Jared's One Blog

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May 28, 2005

I Graduate Tomorrow!

Well, graduation is almost here! Just one more day to go, tomorrow is commencement. But there's still so much to do.

Senior Week has been a blast so far, except for being sick. Back on Wednesday evening I went to the Western Dinner with Josh. Mmmmm, so many yummy Buffalo Wild Wings!! After that I went to a wine & fondue party for a bit that was being hosted by Claire & Anna over in College View. Believe it or not that was the first time I'd ever had fondue. At least I got that checked off my to-do list before graduation. ;-) After that it was time for the Bar Crawl. I went along on that for a bit, it was heaps of fun!

Thursday I slept till after 11 sometime because of my sore throat, which at that point was morphing into a whammy of a cold. I didn't do too much Thursday afternoon, other than getting a bunch of music back onto my computer from CD's. I hadn't done that yet, and I needed to because my music library accidentally got deleted when I wiped my hard drive a month ago. I still need to get some music from Zach's iPod, and maybe a little more from Borg, but other than that I think I'm doing alright. Thursday evening was the President's Banquet, a wonderful free semi-formal meal, exactly 1362 days after our President's Banquet during Freshman Orientation, serving as nice bookends to our time as a Gustie. At the banquet was also a "crapass" speech by Prof. Leila Brammer (that word's a quote from her speech), who has earned the right of being among my least favourite profs on campus. A bit after the banquet I went over to Carl & Seth's apartment in College View for a bit, to hang out and watch "The Gods Must Be Crazy," though my cold was getting so bad by that point that I could only stay for an hour. I also made a brief appearance at Katie G.'s room in Rundstrom, a few people including Vicki, Heidi H. and Kaija were over there watching ROTK, before simply coming back to my room and going to sleep because I was so miserable. Colds suck.

Friday (yesterday) I cleaned out all my stuff from the senior physics office in Olin, and then spent pretty much the rest of the day (3:30pm-1:30am) playing the board game "Civilization" at Prof. Molnar's house with him, Ben, John, Matt, Nate H., and Paul (aka Frodo). It's normally a long game, but it was made longer partly because Molnar had to take breaks frequently to take care of his infant/toddler son. The other part was that the game quickly devolved in the middle of the game from the usual friendly, defensive, "nice" game of Civ into a militaristic, aggressive, offensive game, with Matt basically sacking all his cities to become a barbarian horde and mess up John (and therefore severely affecting Ben, which was good because they were both way in the lead at the time), it was fun, hehe. :-) Anyway, when we decided to call it quits I had managed to sneak ahead with my little base in North Africa down in the corner of the board, and overcome a sluggish, calamity-filled start to win, woohoo! Ben was a bit bitter about getting taken out, thus ruining his only chance to win the game for the first time in his four years here, but oh well, everyone but Ben thought it was a really fun game.

This morning we had to wake up for commencement rehearsal, which may have been the most pointless, mind-numbing hour of my time at Gustavus. It was so disorganized, and there was only a grand total of perhaps three minutes of useful information that we were told (that might still be a bit generous), and it was broken up in little bits and scattered throughout the painful-to-listen-to presentation. Oh well, in a few minutes I'll be heading over to Arbor View to a BBQ that Johanna and her family is hosting, and then I'll be taking the afternoon and evening to PACK. I haven't started yet, and I have a lot to get done before tomorrow morning when my parents and Nathan get here.

Schedule for tomorrow: Baccalaureate Service at 9am in Christ Chapel, Reception in the Arb at 10:30 hosted by Seth Hayek & family for his friends and their families, Commencement Line-up at 12:30, and then the Commencement Ceremony at 2pm at Hollingsworth Field (or Lund Arena if it's raining, which it shouldn't be, the weather's looking nice thankfully), followed by a Physics reception half an hour after Commencement in Olin. Then it's time to pack up the remaining couple things that are still left in my room (which had better be pretty sparse by that point), check out of my room, and say goodbye to Gustavus. :'( Tomorrow evening my family will be hosting a get-together at Aaron & Eve's house in Minnetrista, which is part of my I can't leave much packing/movign for tomorrow at all, I have to have it basically done today.

I didn't get the job with Enterprise, they said all their summer positions were already full. So that means that I need to go pick up applications from Best Buy, JCPenney and wherever else, I might stay at Aaron & Eve's tomorrow night so that I can pick those up and fill them out Monday morning, before heading to Cumberland for a day or two to see people, before returning to Aaron & Eve's for the rest of the summer.

As a reminder, my website will be down for a week or two starting later this afternoon. Keep that in mind if you're reading this and it's still in the month of May. Josh's family is moving from Sioux Falls to Milwaukee sometime next week, and so it'll take a few days for them to get everything transferred and then set up again.

As a parting bit of humour, check out this story about a polar bear that had "breath surgery"!

Well, that's all for me, likely my last post ever from the campus of Gustavus Adolphus College, and certainly my last ever from Wahlstrom Hall, which is being demolished over the summer. Have a good weekend everyone!

Posted by Jared at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2005

No More Finals as a Gustie!

As the title indicates, yes, I am officially DONE with all academic requirements at Gustavus. Apart from being handed my diploma on Sunday afternoon, of course. It feels good to be done, but at the same time it doesn't really feel like I'm done.

