A Break (Or, "Oh Hey, It's Really Spring!")

It's my first Spring Break in college. Everyone asked me what I was doing, to which I replied "Going home" or "Sleeping" or "Baseball", which all ended up to be true, but there was a little more to it than that.

My first day back, my mom makes fun of my socks. No one at Mines ever makes fun of my socks, in fact I just got a compliment on my socks (from a guy, of all creatures), but really- I like my socks.

It didn't take long before I wanted to play outside. And it only took a few minutes before my right pinkie finger was twice as fat as my other one, because I was playing catch with my little brother and I was too stupid to wait until my other brother scavenged up a glove. Even though the old flat glove was awful (and I left mine at Maple), I concluded that I am just as unathletic as ever, being lame at catching, but my throwing skills took an upgrade since I'm so awesome at throwing dodgeballs by now (not really though). The grass, though mostly brown is starting to turn green. I love this time of year, and the weather this week was awesome.

The first few days were a little basketball-y. My mom likes basketball so after I took a nap on the couch Sunday (my bed was full of clothes...augh), we went to Mines basketball game in the NCAA DII tournament. Cool stuff, fun times. And I'm used to having to clean and make sure no one runs across the court, so it was cool to not have to do that. We won of course, and would face Metro Tuesday. So Tuesday my dad had tickets to the Nuggets game. I know, basketball galore. I told Brady to text me updates for the Mines game. At the end, the Nuggets won a supposedly amazing game by tying it with very few seconds left and going into OT. In short, as my dad said, it was "the most exciting boring NBA game" we had ever seen. Brady told me Mines lost. So I obviously wasn't so stoked about basketball. Besides, kids kept kicking and screaming and NBA players don't play defense and the players look so far compared to  me being on the court all the time. So whatever.

I ate Carl's pizza for the first time in forever (winter break). I also ate a lot of other good food. I realized I'm getting quite out of shape and need to exercise if I don't want to pass out during the Ore-Cart pull (I'm kind of joking but not really- I was sore all week from bouldering the Friday before- shows you how much I'm in shape.) But on a similar note, I'm really excited that there's only one more weekend after this until the weekend E-days takes place (and then Opening Weekend after that weekend). It's a good time to be alive.

I pretty much tried to sleep in until 1 p.m., and pretty much succeeded. Getting 10 hours in my old bed is nice, but of course I'll never be able to catch up on sleep lost this year and the rest of my will-be four years. But it was nice. It was also nice that a lot of my classes just had tests and everything due the week before Spring Break. This week, there was no math worksheets due, or homework, or NHV drafts (but a lot of readings that I have not done yet), or physics homework on Lon-Capa to do even if I wanted to, so it was a nice unstressful time. I did have time to fill out a couple applications though. But that's it for productivity.

I think a week was a perfect amount of time. Enough time to get my room messy. Get excited about the stretch run of freshman year. Realize that no one head bangs to TobyMac with you like your brothers (ha, well there wasn't really headbanging going on). Annoy my sister by serenading her with ukulele and making her mad that uke is way more easy than guitar. (Realize I didn't really learn any new songs for ukulele...oh well.) Stay up late, but sleep in 'cause I don't have to do anything. And eat hotdogs and listen to baseball (oh cool, look- a fake walkoff).

I really do love Spring.

The Kids Are Alright

Week Ten. It's going to be crazy. I have a Calculus test and Earth Systems paper due, which is a normal work load, but there is something else going on. Humans vs. Zombies is going on. A game where a bunch of nerds get to carry nerf guns and swords around, eat marshmallows, and swing socks. A game where your friends turn into zombies after going all out on weaponry. A game where you legitimately fear for your life walking back from EPICS in the evening, for dozens of zombies have their faces pressed up against the glass CTLM windows creeping everyone out. This is HVZ. This is Mines.

Oh, we're not immature. It's completely normal for us to run from building to building with toys in hand and scream and yell and would consider ditching PA or (heaven forbid) waking up early to get to a class super early. Why worry about stuff that is more important like homework and labs and tests and world peace and domination? Actually, I'm not gonna lie. This game, though only a game has altered me mentally and made me a little more stressed out than I normally am. I have to plot my way to and from classes and routes and how the heck I'm gonna eat. I've tried to bind together with other humans. My friends have been taken down. It's fun, but kinda a big deal. I suppose any other week (or at any other campus) it would be a nice distraction, but this week....this week is bad.

But survival skills are where it's at, right? I mean, we've survived almost 10 weeks of classes, and midterms are almost over. We bind together and try to get through, one week at a time. We combat homework and tests and then get sad when one takes us out. And when we get stressed out, we go shoot nerf guns at zombies....or go eat humans. Or make use of the many distractions we like to call "outlets".

The thing is, over halfway in, we're alright. We do our own laundry now. We get invited to fun things and then frown and say "I've got homework, sorry", and then do go and do homework. And we've always known how to eat, but now have further knowledge and creativity of meal preparation/acquiration. What else do we need? Eating bags of marshmallows and having massive pillow fights, I'm sure. Just for added maturity. Oh, and shooting off the nerf gun in Chem lecture. (Two of these three things are true for me).

It's not easy. I say this and everyone will say this, but there is so much I have to get done this week and I don't know how- yet I do. Time flies, and it's difficult to grasp that this....it's real. I'm really here at Mines in college doing all this stuff. It becomes a little bit more real every time I see an exam score posted, but I don't think I'll ever really grasp this...college thing...until I'm done, and it'll be too late, and I'll have a degree (hopefully). That seems so far away.

But I've been turned. Go zombies. I'm gonna miss carrying around weapons. The thing I put my sword in. The clank of my gun against my leg as I ran across Kafadar. That's the cool thing now- we're still kids, goofy and immature, but we're not anymore, with school shadowing everything in the back of our mind, getting done what needs to get done, and hoping it was the right way. Meaning: we make our own choices and choose to carry around foam weaponry.