Football, yo

Annie's Log, 9/28/15:

I'm not entirely sure when I started to like football.

Growing up, I wasn't really that interested in the sport. I watched the Super Bowl when I was younger, but, like most, I was more interested in the commercials than anything else. When I got to high school and started to go to football games, decked out in red, blue, and white (those were our colors. Red, blue, and white. NOT red, white, and blue. Come on.), I was somewhat more interested, but I really just enjoyed being in the student section with the other Cougar Crazies.

And then I went to college.

At some point at UNC, I became a massive fan of football. On Saturdays, I went to Kenan Stadium to stand in the student section despite the heat, the cold, the rain, the wind, the glorious victory or the crushing defeat. I played on intramural flag football teams. I actually started to sort of care about who won the Super Bowl.

This was an unusual concept for me. I'd never been a big fan of watching sports on TV. Golf, baseball, hockey, even soccer. I don't know why-I just didn't really enjoy watching them on TV. But that all changed once I became a Tar Heel.

I went to many, many football games while I was in undergrad. I witnessed UNC being completely slaughtered by ECU, and completely slaughtering Elon. I worried about the transition from QB Bryn Renner to Marquise Williams and Mitch Trubisky. My blood pressure skyrocketed during many 4th quarter comebacks, including one in particular: I witnessed, live and in person, the absolutely GLORIOUS game-winning punt return against NC State by Gio Bernard (which I still like to occasionally relive).

I also grew to love watching the Heels on TV, preferably in a room with my friends while we chatted, pretended to do homework, ate, and got way too loud whenever anything went really right or really wrong for our team.

Though I am no longer going to the football games for my Tar Heels in person, I am still keeping up with them. I also have another team to watch: the Syracuse Orange.

Brief aside here: What's up with these two mascots? I love the Tar Heels, represented by Ramses the Ram,

but let's be real: that's a pretty funky mascot. The backstory is pretty cool (I copied it from UNC's website):

"Our nickname, which also applies to North Carolina citizens, has at least two possible origins. One story hails back to the Revolutionary War and the troops of British General Cornwallis. After fording a river in eastern North Carolina, the British troops discovered their feet covered with tar, a product of North Carolina’s abundant pine trees and one of the state’s most important exports at the time. Some say the clever North Carolinians dumped it in the river to slow down the invading army. The British were said to have observed that if you waded in North Carolina rivers, you would get tar on your heels.

Another story comes from the Civil War. A group of North Carolina soldiers scolded their comrades for leaving the battlefield when things got tough. The soldiers threatened to stick tar on the heels of the retreating soldiers to help them stay in the battle. General Robert E. Lee is said to have commented “God bless the Tar Heel boys!” Whatever the reason for the moniker, our students and sports teams have long worn it with pride."

But I don't really know why the mascot is a ram instead of a foot or something. I think he was named after a football player nicknamed "the Ram" at some point, but whatever.

And then there are the Syracuse Orange.

What?

Syracuse fans are, collectively, "The Orange." Not "oranges," but "Orangemen" and "Orangewomen." In emails from the school's chancellor, we are addressed as "Orange Friends." "Orange Nation." and this is the mascot, Otto, in a number of different representations (each more ridiculous than the last):

OK, so that last picture is not actually a real representation of Otto, but the first four are. In researching where this mascot came from, I found this explanation from Syracuse's school website: 

Syracuse University's first colors, in 1872, were "pink and pea green," but then a year later became "rose pink and azure blue." SU's color finally was changed to orange in 1890. How Orange was adopted as the color of Syracuse University was described in June 1940 at the fiftieth reunion of the class of 1890. The chronicler was Frank J. Marion '90, the motion picture pioneer. Marion said his class was responsible for the change from the colors pink and blue. He recalled:

"At the end of our senior year Syracuse accepted the challenge of Hamilton College to a track meet and...a number of us went along to cheer our team. We wore high collars, right up to our chins -- cutaway coats, baggy trousers, and rolled-brim derby hats. On our canes we had ribbons of the college colors, pink and blue.

Much to our surprise, we won the meet, and on the train coming home from Utica we tried to "whoop it up." What kind of "whoopee" can be made with pink and blue, the pale kind you use on babies' what-do-you-call-thems? It just couldn't be done!

So on Monday morning a lot of us went to see the chancellor in his office and told him our tale of woe. Chancellor Sims was a kindly old gentleman, a real father to us all, and he was very sympathetic. He agreed that pink and blue were not very suitable colors.

SU Banner "Professor J. Scott Clark was named chairman of a committee to find new colors", Marion said. "I recall that we seniors had a sneaking idea that we might put over the class colors, orange and olive green." Professor Clark consulted Baird's manual, then the authority on college matters, to see what combinations of orange had already been taken. Orange and blue were the most popular, but orange alone apparently was not claimed by any school and was Syracuse's for the taking. It was adopted unanimously by the committee, the faculty, the Alumni Association, and finally the trustees."

I guess they couldn't come up with a cool mascot for an orange team like, I don't know, tigers or orangutans or clownfish or a turtle with its shell spray-painted orange or actual oranges or literally anything other than an anthropomorphization of the color orange.

