Awwww.... I love FOCUS! Yeah Environ 1!!!!

why not?
http://www.energyaction.net/declaration/declaration.php

Climb on!
For the first time in about a year or two I went rock climbing at the Metro Rock gym in Everett. It was soooo much fun!!! Climbing really rocks my sock. (No pun intended, but its funny now that I think about it.) Katie and I had been talking about going climbing since the begining of the year, and we just decided to go for it! So we got our lesson with a staffer named Jill, who was really nice, for about 30 to 45 minutes. And then we just climbed by ourselves until 9 o'clock. So much fun, but it's really sad how little arm strength I have. I think one of the reasons why I like rock climbing so much is because it's not only great strength training, but it's also sort of like a logic puzzle. :D Gotta love when you get the best of both worlds. So after we do another belay and saftey check next time we go climbing, we'll have our safety passes! So awsome. Katie and I are planning to go climbing at least once a week. Ooo, just check out my arms next semester... ;)

"You know it's a bad school where there are no asians." ~Alex Genova

Quote du jour:
"Be weird whenever you have the chance." ~anon.

I'm feeling very reflective right now. Probably due to the fact that I just spend the last few hours playing a game with hypothetical questions. But totally seperate from that, I'm finding myself really missing some of my friend from back home right now. People just get so busy at college with school and clubs and whatnot that it's hard to keep in touch with people. I miss peoples' quirkiness, the long conversations that I've had with them, their presence. Too bad I'm not the best person for talking to on the phone. I'm just not a big phone person. But reading everyone's respective online journals makes me long for those great summer nights of deep conversation. Not like I don't have that here. I just miss some people...

Since I'm bored, and I can't do anything loud (Ker is sleeping) here are some quotes for you to dwell on for a little while...

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
Victor Hugo

"Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation."
Saint Augustine

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
Hal Borland

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe."
Saint Augustine

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Berthold Auerbach

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
Victor Hugo

Muuurrrr....
It's such a gorgeous day outside! Very very good for... outdoor intramural soccer! Woohoo! Soccer rocks my socks so much. Our first game was yesterday, and it was so much fun. Granted, we didn't win, but it was still a lot of fun none-the-less. Just sorta stinks that I'll probably have a conflict with wednesday's outdoor games and bible study. Ah well, such is life.

"Life here is so elemental. So real. Without the interference of civilization you can really experience things like,...silence. Silence and darkness in its purity. Right now, right outside my window all I can see is a black void. Endless darkness. It's totally exhilarating, and I feel very lucky to be here. Very, very lucky.
~Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Lost and Found, 1992

Observations of a wallflower
Strange mood that I've been in this (school) year so far. In a lot of situtions, I have found myself feeling like a bystander watching from the sidelines. Sort of involved in the conversation, but more like an observer. I don't really know why this is though. Am I distancing myself from people? Maybe I just haven't been in the mood to do the big group thing thus far. It takes so much energy just to be heard in a medium/large sized group. ::shrug:: Things change, people change, and hopefully I'm changing right a long with them... in a good way that is. Change, while usually unwelcome in my book, is inevitable and unavoidable. Change drives the human race forward, which is good, but sometimes it is just so hard to adjust. It takes such a long time for things to get the way you want them, and then by the time you get to that comfort level, things are different already.

I have so many thoughts running through my head, but at this point, I can hardly keep my eyes open. After getting minimum amounts of sleep at the awsome Frosh lock-in, and then waking up to take a test at 10 am, my brain is pretty much fried. However tired my physical body is, my mind is just so loaded right now I don't know if I'd be able to fall asleep. Well, that's not true. I just don't know if I'd want to go to sleep and lose all of these thoughts. Not like I won't have these thoughts again. It's the type of thought chain that recures a lot in your life... Where do I fit in? Who are my friends? Should I really major in this? What am I doing with my life? Et cetera, et cetera and yadda yadda yadda. As a final thought before my head hits my pillow, and also so I don't forget this event... yesterday we had communion using animal crackers. All will say is coolness.

What I learned today...
Sometimes all you need to do is just breathe.

sidebar updated

Grrr... I'm so mad at myself. Since I'm a blogger member I had the chance to open a coveted gmail account... but I never took up the offer, and now it's gone. So much for procrastination...

