Okay, maybe I'm a dork, but I'm feeling particularly full of civic pride right now. I ran across the bid video for my college town, which won the 2011 Great American Main Street Reward.
Here's the video:
I like to call present-day Newark a Disney Town, USA. LOL. It's gotta a lot more generic over the years, but the tradeoff is that it's doing pretty well. (Thinks about Tet and that lovely little college town he has.)
Any people got some nice tourism videos to share of
So, I make a joke about how I'm used to Black and Mild cigars as opposed to the chocolate cigars they were handing out to celebrate Sister 2's twins arriving, and now Sister 1 and Sister 3 are convinced I'm a cigar smoker who secretly goes out to get my fix. They really do want to believe I'm just some liar who hides what he does from everyone and is into all kinds of crazy shit. I absolutely lost it in front of my mother. God, they piss me off. It of course makes sense that the first time in
At University of Delaware, there's this tradition that the graduating seniors jump into the water fountains on the last night, before graduation.
It's graduation weekend, and I'm spending my night at Kildare's. After getting a slice at Margherita's on Main Street, I walked back up to my parking space at the Trabant Parking Garage. I was ambling up Delaware, then I decided to walk on the pedestrian bridge at Gore to get to the quad between Ewing, Smith and Kirkbride. There's this water
I pulled off a 4.0 this semester. Yes! Now my grad school GPA stands at a 3.83. I'm pretty happy, since getting a 4.0 was on my bucket list. I came close to that with winter session '10, and I was disapointed when it didn't happen. But now I can say I had a 4.0 semester. It gives me some wiggle room to deal with the third semester, which is going to be a bitch. I'm taking a seminar with a professor who is a notable badass. Plus I have a 10 a.m. for the first time in a year, and I don't have a si
I had a somewhat odd experience tonight. I went to see the seminal 1990's band, Stone Temple Pilots. They were performing at the convention center at my grad school.
But here was the weird thing. When I came in, I managed feeling very young, because a lot of the people there were in in their mid-30's, maybe even early 40's. Which makes sense, because the peak of the band was in the early/mid 1990's, which is about 15-20 years ago now. I saw some young kids there, but they were mostly outnumb
I had a good weekend. I didn't go crazy and rage- I just had a couple of drinks with my friend Seth at this nice little bar on Philly Street. Sang some karoke and all that fun stuff. The next night I went out to Wolfie's and danced. Friday night I got to see the Plain White T's, and that was fun.
But the best part about this weekend was the sense of utter contentment I had. I've made some choices that have left me satisified about where my life is headed, and I just feel good.
Ha. Now that was fun. No, I'm not leaving graduate school. Not until I have that degree in my hand.
I told my real-life friend Seth that I was getting kicked out of school, and he believed me. It was a great April Fool's day. LOL.
I talked to my advisor today, and told her that I was planning on dropping out of graduate school.
Going back over my blog, all I ever do is worry about school, and how hard it is, and how much I need to get my grades up. And for what? To service some future self? Become chained to the hell that is academia for another year of my life? I've been in school since 1991. Maybe it's time to finally say good-bye to it all?
I was watching an episode of this show called Greek, and the character
I have some acquaintances from high school. One got an article write-up about landing a role in a professional production of Romeo and Juliet. The other one, who works tech, is apparently going to work scifi effects for a Disney movie. Another hasn't had anything big happen, but she is really working toward her goal of breaking it into the movie business in Hollywood. It just had me thinking, about when I was fifteen years old and really wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be in movies- maybe
I had my talk with my advisor with my proposed plan for the second year of grad school.
Some things came clear. I won't be doing a thesis. I might work on some publications, but it's not really where I want to go.
I also don't want to go into a PhD program, at least for a few years. Which pretty much means I really don't have a chance of working in the community college scene because the job market is so bad that PhD's are fighting over jobs in that field.
I want to work in a museum,
I was at a bar tonight. Some DC business dudes noticed my University of Delaware flacco sweatshirt. I got it back in fall '09 when I was drunk at Homecoming. This one guy wanted to buy it off of me, because the Baltimore/DC area apparently doesn't sell Joe Flacco UD swag. I wound up selling it to the guy for forty dollars. Plus the two drinks I got, and the tip I would have given the bartender, I wound up clearing about 48 dollars.
The best part is that the sweatshirt had almost little to
Just when I thought UD couldn't come up with even more inane ideas...they proved me wrong.....
UD Wants to Close Academy Street
See, I get the principle of what they're trying to do- they're trying to create a more closed, Ivy-League like campus(like say, UPenn), and what they have to do to achieve that is to get rid of throroughfares.
Still, Academy Street is just way too critical north-south route to close like, especially when you consider the fire station
I realized that I waited too long to look for a summer internship. Crap. I'm so screwed. I guess I'll have to do an internship during my 2nd year of grad school.