Last Thursday night was the final Prepare of the year. Gary was down and gave a short little talk before using the rest of the time as a prayer and blessing service for the outgoing seniors, transferring students, and Karen, the Prepare staff member who is leaving for a mission trip to Rwanda at least for this summer, but she's hoping she's there for the next 2-5 years. We had a cake for Karen, which was augmented by heaps of good food that we all grabbed down at Midnight Express. Then to wrap up for the year we all played something called "the paper bag game." It's maybe not the most exciting game in the world, but it's pretty entertaining to watch. :-)

Friday was fun, as Fridays typically are. I talked to Heidi H. for a bit in the caf, she'd just gotten back to the States after spending two consecutive semesters and a summer studying/interning over in Europe, it was good to see her again. In the afternoon we had our jazz dance final, which went quite well. Michele really liked the piece that Cory, Kelly, Laura, Johnny & I did, she liked the humour and how we used the space in a variety of different ways. Score. :-) I also finished doing the outline for my senior sem paper, and I got the intro written, woot. I had been hoping to get a bit further along, but Gaming Society served as a quality interruption.

Saturday afternoon I finally sat down and got a start on my paper, about 5 pages or so. At least it was something. In the evening I reserved one of the comfy classrooms in Confer for a movie night to watch "Ben-Hur" on the projector screen. Micah, Jenna, Hilary, Clint, Tim, Seth & Cara came, though I was kinda hoping for a better turnout. Oh well, it was the middle of finals after all. At the intermission of the movie we all went over to SSC to look at Jenna's rats that she's been using for a psych experiment. Hmm, white rats with beady red eyes, not exactly my favourite animals in the world... But anyway, everyone liked the movie, which is good. "Ben-Hur" is such an awesome movie, it's one of my all-time favourites. Afterwards I was gonna join my sectionmates and some other people in their game of capture the flag out in the arb under the silver moonlight, but shortly after I got out there some people got really annoyed at the game and just up and walked off. Some people take a GAME way too seriously...

I spent pretty much all day Sunday writing my paper, by the end of the night it wound up being 16 pages (1 1/2 spaced), woot. It was actually quite an enjoyable paper to write, it really allowed me to reflect on my entire life so far. (The paper was for Curriculum II Senior Seminar, and was supposed to be sort of an autobiographical look at how you became the person you are today, including your ethics and values.) I really only took a break to go down to the Physics picnic at Swede Park. Most everyone went to DC's house for awhile first to take a look at his extensive model train collection and old pinball machine, so the actual picnic got started a bit late. I think basically all the juniors and seniors were there, and then there was even an okay turnout for sophomores and freshmen too. We shot off the potato gun a couple times and played some football (although we couldn't beat Paul, one of our profs, one last time because he didn't show up, so we just had to beat up on each other). After the food there was the awards ceremony and the Sigma Pi Sigma induction ceremony. Sigma Pi Sigma is a nationwide physics honors society, and eight of us seniors, including myself, made it in! I'm not totally sure what benefits it has, other than some nice little thing to be able to put on your resume, but I think we'll also get to wear special cords during commencement.

Monday was my finals day. I turned in my senior sem paper in the morning, John & I quick wrote our astrophysics lab report that was due in the afternoon, and then I did about an hour of studying (if that much) for the Astrophysics final. It was an interesting final, in that Chuck made us all pizza pockets and brought trays of them in periodically during the test. He also put up a joke on the overhead halfway through to lighten the mood a bit, hehe. And it needed lightening, because it wasn't the most fun final I've ever taken. Even though it was open-book (which is why none of us studied), there was still all sorts of info that none of us could find in the book, it was rather frustrating. That and the test was super-long too, it took basically everyone two and a half hours to finish (finals at Gustavus are only supposed to go a maximum of two hours). Despite the crappiness of the test, I'm pretty sure I did well enough to get a B at least.

The astro test made me a bit late for the Curriculum II Senior Banquet. Mmmm, such good food, and free! After the meal those of us who were on the freshman-senior retreat this February at Koinonia did a reprise of our "Guide to CII" skit. We designed it like a 60 Minutes special, and called it "Cults in America: CII Sequence 17," and Sara & I were the two co-anchors of the show, hehe. I must admit, it was quite a good skit, about 10-15 minutes long, and Florence said it's the best senior skit she's seen in her six years as director of the CII program. Carl managed to get it videotaped too, so hopefully he'll be able to convert that into a digital format that he can either burn onto CD's for us, or just put it on Borg before the end of the year.

I had nothing going on Monday night or Tuesday morning, so that night I played "Rail Baron" with Zach, Ben, John & Josh. The dice were very kind to me from the outset, enabling me to win, woohoo! That's one of my favourite board games, "Rail Baron," so I was happy to hear that GGS bought it last fall.

I slept till noon Tuesday, and then in the afternoon I got a call from my brother Aaron, saying that he might have found me a job for the summer! It'd be with Enterprise Car Rental in the Cities, so I applied online right away, using the name of one of Aaron's friends who works at Enterprise as an employee referral. :-) That'd be sweet if I could get that job, because it'd be 40 hours a week, and it wouldn't be weather dependent like painting houses would. That and it'd just be a better job overall. So now I'm just waiting to hear back from Enterprise to see if they want to set up an interview with me.

Tuesday, being the last day of finals for the semester, was the beginning of Senior Week festivities. In the evening there was a Senior Luau in the Johns Family Courtyard, with fabulous free food. I mean, the chicken sandwiches in the caf are usually pretty decent, but these Hawaiian chicken sandwiches were awesome! And then the other food and punch was wonderful too. It was made all the better by it being an absolutely gorgeous day, about 75 and mostly sunny, it was awesome. After that about 15 of us went up to Dick's Bar in Osseo, which is owned by Cory's dad. Even Nate L., Andy M. & Kate came up from their apartments in Minneapolis for it, it was good to see them again. Most of us (including myself) had never been there before, and it was cool getting to see where Cory grew up, and to see Dick's Bar finally, after seeing Cory wear all those shirts from it the past four years, hehe.

