The Unfair Trade and the Increasing Probability of a New Life in the South

Well, it’s been 4 days since my last post, and before that it had been 6 months. So consider me as inconsistent as Old Faithful…isn’t.

Anyway, it’s been a pretty crazy 8 days, as I’ve been home for about 2 of them, and I’ve been everywhere from Wautoma to Tampa to here in Columbus, Ohio. I suppose that would do well as a segue to the first part of the two-part title that hovers a few lines above this very sentence.

So, to explain the unfair trade, and also why I am in Columbus, Ohio…

The last day of the Camp New Years retreat, I got a call from my mom asking how soon we would be home. I thought it was altogether a little bit strange that she would be calling so early about us coming home, but I didn’t ask about it or think too much of it. Then we dropped off Heidi, Kath, and Ashley, and got home to hear the news.

It turned out that for the second year in a row, one of our relatives had passed away while Evan and I were at the New Years retreat.

This time it was our Aunt Donna, on the other side of the family than the Grandmother whose death inspired the post “I put the ‘I’ in ‘I hate Indiana…etc’”, and this time it was unexpected.

Not to reveal an exceptional amount of personal information, but she was alone at the time of her death and we found out afterwards that she had recently taken herself off of Anti-Depressants without a doctor’s recommendation. This, obviously, can cause someone’s mind to work against them, so that makes her death all the more difficult to work through.

So that would explain why I was not able to go to Mike and Amber’s wedding and why I am currently in Ohio’s largest city. I refer to it as the “unfair trade” because at face value, I’m trading a celebration of two lives and a new beginning with friends for a somber tribute that comes with a funeral of a loved one. It’s far more important to go to my Aunt’s funeral but this weekend went from a happy one to a very sad one in what seemed like a moment. Thusly, the unfair trade.

I’m never sure how to take a death. I never feel like I’ve suffered through a very serious one, even though I’ve lived through the deaths of an aunt, an uncle, and a grandmother all at an age where I could fully grasp what was happening (I think I was 11 for the earliest).

Perhaps we’ve just never been as close to our relatives as we could have been, maybe because we are the outcasts in Wisconsin and everyone else is in Indiana or Ohio.

Aunt Donna was one of my favorite relatives, but I still didn’t know her too well. I’ll miss her, but I’m more so sad for my other family members, especially my mom, what with having lost her sister. I know this death came in one of the cloudiest of fashions, but I also know that God will work it out for the good, and I hope it can help bring my extended family a little closer together.

Now would be a good time to change gears. For those of you following along at home, there were, in fact, two parts to the title, so the second part would hopefully be a little cheerier. In it, I make reference to a “New Life in the South.”

This, of course, is an even further reference to the most recent post, in which I stated that I was fairly likely to post about the events of a campus tour for the University of South Florida. Well here goes.

First of all, even though we were in Florida on the shores on the Gulf of Mexico, Old Man Winter refused to stop hassling us and we had got to experience the one of the 3 days for Florida winter – temperatures resting at about 40. Anyway, once we braved the weather (which had everyone down there freaking out, but was “long sleeve weather” for us), we headed to campus to just walk around. We didn’t expect anything more than that, what with the school on break, but we got considerably more that we bargained for.

When we got there, we found out that we could get a residence hall tour, which was fairly nice, and we got to marvel at how new everything was – nothing built before 1956, and many built 3 years ago.

Once we went through that, we decided to stop off at the scholarship office to get some questions answered, considering the scholarship was the only thing that got me considering USF in the first place. We entered the building and got a surprisingly warm welcome.

We talked to someone that looked important, and I guess she was the right person to talk to. Once I introduced myself and explained that I was a Merit Scholar, and she noted that Evan and my dad were wearing Wisconsin sweatshirts, she got all excited.

“We were just talking about you!” she exclaimed as she ushered us into her office. Turns out that they had been speculating, that very day, about the status of a Merit Scholar from Wisconsin, apparently the only one they had ever had and one of two Wisconsin students they had applying from the class of ’08.

I might add, at this point, that one of my gripes with UW-Madison was that their whole admissions process seemed kind of cold and impersonal, and I feared, to, an extent, that USF, a larger college, would be similar. Obviously, though, the fact that they were thrilled to talk to me and get me pumped about their college, allayed that fear and caused a pretty big paradigm shift.

