Interesting stuff...maybe?

The rest of my week went by pretty well. Doing homework late at night or in the morning, not reading the last 2 assignments for my Egypt class and Computer Science class, and none of that stuff being discussed in class is awesome. Also, the paragraphs I've been writing for class have actually been pretty good. I've impressed myself a few times, and thought "I didn't write that." Also, there's a balcony on our floor that we can't get to because someone lit a fire out there months ago, and there's a balcony floor above that where the railing isn't safe. Well, we were able to get the door open to get out there. It wasn't easy, but we did it, and we're hoping we can be allowed to go out there. For the time being, we're not saying anything about it.

I realized this week that if I did drugs, I'd be the worst drug addict ever. I had like 12 things of Fla-Vor Ice popsicle things at a pool party for one of my classes. There were also Nacho Cheese Doritos, and I had about half a bag. I had half a bag of bbq chips last night. Yes, I know I don't always eat healthy, but I can't stop myself. That's why if I started doing something seriously addicting, I'd be done for. Note to self, don't do drugs.

Now on to some serious stuff. I conducted an experiment this week. It's not very complete, and I'm not sure if I want to keep doing it or not. I decided to not say hi to just about everyone online, and see how many people would talk to me. It was no surprise that few people talked to me. A week is not long enough to get accurate data, because there are also times when too many people say hi to me, but it was interesting to see how many people would say hi, who, and when. Friday night seems to be the night when people want to talk. Most of the people that said hi tonight would rather wait all week to tell you everything at once rather than talk through the week, when you can remember more details. That wasn't meant as an insult, but its a lot easier to tell someone something when it happened that day, or a few days ago. Do I remember anything that happened Monday? No. That's why I try to talk to people during the week, so that I can remember stuff like that.

Right now I'm not sure if I want to stay offline for a while and not have to worry about people, or go back to relying on talking to people online to make me feel better. I'm nothing without my friends, and I hate to have to rely on them to the extent I do. I might seem to have my priorities messed up, worrying about if people say hi to me online or not, but here at college, I'm surrounded by worldly people, and when I talk to people, especially church people online, I expect good things from them. Whether you talked to me this week or not, don't worry. Also, if you feel that any of what I said applies to you, I don't want you to start talking to me every chance you get. Be who you are, don't change because I post about people not saying hi to me first. In just about everything in life that I can think of right now, we must change because we want to or have to. To make someone happy and not feel guilty is no reason to change. To want to make someone happy because you want them to be happy is the best reason in the world.

Once again, I feel like I'm accusing people and making a social commentary, but I'm pointing out some generalities I see with people in and out of the church. If we don't act differently than the world, how can we really prove that we're different? Because we go to a different kind of church with our parents? By not going out with friends Friday night, does that really make us lights to the world? Even the little things, and sometimes especially the little things make a difference. What other things in our life, besides how we talk to people online, do we not do differently than the world? What things can we change to make us better people, and show others that we're not like people in the world?

The things that have upset me about how people act online are only part of the problem. At camp, it's not uncommon for people to show how or talk about the worldly things they do, like they're things to brag about. I did it this past year too, and it upsets me. We don't brag about the good things we do; God does the bragging for us by blessing us or building our character. So why are we bragging about the worldly things we've done? Because we like the world, and we like to emulate it and show that we're emulating it. We must change that about ourselves because we want to and have to.

Be wary of the little things and the big things you do. What messages are we sending by the things we do and say? Do we show that we're empathetic online? Do we show that we're empathetic in person? Do we talk to others online to find out how they're doing, to talk to someone you haven't talked to in a while, or just to tell them how good your week was? Is the way we talk online just a mirror of other parts of our life that are worldly? A little leavening can leaven the whole lump in ways we might not imagine.

I went from social commentary to rant mode to pretty much a sermon. This was not to put people down, to make them feel bad, or exalt myself. There were some things that I felt needed to be said. Other things I thought should be pointed out in this context, to make us look at ourselves. We say we're going to examine ourselves, but how often do we? What areas of our life do we examine? What areas do we wait to examine later, but never get to? What simple things can we do to make our lives and other people's lives better? Truly think about these things, act upon them.