Today the weather has turned cool and rainy, and I've come down with a sore throat. :-( This likely means that I'll be suffering from a cold during graduation, which would suck hardcore. It'll probably also limit somewhat how much stuff I go out to do during Senior Week, though tonight I'll probably still go to the Western dinner and Last Chance Square Dance. After that who knows. Then tomorrow evening is the President's Dinner, Friday I didn't sign up for any of the activities, and then Saturday is commencement rehearsal and a couple of BBQ's, in addition to PACKING. Then Sunday morning is the Baccalaureate Service, followed by Commencement in the afternoon.

And just to let everyone know, the webserver (and hence my website) will be down from Saturday afternoon onwards for at least a week, possibly two. A couple days after we move out of Gustavus, Josh's family will be moving from Sioux Falls to Milwaukee, so it'll take a little time to get all their stuff transported and then set up again. Just a heads up.

And I haven't had links to weird news stories in awhile, so I thought I'd throw in a few today. Like the West Virginia woman who was sat on by a camel. Or the calf in New Mexico that was born with 5 legs and 6 hooves. And you gotta love stupid criminals, even in Hong Kong. Or the story from California of a pair of chimps that mauled a husband and wife, with the husband still in a coma in critical condition two months after the attack, having lost most of his face and both his testicles. And the wife still wishes she could bring her chimp home. Is she insane??!? And in other news, some research is now out detailing just how the Great Sumatra Quake on Boxing Day shook the entire surface of the earth. And the "Nitwit Seven" Republicans betrayed their party and the majority of American voters by caving and "compromising" on the issue of judicial nominees. This is an outrage, because it gives the Democrats everything they want, and allows them to continue their unconstitutional practice of filibustering judicial nominees. Finally, my beloved Geelong Cats of the Australian Football League are having a tremendous season this year, and last weekend they won their sixth in a row, slaughtering the Kangaroos of North Melbourne by 85 points, 146-61! Now the Cats are in second place, behind the West Coast Eagles by a game, and showing no signs of letting up. This weekend they host the Fremantle Dockers.

Posted by Jared at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2005

No More Class on the Hill

Believe it or not, the time has come, the last day of class for this, my final semester at Gustavus, was yesterday. Sometimes it sets in that I'm leaving, sometimes it seems like I'll go on living here for another few years and everything will continue to be like it has been.

Back on Saturday I went up to the Cities to meet my parents and their friend Orrel for lunch, basically to talk about what I should do this summer. But now I think I've finally decided what I'm gonna do -- I've decided against doing Prepare Ministries' "Camel Camp" for the last 5 weeks of the summer, and instead will go to the 1-week Answers in Genesis conference out in Virginia with my oldest brother Nathan. That'll also enable me to look for a job, now that I know I'll actually be able to work for most of the summer. Although I'm sure leaving this to the last minute and all, considering I graduate in a week and a half. When I was in the Cities I also stopped by the Mall of America and picked up some Penn State apparel, a sweatshirt and t-shirt, so that I can finally start showing some of my school spirit! :-)

Almost right after I got back to Saint Peter on Saturday evening it was time to head down to Mueller's house for the Physics Christmas in May party. It was a blast! We had heaps of good food (fried fish, grilled burgers, chips, etc) and drinks (mmm, Boone's Farm), and plenty of good company. We even sang a bunch of physics Christmas carols, such as "The First Nobel" and "We Three Quarks," among several other nerdy classics. It was actually the best physics Christmas party that any of us had ever been to. Several of us didn't leave until 2:30am, when we noticed that the northern lights were out in full force. It was an absolutely spectacular show, with the green aurora taking up almost the entire dome of the night sky, and showing vibrant motion. Part of what made it cool is that Christian had never seen northern lights before, so he was in total awe of them, and a couple other people had only seen them once or twice before. Admittedly, I have seen cooler multi-coloured northern lights in the past, but this was the coolest display of plain green northern lights I've ever seen. At any rate, the northern lights totally made my weekend. :-) Oh, and for those of you on campus that wanted my Christmas in May party pictures before I got around to putting them up in an actual album, I've just put them in the Upload folder on Borg, so go ahead and grab them from there if you want them.

Sunday afternoon Zach had his honors recital for viola. It was quite good, and one of the pieces he played was the one that he researched for the paper he wrote and presented at NCUR last month out in Virginia. Sunday evening we all went up on the roof of Olin in an effort to do some observing so that we could maybe get some data for our projects that we were supposed to do, but the clear skies were just a tease, almost as soon as we got the telescopes set up and everything, some clouds rolled in. It's been a frustrating spring as far as observing goes, since it's been cloudy for just about the entire last month-plus. So once the clouds rolled in on Sunday evening, Chuck essentially cancelled the projects, so that now all we have to do is write up a theory section, and explain what we would do if we actually had data to work with. But even if it hadn't gotten cloudy, our telescopes were acting stupid. For example, either thinking it was permanently midnight on 1/1/2000, or being adamant that the moon was below the horizon (which it most certainly was not). Since we couldn't figure out those issues, we wouldn't have been able to take any data anyway, sigh. But even though John and I would've had a little fun going hunting for asteroids, we're not exactly disappointed we don't have to do the work. :-)

