The Thirteenth Week

Let's just not have pictures for now.

And so we've made it to week thirteen. Lucky thirteen. This post, of course, is coming well past week thirteen. My apologies for that(Maybe thirteen isn't so lucky), I've had a busy time though, so I hope you will understand. Week thirteen brought with it much change. And I'm not just talking about the coins I found on the ground throughout the week (42 cents, but who's counting). I'm talking about the fact that I am now officially done with my freshman year of college. I survived. Only three more years to go. But let's just take it one week at a time for now.

SUNDAY: You'd think I'd have been studying for finals at this point, but no. Both of my actual finals wouldn't come until Friday, so I decided to give myself the weekend to rest. How nice of me, right? I did watch Pretty Woman for the first time though. It was pretty funny, but I think I like the Richard Gere-Julia Roberts duo a little bit more in Runaway Bride. But that's just my opinion.

MONDAY: Note to self: It's a bad idea to get a Nintendo 64 with Mario Kart the week of finals. It wasn't me that got it, but I did participate in the breaking in of the game. I just have no self-control whatsoever. Mario Kart has to be one of the best games ever created though, mainly because it's one of the few video games that I can do partially good at. By good I of course mean not come in last every time.

TUESDAY: Tuesday I finally got to studying, and I said good-bye to SAAJ as an actual class for the rest of my life. I will miss it for sure, but at the same time, I won't miss it. As much as I try to love a given class, the love of that class never changes the fact that it is still a class. And I love being out of class far more than I love being in one. We did have pizza though. Pizza makes it much much easier to be in class. If any professors or teachers are reading this...please take note.

WEDNESDAY: Wednesday was the last day of my Philosophy class. I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the class, and I would recommend a philosophy course to anyone, but still I'm glad it's over. I'm like a broken record or something this week. But I ended up getting a B+ in the class, which in Mini-Mitchell-College-Grade-Vocab=College Platinum. Just wait... it's gonna be a thing. If not for everyone else then just for me.

THURSDAY: And out of nowhere we're at Thursday, my very last day of my freshman year of college. This would have been a much happier day had I not had two finals. First came my film final (which could have gone worse but thank goodness it didn't), followed by my Humanities final. But once I got through those I was off and running towards my nice comfortable bed in my home sweet home (not actually running of course. The journey takes enough time in a car, running would have been brutal).

FRIDAY: The toughest part about being home from college is finding something to do while everyone else is still away at college. So what did I decide to do on my first full day back? Well go to high school of course. I visited my former teacher Mr. William Turek at my former high school which I will choose not to name so that my real identity won't be compromised. It was quite the thrill, though I must say I felt quite old, but at the same time being around all the teachers in the teachers lounge made me feel so so young. Thank you Mr. Ernest.

SATURDAY: Saturday went much more like I expected my weekend back to go. I went to a Padre game, but more importantly... I bought a new hat. In my opinion it suits me just perfectly. It's a two and a half inch brimmed grey fedora of the Stacy Adams mold. Now all I have to do is get some good clothes to go with. It has been quite the week, but all I can really say is that it's nice to be home. I'll just have to spend my days for now preparing the way for all of those people who are still off and away at college so that when they get back we can all hit the ground running. No time to waste, we must move with haste. But the sun has now set, now in a much more familiar city. Here's to the future that seems like it will never come.

The Twelfth Week

And so we've made it to week twelve. It's amazing to think that I'm about to enter my last week of my freshman year of college, but I am. This week was considered dead week by most of the students, meaning the week before finals when most students don't really get too much work. This wasn't the case for me. My week wasn't necessarily filled with work, but it also wasn't really a dead week. Aside from working on school I spent a lot of time sleeping, plus I came to one big decision regarding my future in college... but you can read about that inside (I love cliffhangers). So here we go.

SUNDAY: Sunday was spent resting up from my "marathon" by sleeping as much as possible. On top of sleeping I also had to work some more on my paper for my film class (I forgot to mention last week that the professor extended the due date for the paper by a week. My bad). Working on the paper was a nice distraction from being sore though. I was actually a lot less sore than I expected to be, not to say I didn't really dread walking all the way down to the caf for my dinner, but I made it. That was unexpected.

