Observational 2: Disruption

I chose Davis Library as the place to observe and disrupt. I went to the 8th floor of the library and made a scene. I was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop or hear a person cough across the huge stacks of books. However, instead of sitting down in the wooden cubicles, I started walking around the stacks of books, acting like I was searching for a book. While I was looking for books, I started to raise my voice, just to a normal talking level, expressing my disappointment that I couldn't find the right book. In addition, I didn't stop talking and my shoes made a squeaking noise that only happens when they are wet. I saw numerous people look up from his or her cubicle and look dead at me with a look of irritation. One girl actually left the room in a hurry. No one said a word to me, but those who could see me never stopped looking at me; all they did was stop and give me the death look.

Observation #1

Woolen Gym is a unique place to observe the "norms" of a specific place. The gym only seems to allow a certain kind of behavior, which is primarily composed of seriousness and focus. Although joking around is commonly seen throughout the gym, it is worthy to point out that most of the noise in the gym is not caused by people talking, but of basketball being played. The space only allows small talk, such as yelling specific plays or calling for the ball; having a conversation in the middle of the court and goofing around is certainly prohibited, for the people in the gym are those who want to play serious basketball. People talk to each other in firm, direct voices that give the impression that the gym is not a place for playing around, but is a place where competitive athletes go to place a real game. Personal space is almost absent due to the fact that when one plays basketball, there will be another person guarding you closely, most likely right on top.

When I say Sportz, you say Nutz!

First, let's start with a depressing story about flag football. I had waited a couple of weeks for the intramural flag football (4 on 4) season to start, and I was excited to the max. Football has been my favorite sport since I was a little chubby 2nd grader, playing O-line for the Wake Forest Bulldogs. Ahh the nineties were great. But anyway, flag football, although not real football since you don't hit people, was a pretty close contender for the sport I wanted to play the most in college, even if it was just intramural. So on Monday I was psyched about our first game. It turned out to be pretty good too; we only lost by two touchdowns (on a 20 yard field though, so losing by two touchdowns is like losing 4 points in basketball). Then my phone rang yesterday, and the captain informed me that we only had one game left and that we had already gotten kicked out of the playoffs. WHAT? Are you serious? A two-game flag football season. A fan of the sport has a reason to be mad at that. I was pretty ticked off. Our last game is tonight and daggumit we're gonna kick some butt after finding out this will be our last game.

But anyway, it get's better with basketball. My intramural basketball team seemed pretty good and we were excited about playing in the Rec league, where we thought we wouldn't get creamed. But low and behold, the director accidently signed us up for the competitive league. Whoa, bad move. We lost the first game by 50, the next by 40, and the last by about 50 again. We are able to move down to the Rec league for the playoffs and we're seeded #79 out of 82. Haha seems like a joke right? Well we think so, but the good thing is that we've played really well, even against really good teams, so we believe that we'll do well in the playoffs, or at least the first round. We play basketball practically every night and we all can see that we've improved a lot. When I was in middle school, I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a basketball. I plain sucked, not to mention that I was short and my shots always ended up getting blocked. Such good times, but now I've realized that it might be better for me to pass the ball.

I still can't hit the broad side of a barn.

Event #1: UNC vs. NC State

Tonight was the UNC/NC State game, and it made a huge impact on my experience as a university student. One thing that every Carolina student must realize is his or her inner hatred towards the opposite team, especially NC State and Duke. As a child, my parents awakened my inner hatred towards NC State at an early age, mostly because they are graduates of UNC and they shared the same hatred that all students, past, present, and future, must experience in order to be a true Tar Heel. Needless to say my hatred for NC State burns like crazy and therefore I am a Tar Heel. Another way the game impacted me as a student is the unity that brings the students together here at the university. During my high school experience, I witnessed, at different schools, a sense of disconnection that pushed apart students, an experience that I was fortunate not to experience in high school. In college, I expected that it would become just as disconnected as the other high schools, since the campus is extremely large and diverse. However, tonight at the basketball game, I sensed the unity of students in cheering for their team. We all share one passion, and that passion is Carolina Basketball. Sometimes it only takes small things to display the unity of a student body.

