October 2009 Archives

Internet family, it's that time of the semester again. It happens every fall semester. It's the week after Homecoming. All that fun and excitement is over, and one thing still remains: class. This is the time of the semester when I always remember I'm here to get my degree, and I should probably invest more time in studying. This year's week after Homecoming has hit me like a wall of bricks stuck together with the finest mortar ever made. It's been rough. This is mostly because my mind is still in Homecoming week, and my body is walking around a week later. I have lots of work to get caught up on.

Last week was a lot of fun. Quick recap: My homecoming team won. End quick recap. No, seriously, it was a lot of fun. On Saturday, I walked around and took pictures all day. The District was alive and lots of fun. The Golden Eagles smashed Tulane 43-6. One of our proud Homecoming Week traditions is float stuffing, where student organizations decorate large sheets of chicken wire with all tissue paper and Southern Miss spirit. If you've ever walked through the front of campus on the Saturday of Homecoming, you'll have seen the monstrous floats demonstrating students' love for Southern Miss. Here's a picture I took of my fraternity brother Ben "helping" our teammates Chi Omega while they decorated their float. I'm not really sure what he's holding, but this picture makes me laugh:    On Sunday, I extended my Homecoming week festivities and drove to Lafayette, LA, with Madison to see a band called the Dirty Projectors. They were absolutely amazing. So good. They have three female vocalists, and I want to marry all of them. It was a long drive (6 hours round trip) but was totally worth it.

One of my original Hattiesburg Hall crew members came in town last night. Corey lives in Oregon now but made a trip down for a week or so. Last night we had a little reunion at Brad and Sam's apartment. It was just like old times, but we didn't play night man. I'm sure this next week will be fun having Corey in town. He's giving all of us old friends an excuse to hang out again.

And last, but certainly not least, our countdown to Girl Talk. Last week at the Friday Night at the Fountain, I was given the opportunity to pretend to be Girl Talk during the Pep Rally to get everyone excited about Eaglepalooza. It was awesome. Not only did I pretend to be Girl Talk, I made a special Southern Miss-themed mashup with a little remix of the fight song and played it live on stage. We had a dance contest with a few members of the crowd for backstage passes to Eaglepalooza. It was an awesome experience and was essentially my first live show. I want to post the mix I played, but I haven't had time to record it yet. When I do, I'll put it up here, and you can jam out, Golden Eagle Mashup style. Here I am right before I started playing. (I even put plastic all over my computer like Girl Talk does. This is a serious business.)  Well that's it for this week. When I get that mashup recorded, I'll send it this way. Peace.

Hey! I am really excited about Homecoming week. Straight up, super excited. And pretty much for one reason: today was the annual Fountain Sit. If you haven't ever heard of the Fountain Sit, prepare to be enlightened.

The Fountain Sit is an annual competition held during Homecoming week. Student organizations are split up into teams for the week, and each team elects one or two representatives to sit in the fountain in Shoemaker Square. That's right. They sit there for a whole day. It starts at 10:00 AM and usually lasts until midnight. Competitors get to answer trivia questions about Southern Miss to get food breaks and be exempt from "punishments," such as sitting directly under the fountain or walking laps on all fours. I will now tell you the tale of two Fountain Sits: this year's and last's.

Last year, the Fountain Sit was record setting. It was cold. Very cold. It was my time to shine. The night before I got dressed in my fountain sitting gear (rain jacket and athletic pants) and took a motivational walk around campus. I came and sat by the fountain and thought about my life. A person has to think about their whole life before they can get in that fountain. It was below freezing at 8 AM when I walked to my Analytical Chemistry class. Brad and I ate a meal afterwards at the Fresh Food Company. I read the paper. It was like any normal day. Except my life was about to change forever.