Monday was my last day of Conditioning, woohoo! I'm so glad to be done with that class. It was also my last day of Beginning Tennis class, which I'm actually gonna miss, that was my favourite class of the semester. Monday evening was also the wine & cheese tasting seminar put on by the physics and chemistry clubs. Prof. Saulnier (physics) talked about the wine, and Prof. O'Brien (chem) talked about the cheese. There were some good wines, and my favourite was a white wine, a sauvignon blanc by Monkey Bay, from the Marlborough region in the northern part of New Zealand's South Island. And no, it wasn't my favourite just because it was from NZ, though that didn't hurt it. :-) Some of the cheeses were pretty good, but there were also several awful ones. For the most part, those were the ones that O'Brien said had an "aggressive" or "startling" flavour. Uh, yeah. Monday night was also the last Men's Christian Fellowship of the year. It's been fun getting to know those guys this semester.

Tuesday morning at chapel was a farewell/blessing service for the seniors and other students/staff that are leaving GAC after this year. That was one time in particular that it really struck me that I'll be leaving Gustavus for good in just a week and a half. Tuesday was the last day for Golf, and because the weather outside was rainy AGAIN, Brownie set up a few crazy mini-golf holes inside Lund Arena. I didn't have nearly as much luck with it this time as I did the one other time he set up a 9-hole course in there. Tuesday was also the last day for Jazz Dance, and I think I'm actually gonna miss that class. Michele even taught us something new on the last day, adding a little jump to one of the sequences she'd been teaching us. If nothing else, that class was good for getting my back and everything else stretched out twice a week. I might even go into a bit of withdrawal from not doing 24's, hehe. It was also the last day for Curriculum II Senior Seminar, but after hearing the last couple presentations by people, we had a little party with all sorts of cookies, cake, and even ice cream. :-) I'm gonna miss Senior Sem too, that was one of my favourite classes during my entire Gustavus career. Tuesday evening a bunch of us physics majors went down to Chuck's house for an awesome taco picnic. Last year I totally forgot about the picnic at Chuck's, and I almost did the same thing this year, but fortunately people reminded me about it. I had also planning on going to the Proclaim BBQ after that, but I was so full and had a really crappy astrophysics assignment left to do that I just worked on that the rest of the night (till 3am), only interrupting it for my last Proclaim ever. Despite the issues I've had with Proclaim at times, I've still really enjoyed going there, and I'm gonna miss not having that on Tuesday evenings.

Wednesday was the official last day of classes. The only one I had was Astrophysics, and true to form I had a little trouble staying completely alert in there yet again, hehe. I also worked my final shift ever for Admissions, I'm gonna miss the people there. Perhaps it was the cloudy, dreary weather (like it has been for the last month), but it didn't seem like the last day of classes for some reason.

Wednesday evening was packed with stuff though. First up was the Curriculum II picnic (I love spring, there are always so many picnics and BBQ's happening with free food that my caf account can be strung out just a little bit longer). I was playing frisbee afterwards with Nolan, Andy and another freshman when President Peterson walked by, caught the frisbee with the tip of his umbrella, flipped it down into his hand, and then flipped a strike over to Andy, it was awesome! I never knew the President was so talented. :-) Then at 8 in Linner Lounge was a follow-up discussion to last week's "Christianity, the Bible and Homosexuality" discussion, moderated by Vicar Brian Beckstrom. It was a whole lot more civil and respectful than the question & answer session at last week's talk, that's for sure. And far more people got to say something too, which was good. I had to leave at 9:45 before it ended (I dunno how long it lasted), but I think it was a pretty productive discussion overall, at least insofar as it got a lot of the bad taste out of people's mouths that they had from the way last Wednesday night's q&a session went. Then at 10 a big group of us drove up to Shakopee to see "Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" at its midnight premiere. And yes, it is as good as almost all the critics have been saying, I'd give it four out of five stars. For how much plot this movie had to cover, I thought it did a good job of fitting everything together. And it was a very dark film, as promised. Even the dialogue scenes weren't quite as horrible as I was anticipating, they were at least passable, at least as brief interludes between intense action sequences. In short, it's definitely the best of the prequel trilogy, but I'm gonna hold off for awhile on comparing it with "A New Hope" or "Empire Strikes Back" for where it ranks amongst all six films. We got back to campus around 3:45am, 'twas a long night.

I didn't wake up till noon today, and so far I've just been bumming around, though once I finish this post I'll be starting at least some work on my final paper for Senior Sem. Then tonight will be my last Prepare ever. But anyways, this semester's final exam period isn't exactly stressing me out. Tomorrow afternoon we have our Jazz Dance final, where Cory, Kelly, Johnny, Laura & I will do our two-minute self-choreographed dance as a group, and then Monday afternoon is the Astrophysics final, and it's also when the final Astrophysics lab report is due, and the final paper for Senior Sem. Not lookin too bad, as long as I can force myself to do some work now that it's finally nice out. Time to get some work done I guess.

Posted by Jared at 04:28 PM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2005

Frisbee Grudge Match

Thursday was interesting. Neo sang while Matt Swenson speed painted at Chapel before they gave a co-homily, which was a fun novelty to see in daily chapel. Then I kinda started picking out some photos I thought I might wanna use for my presentation in Senior Sem later in the afternoon. I figured that since I was giving my presentation about myself in less than four hours from that time, that I should probably consider at least starting to do some preparation for it. ;-) But after lunch I got the PowerPoint thrown together and all finished a whole five minutes before class started, woot. I rambled a bit and went off on all sorts of unexpected tangents during the first part of my presentation, but hey, what do you expect when you're almost completely winging it? ;-) For the last ten minutes I showed my PowerPoint of 10-11 slides of four photos each with various themes, capped off by a current weather map, to which I did a mini-weathercast to cap things off. It was actually a fun little presentation to do.

