Kara Nicholas: 2011-2012

Prep Time

So this week has been... a mixture of craziness and complete boredom. Explanation: it's the week before finals. For those of you who are still confused by this, here's the more detailed version. Preparing for finals in and of itself is, well, frustrating. On one hand, you want to get a good grade on your final, be it a paper, test, or presentation. On the other hand, being a lazy college student, you have to work to stay motivated through all of the boring studying, researching, and practice that goes into having an easy and well put together final. So, my life has been a mashup of procrastination and frantic typing. And, seeing as I need to get back to the frantic procrastination, eh, I mean frantic typing, aspect of that, this is going to be one short post! Come back next time for my ranting against having finals over the weekend!

How Long Has It Been?

Wow. I have been a really bad blogger lately... no posts in what, two months? Eeek! Anyways, I'm back now. It's pretty rediculous how real life can get in the way of what you should be doing in real life. This is the first week back from Thanksgiving Break, and I am extremely glad to be back here at Norwich! Since my parents no longer live in the area that I grew up in, I didn't get to see anyone I knew except for my father over the break... Don't get me wrong, I have no problem visiting my dad, but it's odd how homesick I was. I've noticed that now when I mention "home", I am usually talking about my dorm room.

Another thing I've found funny is how breaks work in college. We get back from our 10 day or so Thanksgiving Break, and come back to reviews and finals for about three weeks. Then, we get to go away again for three weeks. Not sure if I'm glad about this yet or not. Oh well, nothin I can really do about that.

This month in particular has been a little crazy. Some of my friends were doing this strange thing called NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50,000+ novel all in the month of November. They wanted me to also do this. I started to. Then kinda cheated. I finished figuring out what I was writing about, about the characters, plot, and the world that I was creating. I'm going to actually write the thing over Winter Break. I'll let you know how it goes. 

Now, I'm going to have to get back to my studying; I get to memorize an email for my Chinese final, and can only have the characters for a script. Wish me luck!

Time Change

I never really noticed how oxymoronic our sense of time is until this past week. Here we are, at the week of midterms, and it still astounds me that I'm out of high school and in college. Weekends and weekdays blur together. It seems like so much has happened, but that just yesterday I was still back home. So many decisions have to be made in such a short amount of time, and these decisions affect the rest of your life. Not just how you do in classes, and what classes you take, but the normal 'life' stuff too. Will I actually stay here for the next semester? Can I afford to? Will I go out with my roommates tonight? Will I get into a relationship, sleep around, or neither? 

A lot of this stuff has been going through my mind lately, as at the beginning of this week, I got a letter from the school in my mailbox. Not unusual, right? Well, when it says that you still have to pay about $14,000 by November 7th, it tends to freak you out. Hopefully this can all be resolved, and soon. If not, it's goodbye Norwich in less than a month. Hello reality, can you go away now? Please?

Change in 12 Hours

This past weekend has been... hell, to put it nicely. It was alumni weekend, so we had many alumn walking around campus, seeing how things had changed since they were students here. Saturday afternoon came cold and drizzly, perfect weather for a Norwich football game. I wasn't actually there; migraines and football crowds don't usually mix well. But apparently that didn't matter so much, as I could hear the cheers when our team won from the comfort of my dorm room. The day wore on, parties were planned. Early the next morning, around 1:30 or so, all of Crawford became a hive of murmuring worry. Reports were slowly comming in about a car crash, and rumors about who was involved and what, if any, injurys had occurred. Around three that morning, we were told some more concrete news. There were eight students, all from our building, that had crashed coming back from a party. The driver was drunk, and we were told that one student, Renee Robbins, didn't make it. You could feel the shocked slience, the instant depression, that gripped Crawford. Very few got any sleep after that, worrying what happened to the others, and who was really involved in the crash, as there were more than those eight students that were still missing, who had gone to that same party. Just 12 hours earlier, the primary emotion was elation and excitement of winning the football game. That morning, it was all but forgotten. 

First Week as a Civilian

Hey all! So, it's the end of my first week being a civilian, and I think I'm going to like it here. I'm staying in Crawford, and it's amazing how easy it is to get everywhere I need to be now (though I'm not sure if it's the location or not having to square in the gutter to get places...). Also, I have some of the... most interesting roommates. Both of them are also 'dead rooks' or as one of them likes to put it, "we got recognized early". The only other thing that I will say about them, for the moment, is that, in describing our room, one of our friends on our floor said, "It's like Vegas in there, except weirder". I'm still trying to decide if that was a complement or a criticism.