MONDAY: I had a little bit of a thrill on Monday. It may sound conceited, but hey, this is a blog about my life. It's bound to come off that way sometimes. A random person came up to me and asked me if I was the marathon guy from the Relay for Life. It was pretty exciting. It is a very rare occasion for me to be recognized by people I don't know. Of course the humbling experience was eating lunch on my own. Humbling, but at the same time quite peaceful. In a school of three thousand people it's good to get some alone time.

TUESDAY: There is a class that I haven't really talked about all that much inside of this here blog. That class would be the Social Science Perspective on Film, better known as, "Tuesday Night at the Movies." We actually watched a pretty interesting film about how Hawaii became a state. I had expected it to be an extremely boring historical film, but it turned out to be much better than I expected. Apparently we Americans were real jerks through the whole ordeal. Shocking.

WEDNESDAY: This was actually the most simple day to get through of all of the days this week. At this point I was basically free of all work until finals week, which means that I had a dead half week, or a half dead week...? No. That can't be right. We'll stick with a dead half week. So this was the start of my dead half week. I spent it watching a few friends of mine giving utopia presentations for their class. It was quite exciting. One group had a utopia in which it was ruled by women. Strangely enough, it was the group that had the highest ratio of guys to girls. Now that's progress.

THURSDAY: So this day brings the resolution to the previous cliffhanger. I'm trying to build this thing up as much as possible (Which isn't very much since this isn't really much of a surprise anyways). On this day I finally did something that I'd been thinking about doing for quite some time. Something that I knew that I was going to do but just couldn't find the time to do it. I declared a major. I am now majoring in film studies. Super exciting stuff. I'm sure most of the world is just shocked by this because of my blatant loathing of all things film. So yeah. That's the big event. I hope it was worth the read. If you're bored at this point (Which most of you probably are) then you could probably just look at the pictures and move on.

FRIDAY: I had no class on Friday, which meant that I got to sleep in a whole lot on Friday. It was very nice. I woke up at around 1:15. I feel like I'm already preparing myself for the summer, but during the summer I'll probably be waking up around 3. Just kidding. I hope to wake up by noon each day. I also had my work barbecue on Friday. I never have anything against free food, especially when it's free.

SATURDAY: Once again on Saturday I savored the chance to sleep in, but this time I woke up by 12:15. Improvement. I went to a friends 21 birthday party almost immediately following waking up. It was very fun. Nothing like waking up and playing Mario Kart. She also made a bunch of food for her party, which meant more free food for me. Once again, no complaints there. It's hard to believe that I've already made it through this much of the year. It's really flown by. Before too long I'll be married with seven children, 23 grandchildren, and 62 great grandchildren. But now the sun has set on this glorious week of ours. Here's to the future that seems like it will never come.

The Eleventh Week

And so we've made it to week eleven. This week sort of marked the last real week of school for me. My final paper for my film class was sort of supposed to be due this week, though you'll here more about that later, and that was my own personal indicator of when the year was officially over (except for finals of course). I'm glad that it's sort of all over, but I still can't wait to be home in a few weeks. There are good things about being in school, don't get me wrong, it's just that I really love being home. Mainly because there's more freedom, which sounds off, but it's totally true. Just a side-note, most of the pictures from this week come from the Relay for Life. I suppose I'll talk about my week now.

SUNDAY: Sunday involved doing a lot of research. On Sunday I realized that I'd hardly done any work for a film paper which had a rough draft due Tuesday. This worried me. And so I got to work reading and writing about various films. When it comes to writing papers I can be very indecisive. I had my original claim for this paper two weeks prior to this, and now three claims later I've written a paper. Though, not yet.

MONDAY: Today was the day that I finished the paper. I actually didn't finish very much of it on Sunday. My original goal for Sunday was to write three pages, which was half the length of the paper, but that quickly changed to two pages. When Tuesday finally came I had five and a half more pages to write. I'm such a good worker. Despite my procrastination I was still able to finish my rough draft. So all's well that ends well.

TUESDAY: Tuesday I went through the canyon with a couple of friends to get some supplies for a project that we had to do. It was pretty fun. Funny story though; apparently you are not allowed to take pictures inside of a Trader Joes. So appreciate this one, because right after it was taken I was told to put my camera away, which is odd considering the fact that I shot a whole video at a Ralphs mere weeks before while working on another project. But at least I still got the picture.

