Colder than the Daffodils

The high today is only 37°. I have just taken a picture of some ETSU daffodils that have keeled over in defeat. The weather clearly intends to bring misery over the entire campus, and it has teamed up with the exam schedule, but the good news is that it has not been working. Most of my classmates are in great spirits, and I have had a good Monday and Tuesday as well. Even though we are all overworked this week, there are only a few more days left until Spring break. 

Most of my college life revolves around doing schoolwork, but I think my Collo blog is supposed to be about my college life outside of schoolwork. I have decided I will only say a couple things about my classes. The best part about learning this semester has been learning with my much beloved teachers. Although I have a lot of difficult classes, my professors are all excellent at communicating the material. My classrooms are always lighthearted and a lot of the students have befriended each other. I hope I will live up to all my professors’ expectations in all my future tests.

I am having a good time trying to learn some German. I am working very hard on numbers, directions, and food. When I am in Austria, I will be very good at paying for things, I will never get lost, and I will be an expert grocery store shopper. I downloaded Duolingo so I can practice German when I am away from my computer. My favorite way to learn, though, is to listen to an audio German lesson while I am playing Minecraft. I’ve spent about 8 hours learning German since February: half with my phone (in random places) and half with a good online curriculum.

I have been to one college event so far this semester, which was the Men and Women in Song concert on February second. The concert was two hours long. It featured many choirs from ETSU and Milligan. I went because a lot of my friends were performing, and enjoyed it very much, which I was not surprised by. Since I went by myself, I decided I would sit in the front and in the middle. I am not interested in staying home from a concert I will like just because I will not know anyone in the audience, and I am never interested in sitting in any back rows at all.

The last good thing I would like to write about is my new ear warmer. I used some fluffy blue yarn that I bought two years ago when I really shouldn’t have been in the yarn store, and I knitted it in just over a day. I wanted to make it into a hat, but I kept growing dissatisfied with it and restarting. Did I give up? No. I was just cold when I woke up on Monday, so I pulled out the unfinished body of the hat and used the brim to keep myself a little warmer. 

Some Goals for my 4th Semester

It is February second today, and I have finished my classes for the week. I took a mildly terrifying physics quiz last morning and sat through a US history class about the industrialization of the northeast. But today, the whole day is before me. I’m going to get ahead on homework, and tonight, I’m going to a choir concert at Seeger Chapel.

Since I’m an honors student, I’m obligated to attend honors college events, spend some time volunteering in the community, and pick a project I’d like to work on that helps me grow. I don’t have to record and discuss those things by keeping a blog, like I did the first semester, but I decided that blogging would be good writing practice.

This summer, I’m going to visit Austria with my family. My project, therefore, will be to learn some German. Specifically, I will try to spend (at least) 8 or 10 hours this semester taking online German lessons. I might watch some movies in German as well. So far, my German learning attempts have been very successful. I know three words: danke, bitte, and Deutschland.

This blog post is just meant to be a small report on my plans. I will post plenty of updates on them this semester. Hope you have a good day, my friends.

The Epic Summer Job

This summer, I worked at the nature center at Steele Creek park. I only live a couple minutes away from Steele Creek, so I knew the park and the naturalists pretty well before I applied. I hoped to have some sort of science job this summer, and this was perfect.

The first couple days I worked, I stayed in the nature center and the other naturalists showed me the ropes. Working in the nature center meant answering phones, answering questions, giving guided tours, and making sure kids don’t pet the taxidermy animals. The first day, as soon as the nature center was empty, Lance showed me how to take care of the reptiles, amphibians, insects, and spiders living in the nature center’s 20 tanks.  

As soon as my spring finals were over, the head naturalist sent me home with a mountain of reading material. I got to give snake and turtle shows to school groups that came through, and sometimes to the public. Steele Creek has a lot of scheduled programs, but we do impromptu events too, like when a nature center visitor asks if they can pet a snake. (You thought you were just here to feel the snake… haha NO! Now you’ll be forced to learn about it too.)

My other exciting task was helping with nature day camps. I didn’t have to do much teaching, but I did a lot of learning. There were about 12 kids in each day camp, ages 7 to 14. The naturalists took turns running the day camp, and I helped the designated naturalist manage the kids.

This was really one of the most exciting things I could’ve done this summer, and I’m so glad I had the opportunity.