Let's see, what happened this week... Oh, right. It was Parent's Weekend! Since becoming civilian, this didn't have an extreme effect on me, except for one small fact: Parents = Car + Money! Now, that's not to say that I wasn't happy to see my parents just to see them, but it made me ecstatic to be able to have more than two sets of clothes and to have my own blankets and jackets. Eating off campus wasn't that bad either.

However, I think I'm begining to catch one of the ever-present Rookie Plagues. So, here's to hoping that a lot of sleep and decent food will ward off this disease!

The Most Insane Week Yet

Hey all, so this week has been crazy. Start off the week on Monday with a trip to the hospital because I sat down and could not get back up. That was quite painful, but I was given morphine. Unfortunately, that didn't help too much, but oh well. Spent the next two days looking extremely pathetic on campus because of how much it hurt to walk. For example, it took me 30 minutes to walk around less than half of the UP. Not to worry, I am walking normally now, with minimal pain.

The rest of my week, when not in classes, I was working on my transfer to the civilian side of campus. My move was finalized on Friday, and I have been enjoying wearing pants that mostly fit! Now, I just have to survive until jackets and blankets can be sent up here...

I am enjoying sleeping and taking longer than 5 minute showers. And being able to chew my food more than 5 times. But, this was still a bittersweet move. I miss my platoon, and am trying to figure out what to do with all of this time I now seem to have now that I don't have to contantly be SOPing. Well, I guess next week we'll find out how dealing with this goes.

Weekend of September 11

This week has been... extreme for me. Started off with me being confined to the infirmary for just over 72 hours. I don't recommend it - I was bored out of my skull. For the rest of the week, stuff went fairly normally, and I was worried that I might not have anything to post on here except 'Was here, got sick, got bored, got better.'

However, as soon as Saturday came around, it got much more interesting. First, all of us freshmen Rooks got to go up to the Abare Farm and have pretty much a 'chill day'. Our platoon spent the majority of the time eating ice cream, dancing, and talking/sleeping on any patch of dry grass we could find. Unfortunately, I had to leave early. On to the next exciting part of my weekend.

The Regimental Band and the Campus Choraleers got to have a short road trip this weekend - we went to Battleship Cove in Fall River, MA. When we arrived, we were told to grab the gear that we would need for the night and were shown onto a WWII battleship, the USS Massachusetts. The guys slept in some of the crew's quarters, which looked a bit like stretchers stacked 4 high and roped together with chains. The girls were given an upgrade in sleeping arrangements; we were given the Junior Officers quarters, which gave us bunk beds with actual mattresses and walls. A lot of us spent the majority of the night exploring the ship, which had been made into a type of floating museum. But, morning would come early.

The real reason why we were all down there in Mass was to play/sing for the 9/11 memorial that was being held. However, I honestly don't remember too much of the ceremony. It was important, solemn, and we were representing our school, but the actual event is lost to the before/after chaos in my mind.

Afterwards, we were given around four hours to explore the rest of the Cove. Breaking off into small groups, we toured another battleship and a submarine. We also watched an exhibit on Pearl Harbor. We still managed to have about two hours left after all that, so we found where we (the girls) had slept the previous night and attempted to nap. Which was also done on the ride back up to the school. What can I say, napping makes a rook's life better.

Academic Week aka ‘Catching Breaks – the Good and Bad’

Life as a rook is tough. Last week, I was pretty sure that life, for a while at least, couldn’t get more difficult. So far, it seems like I was right, at least partially. It also got harder.

Rook Week could be called, not easy, but perhaps simple. You follow along with your platoon and obey the people in your chain of command, and life’s… more tolerable. As academics start up, there are more variables thrown in. You alone are now completely responsible for being where you’re supposed to be at a given time. You are more in charge of your schedule. Sounds good on the surface, but this type of responsibility takes much more effort than Rook Week.

But back to what I was saying about ‘difficult’ and ‘hard’. Rook Week was particularly difficult for me, seeing as I am most definitely not the most physically fit person around. It was extremely challenging for me to even come close to keeping up with the rest of my platoon in almost every activity.

Academic Week, on the other hand, is hard. I’m one of those students who, in high school, never studied and consistently procrastinated on all homework, papers and projects. However, I was still able to get mostly A’s in my classes. Now, I’m finding that I picked up many bad habits (procrastination) and didn’t take the time to form good ones (note taking/time management). This week, even more so than the previous one, is full of adjustments for me.

