Friendship Is Magic

(Simply because I couldn't think of a better way to start this post, and when I thought of it I just couldn't resist...)

Dear Princess Celestia,
I've learned a lot of lessons about friendship in the past year. I've learned that the best friends are the ones who know all your annoying habits and faults and still love you; who can disagree with you without judging you; who can make you laugh even when you're crying; who can all tease and laugh at each other endlessly, but still know when to be serious. I've learned that it's possible for quite an eclectic collection of personalities and quirks to all get along wonderfully. Well, maybe not always wonderfully...but even when things go wrong, we always find ourselves laughing together again before we know it. I've learned that sometimes the least expected things bring people together; anything from a madman with a box to putting on a silly musical. I've learned that I wouldn't rather spend my college years with anyone other than the grandma, the Italian, the idiot, the squatter*, and the whole gang. I love living with people who are equally prone to both literary discussions and tickle fights; people who will burst into Disney songs with me; people who will be equally willing to talk about Doctor Who or Crime and Punishment with me; people who will pray with me.

More than anything, I've learned that the best and truest friends are the ones who push you to be a better person and do more to help you than they probably know. They'll poke fun at your tastes, your clumsiness, how bad you are at telling jokes, etc., but when push comes to shove they're right there. There's always one to give a hug, one for advice, one for a laugh, and one for the bossy tough love that we all need sometimes. I love each and every one of them and I'm starting to really hope that none of them read this because I'm getting pretty mushy now. In the case that any of them do: get your butts back to work, losers.
In short, I'm so blessed to be where I am right now and with the people that I am. I hope to hold on to them for many years to come.
Love,
Katie

P.S.
To the ones who've left, for their various reasons: we miss you guys! All of the above goes for you too. Particularly a certain short David Tennant-loving girl with lip rings. We're lost without your reliable wit, solid sense and gift for seeing straight through us. For the love of pandas, please visit us soon!

*Nicknames, to just clarify for anyone who may be confused by the sometimes mean things we call each other.

Is this the real life?

Is this just fantasy?

No, really! Next semester is approaching ever more quickly, and it's still only just starting to dawn that I'll really truly be spending it in Rome. Tomorrow we register for our classes. In Rome there are only certain Core classes that everyone has to take, with just a few other options. I'll be taking four of those five classes and switching out the fifth for Intermediate Italian II. On top of that I'll taking a one-credit, pass/fail course which is actually a volunteer opportunity where we go to a nearby Italian school and essentially tutor the kids there in English. Deciding on classes, doing the paperwork...all these little details of the registration process are really helping to hit it home just how soon this will all be happening...
The other night we had a class meeting about the Rome semester and some previous Romers did a panel covering various topics and answering questions. We heard all about academics, what campus life is like, what to pack, how to travel, and sundry other advice, tips, and funny stories. It made everything suddenly seem so real and so close and still so unbelievable. Me? Taking a bus into Rome multiple times a week? Hanging out at a cafe in a small Italian town up the street? Travelling to places like Florence, Venice, Sicily, London, Paris, etc with my friends? Psh, that's crazy talk! That's the stuff of dreams!
It is the stuff of dreams, my dreams, and it's almost here. A few more weeks of this semester to push through, then Christmas break, and then on to Roma, La Città Eterna, and all the adventures to follow!

Library Graffiti

In the UD library there are rows of walled-in desks for studying. Gracing the walls of many of these is a variety of graffiti, ranging from your typical bathroom stall crudities to "JMJ" to a half-finished sketch of Einstein (at least, I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be Einstein...hard to tell without the hair). I'm sitting in one of these right now, and in front of me is a small graffiti war of a sort that you wouldn't be likely to see outside of a place like UD. I found it pretty amusing and thought I'd share it here for kicks, particularly since it quotes one of my favorite poems.

Red marker: I feel Infinite
Scratched into the wood below that: Infinite beings have better things to do than library graffiti
Fine-tip Sharpie below that: Nay, they have nothing but time.
Ballpoint pen at the bottom: There will be time, there will be time
                                                       To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet*




*Ten points if you can name the poem this is from!

Sorry!