In connection with our studies in english, at basketball games it is obvious to see that the audience is one of the most important aspects of the game. In english, the audience is also one of the most important aspects of writing, becuase a paper will always be written for someone to read, whether by a scientist, amateur reader, or teacher. The audience can drive the tempo of a basketball game by getting louder or quieter. Similarly, the way an english paper is written can also be driven by the audience, since the type of audience will affect the way the language and style of a paper are written. Furthermore, if a basketball team is playing horribly, the audience will lose interest and possibly not want to go watch another basketball game for a while, a detrimental blow to a team. Likewise in english, if the author of a papar cannot keep the audience focused or drawn to the paper by using bad grammer, disorganized sentences or lack of following the prompt, the audience will never want to read the author's work again, usually resulting, in the case of a student, in an ugly grade!

Have you ever felt that maybe a grade or two doesn't reflect how unbelievably hard you work in a class? You feel pretty comfortable with the material and you do a lot of stuff for the class, and then come to find out you're still not doing so hot? Of course everyone has, hence my life story in chemistry right now (yes I know I complain about this class, but it deserves to be complained about). I knew going into the class that it would be difficult and that I would probably have to go see the professor every once in a while to get extra help/tutoring on stuff that I didn't understand. Other than that, I felt pretty confident. The first test rolls around and holy crap, where did all of my knowledge go? It was probably one of the worst performances I've had on a test (it parallels the sucky job I did on an old chemistry test my sophomore year of high school). I was majorly disappointed. I didn't fail, or feel absolutely horrified, but I know I could've done better given I known what to expect. After I got my grade back, I didn't like the letter than was on it, but I still felt like I had done everything possible to prepare for the test. I studied hard starting a few weeks before the test and visited the professor often, and I thought I had a pretty good hold.

But not so fast, says my academic advisor in a letter that warns me of my progress. I received an email yesterday that told me that it's protocol that advisors warn a student if his grade is less than a C (mine is one point below that, at a C-). Yet, sometimes they are not aware of grades since many professors choose not to reveal grades to advisors. Well, mine does, and I got a nice letter from him. I can't drop chemistry either, because it's important to continue in the pre-med track.

So I realized this morning that I'm going to have to become the super nerd I never wanted to become. Well, maybe not a super super book worm, but that one annoying kid who ALWAYS shows up to office hours to get help. Instead of going to office hours maybe once or twice every two weeks, I've raised it up to every single daggum office hour. If that doesn't work, then I will admit that maybe I should have waited another semester to start chemistry.

We'll see how that class ends up by the end of the semester.

So this has been the second week in a row where I have almost totally forgotten about blogging twice. I don't know what it is, but I always seem to be absorbed with chemistry work (I really have been doing work since 3 this afternoon) when I need to blog. But anyway, at the moment I'm playing Taboo with a couple friends from high school. Haha and speaking of which, my ex-gf is in the room playing with me, and she is a good sport. When we dated, I always seemed to get sick when I was around her, haha and I don't know why either. It was during halloween and I think it had something to do with me being squimish and us always watching gross/bloody movies together. Oh the old days, how I miss them.
Taboo is really awesome, and my suitemate and I are currently kicking some major tail in the game. Taboo is supposed to go really fast, but sometimes your brain freezes with easy words and it makes you feel extremely stupid.
I went to Spankys for supper with some friends and I had the half rack of ribs and they were great. I also watched the Golden Compass with my suitemate and also did absolutely nothing in my math class. My life is so full of fun. Anyway, sometimes I think I need to pay more attention to due dates with blogs. Otherwise, as in the words of Christy, I won't get as good a grade I want if I can't remember to blog.