At Prepare in the evening, Raj showed up for the first half hour to discuss the previous night's Bible and Homosexuality talk, and to find out our thoughts on doing some sort of open forum on the topic this coming Wednesday night. He just feels that during the question and answer time on Wed night, that a sense of community was lost on campus, that people got too emotional and hard feelings were created. We all explained how tired we were physically and emotionally from what had just gone on the night before, and that we didn't want the forum to be a place where we'd just get verbally trampled and yelled at again, like the question and answer part of Wednesday night's talk turned into. But in the end we decided that we should do it, as long as we have a say as to who the moderator will be, what the format will be (probably small group discussion, then coming back to a larger group), and then making it crystal clear that this forum will not be an apology, a replacement, or restitution for John Weber's talk this week, because the truth was spoken there, and we won't back away from the truth. But after talking about it for an hour, we decided to stop focusing on that issue, and just worship God for being God and for being good, and just being who He is, which was some very good refreshment, because none of us want to get too wrapped up or obsessed by this issue. Afterwards I wound up just hanging out for awhile with Landon, Jenna, Micah, Cara and others and talking about a bunch of stuff, it's kinda bittersweet that I'm feeling like I'm starting to get to be pretty good friends with them now, but that it's almost right at the end of my time here. But still, friendships are a good thing.

This morning I kinda slept through Conditioning again. Oops. Cory, Kelly, John J., Laura and I did manage to get our jazz dance final project (a 2-minute self-choreographed dance) all figured out and rehearsed this afternoon, now we're set for next Friday's final. :-) And then this afternoon was the annual MCS vs SPS (math/computer science vs physics) frisbee game as well, and in Cory's pre-game words it was "the biggest frisbee game of the millenium." Okay, so maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but it was still a huge deal to us, since MCS had won the Olin Frisbee the last two years. We had a fantastic turnout (around 25, compared to MCS's 10-12 or so), but just like last year, got out to a very slow start, falling behind 4-0. Then my line came in for a couple scores and we quickly made it 4-2 (with me catching one of those scores on a sweet pass by Fowler, who came over from Rochester for the game!). We then fell behind 7-3 before mounting a huge rally to tie it at 8, highlighted by some inspired play by our seniors. But then MCS went on a spurt to go up 12-8, which we countered with three in a row of our own, before MCS then got the final three scores to win the Olin Frisbee by a score of 15-11. Bummer. We're disappointed, but at least we fought long and hard. At least there'll be the SPS Christmas in May party tomorrow night for us to forget our sorrows. ;-)

Posted by Jared at 01:37 AM | Comments (2)

May 12, 2005

The Coming Storm

Oops, I guess it's been a week since I wrote. Time kinda got away from me there. But I mean, seriously, there's only ONE more week of class left for me at Gustavus. Ever. Where did the time go?

Last Thursday night at the SPS meeting we elected next year's officers. But after voting we had the coolest part -- liquid nitrogen ice cream! Man, I don't know that I'll ever get tired of that. Soooo delicious! And then Prepare was very good again as usual, and some students from the U of M Prepare came down to tell us about something called Wheels for Sudan, a 40-mile bike ride coming up in June down around Red Wing, that will be a fundraiser to buy a truck to be used by people in Darfur to transport people and things. I think I'll try to do that, that sounds like it'd be both fun and valuable. And then I talked with Gary until well after midnight about Camel Camp, an intensive 5-week summer-school-type course in Eden Prairie about discipleship, evangelism and that sort of stuff. Now I'm considering possibly doing that for the second half of the summer, even though it'd be five weeks of not being able to earn any income. Hmm, decisions. But if I don't go to that I'll probably still be going to the week-long Answers In Genesis conference in Virginia in mid-late July with my brother Nathan. But I probably won't be applying for a job until I decide which thing I'm going to, sigh. I just hope my summer plans will be figured out before summer gets here!

On Friday evening a bunch of us Physics majors went down to Seven Mile Park between Saint Peter and Mankato for a campfire and some frisbee. We didn't have any proper roasting sticks, so we had to improvise, meaning that occasionally a hot dog wound up on the ground or in the fire when the flames burned through the stick, oops. They were still fine, no worries. Back on campus after dark I joined up with a bunch of people from Gustavus Gaming Society to play a couple games of Capture the Flag with foam swords. :-) CTF is one of the things I'll actually miss quite a bit when I leave Gustavus, even though we only play it a couple times per semester. The last game got a bit lame though, when the other team hid a flag in an illegal place, and when a few people just up and left mid-game without telling anyone. Argh. But I still had a good time.

Saturday was Honors Day here at Gustavus. But for the fourth straight year, I apparently did nothing worthy of being honored. It would've been nice to make the Dean's list at least once, or to receive some special scholarship, but oh well, it's not a big deal. Seriously, I'm not bitter or anything. I just kinda bummed around in the afternoon not really doing anything, and then in the evening I went to the Gustavus Symphony Orchestra concert, where they played Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring." It was amazing! I mean, seriously, they played it really well, it elicited a standing O right away! People loved it so much, in fact, that they're considering playing it again at their final concert on Commencement Weekend, the night before graduation. That'd be sweet. After the concert I went to see "Kingdom of Heaven" in Mankato with a group of people, including Micah, Anders, Michelle, Maren, and a few others. It was a really good movie, up there with "Gladiator" and Braveheart" in my opinion. And it also did a good job of portraying neither side as being right in the Crusades.