No topic name is good enough

I joined intramural tennis this week. I had my first game on Thursday. The guy who I was supposed to play got there a couple minutes late, and all the courts were taken up, so we had to play a doubles match. The problem was that the guys we played against had already warmed up and were ready to play. The guy I played against and I had like 4 minutes, which totally isn't enough time. We lost. Afterwards, the intramural guy wanted the two of us to play so that we had a record of us playing. He won 6-2, 2-6, 6-2. If we had actually had time to warm up and get loose, the outcome might have been different. Oh well, I'll make sure to warm up like half an hour before my next match starts.

Right now I'm upset at people in general. I'll start off with what just happened a couple minutes ago. I was coming back to my dorm, and I see there's a big group of people outside. A fight is being broken up by other guys, so I take the stairs on the side of the building. On the men's side of the hall, which is away from where the fight is, the doors don't open from the outside, but someone on our floor had put something to block the door from closing, allowing us to enter from the outside. I find out when I reach the top that someone took it out. I get inside another way, and find out that the guys in the fight are near the elevator. I have to take a set of stairs somewhere else, and take another set on the other side of the building, then come back to the side of my building where my room is, just to get back to my room. All the people outside were drunk or had something to drink. I wanted a giant piano to fall from the sky and land on them to make them all be quiet.

I hope no one takes this the wrong way, but to be honest, I'm upset with people I call my friends. I'm not looking for sympathy, and I'm not blaming people specifically. I try to treat each person special, and I put some effort into maintaining my friendships. I usually expect them to put some effort back into it. I understand that some don't do it as well, or that some friendships don't work out. That's fine. However, I see a constant trend with a lot of friends where they don't put much effort into being friends. Maybe it's me, I don't know. I have other friends who do simple things like say hi first on IM, try to keep a conversation going, or tell you why they can't keep one going. I appreciate things like that. There are times when you only want to talk to certain people, or don't want to talk to someone, that's fine too. But there are things that annoy me, like if I come back to my computer, and the other person says something like "yay", and then doesn't talk. It's like not talking to me when I'm at my computer is more exciting than not talking to me when I'm not at my computer. Yes, I've done that a couple times too, gotten caught up in other conversations, but there has seemed to be a rise in that sort of behavior. I also bet that if I didn't initiate any IM conversations, and let people say hi to me, I'd talk to about 10% of the people I normally talk to.

I probably sound somewhat irritated, and I am. I'm doing what people said they would after the shootings: telling people how I feel about them. That brings to mind another thing: after the shootings people said they'd tell each other how much they care about each other. I didn't see much of that, or at least not many people didn't tell me they cared about me. Either way, I wasn't surprised. The average person is afraid to say what they mean, and say it like they mean it. It's hard to tell someone how you feel about them, and the fact that we still hide our feelings tells me that most of us aren't mature enough to tell others what we feel. We're afraid of rejection, or hurting someone else's feelings. We shouldn't be offended by what others say. Our mission as Christians isn't to make everyone happy. Is it worth stretching the truth to make someone not feel bad? Do we have to sugar coat everything we say, and run the risk of not getting our point across? There are right and wrong ways to say things, but sometimes you just need to go out and tell someone something.

I too have been working on this. I don't want to sound like I'm putting others down, even though I might come off that way, but that's because I'm not sugar coating things. I could talk to the people that do some or all of these things one on one, but I figured that posting my thoughts on my blog would give me a better chance to organize my thoughts, and let the 3 people that read my boring site know what I'm thinking.

If I had talked to some of my friends about what I said above, some might agree. Presenting my ideas in this fashion, where many (2 or 3 would be many, right?) people can read it, might make me look like I'm preaching, but I'm not. If you have a problem with what I said, tell me. I didn't mean to offend anyone, but if I did, let me know. I needed to vent, and at the moment, the way I worded things seemed right. I should probably end now, so goodnight everyone.

