Random facts about my recent life

Alright, well, I suppose it's time for a second blog post. Let's start with the drama that's been going on with my classes.

I am currently a college freshman halfway through my first semester. I'm a biology major, which I love so far. Well, I love the biology part. A nasty little side effect of a biology degree is all the chemistry classes you are required to take. I'm making a high A in zoology (the most awesome class I've ever taken in my LIFE!), a solid A in English, either lower A's or very high B's in both Government and New Testament....and I'm most likely failing Chemistry.

It's not the content. I grasp at least 70% of what's going on in there from just being in class. It's the stupid assignments! All the homework must be done using a computer program that isn't compatable with my new Vista laptop, and then submitted online. If it's a minute late, it's automatically not accepted. And lab writeups...wow, don't get me started on lab writeups. And every day when we come into class, we have a quiz. Every day!

Normally, I wouldn't care too much. I'd just pull through and pass the class with a C or drop it and take it later. But since I'm a biology major, and biology majors have to take a lot of chemistry classes, I can't just drop the class and take it next year. Next year I have to take a more advanced chemistry class. It's cumulative. And I can't just barely pull through with a low C. There's this little thing called a "scholarship" that's not going to let me do that.

My college has some awesome scholarships, yo. If you graduate with an overall GPA of 3.5 and a ACT score of 28+ (or something I can't remeber on your SAT) , you get $10,000 a year. If you have a 3.25 and a slightly lower ACT/SAT score, you get $8,500. If you havea 3.0, you get $5,000. Something like that. I did good in high school. I qualified for the highest scholarship avaliable with my 3.5 and ACT score of 31. So now instead of costing me $23,500ish a year, college is $13,500 a year. MUCH more affordable. BUT. If my GPA drops below 3.5, I get no scholarship. At all. I don't go down to the next bracket. I get 0 academic scholarship money. (And not to sound snobby or anything, but my dad makes too much money for me to get much else in the way of scholarships.)

So I was going to drop the class today, as it was the last day that you're allowed to drop the class, but in order to do that your advisor has to sign the drop-class-sheet. He said that it is a very bad idea to drop Chem. If I were to take chem at a community college over the summer, as I was planning on doing instead, I would not get as good of an education, and I would have a hard time coming back and doing ChemII.

So I kept the class. And now I have to work my butt off just to get a C this semester. But overall, I think (hope) (pray) that it'll work out.

Ok, on to more awesome things. My advisor, zoology prof, and all-around most awesome teacher I've ever had, Doc Meissner, teaches field biology classes all the time. The class meets only once a week to prepare, and then they go on a trip to study the biology in the field. After the trip, they come back and take a test and get their credit hours. Well, this spring, over spring break, the field biology course is Tropical Biology, and it takes place in BELIZE. As in, tropical Central-America palm-trees-and-crystal-blue-water Belize.

Guess who's going to Belize this spring break!!!!

I'm so incredibly excited!! I can't even put it into words. I have to tell the complicated story of how I got signed up for this trip.

I'd been hearing about this Tropical Biology course since pretty much the beginning of the year. The field biology courses are a really popular thing here at my college and they fill up very quickly, especially since there's only 9 slots. I really wanted to go, since I'm a biology major (And who wouldn't want to go to Belize and get credit hours for it?). So I talked with my parents about it.

Well, the other day I went to check how many slots were open for the trip. There were only two left. So I instantly called my mom and told her that I had to know if I could go fast. "Oh, I have to talk to your father" was the response. No surprise there. I stressed the need to know quickly, and left it at that.

So over the next two days I went back and forth with my mom, who had turned into the middleman. She said Dad dosn't want me to go into even more debt (the trip costs about $1,350 ish on top of tuition), so I replied that I'd get a job over Christmas break. So back and forth we went.

Today I was talking at lunch with my roommate, Kelci, about the trip, and she said she wanted to go too. And that if I were going, she would definitely go because she wanted someone that she knew to go with her. So I called my mom immediately and said "Kelci wants to go, but she'll only go if I do." Back and forth, she says yes, we go to the office and put our deposits down. Done. Kelci and I are going. YES! We totally lucked out, too. We got the very last 2 slots.

About 20 minutes later, we're meeting with the prof to let him know we signed up to go on the trip, and he said he thought we might have. The office had just called him up to let him know that the class was filled up, and that just 5 minutes after we had taken the last two spots, someone came in and tried to register. If Kelci and I had waited just ten minutes, we wouldn't have both been able to go!!! How awesome is that? Thank you Jesus!!

Well, this has been very long and rambling. But I got the story down on paper! Kinda...