End of Fall Semester

It’s my last night on campus as a first semester college freshman. These past couple of weeks have been extremely busy! I can’t remember how many papers I’ve done in December, alone. Fortunately, I have wonderful friends who got me to have some fun amid writing papers and studying for finals.

Thursday night, it snowed late in the evening. When enough of it stuck, everyone played in the snow, throwing snowballs and wrestling in it. I stayed warm inside, writing a paper on Cicero’s use of belittling imagery (Latin 306: Special Topics ... fun times!). Around midnight, I wandered to the front door of Pangborn Hall to see what my friends were doing. My roommate Eddie managed to get a snowball through the open door and land a direct hit on my chest. In flip-flops, pajama bottoms and a t-shirt, I chased after him and got him back with a well-aimed snowball! Later, when the excitement died down, everyone gathered in the laundry room to dry their clothes, drink hot chocolate, and get warm. That was a fun evening!

Friday was a leisurely day consisting of shortened classes and sleeping in. And Patriot Hall served a favorite of Eddie and mine: the buffalo chicken sandwich. I mainly studied that evening. I finished off my Latin paper and e-mailed it to my professor. Saturday was balanced evenly between free time and study. I slept in, studied for Origins of the West until about 4:15 p.m., and then went with my friend, Kate, for a hike up the mountain. It was really pretty in the snow, but unfortunately, we had to head back before reaching the top because it became too dark. I got back and had dinner with my friends, then studied Child Development for a few hours. After that, Noelle and I watched Garden State and just relaxed, trying not to think of finals.

The next morning, Noelle and I had breakfast in the Patriot Hall dining room and then brushed up on Origins and Child Development, my hardest exams—which both happened to be on the first day of finals. I stopped in for the brief winter band concert to watch my friends Andrea, Mike, Katie, and Mike play. Later, a bunch of us had a snowball fight that was more like snow wrestling and shoving snow into each other’s shirts, but it was a much-needed reprieve from the studying. Around 1:30 a.m. or so, I went to bed, ready for the exams.

The exams went very well and to celebrate our last week of school before break, Andrea, Noelle, Christine, Eddie and I got Greek food Tuesday night at Olivia’s and then went to Frederick to see Rent. On Thursday, I finished my Latin final and e-mailed it to my professor and had my freshman seminar essay final at noon. I took the evening to just relax with my friends. Greg pointed out earlier that we all are going to miss each other, and it’s starting to hit me how much I will miss college for the next weeks of break. It’s funny how some of us refer to our homes (the ones off campus) as our “other homes.” Being away from college, I might get homesick, but it makes me look forward evermore to January.