Summer fashions

So it has been a while since I've posted anything. I apologize to all of you that check my blog every day hoping to find my pearls of wisdom. I just took my last final today though, and I should have some time to think again. Hooray!

So the warm weather today has reminded me that I don't really have much great summer clothes. I thought about going shopping today and was intimidated by prospect since I have no sense of style. Any hints anyone? I pretty much need a whole wardrobe including footwear.

Remember How I'm Your Friend

I'm often really surprised how mean return missionaries can be to people who try to persuade them of something. You'd think after 2 years of dealing with unkind people, they would learn from experience how to kindly, but firmly, let someone know you are not interested.

I'm helping out a friend of mine with her run for BYUSA president, and it was my job tonight to cover my ward and make sure they all vote for her. A lot of people were really nice and great; several were not. The most surprising thing to me were the people who are my friends and who were really mean.

I had many people tell me that they didn't really support anything that BYUSA does, and therefore didn't plan on voting, and that's OK. It is not OK to be unkind though. I think that these people don't realize that being mean to people who are pushing for causes that are important to them makes a world a worse place.

In any case, here is my rant at the world.

"The way my brain works"

So I was just reading something where someone made the claim "... but I'm not stupid. That's just the way my brain works."

I'm not going to make any claim on whether or not this person is stupid because I've never met them before, but isn't being stupid all about how your brain works? Or doesn't work, in this case?

State of the Union

When I was little, I used to think that the State of the Union Address was similar to Student of the Month. It was always disappointing that my state never won. I was also always disappointed that I never won either.

Reading Days

So I think I like reading days. When else in the semester do you have time to watch six-hour, Victorian mini-series? Or take naps on benches? Or read books that you've always been meaning to?

I think that the last one is one of the things that I enjoy most about reading days because you feel slightly less bad about it, even if what you are reading has nothing to do with your classes. (I feel the same way about climbing trees on Arbor Day; it's not quite what the day is meant for, but I feel like I better appreciate a tree from the top of it.)

My reading day book today is Ex Libris, recommended to me this week by a friend. I had seen it around the house growing up, and after the first 50 pages, I'm realizing that I had read the first essay already, but I had never managed to finish it for some reason. Perhaps I wasn't at a stage that I could appreciate a compilation of essays.

I think now though that the personal essay is the perfect genre. I've always thought that blot were fun because they are a little bit like road trips through someone's mind. I'd have to call a personal essay a guided tour. And a good essay is like the sort of tour where they will let you stop and play the 15th century grand piano for a moment before moving on. Ex Libris perhaps qualifies as one of these.

In fact, I was going to do some studying after posting this entry, but I think that I probably will take a little more time and read a few more chapters of it.

Today's conundrum

I've known for a long time that there are many things that I like knowing or doing that I don't like learning about. Like reading. I really like having read lots of books and discussing them and talking about them, but the actual sitting down and reading it isn't really all that pleasurable to me. Or Art History. I love visiting museums that have art that I understand or at least can pretend to understand. My experience in art history classes, however, has been pretty boring.

It is just occurring to me today though that it can also go the other way. There are many things that I enjoy learning about that I don't enjoy doing. This is what originally got me out of the Physics Major and what has stopped me from being a pure mathematician. I love my classes--they are the highlight of my day--but the idea of doing a ton of research in it doesn't really get me very excited.

I've been thinking about this today because this conundrum creates an interesting decision for me. It sort of feels like I can choose a field of study now that I love in return for a profession that I may enjoy less, or I can study something that I enjoy less for a profession that I may enjoy more. Making this decision more complicated is that it is hard to say which professions I'll enjoy more or less until I am there. I was surprised by how much I loved my Physics classes but by how much I disliked research. I like my research now much more, but I still sometimes wonder if I would enjoy a more applied field even more than this.

Decisions, decisions.

Unsteady ground

So I've been really grateful recently that I don't have an iPod as I walk up to campus. Most of my interesting (albeit twisted) thoughts and experience seem to happen as I'm making the trip from my apartment to school.

Today I saw this guy and girl trying to climb down the hill south of campus rather than taking the stairs. This hill is landscaped to showcase the shrubbery from various parts of the US. I think that this hill was supposed to be Arizona or something.

In any case, as they are going down, the guy seemed to think he was pretty cool for being able climb down so easily; the girl was just following him because he somehow talked her into it. But she didn't seem to be enjoying nearly as much. She was a little unsteady on her feet, and at one point as she was starting to lose her balance, she grabbed the nearest thing that could possibly stabilize her.

It was really unfortunate that it was a cactus.