Bonfires and Stampedes

Last night I'd have to say was a highlight to the week. Especially since this afternoon I took a quiz that was basically a test, in a recitation for world music. That class sucks and we were not given a lot of material that was on the test. Anyway, the Carolina victory was a highlight.

As soon as the game was over, I told all my room mates to get out of the room and get to Franklin Street where the party was starting. It was pretty funny, because when we walked out onto the steps of Granville, the whole east side of Franklin street had already been overrun by students and police officers. So I put on my ninja shoes (my room mate calls my TOMs shoes ninja shoes), and ran all the way to Franklin Street. Ahhh what a wonderful sight to see all the students chanting and firing up bonfires and jumping over them. A friend down the hall told me he burnt his undershirt for the heck of it. The funny thing was that, as all of you no I am not of the tallest height, I couldn't hardly see anything that was going on in the crowd because I had some huge people in front of me. Plus, push came to shove and I was getting tossed around like a rag doll on the street since everyone was trying to knock people over to see the huge bonfire (that someone make with an old christmas tree). So of course I was knocked over too. Regardless, I had a really fun night.

Besides that, I joined a flag football team for the intramural league and I am way excited for it. I've played football since I was in 2nd grade, except for the last two years since the coaches didn't like how big I was (Hah!). We practiced today and then got kicked off by the air force. Way to go.

So yea nothing really exciting happened today, unless you count a chemistry and math test exciting. I tell you what, I went into the chemistry exam thinking that I had covered everything there was to cover, especially since I had prepared the whole week long for the test. Welp it sucked, and the test was pretty rough. Math, not so much, but that's because it's math.

For those who haven't ever done it, yoga is actually one of the coolest things I've ever done. Yea it sounds a little fruity for a dude, but I really like it. I feel pretty stretched out once I'm done with it and it really improves your agility and speed playing other sports because it allows your tendons/ligaments/muscles to become more accustomed to long periods of muscular stress and that builds your endurance.

Anyway, for those of you that I see outside of class (i.e. basketball games and chemistry), sorry for being anti-social, unfortunately outside of class and in big classes I am shy beyond words, but I'm working on that. I'm more social in small classes, but I guess I've been naturally shy since I was a little kid. So yea I will work on it.

Plus, I always like hanging out with classmates (sometimes being with room/suitemates gets boring), so for those of you who aren't annoyed by me yet then we should all do something.

As part of the pre-med community, I knew that chemistry and the lab would be pretty difficult to handle/understand along with the other classes I have. For years I've heard the horror stories of those who've dropped out of being pre-med or a chem or bio major just because chemistry and the lab were ridiculous. I thought that maybe they weren't doing something they should, or doing something they shouldn't. So I went into chemistry this semester thinking that maybe it wouldn't be that bad.

Well I have news for myself: I was definitely naive in that remark. Chemistry is by far one of the hardest courses I have ever taken in my entire life. I haven't been so frustrated/tired/irritated about one particular subject, better yet concerned about grades than I have been in Chemistry.

Here's a little story about my meeting with my TA for chem lab.

Bless her heart she is a very nice girl and she is pretty sharp with stuff and personable. Today while I was trying to get help with chem lab work, we went over some of the learning device questions (yes I know they are only about 10% of the final grade, but I'm anal enough to want to do well on that 10%). We came across a problem that had multiple answers, and I missed the problem because I didn't check an answer that was supposedly right. Well I asked her about that and she went all through the syllabus in an effort to find the answer, but alas, it just was not there. She said that she would email Volaric and ask about the question and I asked if the question would be counted as correct since the question had a wrong answer. You know what her answer was? "I really don't know, she might not even respond at all or give any credit at all." That was weird, because quizzes usually test the knowledge of the taker, not if they can choose the right answers in light of poor questions. Welcome to the world of chemistry Hunter, I hope you enjoy killing yourself in your trek to med-school