After church Sunday morning my parents came down for my St Ansgar's concert that evening. We went to lunch down at Chipotle in Mankato, it was the first time any of us had been there. I thought it was really good, but after hearing so many people rave about it as their favourite restaurant, truthfully I was expecting a little more than just a burrito bar. But it was good to see my parents again, I hadn't seen them since the beginning of March, and I still haven't been home since the very beginning of February. The skies darkened and thunderstorms rolled in when it was time for the concert, it made for an interesting atmosphere at the concert with it being so ominously dark outside and the frequent flashes of lightning all about, it was pretty cool. And the concert was good too, a combined concert with the Birgitta Singers (women's choir) and the St Ansgar's Chorus (men's choir). I thought we did all 11 or 12 of our songs really well actually. And it was quite fun finally being in a concert on campus, this was my first and last concert at Gustavus that I will ever be a part of. I just wish I'd taken up St Ansgar's last year, it's been so fun! (I'll post a picture of the concert hopefully sometime tomorrow in this post, when I can get my hands on some of the photos that were taken with Carl's digital camera of the concert.) After the concert it was back to reality though, with Astrophysics lab (computer stuff, since it was raining outside). John P., my lab partner, decided to skip lab to watch a movie and play cards, leaving me to do everything by myself, which rather irked me, to say the least.

Monday I slept through Conditioning. Oops. I woke up at 9:15 to the sound of weed whackers outside my window, and realized there was no point in going to my 9am class. Oh well, I have three absences to use up for that anyway. I lost the third place game in the singles tournament in tennis class, thanks to my inconsistent serve. I'd beaten him a week or two ago, but apparently he was hung over that time. We were still pretty closely matched, I just made a few too many mistakes. The rest of the day was alright, including another thrilling "24" episode (only two left! it's getting tense!!) and a great discussion about worship at Men's Christian Fellowship, with Micah leading.

Tuesday morning we had a small golf tournament during golf class over by the Norelius putting green. I'm really bad at golf. Let's just leave it at that. I had my final movement exam for jazz dance, I think it went alright, but I'll have to wait until Michele shows us the grades. Then I was basically just working on my astrophysics assignment, with an interruption for Proclaim. It was basically a hymn night, some good solid hymns were sung, and there was also communion, which I thought very appropriate. There's only one Proclaim left though, and that makes me sad. Well, that and there's only one of everything left this year now basically. It's really starting to set in that the end of my time here is near.

Well, today quite a bit happened. Fortunately I managed to get a nap in on the blue couches this afternoon, because I really needed all the energy I could to invest into tonight. Prepare Ministries sponsored a talk tonight in Olin 103 entitled, "Christianity, the Bible, and Homosexuality: Why Not?" with guest speaker John Weber. Getting this talk on campus has been in the planning stages for about 3-4 weeks, and only in the last week or so has it been a sure thing. We put up a lot of posters around campus advertising the talk, some of which got torn down at least once (and sometimes more), and we could tell that there was a huge buzz on the campus about the talk. We invited the Diversity Center, Queers & Allies, the Dems, the Chaplain's Office and all the other Christian organizations on campus, in addition to a large number of people that we personally invited that might not be directly affiliated with one of those groups. We wanted all sorts of people to come, regardless of their opinions on the topic, and boy did they come! Olin 103 was absolutely PACKED, there had to have been at least 150 people that came, and about half to two-thirds of whom were either in disagreement with or hostile to our opinions, which I had expected would be the case. We knew beforehand that we were gonna catch a lot of flak and be persecuted for having this viewpoint proclaimed on campus, and it seems that that will probably indeed come to pass. We were praying and praying and praying for a long time before this talk, that it would go well, that God would speak through John, that it would reach the people who God wanted it to reach, and that we would be able to respond to all the questions in a loving and Christ-like manner; even some of my friends in Australia were praying for this, and other people's friends in Peru, and all over the U.S., there were lots of people around the world praying for John and for this talk. At any rate, John basically laid out a few of the Scripture passages that have been and are central to the debate about homosexuality. He first laid out the "Gay Theology" views and arguments about each passage. (Note that the term Gay Theology is one that was coined and is used by many of the theologians who are proponents of those views. John went to great lengths to make that clear during his talk, yet some in the audience didn't seem to be listening to that and were quite offended at John's use of the term (as if he coined it), they felt it was too polarizing.) Then he moved onto the "Evangelical Theology" views and arguments about each passage in turn. It was a very fair, even-handed, and educational look at both sides of the argument, I really learned a lot. He basically just laid both of them out there, saying that they could both be wrong, but that they could not both be right, and strongly encouraged people to read the Scriptures and see if what he was saying was true, and to formulate their own conclusions about what the Bible is saying. Overall the audience was very courteous to him during his talk, in that there were none of the shouting or derogatory interruptions that I had feared might happen (although some of the faculty members in attendance were quite visible for their sneering, snickering, and distaste at what he was saying). The atmosphere really got testy, however, during the question & answer time. There were some good and thoughtful (and at the same time, predictable) questions asked, and some very rude and sneering remarks made by others; most of the questions seemed to me to be almost entirely emotional, and that was made even more obvious by how worked-up so many of the questioners were. At some very pointedly pro-homosexual comments/questions, there were even large amounts of applause and cheering by that segment of the crowd. But during the question time, John was joined by Karen and Rebecca (both Gustavus alums who are now staff workers for Prepare Ministries, they work for Prepare on all the different college campuses around Minnesota that Prepare is on), and they all dealt with the questions and attacks quite well, I thought. They maintained their calm, reasonable and loving tone, all while not compromising on the Truth and what the Bible says. In fact, the whole presentation moved my friend Matt to tears afterwards. He hadn't (and still mostly doesn't) agree with our viewpoint, but he said it was the first time he's really heard a sound and reasonable side-by-side comparison of the two sides of the debate, and thanked us very much for having this talk brought to campus. He also said that while he might agree with a lot of the viewpoints of some of the viewpoints espoused by certain audience members during the question session, he was appalled at how rude some of them were, and very apologetic for it. He said that after one of the rudest remarks, he wanted to applaud Karen & Rebecca's response to it, maintaining their patience and loving tone and not compromising on their beliefs, but that they moved onto the next question too quickly. But he feels so strongly about what happened tonight that he's even planning on writing a letter to the editor of the Gustavian Weekly, the campus newspaper, about how offended he was by the rudeness and behavior of some in the audience. But we were hoping that God would reach out and use this talk to touch and move some people, and judging by Matt's reaction, he has already started to work in some people's lives as a result of this talk, which is extremely encouraging. We know that there will be persecution of us coming on this campus, but we are at the same time rejoicing and thanking God that he has begun to move people, and cause them to search out the Bible and find out what it really says. Overall we think the talk was a big success. The talk started at 7:30, ended a bit before 9, question time then went on till 9:30 officially, but people stayed on afterwards till 10:30 or so asking more questions, and some of us stayed and chatted with each other about what we thought of the night's events until 11 or so. I invested so much energy into this talk, before, during, and now after (even though I wasn't giving the talk), that I'm just wasted emotionally and physically. I feel like I just need some time to process tonight's events, and writing all this is helping me do that. It's "Curriculum II" night down at Patrick's tonight, and Carl and some other people called shortly after 11 and told me I should head down there, but I had to bow out and just tell them the truth, that I'm not in any condition right now to go to the bar, that I'm too tired and have too many other pressing things on my mind. That and I have a presentation for Senior Sem to give tomorrow afternoon that I haven't yet really started preparing for. But I think I'll just go to bed and try to throw some things together tomorrow after a night's sleep.