Alright, so it's the new semester. I have a job on campus at the student dining hall. Work is work, but this time around I'm getting more hours. And to be honest, I really don't like two of the shifts I have- I don't like the pace, and while I know I could get used to the duties over the semester, I just don't feel like $7.25 an hour is worth getting aggravated trying to get used to something when I've got two other shifts with job duties I'm used to having. This week I'm working somewhere clo
I started my second semester of grad school this week. The workload is pretty intimidating, but I think I got it down by this point. I hope, anyway.
One thing that struck me is how much more relaxed I feel as opposed to that first week of grad school. Everything- god I just felt like I couldn't breate. I spent the night before my first classes that semester reading the reflections of a woman who dropped out of her PhD program. I was positive that I would flunk out. And I did pretty well.
University of Delaware lost the Division I title game last night at Pizza Hut Park in Frisco. We gave up a second-half 19 point lead for Eastern Washington to come back with 20 points.
I'm pretty bummed. It would have been great to see UD get a championship. On the bright side, it was great to see the Blue Hens there, and it WAS a great season for UD. But since our quarterback is a senior, it looks like next year's going to be a rebuilding year.
I got 2 A's and a B. That brings my grad school GPA to a 3.66. (IUP does not do A- or B+ grades like UD, so there's a little less inflation here.) I was really hoping I could pull off a 4.0, but eh...I'll live. I have some mixed emotions here- I really did work my ass off in all the classes. I really was hoping for a 4.0. And the B kills it, and makes it impossible for me to ever have a 4.0 accumulative in grad school. I'm pretty disapointed, but I also know that I really did all I could do.
My undergrad, University of Delaware, wants to start a law school by 2015.
University of Delaware's Law School Aim
I can't tell you how bad of an idea I think this is. Delaware's a small state, and it already has a law school, Widner. Delaware's strength is based on the chemical engineering and business program, and I can't see how adding a law school would do anything to enhance the university. Programs are already getting cut- like the journalism major- and I imagine that will only
So I'm five and twenty now. Crazy, huh? When I was seventeen, I used to look at 25-year olds and think of them as wise sages who were so full of life experiences from which I could draw important life lessons from. Now *I'm* the 25-year old, and it just feels weird. I was a guy who thought 19 would be forever, and now I'm halfway through my twenties.
This night a year ago, I was getting drunk with my buddy Steve at my favorite bar. Now I'll be spending this birthday pretty much just wr
I came this article in the News Journal today. It's about the sentencing of a former UD student, who got put in jail for 10 years for his assault on a WVU student named Ryan Diviney. The article focuses on Ryan's dad, Ken, who has devoted his life to taking care of his now-comatose son.Former UD student gets 10 years in VA assualt.
I thought I'd post this up and all that because I was just reading it, and I was so incredibly moved by the father. He's put aside his entire life- everyt
I'll be working for Habitat for Humanity for spring break '11 in Winter Haven, Florida. We get a pit stop in Atlanta, and we also get that Friday off to go to Daytona Beach.
No alcohol, which is a bummer, but overall I'm really excited. And this should go great on my CV.
I have never been to Florida in my life, so I'm really excited!
Skidfest, the local charity rock event that has been held every semester in a block of row homes known as Skid Row since 1990, has been denied a permit because of the university bookstore construction going on behind it. I knew this was going to happen as soon as I realized that the construction would take up the two parking lots that surrounded Skid, because it would severely limit access to the event. And you could feel it at the last one that the end was near when the cops closed the event
I had a bit of a faux-paus today where I cracked some joke that I wouldn't let up on, and the professor took me aside and told me that I might not be picking up on the social cues that I was ticking off some of the kids in the class.
I felt pretty embarrassed, although it reiterated to me what a great professor I have. It just reminded me that social cues and graces just are never going to be second-nature to me, and that I really have to remember when I should let my guard down and just fre
So Sister #3 told Sister #1 that I got money from our mother. I got an extremely nasty voicemail from my sister about how I need to stop accepting money from Mom, because I'm too old to do so and I need to support myself.
You would think she would have a point, except 1.) the only reason I need money from Mom at all is because my mom used my credit cards for things like keeping on the utilities- nearly everything on my card comes from that, it's why I have to pay 300 dollars a month, and th
Apparently my sister is still bitching about the fact that I went to IUP instead of University of Delaware, because it's so expensive to go out-of-state, blah blah blah. She bitched about my low GPA is keeping me from going to UD, which would have been so much cheaper.
Except not. University of Delaware eliminated in-state tuition for the graduate school program during the 2009-2010 school year. I would have been paying $24k a year for 2010-2011, and that would have been without living on-ca