WEDNESDAY: I had a presentation with my Social Action and Justice class, which was in front of about 180 people. Luckily, my group was chosen to run the outside booth, which meant that I never had to personally be in front of all of those people. I stood outside with fair trade chocolate the entire time and told people all of the people that asked about where and how to buy fair trade products, which was about three. In any case, that class is now over, which is extremely nice. One down, three to go.

THURSDAY: Nothing very significant happened on Thursday except for finding out that my philosophy class is not having a final. Very amazing news. It made me very happy. Thursday night I played pool with a friend for a long time. Usually I'm not very good at pool, but I got lucky a whole lot of times, so it was pretty fun. Not that losing isn't fun... oh wait... it isn't. But the company can be fun no matter what.

FRIDAY: Friday was the beginning day of the 24 hour Relay For Life. It was a 24 hour relay in which my team of 13 people always had to have someone walking around the track for 24 hours. It was actually really fun. The first seven hours, which was the Friday portion of the event, were spent mainly having simple fun. Played some basketball, walked a few laps, and the best part... played Chutes and Ladders. It was amazing. I ended up getting last. I wanted to be an encourager. I also realized how great my vest is for holding energy drinks. No, I did not drink them all, but I was up all night.

SATURDAY: Now is when things got interesting. So I had two shifts of walking for the relay. My first shift was at 2 AM, my second shift was at 6 AM. While walking my first shift I thought to myself, "I could either stop after my shift and sleep, or I could just keep walking until my next shift at 6." This thought led to another thought, "If I walk that long, maybe I could walk a marathon." And that's just what I did. I walked a full 105 laps around track. I even ran the last mile. It was quite the thrill, and I will now always be able to say that I went a full 26.25 miles at one time. 7 hours and 44 minutes. But now the sun has set on this fine week. Here's to the future that seems like it will never come.

The Tenth Week

And so we've made it to week ten. I decided I'd go with a somewhat step oriented theme for this week. I'm at a school where I climb up about a thousand stairs a week (not an exaggeration. In fact it's probably much more) and I still haven't really talked about them that much. Here at Pepperdine (Stepperdine) we have a very wide variety of stairs that can be taken to get to any one location. If you don't like stairs you can always just walk up or down a hill, but that can be painful and can often lead to things like sprained ankles (Jeff). Anyways. I can't say I walked up any more stairs than usual this week, I just thought it'd be interesting to bring them up. So here's my week.

SUNDAY: I was actually home on Sunday. I think I failed to mention last week that I went home for the weekend. It was Easter of course. Not that I wouldn't go home without a special occasion of some sort, it's just that it's highly unlikely that I'd be able to get a ride otherwise. But I did get a ride and it was nice to be home since I was able to eat lots of good food and see a few people that I hadn't seen in a while (meaning a few weeks since it's really only been a few weeks since I had spring break. A month really, but who's counting? (Me apparently)).

MONDAY: Worked all the way down at the equipment shack on Monday, as usual, it's just that I never talk about it. Mondays these days are the days that I go all the way from the equipment shack to the law school for lunch before I have philosophy. It's probably upwards of about 200 stairs, plus there are hills between the stairs. It's just a really long walk. Totally worth it though. It's the best way to make a Monday seem a little bit better.

TUESDAY: Tuesday I had Humanities, which was absolutely no fun at all. But it was also Tuesday that I started writing children's stories about a little boy named Johnny. I think they can be quite entertaining and even happy if you stop at the first ending that I give the story. Anyways. Tuesday night was spent working on a presentation due the next day for my SAAJ class that I stressed way too much about. You'd think I'd know by now not to stress too much.

WEDNESDAY: My group had to give it's presentation for the class on Tuesday. I was super worried about it and basically thought we were going to fail, but that's just me being an optimist. Believe it or not, but the presentation actually went really well. If you ask me ten years from now I may even admit that I was indeed a part of it. But seriously, it went well. Celebrated that night by watching my RA Eddy (Another shout out) work into the early hours of the next morning trying, and succeeding, at beating the super mario bros 3 on the recently acquired original Nintendo.

