Who I am:

• coffee addict
• overachiever
• blonde
• “independent”
• loud
• Catholic
• runner
• smelly
• a fighter
• a lover
• selfish

What I value:

• laughter
• faith in the face of corruption
• black gold
• alone time
• alone thought
• thorough, minute, compulsive work
• schedules
• humanity
• lists
• languages
• tradition
• dancing to ABBA in the kitchen
• honesty
• simplicity

Am I still all of these? Have I changed one bit? I know all my annoying living habits now because someone else lives with me. Am I still addicted to coffee? Yes. Am I still an overachiever? Sometimes. Am I still a fighter? Do I still love laughing?

I don’t think people really change at all. Not even for college.

1. Cross-training at 8 a.m. is one of my favorite classes because I more or less watch people and run. I made the mistake of running a little too hard on my first day (mile and a half in under 11 minutes, which isn’t terribly fast) because my teacher then recognized me as the distance runner from Concord. Now, he expects me to run when all the other girls walk. There’s a married couple that sometimes fights because he wants to run and she wants to walk, and goodness knows they have to exercise together. It’s a 300 m track, he’ll catch up eventually. The only good thing is that we have an adult student–a man in his mid-40′s–who always says “Atta girl, I know you can do it!” and high-fives me while we run. It’s funny, unlike the time of this class. I woke up at 7:45 this morning and had to literally run to class. Of course, then I’m a little sweaty, which sucks for
2.a. My chemistry class meets at 9 a.m. and it’s very easy to zone out. Luckily, my professor (Dr. Kennedy) is very amusing; he likes to compare chemical properties to human behavior. It’s a lot easier to remember and understand properties that way, and I get a good laugh. Yes, I laugh at science jokes. The sign “Physics makes the world goes round” made me laugh for an embarrassing amount of time.
2.b. My chemistry lab is intense. It’s two and a half hours weekly, and it’s all done in a carbon copy lab notebook, so errors can’t be whited-out. My lab partner is a junior named Brett who is more clueless than me. Luckily, she also has a dry sense of sarcasm, so we get along well.
3. My LART (liberal arts seminar) class is a lovely blow-off class. The bulk of our points are from talking in class. We have a one-page paper due every time we come to class. My roommate averages three hours on each one. I average ten minutes. Thanks, Judson.
4.a. I’m in love with Dr. Ippolito, my biology professor. He makes really trippy statements like, “We can only assume science exists if we assume reality exists” and sends us copies of his PowerPoints if we ask. Then, we can take notes on them in class and not fail watching the screen. It’s excellent.Z
4.b. We have chairs in this lab, which is nice. Nothing exciting has happened yet…but I hear some dissections are coming. Excellent.
5. My honors seminar is mixed–I either love it or I hate it. The history portion of it, taught by Dr. Murphy, is entertaining, fast-paced, and highly interesting. The English portion of it, taught by Dr. Radaker, is slow, repetitive, and irritating. Our discussions in that class always end up spinning out of proportion. When everyone spent a class session praising Fareed Zakaria’s attack on American policy toward Iran, I imploded. Both Dr. Murphy and Dr. Radaker were watching, and they were highly amused. They asked me what my thoughts were, and I spit out that I felt Fareed was exploiting American ignorance. Dr. Radaker pulled me aside after class to compliment me and ask me to talk more. Yes. A teacher asked me to talk more. Believe it or not…I’m kind of quiet in class.
6. Living in a dorm is weird. My roommate couldn’t handle having her classload, so she’s down to minimum credit hours with minimal homework. Luckily, she’s found lots of social opportunities outside of our dorm room, so Kelly and I usually take over it. Kelly is my closest friend here; she’s sweet and a little timid, but very comforting. I was sad last night, and Matt Miller called. I crawled onto my couch and she stroked my hair while I talked to him. I can only think of one relationship I’ve had like that with a girl…and I haven’t seen Heather in a while. Kelly and I spend all of our free time together, more or less. She Facebooks on my couch while I do homework/make coffee/watch Season 3 of Boy Meets World. I feel bad because I drag her around everywhere with me…
7. Except for my social activities. I completely broke down to my mom about a week ago and she told me to get myself as involved as I could handle. After a lot of deliberating, I decided against joining cross country/track, even though I miss it a lot. I am now writing for the Andersonian, although I haven’t exactly done my interviews yet. I’m also on the debate team…something I never thought I’d continue. Yes, Stutz, Terri is hilarious. I’m on a hardcore flag football team called Vicious and Delicious or something like that. My captain, Steph, is a really intense freshman, so our practice tonight may be rough. I’m also in Advocacy and Awareness, which showed an amazing documentary last week on American militarism. They’ve hooked me on alternative news websites and pacifism.
8. Chapel is lame. The speakers aren’t very motivating/moving/touching, so I sit and listen to the same messages over and over. Trees, roots, blossoms. This year’s logo. Come see Jesus. Okay, got it.
9. Here are the things I think–after a few weeks in–I’ll get out of my AU experience this semester:
a. I will watch an insane amount of chick flicks.
b. I will witness a lot of engagements.
c. I will hear the phrase “boys suck” a lot.
d. I will learn to stay up past midnight on a regular basis.
e. I will learn every worship song known to man.
f. I will learn a lot of common phrases in Romanian (my roommate’s Romanian).

Oh, and my science classes are a little tough. I dream about hydrogen bonding.

At least I know how to do laundry now.

I came here on Sunday with my folks and we set up the dorm and all that jazz. They were very tired and went straight home afterward. Monday, after my morning orientation, I had a complete freak-out. After working out, getting to know a few girls, and getting Internet connections, I felt tons better. I got into a little routine–if only for three days–up, orientation, lunch, errands, work out, dinner, girls night. When the freshmen moved in, all of that was turned on its head. We’re stuck in random activities and the days are blurring into each other. To keep myself from going insane, I thought I’d list some of the highlights of the whole orientation process.

-We took lots and lots of personality tests and analyzed each other extensively. The verdict? I talk a lot.
-I’ve never missed my friends more.
-Heck, I’ve never missed my mom more.
-Audrey and I have bonded quite a bit. (That’s my bamboo plant, by the way.)
-I have insane blocks of free time.
-My roommate Angi loves to wake up me in the night.
-She’s pretty sweet, although she’s bound determined to teach me fashion.
-I spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on textbooks.
-I’ve worked out every day.
-I’m nearly done with The Stranger, which I can surprisingly read while working out.
-Someone swore today and I cheered.
-Michael and I bicker like an old married couple.
-I tried to get milk and wound up with a cup full of ice cream. Oops.

The bottom line: college is great, but I don’t feel like I’m in college. All my friends are partying and going to games and…I’m cranky and want to go to bed. I know it’s going to get better–class just needs to start! I want to have to be somewhere (other than orientation). I want to have mass or a newspaper deadline or a football practice (Yes, I’m on a girls football team. I don’t know how that happened, actually.)

Basically, I just don’t feel like this is college.

• “Fourth hour advice: never propose naked.” (For the record, this was Mr. Stutzman’s class. Ahem.)
• “Take two wolf babies, mix them together, and you’ll get a chihuaha.” -Mr. Larimer
• “He looks like Tim…only taller, and with darker hair, and Asian.” -Shei describing her prom date
• John Stauffer: “Why can’t we mate with dogs?”
  Mr. Larimer: “Because you’d get arrested!”
• “But AIDS doesn’t kill people here, right?” -CJ Raber
• “Do nudists wear shoes?” (There was no credit, but I think it was me.)
• “There’s a special place not in heaven for people like you.” -Mr. Larimer
• “The band’s going to Hollywood…and we’re going to Dollywood!”-John Flores
• “It should be illegal to have illegal immigrants here.” -Iris Bock during an immigration debate
• “Mike [Koscielny] is not a one-man girl.” -my mother
• “Don’t touch me! Go hug Kelly…she’d be more than happy to hug you!” -Kylie Bontrager
• “Wait…the monster isn’t Frankenstein?” -Ross Winterbauer, after our Frankenstein exam
• “You talk more than me. A lot more.” -Colin Grose
• “Imagine this as a wedge of cheese.” -a Mrs. Meek analogy
• “P is for Purging, that’s good enough for me…”-Chris Wells
• “When you get married, get your own toothpaste.” -Mr. Miller
• “You’ll finish the exam on time…unless you’re not focused or you’re an overachiever.” -Stutz
• “Does your parents trust you?” -Mrs. Overmyer

A guy I work with is quite into Christ and all that jazz. Which is fine. But when someone brings up Catholicism (we were talking about mass at Notre Dame, by the way), it’s not your place to start bashing them. What kind of Christians bash others? Isn’t that against our core?

He told me that because he cares, he’s going to tell people they’re going to hell.

That’s not evangelization. That has nothing to do with God. That’s about proving that you’re right and everyone else is wrong.

It makes me sick to think of the things that are done in the name of Christianity.

I believe that doesn’t make Christianity inherently bad or wrong or even flawed. It just means that it’s suceptible to corruption. Like everything else that humanity touches.

I’ve never spoken with someone so incredibly close-minded, and I literally feel sick. This type of conversation makes me want to erase the label “Christian” from my views.

It makes me sick how much he knows about other religions–but only a small, twisted side of it. It makes me sick how slippery the words he’s heard are. It makes me sick how he can regurgitate the condemnation sermons, word for word. All in the name of love.

Please, someone restore my faith in humanity about now.

