College and the (non)Coffee-Drinker

When I was in high school, the popular thing to do was grab an energy drink.

That was all I heard: Monster this and Red Bull that and Rockstar is pretty cool and so on and so forth until my head started going in circles just like anybody actually reading this massive run-on sentence is probably suffering just at this moment.

I could never figure out what was so great about energy drinks.  My first boyfriend (sophomore year) had me drink a sip of something labeled “Sobe” and I started shaking all through American Studies.  I tried some Monster when I was out on a (rather disastrous) adventure with my best friend and didn’t like that, either.

After all my little taste-tests, I’d finally settled on drinking nothing but Mountain Dew to get a quick energy fix – much different than my beloved characters in The TECH Project, who can’t drink Mountain Dew at all – fairly early on in high school.  I held steady even throughout my senior year, when stress and tests abounded.

But all that changed when I went to college and started working at the newspaper.

I was talking about my job in the previous post, but only briefly: I work as a copyeditor at our campus paper, which is highly educational.  For example, I think I now know every single way humanly possible in which to prevent H1N1, commonly known as the swine flu.

What I never mentioned, however, is that my job begins at 4 on Sundays and 6 on Wednesdays – and doesn’t end until 1 or 2 in the morning.

Now, the pay isn’t great, but bad pay is better than no pay, and I like it that I’ll have some previous employment in my major when I go to find a job.  But the late hours seriously drag on me, especially on days like today when my extracurricular (and non-paid) activities mean that I’m up at 9:30 in the morning, acting as a runner til 6, then running to work where I’ll be til 1 or 2.  (I was up til 2 last night as well, but that’s another story.)

So I have discovered, in the process of walking to work, that having a nice, cool, refreshing can of Mountain Dew just won’t cut it when the weather outside is 40 degrees and it’s raining.

Therefore, I picked up a brand-new habit that I know my mommy wouldn’t be proud of: drinking coffee.

Coffee is among on of the most addictive substances in the world, just after nicotine and being a rock star.  While I’d much rather be a rock star than a coffee-drinker, I’m just going to have to settle for the closer-to-home of the two.  But the caffeine is seriously pleasing.

However, I do have a few limits on my coffee-drinking indulgence:

1. I will only drink cafe mocha.
2. I will NOT drink Starbucks.
3. I will only drink it when it’s raining, snowing, or exceptionally windy.
4. I only buy Einstein Bros. Regular-sized Cafe Mocha, always hot and always with whipped cream.

Those probably sound pretty picky, but I have some good reasons for that.

First off, Starbucks is disgusting.  Not even joking.  It tastes like someone threw mud in a toaster oven, scraped off what was left behind, and brewed it into coffee.  And that’s AFTER putting whipped cream on it.  Ew.

Second, I only drink it in poor weather conditions because it is nice and warm, like the grown-up version of hot chocolate, which is nice.

Third, the only coffee I actually DO like is Einstein Bros. Regular-sized Cafe Mocha.  I like chocolate, for one, and if I get a large the whipped cream just melts and becomes untasteable.  And no one makes a good cafe mocha like Einstein Bros.

What kind of coffee do you like?  Got any guilty pleasures?

Writers and Critics: Why Art Students Just Aren’t That Hardcore

Last night, I was at work – I work at my college campus paper as a copyeditor – and we discovered a Very Bad Article.

Now, we didn’t quite know what to do.  We felt that we couldn’t let this one slide, but we couldn’t really do much with the writer of the article being in the room at the time.  (He’s a nice guy and not a bad writer, jut apparently not cut out to do stage reviews.)  Finally, the copy chief jumped the Arts & Life editor when he stepped outside, and he agreed to have us do a digital copy (which we could rearrange and rewrite at will) rather than a hard copy, which we could only proofread.

My little copyediting escapade of last night brought to mind something that happened to me last year, when I was taking Drawing II.  It was a curious event that happened when we did our first critique.

Now, I like to draw, but I’m nothing spectacular as an artist – I can draw some excellent naked people, but that’s just about it.  My piece for that particular critique was not one that I was proud of: I’d made (in my eyes) mistakes beyond count and measure, the lighting was off, the symbolism was strange, and many other things were just WRONG about it that I couldn’t put my finger on.

Fast-forward to the critique.  I brought my pieces into class, expecting the critique to go similarly to the critiques I’d done in Creative Writing: brutally honest, meant to work like a chipper at a gem to take out all the crap and leave behind something priceless.

But something very odd happened.

I ended up receiving little to no constructive criticism.  Instead, I was told that “the mouse is cute” and “I like the atmosphere.”

I was so frustrated I wanted to pull out some of my own hair.  I like the atmosphere too!  But this composition’s a depressing one with a girl lying in a heap in a dirty alley, and you tell me that the mouse is cute?!  It’s not even a mouse!  IT’S A RAT!

It was then that I discovered the fundamental difference between graphic artists and writers.

Writers, by nature, have to stand up to harsh criticism.  Since our work can be fixed and reworked to no end, we get used to the harsh judgement – even of our writerly peers – and simply go to and fix them.  Artists, on the other hand, are apparently rather sensitive during their formative college years.

Am I right?  I’m pretty sure I  am… but, if I’m not, do correct me.

Graduation… or was it Prom?

The final month of my senior year was probably the busiest month of my entire educational career.  Between the National Honor Society induction ceremony, prom, and preparing for graduation, I had little room to sleep – let alone do anything else.  As May draws to a close, though, I find myself wondering what the “big finish” of high school really is.

I have always thought of it as being graduation.  After thirteen hard years of work, why shouldn’t it be?  But after living through my senior year, I’m starting to wonder…

Is the “big finish” of high school actually the prom?

Students – particularly girls – can spend hundreds of dollars on prom.  The clothes, the accessories, the prom bid itself – not to mention the “after-prom” activities and the pre-prom activities, which can range anywhere from a stop at a burger joint to a two-hour dinner at an upscale restaurant.

Do high schools sponsor “after-graduation” activities?  How many people spend upwards of $50 at a pre-graduation dinner?

For me, graduation will always be the big-bang ending, but I’ve never really been a typical student.  What part of high school do you think is the real “big finish”: graduation or prom?

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Last Olympian

I think this video says it all.

A Small Apology

I’ve had my copy of James Patterson’s new novel Max since Saturday.  I still haven’t had the chance to read it.

A review is forthcoming; I promise.