Why didn't anyone tell me that?! Part 2

When I left off last time, I promised my next post would include some more insight into things I wish I'd have known coming into PLNU. I think I'll include that at the end of today's post, so if you are really excited about that part, feel free to skip down.

This weekend has been exhausting, but really fun at the same time. On Thursday night, my roommate's band , Family Wagon, played a show at a place in Ocean Beach called Dream Street Lounge. It was a great time and the band got to play a longer set of about 45 minutes. Once again, I left my camera at home all weekend (it's been giving me problems so it's not really worth the effort of bringing along). But I did manage to snap some questionably legible shots with my iPhone. Here's one of the Dream Street show:

Friday night we had a bonfire for some of the guys and girls in our Flex Apartments. It took place down on Shelter Island. Ocean Beach and Shelter Island are both located less than 5 minutes away from campus, which is super convenient. Alas, iPhones do not yet include a flash, and it was pretty dark on Shelter, so no photo from this experience. But it looked something like this:
Saturday came early. I woke up at 7 in the a.m. to help my roommate fix some breakfast for my previously-mentioned friend Blake Nelson (see first blog) and the cast of his movie. Then at 8:15 I left with my Student Ministries group to City Heights for a project called Face Lift. We painted, planted, potted, and panted for about 5 hours. It was fulfilling, but incredibly exhausting. My work included shoveling concrete into a dumpster, digging holes and planting, and my personal favorite, digging out ridiculous things from the bamboo abyss. We literally spent almost two hours digging out mattresses, a shopping cart, and much more from a spider-covered bamboo forest. Apparently some homeless people had been living there some time ago. This task was much more challenging than I had anticipated, and also left me resembling a human Oreo. At the end of the day, everyone came together and all the groups were given awards for their hard work:

Then last night, we had a fall festival on campus called Samedi Gras. I didn't have the energy to go to most of it, but I came for the end, when Family Wagon played yet again (this time in masks!)

So that was my weekend! Now, as promised, a second bit of advice for those of you coming into PLNU:

If you're taking a class your first semester and you're doing very poorly, you can DROP the class.

Here's a little secret: there are some professors at this school who experienced students have learned to avoid. The honest truth is that 9 out of 10 professors at Loma are awesome, or at the very least show a deep care for their students. But there are a limited number of professors that people who have been at PLNU for a while tend to avoid. And since you're a freshman and you have no choice in the matter, guess what? There's a chance you might end up with one of these professors your first semester. I did.

I took a class with a professor who liked things done a particular way – in other words, she was really picky. If you were one second late to class, you were tardy, no exceptions, and the class was at 7:30. By the halfway point of the class I realized I wasn’t doing well, but I didn’t know at the time about my option to drop the class. So I received a poor grade that ended up costing me a scholarship :(

So please remember that this option is at your disposal. Use it only in an emergency situation, but if one does arise, don't hesitate to drop the class and take it again later with a different professor.

That's all for now! Hope you all have a spooktacular Halloween!

Why didn't anyone tell me that?! Part 1

It's time for my first edition of a periodic blog I have decided to title, "Why didn't anyone tell me that?!" Every few weeks or so, I will post a blog about one or more topics I was pretty clueless about coming in as a freshman to PLNU. You'd be amazed that, for the incredible abundance of information you receive in the first four days here at school, there's still a lot of important stuff left out.

As you may or may not have heard, for your first semester here at Loma, your classes will be scheduled for you based on your major. I think the reasoning behind this is that the school probably knows better than you what you need to take your first semester. Considering you've never met with your college advisor, and you probably haven't planned out your classes for your four years of college just yet, this makes sense. Which brings me to my first point:

After your first semester, sit down and plan out your class schedule for the rest of your college career.

Most students do not do this. Some departments encourage or even require students to do this, but the majority do not. It's really important, though, for several reasons. First, even if you think you may change your major at some point, you need to save some "gen-ed" classes for later down the road. Trust me on this. Gen-ed classes are classes that every student must take regardless of his or her major. By planning out your schedule and spreading these classes out throughout your college career, you save yourself a lot of stress down the road. If you take all of your gen-eds right away, you will be stuck your junior and senior years taking all classes for your major. These classes are typically more difficult than your average gen-ed class, so it's good to take 2-3 gen eds along with 2-3 major classes per semester.

Also, if you leave a bunch of your major classes to the end, chances are you're going to get into serious trouble. Often, classes for your major will not be taught every semester (some of mine are only taught one out of every four semesters). It's vital to know when those classes will be offered, and you can find this out online or by talking to your advisor. If you don't plan things out carefully, you're likely to hit senior year and realize there's a class you needed to take the year before that isn't offered until after you are supposed to graduate. It's also important to note that since your major classes are offered more infrequently, if you try to take a bunch of them at a time, chances are they will overlap in the times they are offered, and you won't be able to take them all in the same semester. By mixing in gen-eds, you can take your 2-3 major classes per semester and fit in 2-3 gen-eds wherever you want.