At 10:00 AM I got in the fountain. It was freezing. We got to sit in chairs for the first few hours. I had already been working in Admissions for most of the year, so I got all the trivia questions right. My teammate wasn't so informed, but I taught him as we went along. Emily brought me some hot chocolate. Tobin brought me some food at lunch. Help from friends is best. Some of the games they made us play in the fountain were ridiculous. We had to play the game "Questions," which meant that we could only talk in questions. I had one question that I kept asking was "has your mother ever been to Georgia?" I have no idea why I kept asking that question. Someone commented on it a few days later. I think the cold got to my head. It was so cold.

At about 3:00 PM we had to take off an article of clothing. I took my long pants off and had shorts on underneath. Once our chairs were gone it didn't matter how many pairs of pants you had on, because it was so cold. By 4:00 PM we were sitting on the bottom of the fountain with nothing but our heads above water. It was so cold. There were only five of us left. At 5:00 PM, one of the campus physicians came to the fountain, made a quick diagnosis, and we were forced to get out of the fountain. We were all showing serious symptoms of hypothermia. It was the first time the fountain sit was forced to an abrupt end. The historic "Fountain Five" all split the points for the sit. I was prepared to stay in the fountain indefinitely, and I was almost reluctant to get out early. It was the high point of my college career.

This year's fountain sit had fewer contestants and the air wasn't quite as cold, but the water temperature was still cold. My main man Justin represented my team this year, and I couldn't be prouder of him. I just received word that he won this year's fountain sit. Props to Justin. He is quite a comedian. He reminds me of his old dad. Er, I'm not his dad. I'm just the guy that did the Fountain Sit before him. There was a dead grasshopper floating in the fountain, and he picked it up and played with it for a while. It sounds crazy, but he was in the best mood and the cold can be blamed for any deviation from sane behavior. Here he is below waiting on a game of Duck Duck Goose. He looks miserable, but his spirits were high and he was a trooper for sure. 

  Happy sitting, everyone. I'm proud of you, Justin. Countdown to Girl Talk in 3, 2, 1:

Internet! It's that time of year again! It's time for Black and Gold Day! This Saturday! Along with Homecoming, Black and Gold Day is one of the best Saturdays of the year to be at Southern Miss. It's a chance for anyone who's interested in Southern Miss to come and see our campus at its finest on a game day. There will be informational sessions, campus tours (hosted in part by yours truly) and Golden Eagle football. I especially am looking forward to the campus tours, as I am Co-Black-and-Gold-Day chair for Eagle Connection, the student recruiting group. We've been preparing diligently for the event on Saturday, and I hope all of you can make it. If you haven't signed up yet, then you can just show up on Saturday and register as a walk-in.

I had an awesome fall break. The Give-a-Push weekend was great. Lake Thoreau is a really cool place and isn't too far from campus. Once the site is finished, it will be a great place for students to go enjoy nature and learn about it as well. My role for the weekend, along with several other fraternity members, was to help cut a path through the woods for one of the accessible trails that will circle the woods. Some other members built an accessible boardwalk over a creek. On Saturday night, we went and painted pumpkins with people with disabilities at the State School in Ellisville. It was an amazing visit and a great weekend.

This week hasn't been too busy, but it's almost like the calm before the storm. Homecoming Week is approaching. Approaching quickly. As in, next week quickly. Next week is Homecoming. I can't seem to wrap my head around it. Where has the semester gone? I feel like I stepped into a wormhole during GEWW, and now I'm just getting out of it. Fun story about wormholes: One day, I slept over at Brad's apartment off campus, and we were driving to our 8:00 AM chemistry class. On the way there, we saw one of our classmates walking with his bike in the opposite direction (away from campus) about a mile from our building and five minutes before class started. When we got to class, he was already there, sitting calmly in class. The only explanation we could think of was that he stepped into a wormhole somewhere on 4th Street, and to this day, his name has been "Wormhole guy."

That's about all for this week. Next week, I'll give you a big, big, rundown of Homecoming Week festivities. I'm talking big.