Posted by Jared at 01:31 AM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2005

Proclaim Talk

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! (And Joel, if you need a translation, feel free to ask me. ;-)

So back on Sunday, it turned out that I didn't have as much to do as I had originally feared. The astro assignment was pushed back to Wednesday because Chuck hadn't covered the chapter that half the assignment was on, and then the lab got pushed back because the software wasn't working, and because Chuck wanted us just to finish the super-ultra-long tests from the previous Wednesday. Anyways, that meant that I actually had the time to attend the Gustavus spring play, "All's Well That Ends Well" by Shakespeare. It was a 19th-century adaptation of the play (in terms of costuming, etc), and I honestly thought it was the best production of a Shakespeare play that I've ever seen. The acting and directing were very good, which made the plot very easy to follow and the dialogue easy to understand, despite being in archaic Shakespearian English. And it was a play that nobody's familiar with, including myself, so I was able to come at it with basically no preconceptions. I had read through it once though, back over Touring Week when I thought I was gonna try out for it. Part of me wishes I had tried out... And then Sunday evening I went to the Gustavus Choir concert in Christ Chapel, which was pretty good. I'd never been to a G-Choir concert before, and I don't think I'd been to a choir concert since a Chapel Choir concert back in freshman year, so it was good for me to go to one.

Sunday's flurries lasted into Monday morning, but I think I can safely say that's the last snow we'll be getting for a few months around here. Even though it was only about 40-45 and pretty breezy on Monday, the air just felt different than it had for the last two weeks, it really felt like a warmup was imminent. Anyway, Monday was long, just like Mondays always are for me this semester. For St Ansgar's we had our final rehearsal in the Chapel before our concert this coming Sunday night. We've really got a few cool songs (11 or 12 total), you should all come, especially if you're already on campus. 7pm Sunday night in Christ Chapel, be there or be somewhere else. Anyway, after yet another exhilarating episode of "24" (they keep getting better!! only three episodes left this season!), then it was time to go lead the talk at Men's Christian Fellowship. I printed out a double-sided page with Scripture passages on it that addressed the questions of who God is, and what God is like. About 16 or 17 guys showed up, a pretty good turnout, and we actually had a fantastic discussion about all that stuff. In my honest opinion, it was one of the better MCF's this semester in terms of quality and focused discussion/Bible study, which was what I was hoping for.