You'll have to make some adjustments to your plan from time to time, but having a set schedule in place and knowing when classes will be offered is very important. Your advisor meets with a lot of students in a very short period of time, and he or she may not mention this idea to you, but you'll want to use it, and your advisor will be thankful and impressed when you do.

I will post part 2 of this series of tips in the next few days. But now, let me share a few highlights from the week. This week was a tough one for me as a sports fan, because I endured Oklahoma's harsh loss to Texas in the Red River Shootout this past Saturday. I then had to watch my NFL team, the Broncos, lose an embarrassing game to the Jaguars. So I spent much of the weekend looking like this:


However, on Sunday we also played an intramural softball game, and my team won! Our team name is the Hot Tamales and we improved our record to a respectable 3-2 on the season. I also saw my roommate's band play a great outdoor concert on Saturday night (shameless plug time: check out his band, Family Wagon, on Myspace!) Alas, I forgot to bring my camera to the concert, so I was equipped with only an iPhone. Family Wagon played later in the night and it was too dark to get any decent pictures, but I nabbed a passable shot of the opening act (again, keep in mind this was taken with a 2.0 megapixel iPhone camera).

This is Rheanna Downey (R), who is actually a really cool musician from just up the 5 (Interstate 5) in Encinitas. On her left is Nancy Reeves, a PLNU grad who also has a great voice.

The coolest thing about the concert was that it was a free show put on in downtown San Diego by a local church, and they had food donated from Wienerschnitzel and Starbucks that they gave away to some of the people who live on the streets nearby. So really the concert was only partly about the music, but also about unifying people of different backgrounds through common ground - who doesn't love a free concert and free food?

I always get a laugh out of this week's YouTube video, even though I kind of feel bad for the guy. This is one of my all-time favorite YouTube videos, so definitely check it out. I'll be back in a few short days with part 2 of my little series...hope you find it helpful!

Is it cold in here...or is it just me?

There are a lot of great things about living on a college campus. I've lived on PLNU's campus all four years and have never wanted to leave. Here are three great reasons to live on campus:

1. Living near friends: When you live off-campus, you live with 2-4 roommates, and you may have a casual friendship with a couple neighbors. Living on campus, you live with 1-4 roommates, but you have 30 or 40 other guys or girls around you who become your "second roommates." When I lived in Hendricks Hall, our hall became almost like a fraternity. We did things together all the time, from date nights to Covenant group (Bible study) to going to the mall or the beach.

Hendricks Hall was good to me my first two years of college

2. You are more involved, guaranteed: When you live off campus, chances are a lot less likely that you're going to come back to campus for cool events like baseball games, Movie in the Greek, or Bobby B's (the school president's) Birthday Bash. Even off-campus events like Superhero Bowling are much more likely to draw your interest, as everyone on campus will be talking about the event and what awesome costumes everyone is going to wear, etc.

Two of my current roommates, Chip (left) and James (right) at Bobby B's Bash

My friend Nathan getting creative at Superhero Bowling

3. Lastly, the fact of the matter is that you're going to be spending a lot of time on campus either way. With classes, the library, meetings, chapel, and so much more happening on campus, you'll be here all the time either way. You'll also probably have a lot of down time in between things. Those hour and a half breaks are a lot easier when you can head back to your dorm instead of wandering around campus or driving back and forth from your house.

Also, parking is pretty crowded on this campus, and if you drive onto campus at 8:30 you're guaranteed to have to walk a long way to class. Better if you're in the dorms and you can just make a short walk or hop on the shuttle.

So these are some of the great things about living on campus. There are also admittedly one or two bad things about living on campus. One is trying to get to bed at a decent hour in an underclassman dorm (I love Hendricks, but I didn't get nearly enough sleep those two years). The other is the fact that if one person on campus gets a cold, it's almost guaranteed that 50 other people will catch that cold by the end of the week.

Last year I managed to pretty much avoid getting sick all year. This year, I got sick before October even hit. Runny nose, cough, sneezing, sore throat - pretty much every single ailment that's listed on the back of the Nyquil bottle - I've had them all this week.

Fortunately, we have an awesome Wellness Center on campus, and I went in yesterday. There's a nurse practitioner on duty, which is pretty much the same thing as a doctor (translation: she can give you drugs). So I got this prescription cough medicine called Cheratussin, which makes you roughly 10 times more drowsy than Nyquil. So basically I can stay awake during the day and be sick, or I can sleep/hallucinate 24/7. Tough choice.

I hope you enjoy the clip from Tina Fey on SNL impersonating Sarah Palin as much as I did (if you haven't seen Palin speak before, find an actual clip of her before watching- Tina's impersonation is classic). Until next time, I'll be sipping on Cheratussin and honing my Goldeneye skills (yep, that's right, our apartment has an N64).