The nice scholarship lady, and her friend, the other nice scholarship lady, then answered all our questions, and tried to arrange an impromptu formal welcome for us. They contacted the Dean of the Honors College, who was on vacation, and got me into his office to talk with the Associate Dean of the Honors College. The associate dean then told me about USF honors (which I would very likely be a part of), which included absolute first priority housing, first priority class selection, all on top of the full tuition, room, board, laptop, and semester abroad (and free pro hockey tickets [and I love hockey…go Tampa Bay Lightning] !) already offered to me if I were to go to this college, which is in a climate averaging highs of 70-80 most of the time.

All of this, in addition to another tour of the beautiful campus given by other nice scholarship lady, was enough to get me a step away from pledging all allegiance to the University of South Florida. I commented to Evan that South Florida made UW look like a “mean old lady” and it’s safe to say that, as of right now, I love how the future looks if I go the Tampa Bay way.

Yes, there are cons – leaving friends behind, 3 hour plane rides, but right now the pros outweigh them and I think it’s the best way for me to grow in a lot of ways. Here’s to the hope that it will all work out and I can properly fulfill New Years Resolution #2.

So it’s been, as I said before, a wild couple of days, and I could use a break…too bad it’s all fast-paced for the foreseeable future. But we’ll try a toast once more – here’s to less tragedy and more excitement in 2008.

So you were born
and that was a good day
Someday you'll die
and that is a shame
But somewhere in the between
is a life of which we all dream
and nothing and no one will ever take that away
- "Somewhere in the Between - Streetlight Manifesto"

I got dreadlocks fallin' all over me

Well, here's the new year, so it seems fitting to make a new blog post. I think (I'm not sure about this) that this is the longest blog drought in the history of the ol' Flight 109 (all 3 years of it!). Basically, this site has been pretty worthless, because a lot has happened between July and now. Or has it?

So I'm not really going to try to catch up, but I think it's fair to try to cut my losses and push forward for this new year. Although, to keep a little connection to last year, I may as well conclude the last few New Years Resolutions of 07 and close with a few for next year. As I recall, here were the ones still hanging.

-Get a girlfriend: There's always next year!
-The soccer one: I didn't technically accomplish either goal, but I would hardly call it a failure. I wasn't captain, but that allowed me to have more fun and focus more on self-improvement. Also, I wasn't top 3 in goals, but I was 4th on the team in goals and I was in 3rd until the last game of the season. I also had the top scoring percentage for shots taken, so I was really happy with how the season went.
-Get a job: Not yet, but I do have a pending Walgreen's application, so we'll see what happens with that. I suppose I could live with that sort of job.
-Eat a full-size Mr. Goodbar: I put this one off for too long, and couldn't achieve it at the end of the year due to a full day of travel. How unfortunate, I'll bet it would have tasted really good.

And speaking of this full day of travel on New Years Eve, an explanation of my current surroundings would probably be in order. The family flew to Florida yesterday so I am blogging from Evan's laptop in a Tampa hotel room.

We decided to go to Tampa on vacation for a couple of reasons. For one, the Badgers just had their bowl game at the wonderful Raymond James stadium. Unfortunately, they lost, but it was still a cool experience, just to go to an NFL stadium and see a bowl game.

Ultimately, though, the real driving force of the trip was the fact that I am considering the University of South Florida, which is in Tampa, as a legitimate option. We will be touring the campus tomorrow, and maybe I'll post later with thoughts on that.

It's interesting (to me, at least) that I would be considering South Florida so late in the college decision process. It seems like a pretty crazy, out there college choice, but it has held up this long as a realistic possibility. There's something to be said for staying around and going to Madison, but maybe I would enjoy a drastic change. If not, there's always such a thing as transferring. Who knows, right now it's at about 50/50.

What experiences do I have to gain from going?
What relationships do I get to keep by staying?

It's a lot to think about.

How about some new resolutions then...
1. Girlfriend? If I go to USF, that might be the least of my relationship worries. So I will attempt to make and keep friends in all facets, and if a girlfriend happens, sweet.

2. Be happy with all my decisions. I've got a lot of them to make (not just college), and there is a certain amount of worry that comes with each one that I will make the wrong one. I should know by now that no matter how the decision seems to be going, it will work out for the good, so once I make up my mind, I will try to be satisfied with it.

3. Learn to appreciate mornings. I hate getting up early, or really getting up at any time before I would naturally wake up. To be more productive, it would probably help if I could, if not get up fairly early, be ready for the day when I do wake up.

4. Go to an MLS game. I've always sort of planned to go to a pro soccer game, but it never happened. In addition, I'd like to go see the US national team play again, but that would be pending on if they are playing nearby for any of their games.

5. Eat a full-size Mr. Goodbar. I've got another 366 days to net this one.

I suppose that will be all for now, I'm sure I'll have more goals for the year, but at least I've got something to start with. Here's to a great 2008.