All Time Low concert: Out of class activity

            For my second out of class activity I went to Richmond to see one of my favorite bands perform for at least the fifth time since I started listening to them back in 2009. I will admit that I skipped Sweeney’s class so that I could get a head start on all the errands I had to run before leaving for Richmond. Sorry Sweeney! When I left the Richard Bland College campus that day I had to go pick up my check from Shoe Carnival because even after over two years of working there, I have yet to sign up for direct deposit. I also squeezed a visit to Verizon into my busy schedule because the week before spring break I dropped and cracked my iPhone :( According to one of the sales associates there, because I cracked the screen moisture is able to get into the crack and mess up the way my phone works, which explains why my phone will randomly not send and receive texts. I have insurance on my phone but have been too broke recently to pay the money to get a new one so for now I’m just dealing with a broken phone. Once my best friend got out of school, we were off to Richmond. We got there around 4 o’clock and decided to go eat an early dinner at Galaxy Diner. After dinner we drove over to The National where the concert was being held. Once the concert started, we patiently waited for the other bands whom we were not at all familiar with to finish their performances. Finally when All Time Low took the stage the crowd went wild. They played an absolutely amazing set for a sold out show. After the show ended Danielle and I made our way to McDonald’s for a late night snack. We ended up getting home around three in the morning, and after such a long day I had never been happier to lay in my bed.

The struggle is real

          Monday’s are never good, especially when it’s the first day back to classes after spring break, and ESPECIALLY when the weather sucks! With those crappy factors making Monday worse than it usually is, all I could think was “CHOO CHOO! All aboard the struggle bus”! I don’t know how I managed to roll out of bed that morning but I made it happen. As the day went on it was just a blur to me and I was overly excited to be finished after English that day. The Rape of the Lock was yet another weird story that we had to discuss on Wednesday. Sweeney helped us out by helping us pick out a ton of words that went along with the story and putting them all up on the board. After we finished doing that we picked our own groups for once and had to answer a question about the story. All of the groups answered their question and then shared their answers with the other groups. Sweeney cancelled class on Friday because a family issue came up and asked us to watch J.K. Rowling’s Ted Talk about failure in life, but also the fear of it in life, writing and education. 

Spring break

           The beach is a typical spring break vacation destination but I prefer to spend my spring break about 15 minutes away from the nearest beach in Wilmington, North Carolina. My dad’s side of the family lives in North Carolina and I have always referred to it as my second home. Ever since I was younger, my cousin and I have been inseparable regardless of our four year age difference. She shares a house with two other roommates, five dogs and a cat. As most girls do, we shopped on a few different occasions. We both played softball growing up so we decided to reconnect with our past and played around one night. Even though it was my spring break, it was not hers so while she was in class I used my time wisely and worked on biology homework. Downtown Wilmington is one of my favorite places in Wilmington itself. There’s a bunch of cute little boutiques and it’s the perfect place to people watch on a nice sunny day. While my cousin and I were there, we got sushi for lunch and people watched by the Cape Fear River. Later on that day we got ice cream from my new favorite ice cream shop, it’s called Kilwins and it was absolutely fantastic. As my week with my cousin ended I was sad to say “see ya later” because she will be making a trip to Virginia the week after we get out of school for summer vacation!

Baseball weekend: Out of class activity

            As the lovely month of March began it brought us closer and closer to a spring break that many of us students so desperately needed. During that first weekend, I attended a few baseball games that made me long for spring break even more. A week or so ago, I received a “Guess what” text from a boy that I had dated over the summer. He plays college baseball up in the Washington D.C. area and because of all the recent snowy and messy weather that we had been experiencing, his games that weekend had been moved to a different location. It really is a small world and that weekend was a perfect example to proven it because his baseball games had been moved to the baseball stadium in Colonial Heights. It had been about eight months since we had last seen each other and I had always wanted to go see one of his baseball games, so that’s what I did with my weekend. He pitched the game on Saturday night as I froze in the bleachers. The weather was a lot nicer on Sunday morning and the team also pulled out a win in that first game. I had to leave before their second game began because I had to work. I was really glad that I got to see him play and being able to use his baseball games as one of my out of class activities was just a plus!

Ugh

            Before the seventh week of class even began I was ready for it to be over and done with. Monday’s class was cancelled because Sweeney came down with a stomach bug. I was unaware of that until I actually showed up to the class and checked my email. Speaking of our email server, I think that the Outlook app for iPhones sucks. Half of the time it takes forever to load once I open it up and sometimes it says that I need an update, which I assume is why I was not notified of Sweeney’s email. But nonetheless, I was still glad to find out that I had one less class to attend on the worst day of the week. During the middle of the week, we finally finished watching The Glass Menagerie which stayed true to Sweeney’s story choices with its obvious weirdness. Even though it was a quirky movie, I was sad to see it end because I enjoy watching movies in class because it’s like a mini break from school. Sweeney had arranged for us to play Jeopardy on Friday, and it was once again like we had a little break. He grouped us off, like he always does, with people that we aren’t fully familiar with. When it was finally time to play, it shortly became apparent to Sweeney that very few of the students had been keeping up with the book as well as we should have been. He eventually dismissed us from class because we clearly weren’t doing the best job of participating.

Happy Valentine's Day

         Valentine’s Day is today and the lack of class this week was quite the early V Day present! Sweeney was sick on Monday so class was cancelled, but I didn’t know that until I got there and checked the email. Even though I still showed up to class I wasn’t too bummed out because I had been at school since around nine that morning. Wednesday was a rough draft day so Sweeney separated the class into groups so that we could talk about our papers and help each other out. I had forgotten to print out my rough draft so I talked about what I had written my paper on and how I had struggled with it. When I got home that day I decided to work on my paper some more but then I ended up changing my paper completely. The winter weather that we’ve been experiencing this year hit us again on Wednesday night, so much that Thursday classes were quickly cancelled. Slushy snow is the worst, so I was rather disappointed with the rainy weather on Thursday. With the help of the cold temperatures, the rain eventually turned to snow and class was cancelled again for Friday! I was so excited to have yet another day off from school.

Scavenger hunt

          The third week of Sweenglish class was not at all what I had expected it to be, although I will admit that I was relieved to have somewhat of a break. During class on Monday, we participated in a scavenger hunt so that we could become better acquainted with our library and its resources. After our groups had found all of the things on our lists, we had to share what we found with the rest of the class so that we could all know a few new things about the library. Thankfully on Wednesday, school was cancelled because of the snow. During the snow day I could’ve spent the day being productive and getting some of my homework out of the way but instead I just relaxed with my dog and watched a movie or two. Once we came back to class on Friday we had to discuss “The Chrysanthemums” because the wonderful snow day had put us a little behind. Like most other stories that we had read this far, “The Chrysanthemums” was an odd story that was a little hard to understand. After a long class discussion about trying to interpret this story, the class decided that the woman in this story was bothered by the fact that her husband did not see who she really was but instead only who she appeared to be on the outside.