Soooo... anyone want to pass a gmail account invite my way?

This is why I hate the college application process. College is not a place you go because it's where your dad or grandfather went. It is not a social club. College is an institution for study and learning, period.

The Legacy of Legacies
By JEROME KARABEL
taken from the New York times, published on September 13, 2004

Berkeley, Calif. — Admissions policy is an especially popular topic on campus this time of year. As new students arrive, they inevitably ask one another the same questions: Where did you apply? Did you get in anywhere else? Why did you decide to come here?

They are personal questions, of course, often asked more out of courtesy than curiosity, but their answers reveal a story about not only America's system of higher education, but also America's ideals. President Bush appealed to these ideals last month when he acknowledged that while he was the beneficiary of a so-called legacy preference (that is, he was admitted to Yale in part because other members of his family had gone there), he believed that admission to college "ought to be based on merit."

It is an admirable goal. Yet the persistence of legacy preferences may not be fully appreciated by either Mr. Bush or his opponent, John Kerry, who has also called for their abolition - and whose father also went to Yale. If America is to take advantage of this rare bipartisan opportunity to end this form of affirmative action for the privileged, it may be helpful to know the full story of legacy preferences in general and Mr. Bush's in particular.

In the fall of 1963, George W. Bush was a senior at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., facing the same dilemma confronting his 232 classmates: where to apply to college. He had never made the honor roll, and his verbal score on the SAT was a mediocre 566. Although popular among his classmates, he was neither an exceptional athlete nor did he possess any particularly outstanding extracurricular talents. Looking over his record, Andover's dean of students suggested that the young Mr. Bush consider applying to schools other than Yale, the alma mater of his father and grandfather.

But unbeknownst to the dean and Mr. Bush, Yale had quietly changed its admissions policy toward alumni sons during the very months when his application was under consideration. As the number of applicants to Yale increased, the administration decided that it could no longer afford to treat all legacy applicants equally. Instead, it would differentiate among alumni sons, giving extra preference on the basis of the family's contribution to Yale and its importance to American society.

As the son of a prominent Texas oilman then running for the United States Senate - and the grandson of a United States senator from Connecticut who had recently served as a member of the Yale Corporation - George W. Bush was no ordinary applicant. In April 1964, he was accepted to Yale - unlike 49 percent of all alumni sons who applied that year.

Less than two years later, in an abrupt change in policy, Yale's new dean of admissions, R. Inslee Clark, presided over a radical reduction in legacy preference. By 1967, Mr. Clark's second year in office, the proportion of alumni sons in the freshman class plummeted to 12 percent from 17 percent in the class of 1968, George W. Bush's class.

The reaction of the alumni was swift and furious. By the end of 1966, the alumni were in open revolt, and Yale's alumni board hastily formed a special committee to investigate the matter. In 1967, William F. Buckley, an alumnus then running an insurgent campaign for a seat on the Yale Corporation, declared that Yale had ceased to be the "kind of place where your family goes for generations" and had been transformed into an institution where "the son of an alumnus, who goes to a private preparatory school, now has less chance of getting in than some boy from P.S. 109 somewhere."

In truth, Yale had not eliminated the legacy preference even under Mr. Clark. But the new dean had brought the admissions rate of legacy applicants closer to that of non-legacy applicants than at any point in Yale's history. By 1970, Mr. Clark was gone, and by 1974 - just as a major fund-raising effort was beginning - the legacy preference was even stronger than when George W. Bush and John F. Kerry had applied more than a decade earlier.

Yale's chief competitors, Harvard and Princeton, took due note of the turmoil created by this radical experiment, and neither ever tried an admissions policy remotely as meritocratic as Yale's under Dean Clark. (Recently, both Harvard and Princeton have admitted legacy applicants at a rate more than triple that of non-legacy applicants.)

The consequences of the Yale episode are with us still, for the elite colleges drew from it the lesson that the costs of seriously encroaching on alumni privileges are simply too high. Because of the elite universities' investment in the current system, change is unlikely to come from within. But President Bush's denunciation of legacy preference may well have set in motion a public debate that will bring about the demise of this anachronistic policy.