I'm always meaning to blog, and I do have things I want to write about, but it never seems to get done. I have drafts of posts that I've started writing and then gotten stuck on, or saved to finish later and then forgotten about. I seem to have a problem with finishing things. Beginnings I can do, endings not so much. Do I spy a possible topic for a future post there? Maybe. Although if performance up until now is anything to go by, that post, of course, will probably never happen.

In any case, I've been super busy and will probably continue to be so in coming weeks but I will definitely try to set aside some time to write here. And even if that doesn't happen, you may get, and don't laugh at me here....you may just get a vlog. In the meantime, since people seemed to like the one a few posts/months back, I thought I'd share another poem. I wrote it a couple years ago and I think it's my favorite out of all my poems, so I hope you enjoy it too.

Cheap Tricks

Ladders, mirrors

A black cat

Watch the rabbit

Come out of the hat

Magic, luck, it's all the same

Gullible minds are its favorite prey

Pick a card, any card

Doesn't matter, isn't hard

To see that it's short-lived amusement

A moment of wonder, thrill, confusion

Until you learn how the trick is done

And your bubble of enchantment

Pops.

Gone.

So Far, So Good

   Checking back in after the first week and a half of classes to say that it was a pretty darn good first week and a half of classes. Let's take it one by one...

West Civ II: (That's the history class I'm taking, for non-UDers.) This one will be no piece of cake but it's not the devil either .For one thing, the professor's not as scary as I thought. In fact, I actually like him. For another, NO PAPERS!
Italian: Molto bene, sempre. Questo semestre preparo per Roma e io sono una precetorre, cui sara interessante.*
Principles Of American Politics: Surprisingly enough, I don't hate this class! In fact, so far I'm rather enjoying it. Maybe it's just the professor, who is a new favorite of mine. Or maybe it's that I feel superior, considering 90% of the class are freshmen. In any case, there is definitely hope for this one.
Lit Trad IV: The lit course. I. Love. This. Class. In contrast to the first two semesters which were mostly epic poetry, this time around it's novels; in other words, my literary bread and butter. Extra bonus points for starting off with Mansfield Park by my first classic love, Jane Austen. This class and this professor (Waterman-Ward for any UDers reading) are reminding me why I'm an English major and why I love stories so much. More on that another time.
Econ: So far the only "meh" class. I like the professor and I'm sure I'll learn a lot in this class, it's just probably not going to be one of the courses I'll look back on particularly fondly in future years.

   Shall I continue with some other tales of the past couple of weeks? Well, you don't actually get a say in that. I shall. Let's start with last Friday night (stop right there, no Katy Perry allowed on my blog). A bunch of us got together and took the spiffy new DART line into downtown Dallas. We didn't have a very concrete plan. Since most of us are on tight college student budgets, the idea was simply to go and walk around a nice part of town; see the sights, look in shop windows, skip merrily arm in arm down the sidewalk, that sort of thing. Really we just wanted to A) Get off campus and B) Take our first trip on the DART. After much dilly-dallying, plan-changing and outfit-changing, we eventually got on the train and found ourselves in downtown Dallas. I guess we walked in the wrong direction, because in all honesty, the whole night blew. A couple of nice hotels were the only remotely interesting thing we came across, unless you count tipsy homeless folks as interesting (don't worry, Mom and Dad, we had guys with us). Add to that blisters, tiredness, and zero fun, and it was a crappy night for everyone involved. I have higher hopes for this one, as it'll consist solely of going to First Friday Mass at Cistercian Abbey, with beautiful music from Collegium Cantorum (polyphonic and Gregorian chant choir) as always.

   In other more cheerful news, the year's first night of swing was great! I missed swing dancing so much this summer and it was wonderful to get out there on the floor again, in a spiffing new '50s-style dress to boot. I was initially afraid I'd be awfully rusty but on the whole I think I was absolutely up to par, phew! There were LOADS of people there, a lot of freshmen turned out in addition to the veterans. Over the weeks that number will inevitably go down a bit but it looks to be a good, hoppin' semester for UD swing.
   I have but one more thing to relate, and that is that last night Maria, Dominic, Laura, Anne and I broke into my old dorm (Theresa). It felt almost like going home. Not surprisingly, some typical shenanigans went down. Foosball, frantic chases and attempts to get my wallet back from Anne and Dominic, crazy times in the quiet study room...the usual. Laura and I also met the girl who is now living in our room and #212 looks to be in good hands.

