Almost October?!

Is that real? Is this real life? Is September really over?

Yep.

It's comforting to me this year. I really do love college. I do! I do. But, this winter, I'll be home with my family and Mike, and I won't be leaving again. That really makes me happier than anything.

But for now, I'm really enjoying senior year. A lot more than I thought I would. Yes, there's a ton of work, and yes, my thesis is starting to take over my life, but I can't help but be happy living with the best floormate ever and seeing my friends all the time (the ones at college, at least!)!

Plus, the library cafe has pumpkin lattes.

I'm also SUPER excited about all the sewing I have coming up. I've been COMMISSIONED to make THREE t-shirt quilts, and I'm going to make more stuff for my etsy shop. I'm so excited. Plus, I have two really special projects that I'm going to start over winter break.

Plus, I love buying presents for people for the holidays, and I'm making some things too.

And in one month... I'll start playing Christmas music =D November 1st!

I hope to post again soon. I'm super busy but I'll be back!

Favorite sound right now: Coldplay, "Now My Feet Won't Touch the Ground"

Sight: "How I Met Your Mother" Season Two (and homework, right? Right.)

Taste: Chocolate chip cookies and milk =D

Smell: Nothing (that's good)

-Jess

Weekends at College

This is my first weekend back, and it's quite relaxing. I always like the freedom of getting up a little bit later, eating brunch with my friends (the dining hall has breakfast food until 2 pm), getting coffee, and spending the day in the library (sometimes doing work, other times talking/Facebook/hand-sewing/laughing/staring out the window). Then, I'll have a relaxing dinner with friends, maybe watch a movie, or just hang out. The cycle is usually the same on Sundays, but even more relaxing. Some weekends, Mike will come for the night and I'll get to spend time with him. Sometimes my friends and I will get takeout. Sometimes we'll go get Halo Farms ice cream and go out to On the Border (like this weekend), or we'll go on one of the school's free bus trips to Washington, D.C. or Philly or NYC or New Hope.

It's always a nice break from the crazy week, even if there is a lot of work to be done. This morning, for the third day in a row, I actually made it on the Loop (2 miles around campus), and I feel great! Now I'm sitting in the library cafe with Melissa, my Holocaust books, and my iced caramel macchiato, and life is good.

Senior Year Thoughts

It's funny how being a senior in college is different, for most people, than it is in high school. As you approach high school graduation, all you want to do is go to college, if that's where you are heading. There are new people to meet, dorm room things to buy, and a whole new world to explore. Even if you're not going to college, you probably wanted to get the heck out of high school. Graduating from college is the opposite - people don't want to leave. The real world awaits, and with that comes scary things like rent and putting on our grown up pants.

I'm on the fence. Part of me wants to stay, but a bigger part of me wants to leave. I'm going to list the reasons here, for my own sanity and for inquiring minds...

Reasons I want to stay in college:

-See friends all the time (single thing I will miss the most, by the way. I'm already having this happen with Julie, who graduated in May, and I don't like it one bit).

-Live in my own little single room and do whatever I want

-Chinese food and Italian nights, late night movies, TV marathons with friends

-Biking around campus is the best.

-I love my professors and I still love going to class, as long as it's a good one (not looking forward to statistics and economics though). I love school :)

-Student discounts

-Being on campus in the fall = heaven. Everyone is out and about, and everything is so pretty, and it really calms me.

-The free gym on campus!

-No huge bills to pay

-I know what I'm doing/where everything is now like the back of my hand, and it's comforting. So, comfort level.

Reasons I want to get the heck out of college:

-I want to teach. Plain and simple. I'm impatient.

-No more dorm life. I'm a little sick of being a nomad, and of drunk people, and of freezing my butt off 24/7.

-I'm getting married and I want to live with the man I've been dating for five years! Again, plain and simple.

-NO MORE HOMEWORK :) I would trade writing papers for grading papers any day.