A useful first step would be consideration of a bill introduced last fall by Senator Edward Kennedy that would require universities "to publish data on the racial and socioeconomic composition of legatees." So, too, would a requirement that universities disclose the admission rate of legacies and non-legacies as a way of casting a spotlight on a policy that is, in the end, indefensible.

Such legislation may not end legacy preferences. But it would subject them to the public scrutiny befitting a democratic society - a scrutiny that could well be fatal.

Jerome Karabel, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of the forthcoming book "The Chosen: Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900 to Today."

Hahaha... now I don't know if it's funny in general or if it's funny because it's 2:30 in the morning, but you all HAVE to watch Chayanne's new video for Torero. It's an absolutely great song, but the video is so hilariously over the top, it's great! Here's the link, hope you love it!!!

To play JV soccer or not to play JV soccer... that is the question. Or rather, push myself to the max and be worm out while being able to play the sport that I love so much, or just play intramurals and stay a little saner. At dinner I saw a table tent advertising for Eco Representative, and even before I could say anything Julie said, "Tara, no. You don't have the time." Which is pretty much true. I'm always torn between doing a lot of things and half-assing some of them, or picking the things that are most important and doing really well in them. Ugh, I'm so indecisive.

On a more positive note, there were 10 of us at Bible Study tonight, which just rocks my socks. On a stranger note, there were as many guys as girls tonight, which never happens, but was really cool. The two new frosh (Steve and Chris) seem really cool. Yeaaahhh PSF!

"Faith is in many ways like a wheelbarrow. You have to put some real push behind it to make it work." ~Anon.

Woah. I just spent the past hour and a half taking care of a totally trashed person. (note the time of the post). So not fun. People, please learn your limits and drink responsibly.

In a total 180, PSF had their first worship service of the year today (Sunday in my mind), and it went so well!!! There were about 35 people there and the singing went really well and some of the freshman were super enthusiastic about comming back. It was great!!! Keep in mind that this is a super transitionhal year losing our old chaplin, and importantly, losing Andy. Andy was our worship leader who had been with us for a ridiculously long time, which equals 15 years or something like that. But anyway, can't wait till next Sunday!!!

"Instead of measuring your life's value by your progress toward a single goal, remember that the direction you're headed in is more important than temporary results."
Anthony Robbins

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."
Judy Garland

In Ecclesiastes 3 it says that there is a time fore everything, including a time to dance. I went to the ballroom open house-thingy tonight, and it just made me realize how much I miss ballroom. Or rather how much I miss dancing. I really want to get back into it, but it is just so much time. Is right now my time to dance, or is it time for me to buckle down and concentrate on my school work. Thinking of ballroom also sort of reminds me of another passion I haven't been able to persue, which is singing in an a capella group. I can't decide if I want to try out again. There is the huge time commitment to think about, and also the fact that I don't know if I can take another blow to my ego if I don't get in. Garrrr, decisions, decisions... There is not enough time in the day.

Well I am back at Tufts and I have to say that my sophomore year is kicking ass already, thanks to some great people in FOCUS!!!! To recap, I was a leader this year for a pre-orientation program called FOCUS, which is centered around community service (hence the CUS in FOCUS.) Besides all of my fellow leaders who are awsome, my FOCUSers totally rocked my socks! Annonshay, Cheba, Drey, Tom-Tom, Ele, Turkish, and Emaroo (Shannon, Sonny, Tom, Elenor, Zach, and Emily) were definitely the best group ever! Not only were they totally low stress, but they also play a mean game of sexual fantasy and zip-zap-bang. Our projects were pretty kick ass too. Day 1: Worked with the Charles River Conservancy group cutting down stuff. Day 2: Helped out at the Everett 'Back to the River' Festival (ie: did nothing). Day 3: Gardened at the Somerville Growing Center. Day 4: Painted a couple of maps of the Mystic Watershed... while painting our own shirts at the same time. :) OooOoo! There was also Rina, my rockin' co-leader... never give her an energy drink by the way. ;) I'd have to say good times all around. Can't wait till next year!