Parting Words

Well, anonymous and intermittent reader, this is my last blog post for the year. On Wednesday I'll be heading home and unpacking all my stuff, realizing just how much I'm going to miss all my new friends and how my freshman year of college is done and gone, never to be experienced again. I figure I'll probably ask myself why I didn't take advantage of it more, really enjoy it and not worry so much about things, but I'll try not to do that too much. The more we regret the past the less time we will spend time really enjoying the moment, and in turn we will just create more wasted moments to regret. Summer will be pretty awesome. I'm going to work at the hamburger and brat shack I ran last summer, grilling and sittin' out in the sun. I'll spend a lot of time with friends that I haven't seen for a long time, and I'll probably go on a lot of road trips. This is the first time in my life that summer has come accompanied by a twinge of sadness, because I'll be leaving a place I've come to call home and people I've been privileged to call friends.

I started the year with a few of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes comics, and I think it might be fitting to end with them. Some of them are sad, some happy, some just funny, but all express some truth about my life and perhaps about human life in general (if I may be so bold). I'm sad I'll be leaving, but I also remember lots of happy memories from my freshman year. At times I was depressed, but I think from my experience and from knowing my friends, pretty much everyone gets pretty depressed at some point in their freshman year. If not, you've found a pretty awesome way of distracting yourself from the tougher realities of life, and you should really send me an email with a detailed list of steps to follow (video game advocates need not submit; I've played enough Super Smash Bros. this year to have each map's theme music stuck in my head during class). And perhaps that's why so many college students are drunk every weekend--college is definitely a freedom trip, but it's also accompanied with a lot of new questions, but some people might prefer to drown them out (no judgment intended).

In parting, here are some of my favorite Calvin strips.

***

Look closely at this one...

Hobbes always has the best lines.

" * "

Nobody can say they don't get this way sometimes. I had perhaps too many of these moments this year.

And he goes back to daydreaming :)

Thanks for reading, friends. Have a wonderful summer and take it easy,

Danny

Mistakes

Another week gone by, and now we just have a few weeks left of school to go. Seems crazy I'll only have two more blog posts after this--it's been a weird sort of constant throughout all the change that has happened throughout my freshman year. I looked at my profile picture for this thing as I logged on tonight and marveled at how different I look now. My hair is longer, yeah, but really I think that the differences I see aren't necessarily the physical ones. It seems odd to me that we look back at pictures of ourselves, whether it's a year or ten years, and try to place ourselves in that position again. Of course it's the same physical being, but is the person in that picture really the same self, the same formulation of personality and sociality that exists now? I don't know. I guess I'm trying to define the self, and that hasn't worked out so neatly for even the most erudite philosophers.

As I was driving around my hometown this weekend I saw a lot of rummage sales and a lot of really sweet furniture I wanted for my dorm room next year. Room draw is on Wednesday for me, and my roommate and I are hoping to get into Larsen. I have to admit I'll be a bit disappointed if we don't, but living in Towers where almost all the sophomores live won't be too bad. Next year I want to bring as little amount of stuff as possible. I'm tired of the clutter that has built up in my room this year. I have too many clothes, too many books, too much electronics, and too many "decorations." For some reason, it seems like my stuff has somehow reproduced. I have way more than I came here with. Next year, I want a comfy chair, a vinyl player, a lamp, my computer, some clothes, and my books. And that's all really. Well I'll bring my slackline and climbing stuff, but that's a given.

A blog is a tough thing to write. So much happens in my daily life, but nothing really happens that I feel like people care to hear about. Then again, nobody wants to read random musings of a discontented college students, so you have to find a balance between daily happenings and the insights one might draw from them. I hope that I've done a pretty good job with my blog, though I know that at times I've tended more towards rambling than any sort of narrative. It will be fun, though, to go back and see the changes in my outlook on life through my blog. A sort of journal, I guess. I've been keeping a private journal for a while now, and I have to say, it's been a real pleasure to be able to express my thoughts that way. To all the slightly depressed, thought-ridden disaffected youth out there: buy a journal and fill it up with all the thoughts you have no idea how to deal with or express, fill it up with everything you could never tell anyone, because a journal doesn't care if you don't adequately express your thoughts in a way someone else can understand. It's just a passive receiver. The whole point is you.

I've been losing motivation for school work pretty steadily. I need some sort of academic pick-me-up here soon, but I fear I will have to cope with self-induced energy for the next few weeks. I just want it to be summer.

Take it easy,

Danny

From Magpie's, With Love

As I was walking out of class this Friday afternoon I crossed across the library lawn through about four different frisbee games and countless blankets strewn across the grass. I would have thoroughly enjoyed it, had I not just exited a philosophy discussion about the futility of all our actions towards happiness. Yeah, rather depressing, but mentally invigorating too. That contrast, of feeling utterly lost and sad and of seeing countless college students seemingly perfectly happy simply to be in the sun and to be with friends, threw me for a loop. Ignorance is bliss. I thought, maybe being a philosophy major won't be as much of a happy trip as I thought. But then I kept thinking (as is my wont, and often my downfall, though this time happily not so), and I realized that I would much rather approach happiness having gone through a genuine philosophical breakdown, having been depressed and disaffected with the mundanity of life, than to revel in an ignorant happiness born from willful blindness. Why I prefer that, I don't know. But perhaps it is because I feel like there ought to be more to life than happiness, that our goal ought not to simply be happy but to genuinely human. Or to genuinely try to understand what it means to be human. That's such a presumption, I know, to say that there really is more to life than pleasure, but it feels to me a better representation of the complexity of life, of suffering and its meaning, than to just be happy happy happy.

Okay and to those readers who skipped that last paragraph due to it's tediously long discourse, a short recap of my week: Monday through Thursday, classes, slacklining, frisbee, studying. Friday some friends and I went down to the river and swam a bit, then I headed to the co-op to do a little journaling. Friday night (which I guess was last night; I'm not used to writing this on a Saturday night) I went to Trout Fry, which was really a fun experience. To those who don't know, Trout Fry is an annual party hosted by the Pi Sigs, a frat that was once chartered by Luther but has since lost that charter. Anyway, it's a big get-together off campus at a campground, and in years past there have been kegs provided at the party for people to drink. This year there has been a lot of attempts by Luther administration to get Trout Fry shut down, mostly because it has been a den of underage drinking and some pretty heavy partying. So they didn't have kegs, but the party went on anyways. I won't go into why I think Luther is being ridiculous about this all, because this is in fact a Luther-sponsored blog, but I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed Trout Fry. And I am definitely going to go again next year.

And now it's Saturday night, and I am at Magpie's, a coffeehouse off-campus. For some reason, it closes at 10, so I have to be out of here in about four minutes. I got a lot of my homework done, and I think I'm gonna head back to campus to hang out with friends tonight. We'll see what happens. For some reason, lately I've been really enjoying my alone time. I know I talked a little bit about that in my earlier blogs, but the solitary bug has infected me anew with the warm weather. I wrote extensively in my journal about why it's important to have alone time, and I think my next blog post I'll write a little about that. For now, I've gotta get out of here.

Take it easy,

Danny

Waste

In philosophy we just finished reading a text about the presumptive nature of all life and the faith inherent in all actions and beliefs, even the belief in truth. I never knew Calvin was such a philosopher at heart, but then again, Calvin is seems to have a keener insight into life than most philosophers I've read.

***

Tonight I went to Magpie's to study a bit with Inga, but ended up getting distracted by so many things that I ended up reading just one chapter in one of the books I have to read tonight. I would start to read, and then decide to check facebook, and then I would answer a text, and then maybe I would drink some coffee and talk to Inga for a bit. I felt almost thinned out, spread over way too many objectives and actions, like my feeling of contentedness was intimately tied with my feeling of concentration. But that doesn't seem right to me, because when I truly concentrate I feel a growing restlessness. I can never seem to find a happy medium, a place where I am both concentrated without being restless and distracted without losing the illusion of progress. It's the ultimate talent a college student can have, I think: to think, but not too hard. Such a banal distinction, but one that people strive for so tenaciously and so rarely successfully.

I feel like I never tell stories in this blog, but I rather just ramble. The problem is I have so many thoughts, and the thoughts crowd out the everyday happenings. I would feel unjustified, or rather, disillusioning myself, to place the highest importance in this one-way forum of mine on actions that have not pressed upon me any lasting impression; rather, my thoughts consume my daily energy and leave me with the emotions that prevail from one minute to the next. What I mean to say is, my life at this point is based so thoroughly on academics, on rigorous mental work, that the very timbre of my life has been adjusted to resound with the nature of my intellectual musings. Thus the more temporal aspect of my life, the comings and goings of everyday college life, the visits to the caf, the hours spent playing frisbee or slacklining, really haven't meant much to me, and I haven't really been moved to comment on them in this blog.

But that's a shame isn't it? That I place all my eggs in the basket of academic experience, and none the very real and very powerful forces of the physical world. I ought to strive for a balance in the placement of my energies and in the investment of my emotional endeavors; I ought to try to simply be more present in the corporeal world. How that translates into action, I have no idea. But perhaps a little fun distraction might help- something to get away from the collegiate grind. Any ideas?

And on that note, I really have to get back into my homework. Only three more days until the weekend. Take it easy,

Danny

At Least It's Done...

I've been trying to figure out what kind of classes I want to take next year, and have become rather stressed with the idea that eventually I might have to know where exactly I'm heading with this whole education idea. Sometimes the whole idea of a career frustrates me; some of the greatest thinkers and doers in history were authors, engineers, inventors, statesman, economists, etc. all at once. Tack up the loss of such genius as a casualty of modernity's frantic obsession with productivity and production. Anyway, as I am trying to decide what courses I take next year, I've been thinking a lot about what I am going to actually "do" with my life. Law school seems like a viable option, so maybe I will do that.

When I was home this weekend for Easter break I went over to visit my friends at Augustana College (the one in Sioux Falls); it was a lot of fun but pretty weird to spend some time in their dorms... weird how similar it was to ours, but how it had its own flavor, too. One thing that I really appreciate at Luther has been the sort of open atmosphere we have, at least in Ylvi. Next year I'll be living in Dieseth I think, and I have no idea what thats gonna be like. It has the reputation being rather "dirty," but I think the social atmosphere will definitely not be lacking.

So we've only got five weeks left, and then I'll be back for summer. It feels like the year has just flown by, and I'm already almost one fourth (or one-third, depending on how fast I go) done with my whole undergraduate experience- what have I done? I look back on the year and kind of wonder what I've done that I will remember in a year. This whole blog post has been so scattered and disjointed- I have to apologize for that. There's a contingent of guys in my room watching T.V., talking, and being very loud. I suppose that's something I could note- its pretty much impossible to do anything coherent when you have six guys in your room talking and socializing. Tip: go somewhere else if you need to do something academic.

Well, off to bed. Take it easy,

Danny

Decisions

Why is it that we show our love in such backward ways?

***

It's Monday, I guess, and that means we only have four more days till Easter vacation. It definitely feels like we just got back to school, so while I'm excited about getting to go home for another four or five days, I kind of wish the timing would have been better- more to the middle of the remainder of school we have left. Ah well. I've just got to take it one day at a time, and for now I just want to get through Monday. For some reason, today is my busiest day, with classes, Chips articles overdue, and Tuba stuff at night. Poor planning for a guy who already has a perpetual case of the Mondays.

This weekend I went up to Gustavus for a Tuba-Euphonium conference, Tubonium. It was... educational. And enjoyable, but mostly educational. I have to admit that by the end I was ready to be done with anything remotely relating to a tuba. But I did get to spend some time with my high school friend who goes there, and I got to hang out with some of his friends. It was weird to see that my friend from high school sort of played the same sort of social role in his new group as he did in our old group- perhaps we just naturally gravitate towards certain social behaviors, and aren't purely placed there out of circumstance and organic social development. The important thing, though, is that he doesn't resent that position, but rather accepts it as a natural condition.

For those of you who know me well, you know that for a long while I have been considering transferring out to the University of Montana. It has probably been pretty evident in my blog entries that I've not experienced that sort of idyllic college high, or even remotely found a comfortable position here at Luther. But I've kept my thoughts about transferring to myself, in respect to this blog, because I really feel like my job as a blogger is not to ruminate about the potential benefits of a different school, but to give an accurate picture of what life is like at Luther, what I have found to be the most fundamental experiences and feelings accompanying my time here.

But I feel comfortable talking about my desire to transfer now, because I've decided to stay at Luther. Don't ask me to explain why, because I don't really know. But it does feel a lot better to have made a decision- at least now I know what I'm going to be doing next year. I was pretty much certain I was going to transfer- I had applied, gone to visit, gotten financial aid, even talked to a friend out there about looking at apartments- but something just stopped me, and now I am staying here. Perhaps in a week or so I'll be able to explain why.

Well, class is about to start so I have to go.

Take it easy,

Danny

Spring Break: Notes on a Vacation and the Effects and Ramifications of its Aftermath on Academic Experience

I feel exactly the same way about Spring break- with some notable exceptions. As soon as I got home the weekend before last, I was ready to just relax and enjoy a week off from school. After about a few days, though, I was pretty bored. It was really awesome to see my high school friends (some of them, at least), and to watch our H.S. basketball team win the State Championship, but I kinda wished that I was off on some exciting trip like the stereotypical college Spring Break adventure. But I guess I didn't necessarily want to get drunk on a beach and play volleyball with a bunch of random tanned and completely air-headed girls in bikinis. So when I found out my friend at the University of Montana's mom and sister were heading out to Montana to visit her on Wednesday, I thought it would be fun to bum along for the ride. So I rode along for the 15 hour drive and spent a few days out in Montana with a couple of my high school friends- it was pretty amazing.

But now I am back at Luther- school is starting up again and I think I already feel a little spring fever coming on. I was in Philosophy today looking out the window and started to feel a pull to just go outside and... I dunno... do something. But I stayed in class, of course- if I give way to the feeling now I will have absolutely no hope once the weather warms up significantly and the trees bloom. Do trees bloom? Or is that just flowers? When the trees leaf. Well anyways, we only have a quarter left of school- 7 weeks about, and I have the feeling that April will just fly by. I think time has a winter, too, and it corresponds with the seasonal winter- when the weather gets cold and things start to die, to close up and hibernate, time slows down and begins to just slumber its way through the winter. Then spring comes and after time has stretched a bit and shaken off the last snow, it begins again to run, and then fly through summer.

My dad is coming next weekend to visit, and I'm going to send some stuff home with him so that I can get rid of all the clutter in my room. When I look at all my stuff that I have, I wonder how in the world I accumulated it all in just a short year. Didn't I come with just a van load to Luther? It feels now like I would need to call Rent-a-Van or whatever that thing is just to make it all in one trip. Here's some good advice: every time you go home over any break, always vow to bring more stuff home that you don't need then stuff to bring back that you think you might want. Otherwise, at the end of the year you will realize the only way your clothes all fit in your dressers and wardrobe is if you have a full load in your laundry basket.

Tomorrow my Fitness and Welness class starts. 8 a.m... I haven't woken up that early all semester. I'm rather worried my body will even accept my alarm going off- maybe I'll just subconsciously reject any noise I hear before 10 o'clock. I feel spoiled though. People get up at 7 or 6 or 5 or earlier every day and I am complaining about waking up at 7:55 to throw on a pair of shorts and run down to a class about how to work out.

Take it easy,

Danny