning of my very first poetry reading. I contemplated whether I should attend or not, but I was already in the library, and it couldn’t be more than an hour at least. I couldn’t help but overhear the mother behind me tell her neighbor that this was her young daughters’ first poetry reading as well. I thought that was a little ironic, seeing as I was 18 and the little girl looked about 6.
As the small auditorium continued to gain spectators, I glanced around trying to spot this Rae Armantrout. I knew nothing of her except what I learned from Google, such as her winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2010. Suddenly, the man who put this reading together stood up, and after discussing Ms. Armantrout’s numerous awards and background information, signaled for her to begin. A short, bespectacled woman walked to the podium, and began to recite her poems.
Before each poem, she discussed where her inspiration came from. Though she read many cleverly constructed poems from her new book called “Money Shot”, most of which were about the stock market crash and Bush presidency, I personally enjoyed her more comic poems.
She began one poem by telling the audience about how she began to enjoy reading physics books for leisure. She wanted a more in-depth look at physics, so she invited a physicist to lunch, to discuss some of her questions. She began asking questions about the space time continuum and Galileo’s Law of Conservation. She admitted to posing the questions in such a way that the even the most celebrated physicist could probably not answering them perfectly. Soon enough, this particular physicist grew frustrated with the above mentioned questions and could not conjure up a plausible answer to them. Her poem “Dress Up” addresses that disastrous lunchtime discussion.
However, I gained the most entertainment from another poem, an interpretation on Shakespeare’s 3rd Sonnet. She was asked to recreate one of Shakespeare’s sonnets for the new book entitled, “The Sonnets”, where 154 modern poets try their hand at modernizing them for a new audience.
Her modern, hilarious twist on one of Shakespeare’s “procreation sonnets” produced many laughs within the auditorium. Shakespeare’s 3rd Sonnet involves Shakespeare telling a young man to hurry up and make children to make his father happy before his youth and beauty escapes him. It’s a funny thing to hear an old man telling a young man to hurry up and procreate before he becomes ugly. It’s even funnier hearing a woman speak as an old man telling a young man to procreate. Her tone of voice and modern use of language, especially in this poem, really stood out to me and opened my eyes to the world of modern language.
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