The Ultimate College Crush

I have a crush…

On my boyfriend.

As it turns out, crushes are not only for junior high girls in the heat of puberty. No, in actuality, crushes can hit women of any age, even my very independent, very sophisticated college self.

I admit it. Every time I see him coming towards me, I get butterflies in my stomach like I did that one time I sang a solo about Santa being stuck in a chimney during the fourth grade Christmas pageant. My hands start to sweat (gross, I know) and my insides go all gooey.

I can’t believe it. One year and he still has this affect on me? Honestly, can’t I grow up a little? Thank goodness we’ve gotten over the flirting stage of our relationship or every time I see him would be this terrible performance of bumbling sentences and misused words. It’s bad enough he makes my knees go weak – the whole speaking thing would reduce my age level about seven years.

I start to play this game where I try to look like I’m doing something so he won’t think I’ve been watching him saunter towards me. Heaven forbid I get caught watching him – that would simply ruin my James Bond moment. (This is where he tells me years later that he knew I was watching him all along but gave me the benefit of the doubt and pretended to catch my attention from whatever most “important” task I was completing.)

Then – oh, then – worst of all, I start to giggle. It’s a nervous/non-nervous habit. I try to hold my breath to stop the obnoxious noise from escaping my mouth but it’s no use. I giggle like the naïve Catholic-school girl I have always been.

And yet, through it all, he still likes me. He still sticks around. I don’t get it. Any normal guy would have high-tailed it with the flood of water seeping from the pores on my hands, but not mine. No, my guy stays through the sweat, through the gooey insides, the weak knees (turns out he’s very good at carrying me), the silly games and the giggling. Not only does he stay, but he has the gall to fall in love with me and coax me into falling in love with him (secret: not much coaxing was needed).

And so in the end, here I’ll stay, crushing like a teenager on the man who changed my life the day he picked the chubby-cheeked girl-next-door.

A Nineteen-Year Old's Temper Tantrum

A few months ago, I threw a royal temper tantrum.

For those of you who thought temper tantrums ended at age three or so, you were wrong.

Here's how it went:

Since school started in August, I've had a very small group of really close friends. We're an interesting mix of girls: a blond, a redhead, a brunette, a Spaniard, a native Kentuckian, and me. We were pretty much inseparable first semester, despite our many differences.

However, as anyone who has lived in a dorm will probably attest to, people you spend all your time with start to get on your nerves after a while. A few of these particular friends do something every weekend that I absolutely promised I would never do: drink. I let it go for a while, thinking that they weren't hurting me so I really didn't need to say something. But after some months of the same routine and one particular bad night with three drunken friends passed out on my floor, I sort of lost it.

Let me tell you, while it may have been effective at the time, throwing a temper tantrum may not have been the best mode of communication I could have chosen to get my point across. Not only did it make me look like a petty toddler (honestly, this temper tantrum had everything but throwing myself on the floor kicking and screaming), but the long-term effects... well, there weren't any. The only thing my friends really learned from my "confrontation" was that I was a terrible communicator.

As I sat in church this Sunday night, all of this suddenly made sense to me: the ridiculousness of my fit and more importantly, the truth in the old Sunday school song "They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love." Sure, it was important that my friends understand how wrong I thought their behavior was. Still, maybe the better way to show them that would have been through action - by showing them how much fun we can have when they aren't getting drunk.

So, my biggest lesson of my freshman year of college was learned.

Learning a Lesson… through a Starbucks Card

Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m a coffee snob. I’ve seen all the comics with the coffee baristas exclaiming “Do you want any coffee in your coffee?” and yet I’m the first one to step up to that counter and say “I’d like a tall vanilla latte, skim, no foam, please.” Sure, I probably wouldn’t notice the difference if I were to accidentally receive a tall vanilla latte with whole milk and the normal ½ inch of foam topping but the power is in deciding not to be ordinary. A latte with whole milk and foam is just a normal latte and ordering it would make me the same as every other tall vanilla latte customer; the skim, no foam specification sets me apart. And, in comes my inspiration.

College, for the most part, is a melting pot of people of all identities, whether it is age, ethnicity, religion, or appearance. The room across the hall from me, for example, consists of a blonde, a brunette, and a red-head. Coincidentally, their drink orders are as diverse as their hair color: a tall Cinnamon Dolce Latte with no whip and skim milk, a tall hot green tea, and a tall black coffee, respectively. Week after week of Starbucks visits has wired these facts into my brain as my Starbucks card balance slowly declines. All the while I’m feeling grown up in going to study at Starbucks in the afternoon with a bunch of friends, a vacation Bible school sing-along from my childhood plays like a broken record in my head: “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight…” My Sunday school teachers would be glad to know that even now, the circuitous teaching of “everyone is unique” catches up with me in the form of a tall vanilla latte, skim, no foam and a coveted Starbucks card.

Alarm Clock War

Beep beep beep beep beeeeeeeeep! WHACK! These are the sounds many people hear in those wee hours of the morning when the bliss of bedtime disappears in the anarchy of alarm clocks. While college students may not experience this particular series of unfortunate events as early as those in the work force, we know better than most the tyrannical rule.