THURSDAY: The fact that Eddy bought this Nintendo means that these next few weeks are going to be extremely difficult to remain focused on my studies. Which means I should technically get a head start and begin studying now, but we all know that's not going to happen. I thrive in pressure situations anyways. I actually have no way of knowing if that's true. I don't remember if there's ever been a time where I haven't procrastinated to create the pressure situation, so maybe I would actually do better without it. We'll most likely never know.

FRIDAY: Friday I received the extremely spectacular good news that I got a C on my humanities essay. This may not seem like much, but for me, in Humanities, it's possibly one of the greatest thrills of my entire life (Which I suppose is saying that my life hasn't had a ton of super great thrills) and you can't take that away from me if you tried. In celebration of my wonderful accomplishment I bought myself a good fruit smoothie from Jamba Juice. That too made me happy.

SATURDAY: Nothing like the joy of waking up early on a Saturday to spend some good quality time at an orientation for studying abroad. The orientation itself wasn't super great, but the food that we got afterwards was spectacular. I was able to have something that I haven't had in many many moons. Texas chocolate cake. It was a beautiful thing and made the whole morning worthwhile. Then afterwards I took a three hour nap to recuperate before playing some good old basketball and failing miserably at pool (It's apparently a bad idea to hit the eight ball in early in every game, so I stopped doing this and instead scratched while going for the eight ball, which apparently is just as bad). Only three more weeks left, but now the sun must set on this fine week. Here's to the future that seems like it will never come.

The Ninth Week

And so we've made it to week nine. I can feel the school year beginning to wind down now. I basically have one more of everything for all of my classes. It's crazy. One more paper for film, one more paper for philosophy, one more presentation for my SAAJ class, one more test for humanities. I'm counting it all down already. I just have to remember to be prepared for it all, which is the hard part. The easy part is looking back on what's already happened. So here's what happened this week.

SUNDAY: Every week must start somewhere and it seems like mine always seem to start with Sunday. It's something I just can't seem to avoid. I ran into Josiah and Audra Pleasant at church on Sunday. That sure was pleasant. I also spent some good time working on a philosophy paper that I had due the next day. Nothing special. Just about whether or not a person's mind and soul are a separate thing from the body. If they are in fact separate I think my mind is really seventy-five, even though my body is still seventeen... wait... eighteen. It's so hard to remember these things with a mind my age.

MONDAY: Monday was quite an interesting day, but not for very interesting reasons. In my philosophy class, instead of going into deep philosophical questions about a text, we instead watched I robot. It was amazingly fun to watch a movie like that and discuss the philosophical questions to be found inside of it. That's not saying I'd do that with all movies, I feel that would be much too mentally draining, plus I don't think the philosophy of Napoleon Dynamite would be quite so intriguing.

TUESDAY: Tuesday was a rough day, caused partially because I had a lack of sleep the night before, and partially because of why I had the lack of sleep the night before. I was up to the wee hours of the morning studying for a humanities in-class essay. There's always that pro-con list that must be made in a person's mind about the opportunity cost of studying later into the night or getting that extra hour or two of sleep. I would do a more extensive study on the subject, but I just don't have the time.

WEDNESDAY: I got to go on another field trip for my SAAJ class on Wednesday. It was very interesting. We went to an aquarium in Santa Monica (not a major aquarium. It probably only had about twenty fish or something like that. But interesting nonetheless). It took an hour and a half to find a parking spot when we were going though (Yet another reason that cars are terrible. You don't have to worry about parking when you're walking). I also went to the 3rd street promenade after the field trip, where I used the power of the human will to avoid buying myself a hat, which is quite the achievement for me. Be proud. I avoided contributing to the capitalistic ways of our consumeristic society.

THURSDAY: Thursday was April Fool's Day. I actually participated for once. Moving a suitemate's things from one room to another placed in the exact same way can be quite entertaining. As can covering a suitemate's floor with cups of water making it extremely difficult to get out of bed. Good times. You the reader are probably completely confused by those last two sentences. My apologies.

FRIDAY: Ah the weekend. Nothing like starting off a good Friday (Think about it) like going to Celebration Chapel in the morning. I heard a few songs that I'd never heard before that were quite appealing to my senses. They smelled wonderful. The female singer who was helping lead worship had a voice that was divine (Even if it wasn't it was still pretty amazing, and in eighty years or so she'll die and it'll become heavenly. The thought's not so morbid if you just stop and think about how beautiful it is). Music is always uplifting for me, mainly when it comes from other people. Listening to myself sing can ruin it.