College time!

Well, I've been through my first two weeks of college, yay! It's not that tough yet. I have Computer Science A & B 4 times a week. One of those classes we meet in the computer lab. The problem is that 75% of the computers in there are MACs, so we're learning how to use them. Whoever said that MACs are user friendly needs to be shot. A friend across the hall who has a MAC laptop (he got one because he wanted to see what they were like), hates how they're nowhere near as stable as they're proclaimed to be (whoever said they're stable also needs to be shot). The guy teaching the class is a million times better than my Computer Science teacher in high school. I have Evolution of the Universe, which is basically an astronomy class, looking at the way the universe works, with little emphasis on math (YES!). The teacher's pretty cool. I've got an English class called Writing About Monsters, but we write about monstrocity, the way it's depicted in various forms. The problem is the teacher doesn't seem that experienced, and don't explain things very well. Also, why would you hire a guy to teach English when he has some of the worst handwriting ever, and goes off topic constantly!? Not a good class. My final one is my RCC class (Rollins Conference Course). During orientation, we'd be with that class, and go around campus being oriented, and we'd make some friends in that class. A good way to get adjusted to college. Instead of giving you the longest name for a class ever, I'll just tell you what it's about. We're studying the art of ancient Egypt, and somewhat of the areas around Egypt. We're learning how the art affected just about everything in their lives. It's more interesting than it may sound. I love Thursdays. English from 11:00-11:50, and no more classes after that.

In case I haven't already told you, you're probably wondering what Rollins is like. Well, to start off, it's a beautiful campus, and most people here are pretty nice. There's a 60-40% ratio of women to men (which I honestly had no idea of), and most of those women are attractive, and like to show it off. I have wondered a few times how some of the people at this school met the qualifications. I also wonder how some of them are even going to last in the real world. I heard one girl going off on her dad because he wouldn't send her some coffee from home. It's not like there's a ton of places on campus to get coffee or anything!

There is bad language of course, and drinking. No, I have not had anything with alcohol in it to drink. Aside from that, there's not much to complain about. Now on to the cool things about college:

I live on the fourth floor of my dorm. We have a big lobby area with a tv, some couches, half the amount of people as the other floors, twice the washers and driers, and a ping pong table. We're trying to get a pool table on our floor too. Almost everyone on my floor is pretty cool. We're one of the best dorm floors on campus, maybe even the best. I have tennis courts, basketball courts, and a volleyball court right outside my dorm. We have a gym with basketball courts we can use any time, and a place where we can work out. I still have to go there, pump some iron, and be a stud at camp next year...or not. There are plenty of places around here to eat, and the food's good. There's a place where they serve subs and wraps, I want to live there.

My birthday was Thursday (I'm 19 in case you didn't know), and I played 3 hours of tennis that day. It was great. Even though it was in the middle of the day, and I was sweating like crazy, I was able to get warmed up enough so that I could hit the tennis ball the way I wanted to just about every time. I now have a backhand shot! I can put slice on the ball if I want. I can even come to net, which I could never do before. It was so awesome. I took a nap later that day, and had a 12 inch sub with chicken tenders in it, muenster cheese, and some sauce. Don't be jealous. Yesterday I had to meet with my RCC class from 2:00-3:15. It's mandatory for all freshmen in RCC classes. We played football (two hand touch), and I threw some frisbee after that.

It's pretty crazy having all this freedom. Unlike high school, there are no security officers or teachers telling people to stop making out. People smoke, and no one cares. Some people even throw away empty boxes of beer in the trash, and don't even try to hide it. It's insane sometimes, but I'm avoiding that stuff. Being in a school setting and having so much freedom is very different, but I'm used to it now.

Well, I've got nothing more to say. Just thought I should keep my blog alive. Since I'm getting used to my schedule, I hope to be able to post on here more often. Adios everyone.