That's all folks! For now, anyway. Next post will be about the English major, why I chose it and why it's important. See you then!

 *Just squeezing in some practice where I can. Google Translate is your friend.

School, Sweet School

Woah! I'm actually posting! Didn't see that comin', did ya? I haven't been lazy or anything, I just like to keep you on your toes.*

Let me paint you a picture. More of a collage, actually. The scene(s): Various locations at a small, slightly downtrodden but not without its charm, college campus; mostly the rooms of a three-bedroom suite in the newest dorm, currently inhabited by three girls who are absolutely delighted to have that suite. Their resourcefulness and similar tastes for decoration have combined to make it a unique, pretty, and cozy little set of rooms. These three girls are the best of friends, and in these pictures they're seen in different combinations with their other friends or just by themselves, hugging and chatting and usually laughing. Old jokes and nicknames are renewed and their old peculiar brand of camaraderie is back in full force. Sometimes you can see that they're a little bit worried about one thing or another; classes, financial aid, the usual. But for the most part they're just happy to be back where and with whom, after the previous year of shared trials and adventures, they truly feel they belong.

I couldn't be happier to say that that's my life right now. Firstly, I'm so, so, so happy to be back with my friends. Sadly, we're missing some members of the gang but on the bright side, that leaves those of us left behind to grow even closer. Then of course there's the triple. This suite is a huge step up from our respective living spaces last year (although of course, once a Theresa girl, always a Theresa girl) and as I said, we've managed to make it look pretty nice. On the academic side of things, I have to say I'm not really looking forward to some of my classes but who knows, right? Politics class may turn out to be more fun than I think....maybe. However, I will be glad to get back to classes with my wonderful Italian professor[essa] and I have high hopes for this semester's literature class (I get to read and discuss Jane Austen!). Overall, it's just great to be back in the bubble. This is a really important semester because it's the prequel to Rome, which is hopefully where I'll be in the spring. It's also important because this past summer wasn't one of the best I've had and that was entirely due to my not being the best I could have and should have been. I need to make that up to myself and others so these coming months are loaded with resolutions and expectations for me, here's hoping I manage to make good on all of them and have a great semester. In any case, I'm smiling these days and I hope you are too. Hope everyone is having a good back to school! Stay tuned for pictures of my dorm (which may take a while considering that I need my family to mail me my iPod, aka my only camera), thoughts on being an English major and further adventures with the merry band of misfits I call my very dear friends.

*This is a blatant, shameless lie. I'm just lazy.

Turmoil

In quiet lonely moments
It so often seems that
The feelings in my mind
And the thoughts kept in my heart
Become voices
Scolding, lamenting, accusing
Louder and louder
A silent shouting chaos.
Wrong, wrong, wrong
And so little right
Nothing to do but listen
Let them shout
Get it out
Think, curse, pray
Choose a better way
Hope that actions will speak loud enough
To quiet them someday.

Let's try this again, shall we?

Hello, there!
If you're reading this, you may know that I'm a Blogger veteran. I had a main blog going for a few years, and a few side collab blogs and book review blogs that never really went anywhere. My blogging activity dwindled and eventually came to a full stop, then I discovered Tumblr. That became the staple of my internet life for a long time and it was fantastic, I made friends there and was introduced to many things that now I don't know where I'd be without. I recently deleted my account, having realized that the amount of time it was taking up and the easy distraction it provided were good for neither my personal life nor my grades. However, I had begun to want to get back to "real" blogging; actually sitting down to think out and write a post. Not just for its own sake but also because I miss enjoying writing outside of schoolwork (and at UD there is a LOT of that). So I'm starting over again with this blog. I don't know how often I'll update or how long this may last, but for what it's worth it's here now. Enjoy?

-Katie

P.S.
The title of this blog is taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson, one of my favorite poets. It's a poem I've always been attached to and identified with and there's something about that line that I feel says a lot about our society and about me personally. There might be a more in-depth post about this in the future, so keep an eye out for that.