SATURDAY: The important thing that happened today hardly even happened today. It happened at night. I'm sitting in my bed thinking about various philosophical questions (as always) and I think to myself this thought, "People talk about moments that come once in a lifetime. That's not crazy at all. What's crazy is that people don't realize that every moment only happens once in a lifetime. Even if it happens again it's a different moment. That means that we should all live our lives knowing that each moment only comes once in a lifetime." That's my deep thought for the week. Make the most of every moment, because each moment only comes once in a lifetime. And now the sun is setting on this week that was here for once in a lifetime. Here's to the future that seems like it will never come.

The Eighth Week

And so we've made it to week eight. This was a pretty busy week. So busy in fact that there is even a day that I don't even remember. There are some weeks that just sort of leave you wishing that every week could be like them. This week was half that, and half hoping that it is the only week like this. For one, I've had a minor cold all week. Nothing bad. Just a small cough and a recurring runny nose. I can't complain though, because I still did a lot of fun things. I also spent a lot of time appreciating nature. That's a pretty decent theme for a week like this. And I must apologize that some of the pictures from this week overlap days, but some were too nice to leave out. They may seem irrelevant to the day they are on. My apologies. So here goes...

SUNDAY: Sunday was a relatively boring day. I went to church in the morning, which was actually extremely tiring. It's a good thing there was a lot of standing up and sitting down or I never would have made it through the whole service. After that I bought my amigo Eddy lunch in the caf. I've been buying a lot of people meals lately. Primarily because I have a surplus of points on my card while everyone else is running low, which makes me a very popular person. I have no objections to this.

MONDAY: This blog is called "The days that Mini-Mitchell remembered." Try as I might I can't remember anything interesting that happened on this day.

TUESDAY: I had another paper to write on Tuesday, which is naturally what I always look forward to doing. I just love writing papers. They make my day. Especially papers on whether or not Christianity helps or hurts the environmental movement. It was a trick question though. Christianity helps and hurts the environment. Christians help the environment by being loving and nurturing towards God's precious creation. We hurt it because for some reason the Bible is the top selling book of the last one thousand years and it's like a thousand pages long.

WEDNESDAY: First of all, I had class at a yoga studio. That's what the picture is of. It basically just made me realize how not flexible I am. So... moving past that self-esteem lowering event. Then things got interesting. So I'm texting Riley while I'm at work and while he's on his lunch break. He's talking about how he's on spring break and he's bummed that he couldn't come up to visit me at Pepperdine. In response I say(through texting), "Wen u get home pack ur car and drive up. imagine the story thatd b"(I don't actually use the abbreviations, I just thought it'd make this more interesting). After another hour and a half of talking him into it I finally got him to come. He arrived at 2 a.m. on...

THURSDAY: Having Riley around made this day pretty sweet. Since he's on spring break I figured the natural thing for him to do when he was here with me would be to come to work with me. So he did. We set up and cleaned out four tents and watched a couple episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show(or the Jerk Van Gay show if you have a T.V. Guardian). Then I took him to have lunch at the law school, which was delicious. Then I had class, which I didn't force him to come to. I did get my philosophy paper back though... A-. Made me happy. Then we went to Ralphs and bought amazing things, and then I showed him Heroes Garden, and then we went to a showing of a thing called the Randumb show. And then Riley left.

FRIDAY: I enjoy eating. Having barbecues makes eating that much better. Not only is the food amazing, but hanging out with friends around a grill also has a really relaxing feel to it. I only ate one burger this time though. Had I had any more it probably would have been much more unhealthy for me. I found out in one of my classes this week that it takes a really long time for meat to digest in a person's system if not eaten a certain way. Sometimes it can even start to rot in a person's stomach. Think about that next time you eat a burger.