As always, we're in the countdown to Girl Talk and Eaglepalooza, so here's one of the mixes I put together over fall break:

Hello! It's time for round two, GRE style. Tomorrow morning, I will once again come face to face with the Graduate Record Examination in an attempt to get into the graduate school of my dreams. It's been a rocky two weeks preparing for the rematch, but I think I'm ready for it.

It's also almost time for the elusive fall break, which offers a much needed rest for college students everywhere, especially at Southern Miss. I talked a lot last week about what I'll be doing for this fall break, but I'm going to give you a quick rundown of what I did the past three fall breaks of my college career:

1. Freshman Year - Visited my friends at LSU. Went home. Slept.

2. Sophomore Year - Went home. Slept.

3. Junior Year - Slept.

As you can see, Fall Break is clearly a time for rest. This past weekend I took my fall break early and slept a lot to compensate for my coming activity-filled fall break. Also, after writing "slept" three times (now four times) in a row, it no longer looks like a word in the English language. Does that ever happen to you? Gets me every time.

Before fall break and my second try at the GRE gets underway, I'm going to be enjoying a free dinner at Brownstone's in downtown Hattiesburg provided by my fraternity. It's for members with a 3.0 GPA or higher, and it gives us a chance to celebrate academic excellence and enjoy some great free food. After that, though, it's all night study marathon for my GRE. But not the whole night. I've got to get my sleep on before the big test.

Something that I've really come to love about every semester is new friends. This year I've gotten the chance to make some cool new friends. A few of us have decided very recently to start a band together. The idea of writing and performing songs has gotten me back into my songwriting mood. It now looks like in my free time over fall break I might record a few of my older songs, which I unearthed in my songbook for your listening pleasure (or displeasure.) It'll be up to you to decide.

Well that's it for this week. It's finally time for some Fall Break '09. I'll leave you with the last original song I recorded.  It was for my friend Molly's birthday over the summer. I'll put it on my nifty little song player so you can play it right here:

Hello everybody. It's been a crazy week of traveling and getting down to business. By the time this week is over, I'll have gone down to New Orleans three times. On Tuesday night, I went to the Archdiocese of New Orleans College Fair with Eagle Connection, our student recruiter organization. I got the chance to talk to lots and lots of prospective students from around New Orleans, including some students from my high school, Brother Martin. It was probably one of the best recruiting events I've been too, just because of the sheer number of prospective students and parents I got to interact with. Here's a picture of Sam and I working the table and telling students about Southern Miss:

Tonight, I'm heading down to New Orleans again to go see Phoenix, a great band from Versailles, France. You may have heard them on a Cadillac commercial. The show is sure to be a lot of fun. This isn't the first time I've been able to drive down just for a night to see a band and be back in Hattiesburg with time to sleep and get to class in the morning. (Another reason I really love Hattiesburg.) To follow that, I'm going home tomorrow to Metairie to get some rest and see the family. I'll also be seeing Andrew Bird and St. Vincent, two more great musical acts, at the same venue as tonight. Got to love that music. I'm spending the weekend at home because next weekend is our fall break, but I'll be in Hattiesburg doing some community service.

The event I'll be attending for fall break is known as a Give-A-Push Weekend, which is put on by Push America, my fraternity's national philanthropy. Other members from chapters around the region will be coming to Hattiesburg to help with some construction projects at Lake Thoreau, a new lake that the University has acquired and is developing for research and for students' recreation. We're going to be adding some paths and making the area accessible for people with disabilities. The purpose of Push America is to raise awareness about people with disabilities, and this project will help those people with disabilities to enjoy the lake. We will also be making a trip to the Ellisville State School to have a visit with some people with disabilities there. It's sure to be a fun weekend. During Spring Break of this past school year, my friend Sam and I drove out to Elgin, TX, for a similar event called Push Camp.  It was an entire week not just a weekend. If the Give-a-Push weekend is half as fun as the event over spring break, it will be a blast. Here I am at Push Camp (in the middle in the white shirt), getting my hands dirty building an accessible fishing dock: