Finals Week

Blogger was acting up so this post is about something that already occurred.   I think you should read this entry anyway :  P

Oh hey!

I started this super awesome blog about a month ago and I've been awesome at updating it...

Well, at any rate, today's entry is going to focus on something I love...FINALS WEEK.  

I know what you're thinking -who loves finals week? The answer?  This chick.  Finals week is stressful and awful for any college kid but there ARE fun things to note about finals week with proper consideration....

1.  YOU CAN DRINK AS MUCH CAFFEINE AS YOU WANT AND NO ONE CAN SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IT.  I personally consider caffeine responsible for a majority of my academic success.  Last year I had a final in my theology class and the professor was as tough as nails.  He refused to give anyone an "A".  EVER.  (Not really, but you get the point..)  I had to write two in class essays for the final.  I slowly drank the twenty oz. Red Bull that my friend had given me for my birthday throughout the two hour exam.  In my tiny illegible cursive handwriting I wrote eight pages.  I aced that sucker.  I continued this tradition this year with a pretty dense exam that I had only started studying for the day before.  My poison?  A twenty oz. coffee from the school cafeteria.  (It was dollar deal Tuesday for ANY size coffee drip my friends.)  I'm pretty sure I did well on it.  This is in no way meant to brag!  Seriously.  This is advice that probably would have been in Poor Richard's Almanac had someone found a way to make it rhyme or word it more cleverly.  

  

My Secret Santa bought me a case of Red Bull.  That's friendship right there.

  

2. WORK/The Front Desk

At my old job we were only allowed to do homework during Finals Week.  At my current job I can also do homework.  Going to my job forces me to study.  I actually get work done as opposed to the hours spent in my dorm periodically checking facebook, eating Kashi cereal, writing things on Post It Notes, not doing my dishes or laundry, etc... However, a few days ago I decided I deserved a little bit of a break.  I'm allowed to use Pandora to put on some Christmas music and spread the Holiday Cheer.  Unfortunately, I've had Rihanna stuck in my head for the last eight days.  So instead I forced the residents in my hall to listen to "We found love" on repeat.  When Pandora died on me, I then forced them to listen to me sing it at the front desk.  If my boss had been nearby he might have tried to find a legitimate reason to fire me just to end the madness.

 3. THE IC (Information Commons)

I love the IC during finals week.  (That's the Information Commons for you non-Loyola readers of my blog.)

 Everyone is there.  Everyone.  All the time.  And yesterday I was doing some last minute cramming and I saw a girl dressed as a dinosaur.  I'm not lying.  It was incredibly strange and I took a picture of her on my phone in a creep-like manner.  

 

 This is what the costume looked like.  (Not the creepy picture I took)
 

4. The Halfway Point Where One Loses All Motivation to do work

I still have two finals left.  Neither one will be too difficult.  What have I opted to do instead?  Update my blog and watch Slings and Arrows (which, while mildly entertaining is not living up to my expectations).

 I also offer these for finals procrastination:

www.themoviebox.net

 www.writtenkitten.net

Lots of holiday Cheer!

          

        About two weeks ago I had an exciting opportunity at school.  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came to Loyola to speak with students, staff and faculty about the environment.  As a college Democrat, this was an event I had known about for the last year, and when the President and executive board of our organization announced that there were opportunities to show Mr. Kennedy around campus I jumped at the opportunity.

       On Wednesday October 26^th, Mr. Kennedy arrived at Loyola in the late afternoon.  His first stop of the day was a tour of our biodiesel lab.  Several other students and I represented different Loyola organizations while the student managers of the lab showed Mr. Kennedy around and showed off our green technology (we make the fuel that is used for our campus to campus shuttle service and we are eventually going to make all the soap for the university.)  These students and I then accompanied Mr. Kennedy to a private Q&A session.  There was a dinner that certain students (obviously I should have changed my major for the day) were able to attend, but in the evening I joined several hundred members of the Loyola community for his speech in Mundelein Auditorium and the book signing that followed. 

            I did not really know what to expect.  I had read most of his book, Crimes Against Nature (which I have since finished), I knew of his work as an environmental activist, and like everyone else, I knew that he was a Kennedy.  Every introduction of the day focused on how it was such an honor to have him at Loyola and how the Kennedy family was a symbol of American democracy, yet I did not quite grasp the meaning of that until I heard him speak. 

            Mr. Kennedy spoke about holding those who pollute our environment accountable for their actions.  At Pace University, he oversees ten law students who work on suits against these offenders.  Mr. Kennedy mentioned personally suing individuals, corporations, and other governments over the years.  After discussing his work, Mr. Kennedy opened the floor for questions.  It was interesting to note that the questions, the original subject matter focusing on the scientific aspect of environmentalism, quickly turned to corporations, media, and the occupy wall street movement and their relation to the environment.   Mr. Kennedy willingly answered these questions, stating that he believed corporations were good for America, but that they should not run government and that American and corporations do not have the same wants and interests.  He noted that even when it appears that the two do there is usually an ulterior motive.  An example he cited was Walmart. He is of the belief that in the case of Hurricane Katrina, Walmart did not bring water to Katrina victims out of the kindness of its big multinational corporation heart, but to increase stockholder value.  When a communications student asked him how to go about increasing public awareness about environmental issues without reverting to fear tactics, the sharp witted Kennedy replied, “I think you should always tell the truth.”  Mr. Kennedy’s liberal slant was very evident, but it did not affect the content of his answers or his speech.  He has studied and advocated for the environment for years so when he told the room about how five multinational corporations, or “five guys” (not just the name of a Roger’s Park burger joint my Loyola friends), control all billboards, eighty percent of radio, and fourteen thousand channels, and that these corporations actively work against the good of our planet, few wanted to or could argue with the points he made. 

            Mr. Kennedy spoke about coal, mountain top removal, tap water, and plastic as well.  While he offered satisfactory answers for most, he like any speaker remained vague when confronted with an issue he was not particularly passionate about or certain of.  At one point in the night he turned a discussion on bottled water into a discussion on health care (which I didn’t mind, but it was not exactly related to the overall theme of the night), he noted the need to recover plastics but ended that discussion calling it a “complicated issue,” and deferred to others of political stature, saying that Hillary Clinton would have a lot to say on the Keystone issue. 

            Overall though, the night did focus primarily on the environment (though I did not mind the slyly inserted wise cracks about FOX news).  He said Loyola had a special energy, and that he would like to work with our university on bigger environmental issues.   He seemed impressed with our university and our green initiatives, and I am happy to say that liberal or conservative, we were equally impressed with him.