SATURDAY: On any other week this would have been the funnest day. Riley wins though. That doesn't change the fact that this day was awesome. I went on a hike with some people from Campus Ministry. It was really fun. Every ten minutes or so we'd stop and either say something we were thankful for or we'd share a verse. It was my spiritually uplifting time of the week. I got to know some people I hadn't really known before and I also met a guy who's going to London next year. The hike ended at a cross on the top of a mountain with quite a good view of the ocean. It was truly inspiring. And then I came back down from the hike and checked my facebook(just kidding. That was just for irony. I actually went to a baseball game). But now the sun has set on this fine week. Here's to the future that seems like it will never come.

The Seventh Week

And so we've made it to week seven. I should probably start by apologizing for the lateness of this post, but I had quite the busy week. This was the performance week for songfest, which meant that school was basically put aside for singing and dancing. I had to battle sickness, allergies, sore knees, and possible embarrassment. In the end, I'd say it was worth it. I don't know if I'd do it again, but it was definitely worth doing once. So now I suppose I'll tell you about

it.

SUNDAY: So the time changed on Sunday. Not the good time change that gives an extra hour of sleep though. It was the terrible time change that means I get one less hour of sleep. People that know me know this; I need every hour of sleep I can get. There is one good thing about this time change though. Now all my clocks are right. I don't change my clocks when the time falls back. What's the point? People thought I was crazy. But now that the time has changed and I saved the 30 seconds needed to change my clocks who's the crazy one?

MONDAY: Monday was the dress rehearsal for Songfest. It was the only chance we got to see the other groups perform, which was exciting, if not completely intimidating. Seeing everyone else go did get me extremely excited for the show though, especially since I knew my parents and Riley were gonna be seeing it. It was definitely crazy doing the whole performance on the stage for the first time. Our spacing wasn't that great the first day, so with a hundred people on stage at one time I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I ran into like five different people.

TUESDAY: Opening day. This was actually really exciting. I was nervous, sure, but at the same time I realized that it's hard to be nervous once you're on stage. You're just too focused on the moves that are coming up...or on the moves that you just messed up. This wasn't the best performance for my group though. We were still in the process of working out a few kinks. But it was still fun and our final song went over really well. It's good that people have short memories so they'll probably only remember the final song.

WEDNESDAY: I had a paper due. Having papers due during the week of performing a show can be very stressful. I had already been up until two with the other work that I had, but with a paper I was lucky that I was only up until 3:30. The only reason I went to bed then was because I decided I would finish the paper in the hour between class and the time the paper was due. Kind of like a race. Funny thing happened in the show tonight though. On the final song there's a part where we tip our caps to the crowd. In this part the girl next to me accidentally hit my hat out of my hand. It was quite the thrill picking it up and putting it on with the choreography. But...still pulled it off somehow.

THURSDAY: Thursday was an extremely exciting and chaotic day for me. I woke up feeling very under the weather, which was worrisome because this was the most important show night for me. I got some extra rest though and decided that I would stop being sick and be awesome instead. True story. My parents and Riley came up to see the show too. I had a good time showing Riley around campus, and I'm hoping he had a good time seeing me and my bro perform. Though it might have been painful to watch in comparison to the amazing work he does.

FRIDAY: I didn't have my film class today, which meant one amazing thing. I actually got to sleep in. Waking up at 1:30 is really nice. I wish I could do it more often. I must admit that by this day I felt a little bit old. My knees were getting sore from performing so much and there were a couple times where I decided to get microwaveable food from the rec center just so that I wouldn't have to walk all the way to the caf. No regrets though. I loved the rest (rest meaning sleep rest, now rest as in the rest of the day. The English language can be so confusing).

SATURDAY: The final day of performing. The final day of having a guaranteed two to three hours of my day spent singing and dancing. It was very bittersweet actually. Right before the curtain came up for our final performance I turned to Cory (Spenser's roommate) standing next to me and said, "This is our last time ever doing Songfest together." The moment just sort of hit us and we had a momentary embrace before the curtain came up to savor the moment. Our finale was powerful. All of us singing at the top of our lungs and dancing with all of the energy we had left. Pretty amazing stuff. The cast party went until around 1:30, which is why I hadn't written this 'til now. But at least it was that I was actually doing something right? The craziest thing about Songfest ending is after 3 weeks of practicing and getting ready everyday and then performing and then all of a sudden it's over. What do I do now? Well, it appears the sun has set on this way too busy week of ours. Here's to the future that seems like it will never come.