Tuesday got a bit warmer, up to about 55 or so, and sunny. Heat wave, I know! For golf class we were by the putting green over by Norelius (which I had never noticed before). John and I had a little competition to see who could get our chip shots closest to the pin on a best of five basis, but both of us are bad enough that it was basically a draw. ;-) I guess neither one of us will be getting the free pop that Brownie (our instructor) was offering, oh well. Senior Sem was cool. Claire had everyone make a polymer (kinda like Gak or extra-moist and malleable Play-Doh), it was fun playing with that the whole rest of the class. Seriously, it's a good stress reliever! It turned my hands green though for awhile, and sometimes distracted me from the other people's presentations, hehe. And I promise that making a polymer had something to do with our values and ethics (or at least Claire's). It may seem unclear as to how, but just take my word that it did. :-)

But definitely the biggest thing that happened Tuesday was Proclaim. I was scheduled to give the talk this week at it, and I'd been working on it for a couple of weeks, handing it off to people like my Dad, Brian Beckstrom, and Gary Gilbertson along the way for feedback. Basically I'd put a lot of work and time into the talk, trying to make it as good as it could be. Like my MCF talk, my Proclaim talk was also on the questions of who God is and what God is like, but it was quite a different spiel. The group from Prepare Ministries that went on a spring break missions trip to Dominican Republic also put on a touching skit right before I went up there, and the Proclaim band played "Prince of Peace" and "Great Is He" (my two favourite Proclaim songs) per my request, to go along with the topic of my talk. :-) Anyway, I was a bit nervous beforehand, but then all that went away when I got up there and started talking. I was also apprehensive that my talk would be too long and that it'd lose the audience, but it seemed to me both during the talk, and from the feedback I got afterwards, that seemingly everyone was paying attention the whole time, and really engaged by what I was saying. (Yes!!) Basically, I thought the talk went really well, and so did heaps of people who were listening (at least judging from what people told me, I've been touched by how many really good compliments I've gotten from people about my talk), I think it really touched and impacted a lot of people, and glorified God, which was my entire goal in giving the mini-sermon. I think people were most blown away (as I had hoped they would be) by Dr S.M. Lockridge's "My King" sermon, which I played the audio of. Anywho, I'm relieved to have that over and done with, so that now I can turn my attention to other things. Although I must admit, it was still kinda tough concentrating afterwards, trying to finish the astro assignment.

Wednesday was the MAYDAY! Peace Conference here at Gustavus, this year's theme being "Energy for Peace." It was a glorious day for it, clear blue skies and 65 degrees. And the college put up all these colourful banners lining Eckman Mall, from Three Flags all the way to Christ Chapel, it was really festive-looking. Truth be told I'd never gone to a single Mayday talk during my previous three years at Gustavus, and still avoided the chapel service, because it contained an hour-long global warming lecture by some activist. That actually annoys me, when the college mixes the actual church/chapel service with such blatant political activism. And it's not just that I get annoyed when a leftist group takes over the pulpit for a service, I'm also made uncomfortable by some of the political pulpit shenanigans that go on on the right, though naturally I typically agree with the political message in those forays a bit more. I just don't think that it's appropriate to use the pulpit for an entire hour during a service for political activism. But anyway, in the afternoon I did go to a talk on Wind Energy and Minnesota's Energy Grid. That was also an incredibly alarmist lecture on global warming and stuff, and while the guy did have some points that I agreed with, I also disagreed with a few of his assertions and conclusions. Naturally I hope that as a nation (and planet) we could en masse switch to forms of renewable energy (or at the very least, a healthy mix of wind, natural gas, and nuclear power), but I just don't agree with some of the methods that these people are proposing to accomplish those goals.

Anyways, between that and St Ansgar's rehearsal I went down to Mankato with Carl & Bridget to help Carl with his photography final project. Basically it involved him taking pictures of me interacting with a store clerk, and then having both of us separately showing some exaggerated emotion, like a scowl or whatever, to illustrate how some people put on a fake positive persona while in public. It was a little weird doing all that stuff while other shoppers were walking by, and it was even a bit of a challenge to find clerks and stores willing to let Carl photograph them. Then right after St Ansgar's I went over to Mark Anderson's house for the Admission Office BBQ. I wound up getting there at the tail end of the senior stories (those are always good, hehe), just as people were starting to leave, but at least I got some free food. I also got a thank you card with lots of nice notes from all the Admission counselors on it. I'm actually gonna miss Admissions, and miss the people there... Immediately following that I went to a concert/lecture about Martin Luther, put on by a student who did an independent study about him. She talked a good deal about his theology, his polemics and his hymnody, and had us sing a bunch of Luther's hymns, it was a good program. Then I went over to Pittman for awhile for a Bible study, basically I just wound up hanging out with Micah and Nolan for awhile. And now I'm here writing this, while I should be in bed sleeping.

My cell phone should get here tomorrow! I can't wait! As soon as I get it working I'll probably call Cingular and try to have them give me a new Pennsylvania number, since I'll be moving out there in three months anyway, instead of the current Mankato number that I'm assigned. And just for fun, if any of you are bored with my site, check out what gizoogle.com translates it as, it's hilarious! And you can get any site translated by gizoogle.com, it's the dizzle fo' shizzle. Check it out yo.

Posted by Jared at 01:27 AM | Comments (0)

May 01, 2005

Snow? In May?

Seriously, you've gotta be kidding me. After church this morning I went to lunch with Erin, Javen & Andy, and when we got done I looked out the windows at the caf, and noticed that it was SNOWING. In May. Something's seriously wrong here. This weather is really starting to get a bit ridiculous. Anyway, I just remembered that Cory & I have tickets to the play today here at GAC at 2, and then we have an IM frisbee game at 5. I'm seriously debating whether or not to partake in either of those activities, since I have so much to do. Well, I better stop blogging and start homeworking.

And I'd like to wish Dave Fowler a happy 22nd birthday! Dave also got a brand new Macintosh Powerbook laptop a couple days ago, so I'd also like to welcome him into the Mac family, and the joy of Mac. Happy birthday Dave!

Posted by Jared at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)