But I have to say; so far the experience is quite enjoyable. What can I say, for some strange reason, leaning is… sort of the highlight of my life. Discussing differing ideas, the sharing of knowledge, all of that is exciting for me. So, time for me to figure out how I’m going to survive through another year of doing what I love. Wish me luck!

Rook Week! aka 'What in the World is Going On?'

I have now been at the center for academic learning known as Norwich University for... not quite a week. It sure feels a lot longer than that! Between the physical activity and the amount of new information being thrown at me, I've barely had time to even think about what to talk about in this blog.

Rook Week is... intense, to say the least. I've gotten less sleep, more physical activity, and more food then I ever have had for any extended period of my life "BN", before Norwich. I've also gotten yelled at and have yelled more than ever - I can count on two fingers the amount of times that I have yelled before coming to this school. Now, well, you get yelled at if you don't yell.

But all in all, this has been a good experience. I was completely confused the first two days when our Cadre were telling us that we had to look out for our Rook brothers/sisters because they were our family and that they were the people we would know best. I have known the 27 other people in my platoon for less than a week, but I can already say that I know they will be some of my closest friends. It's amazing the amount of information you can learn about someone in a short time span when you can't even talk to them, except for maybe an hour a day collectively.

It hasn't been all smiles and happy bonding though. This has been one of the most challenging weeks of my life. First of all, I'm not that great at anything physical, and the Corps of Cadets is intensly physical. Also, I have had to re-learn my idea of respect. I was taught that it was respectful to look people in the eyes when talking to them, when they began to talk, or when they enter a room/conversation/area. But in this program, that is concidered extremely disrespectful. It's taken some adjustment.

I feel like I have learned more in these few days than I learned in my last semester of high school, and the Academic Week hasn't even begun yet! Now, I should get off this computer and get to my next meeting before I'm late - I have no clue where it is! Nicholas out.

Your Typical 'Back-to-School' Essay, aka "What I Did Over Summer Vacation"

Summer break is almost over, the new school year just around the corner. Naturally, as one chapter of my life closes, I tend to look back and reflect on the changes which have taken place. And if there is one word to sum up my experiences over this summer, change would have to be it.

To fully comprehend this, we must go back to approximately Christmas break of last year. I had finally decided on my school choice for college (virtual cookies for whoever can figure out where!) I’ve lived all 18 years of my life in the wonderful state of Massachusetts (or is it the state of Insanity, I can never remember which…) That being said, a move up to Vermont is not that far of a leap. Far enough away from parents to not worry about them checking up on me too much, but still close enough to not worry about transportation home for vacations.

Now, fast forward with me to late April, early May. My father, who had been out of work for about the past year, had found a good, long-term job. Great, I recall thinking, college is kinda expensive, and more parental cash = less student loans! Of course, this job happened to be in Virginia. Now, I have nothing against Virginia. In fact, if you discount the summer humidity, I enjoy being down there very much (though you can easily tell which side of the Civil War they fought on) In fact, Washington DC, which wasn’t terribly out of the way from my father’s apartment, is one of my favorite cities. What can I say, I fell in love down there… with the Metro, that is.

Now, why am I telling you all this? Because right after the craziness of graduation which I’m sure you can all remember, you know, the getting your diploma, saying goodbye to high school friends, and making the rounds to family members, something strange happened. I found myself packing up everything from my father’s Massachusetts apartment, throwing it into a moving van, and driving all the way down to Virginia. Two weeks of my summer, completely taken up by moving.

Eventually, I get on a plane back to Massachusetts to spend the rest of my summer with my mother. Surprise, surprise, mom’s also going to be moving out of Massachusetts. Not to Virginia, not to Vermont, but all the way across the country to Arizona, her home state. Apparently, my mother has this strange urge to move back to where her family is, imagine that! Ok, can’t really blame her for that.

So, my summer has consisted of two main ingredients: packing/moving (for three separate moves. THREE!) and preparing for college/corps (and I’m pretty sure that it’s the corps that I prepared the most for, and yet am least prepared for). Maybe this is a good thing. At least I’ve been practicing dealing with curveballs and stress. Isn’t that part of leadership skills or something?

Anyways, as far as plans for the imminent future go, not dying during Rook Week and figuring out possible flights for vacation seem to be the direction I’m heading in. Norwich, here I come!