-I will finally be able to sew all I want with my machine, and start my etsy business (with the current busy schedule I have with school, there is no way this can happen).

So you can see why the reasons why I want to graduate reign supreme. I think. They are bigger things. Things I've been waiting for.

But I'm definitely going to enjoy this semester. I'll be taking the usual 4 classes, one of which is for my senior honors thesis on Holocaust memorials (I'm sure I will be posting about this soon). I'm looking forward to accomplishing such a thing as a 50+ page paper, written all by me. It's daunting but exciting. I'm living with Kristina again, which will be totally awesome, and we're going to start marathoning How I Met Your Mother, like we did for Friends in the past (we watched all 10 seasons in a year and a half and it was a blast). I'm living on campus for one semester, not two, so if I get frustrated with everything, I can just look forward to the spring, when I'll be living at home, sewing, student teaching, seeing my family and Mike, babysitting, and basically living in the real world. So, I have a lot to look forward to this year in general.

However, I still can't believe I'm a senior. Freshman year was the fastest year ever, even though it was definitely the most frustrating. Perhaps it's a good thing I don't remember too much :) Getting used to a new place, being away from everything/one I loved, doing college work, working too, having a horrible roommate situation... I remember being sick more in the four months of the fall semester of that year than I ever have before. Sophomore year flew too, but it was definitely my favorite year. Junior year got more busy and difficult than I thought it ever could, but I knew my professors so well and I could finally write a really good history paper. Practice really pays off. I also got to teach my own two week unit in a real high school - so, I had my introduction to teaching, and to say I liked it would be an understatement. Plus, by second semester of sophomore year, I knew who my friends were for sure, and it just got better from there.

I remember going to freshman orientation. I remember so much of it. Am I really about to be a senior? Is this real life?

(skip to .17 seconds)

Yes. Yes. I am. Gulp.

-Jess

Why I do what I do

As a historian, you're expected to gravitate towards a certain time period/event/person etc. to really delve into during your college career. If it was a true free-for-all, I don't think I would hesitate to become a Tolkien scholar (though I'm horrible at learning languages and would have a lot of trouble learning Elvish). :o)

Anyway, point is, as soon as I got to college, I took a course called "Music and the Holocaust" - and that's how I really got interested in studying the Holocaust and other genocides. I like the way Adam Jones, a visiting scholar to my school, put it: "we study genocide because we want it to stop." Plus, I feel connected through my Jewish heritage, and as horrifying and as dreadful it can be to study sometimes, it is what interests me most. That is what my mom asked me today after we watched "The Pianist" for the first time - why do I study the Holocaust?

There was one point last semester where I had just about had it. I had just started my internship at the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in NYC (teaching and giving tours to students grades 6-12), I was starting work on my senior honors thesis (more in a minute about that), and I was taking a class called "The Holocaust in Art and Literature." I remember I was reading a speech that Hitler made (after watching the propaganda film "Triumph of the Will") and I was just like - that's it. I had to put it all down for a weekend. And I realized that it's okay to do that... as long as we never forget about it and we keep coming back. It has become a true privilege to listen to a Holocaust survivor speak, which I have lucky enough to experience at least 6 times in my life. This is just one way to keep it alive, but there aren't many left. I feel like I am doing my part by bringing my experiences and pictures from Eastern Europe, as well as my research, to my future students, as a social studies teacher.

All of this suddenly came flooding back to me tonight after the movie finished. Since I got back from Europe (a Holocaust study tour, no less) in early May, I've been putting off my thesis work on gender in Holocaust memorials. I've been sewing constantly (my [almost always] relaxing obsession), and reading FICTION again (gasp) - but now it's time to get to work. I feel a lot better now after a two month break from thinking. I think I'm ready to go back to it.

This is probably a good thing because I met with my professor a couple of days ago, took out more than ten library books, and have a reading assignment on postmodernism to finish for her in two weeks.

-Jess