Scenario: Roommate #1 has a class at eight a.m. while I do not have one until noon. Before going to bed at a scandalously late hour the night before, I look forward to the one day of sleeping in on the one morning absent of eight a.m. classes. It’s a luxury I simply can’t deny. I settle into my bed, which seems so much more comfortable this night than those other nights which always seem dreadfully short as that alarm begins its business of making my hair stand on end with the constant buzzing.

7:15 a.m.- I am rudely awaken by the buzzing again. Forgetting this is my “sleep-in morning,” I sit up and hit the snooze button on my own alarm. The buzzing persists. I hit the snooze button again, thinking perhaps I have missed in my still sleepy aim but again, the buzzing continues. Wide awake at this point, I realize the buzzing is not coming from my own alarm, but that of Roommate #1, still sound asleep. “Roommate #1,” I whisper, “it’s yours.” Still no movement. “Roommate #1!” I raise my voice a tad, amazed that she is still asleep. Finally, she sits up and hits the snooze button, to my extreme relief. By now, I realize falling asleep again is an impossibility. I lie there in bed, glaring at the ceiling I imagine is my roommate’s face.

These wars occur just about every week as I play “Mom” making sure everyone gets up in time for their first class while rarely sleeping myself. My mother tells me it’s good practice, that I’ll be much more prepared for life as a mother by dealing with this kind of thing now. Me, I just follow the same routine every night before “sleep-in day,” with the hope that this time I’ll get it, this time Roommate #1 will wake up to her alarm, this time I’ll be able to fall back asleep if she doesn’t. Me, I just lie here glaring at the ceiling, watching despairingly as every “sleep-in day” disappears into the abyss of the other unknown pleasures in my life as I heave myself out of bed and to the bathroom where I‘m sure the toilet paper roll will be empty.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics vs. the Bathroom Sink

Recently in my Introduction to Philosophy class, we covered a chapter titled “Darwin or Genesis: Which One Should I Believe?” One of the articles we read cited the Second Law of Thermodynamics as one of the reasons for which the evolutionary theory is not plausible. For those of you not familiar with this law, it states, in simple terms, that all matter tends towards a state of disorder, entropy, if left alone. Now, I’m not here to argue Evolutionism or Creationism. However, I am here to argue the validity of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and its evidence in the ecosphere of my bathroom sink.

I was prepared for many things arriving in college: doing my own laundry, cleaning my room, changing the linens on my bed, and buying my own groceries for the meals I didn’t eat at the school cafeteria. The one thing I was not equipped for was cleaning my own bathroom. Sure, I consider myself quite fortunate to have gotten a three-person suite with a private bathroom. But, more times than not, this convenient private bathroom seems not so convenient at all.

Four days ago, I took my special “Eucalyptus Mint” scented bathroom wipes (if you have to clean the bathroom, of course you have to have the right materials) to the plethora of growing things in my sink. From one roommate's coffee splashes to the other’s leaking face wash bottle, all with my toothpaste droppings intermixed, the once pristine white sink had started to look like the laboratory petri dish I had wiped my spit swab on during a ninth-grade biology experiment. Still, I swallowed my gag reflex and got to work. Two days later, I headed home for a weekend with my family. Upon my return yesterday, I walked into the bathroom to replace my shampoo and face wash only to be greeted by the remnants of the battle between the Second Law of Thermodynamics and my bathroom sink. Let me give you a hint: the Second Law of Thermodynamics won.

I can’t deny my anal retentive personality as a look in my impeccably organized closet would quell any protests I could possibly offer. And yet, I can’t hide my astonishment at the seemingly complete ignorance of my roommates regarding the biochemical hazard waste area overtaking the bathroom sink. Thus, I tread on in my uphill battle with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, still searching for the upper hand all while rolling up my sleeves and diving into the grotesque reality that is a college dorm bathroom sink.

The Beginning...

I was recently introduced to the world of blogging through a very good friend of mine who sent me the link to the website of a talented stay-at-home-mom blogger. The instant I read one of her pieces, I was hooked and spent the next three hours reading each of her subsequent pieces, more than twenty columns in total.

Her being a wife and stay-at-home-mother of two and me being a nineteen year-old college freshman, we had very little in common. Still, I couldn’t help but be captivated by her tales of laundry fairies and a son who is very picky about his shoes. Even though I couldn’t relate, I still had to keep reading. I wrote an email back to the friend who had sent me the link to tell him I had fallen in love with the writer and hoped that I could one day write the way she did: this crazy combination of real-life anecdotes and lessons for life that sucks in people of every age. Thus, “Tales of a College Freshman” was born.

I really have no long-term view for this collection, only to put into words the humorous experiences that I have dealt with being a first-time-away-from-home-on-my-own college girl. Sure, there have been a lot of serious and not-so-fun times as well. As a whole, however, I have no complaints and college has treated me well. So, before I forget it all and become the stay-at-home-mom and wife I hope to someday be, here’s my little view of the world.