So yesterday, I went up to archives. I couldn’t get the main sliding door open, so I had to go downstairs and ask Theresa (my immediate boss) how to get it open. After she explained it to me, I went back up to archives, slide open the big metal door, walked back to HR Archives, and went in the back room.

While I was searching in the HR Archives, some jerk shut the main archives door.

I was locked inside of archives for about half an hour. There was no way to exit, despite the keys in my hand. It was hot as hell, but at least I had my coffee? Four people walked by (there were a couple of cracks I could see out), but the door was so heavy, they couldn’t hear me.

When someone finally heard me and let me out (I slid him my keys under the door), I rushed back to HR and began loudly recounting my woes.

They didn’t notice I was gone.

I love…Corporate America…

I was drying my shirt (yes, I work with a series of engineering boys) after lunch and laughing about the awkward Halo conversations when all of a sudden I had a “memory flashback” so to speak: just a well-preserved voice saying, “Wow, Kel…that’s kinda harsh, don’t ya think?” I wasn’t thinking about the speaker, the subject, harsh conversations, nothing. As far as I can consciously analyze it, it was random.

Here’s where it catches me: biologically, we’re wired to mimic behavior, scour for patterns, and bring up related subject matter. Biologically, there shouldn’t be randomnity.

Where’d it come from?

Can something come from nothing?

For example, I was listening to Rufus Wainwright’s “Cigarettes and Chocolate” today while re-creating some forms that apparently no one in HR knows how to recreate but me.

Narcissim points: +10.

There’s a weird corkscrew sound coming to my right. What is Joe doing? I pause the music and look into Joe’s office.

Nothing.

Strange. I go back to the music and hear it again to the right.

I check Todd’s office.

And Barb’s.

Nothing.

As I put my headphones in, I can’t figure out where this noise is coming from.

Oh yes. Split headphones. Different sounds come from different ears.

Narcissism points: -15.

Or, as Ross at-the-lunch-table (who took my seat today, jerk) says: “It was a love story, just not with each other.”

So I began talking about The Last Kiss, arguably the best movie I’ve seen in a good year. I began describing the emotional-ness of watching the main character cheat on his girlfriend Jenna. At the time, she is pregnant with their child and they’ve lived together for a few years.

Then Jordan pipes up, “If I were her, I wouldn’t let him back.” He stops to re-evaluate the sentence, and, manliness in tact, repeats, “If I were Jenna’s friend, I would tell her not to let him back.”

I start laughing and ask him why. His answer: “Well, they weren’t married and they lived together, so they obviously had problems.”

Ah, yes. There are apparently still people in the world who determine a human’s worth on their virginity, et al, and still refuse to watch a chick flick if the main characters are “morally wrong.” Because, as Jordan so eloquently put it, “who cares if he cheated on her? They had sex and weren’t married.”

Incredible.

Kel: “Hey dear, can you go talk to the kids for me?”
Spencey: “Whatever you want, Princess.”
Judson: “I think you just took that too far.”

I’ve always hated the nickname Princess. It seems to me that it’s either disgustingly romantic and sappy or bitterly sarcastic. It’s a name of entitlement.

I read a question yesterday (yes, in CosmoGirl, which I hate by the way) that asked: Do you think Gen Y feels entitled?

Entitled to what? The immediate answers below were accusations of older generation saying that we don’t believe we should have to work for what we get. I think to some extent this is true. I also think–like nearly everything under the sun–entitlement as a concept isn’t absolute; it isn’t necessarily good or bad, it just is.

It tends to have negative effects, so I think that’s why the connotation of being called ‘entitled’ is so awful. I have a handful of memories in newspaper or times editors felt ‘entitled’ to write on their own schedules. This made the other staff writers upset, as they had stricter–and earlier–deadlines.

And this, my friends (and Spencer), is life. Of course Gen Y feels entitled; the whole world feels entitled. Every single individual feels like they deserve something.

Corporate America, my lovely niche of employment, believes certain individuals are entitled to certain privileges. I had the opportunity to regulate paychecks yesterday. If a salaried employee came in, he or she was free to find his or her check and grab a few for an employee in a nearby cubicle, no questions asked. If an hourly (aka factory) employee came in, he or she had to provide identification to receive his or her check. Furthermore, taking another’s check required signing off on various forms.

I’m not saying this is wrong. I do believe that the salaried employees show more responsibility, especially judging by their past preparations. At the same time, I understand why the factory employees feel snubbed.

One final story of entitlement: during the Hall Sweep one morning, I was caught in the hallway by Mr. Cunningham. I was not wearing an I.D. The consequence of being Kelly Frye was this: he said hi to me and asked me how my morning was going. And then left with four other students about to get detentions.

Princess? Nah. My “weighted name,” as Evie once called it, doesn’t entitle me to a full-ride, amazing job, or free gas. Being Kelly Frye doesn’t do that. It just gets me out of detention.