Wait. Why am I talking about mascots again? Right. Football. OK. 

I now have two college teams to follow closely: the Tar Heels and the Orange. I have two games to watch on Saturdays. (And the Orange are particularly interesting to watch because they've gone through two quarterbacks this season so far, one with a torn Achilles' tendon and one with an unspecified upper-body injury which resulted in the fifth-string QB playing and leading the team to victory in overtime.)

This past week, I watched the UNC-Delaware game (and the Heels had a PHENOMENAL game, by the way, ending in a definitive victory) and followed the Syracuse-LSU game on Twitter (which did not end quite as well, but was still fun to keep up with). A few weekends ago, while sick with a 24-hour stomach bug, I holed up on the floor of my bathroom with a blanket, pillow, stuffed dog named Doug, and my laptop to watch the Orange play (and beat!) Wake Forest University (it's interesting to note that I was almost a Demon Deacon:

He's pretty intimidating, I guess, right?

Maybe not.)

To bring this post to a close: I love watching college football. I can't pinpoint exactly when I started liking it so much, but I'm definitely a fan.

And don't even get me started on basketball.

End log.

Being bad at math is what gets me out of bed in the morning

Annie's Log, 09/20/15

No, really. It is.

Math has never been my strong suit. If you read my post "Chemistry is a Dementor," I made it explicitly clear. I'm not a fan. I recognize its value in everyday life and all, but it's never been my favorite subject.

I'm decent at algebra and I can do geometry and arithmetic, but beyond that I'm not very good at it. The only class in high school where I got a "C" was PreCal (THANKS, MRS. [REDACTED]-YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE).

But I'm not bitter or anything. I've accepted that math is just not one of my strengths. And that's exactly why I'm using my weakness to combat one of my other weaknesses.

One of my absolute worst habits is hitting the snooze button on my alarm in the morning. You can ask any of my former roommates. Or my parents. Or anyone who has seen me at an 8:00am class.

 I fully recognize that it's a terrible, disruptive habit that negatively impacts my life in many ways (well, really just getting up in the morning), but I just love sleep so much. One time I slept for 16 hours. It was a great day at the end of a very long week. I remember it well.

But I can't live in my bed forever. There are too many things to do.

So how did I use one of my weaknesses to cancel out one of my other weaknesses? I downloaded an app for my phone that requires me to solve math problems in order to turn off an alarm. My alarm clock makes me do math problems as soon as I wake up in the morning. Literally the first thing that I do in the morning is math. Really.

Imagine waking up in the morning to a blaring alarm sound and this problem on your phone's screen: 6 + 2 x 4 - 8.

I have to do 10 of these in order to turn my alarm off in the morning. It's a lovely way to start my day.

End Log.

I was told it would be cold in the North

I was told it would be cold in the North.

I want to be explicitly clear in what I am going to say next:

Literally (and I do actually mean literally, in the actual, literal sense and not in the figurative, hyperbolic sense), literally every single person who found out that I was going to move to Syracuse this year commented on the weather. Every. Single. One.

"Oh, man, I hope you like snow!"

"You'd better get yourself a winter coat!"

"It's gonna be soooo cold!"

"Those winters are nasty!"

"Good luck with that ice!"

The list of different ways to say "upstate New York is cold in the winter" goes on and on.

Now, I fully recognize that the tone of this post is somewhat agitated. A little peeved. Just a touch mad. I want to be clear in saying that my anger and frustration is not directed at the people who commented on the wintery weather in Syracuse.

No, my touchiness is directed entirely at the incompetent weather god who is presiding over the Empire State. My displeasure is solely pointed at the false expectations I was fed when I visited Syracuse in March and it snowed two inches. My irritation is directly aimed at whoever was responsible for the grievous miscalculation in the sun's intensity over the place where I'm currently sweating. Am I using too many words? I feel like I'm using too many words. In short:

It's freakin hot, man.

The highs of this week have been in the 90s and the humidity is enough to make a fish cry. I thought, after a year of walking up the hill on Hillsborough Street at UNC (which is approximately a 70 degree angle, measured by Satan's protractor), that I was through with showing up to class drenched in sweat. That is not the case. To paraphrase a quote from Simon and Garfunkle, "Hello backsweat my old friend/ I've come to soak in you again."

In all seriousness, I was not prepared for this heat. I mean, I was prepared-I spent my entire summer outside, running around, getting "tan" (read: slightly less pale). Before I started working at camp, I was in the Bahamas, roofing in direct sunlight (in long pants and long sleeves no less, because my skin is genetically predisposed to sizzling like bacon when exposed to UV light). And yet I'm still shocked every time I leave my apartment and am greeted by a wave of just the hottest heat.

Writers describe heat as "oppressive" all the time, but I swear that these temperatures are trying to take over Syracuse's campus and rule with a dictatorial fist. It's ridiculous. And the thing that has me most worked up is that it was even hotter in Canada.

Last weekend, Logan (bless her Southern-belle heart) flew up to visit me in Syracuse for the long weekend. That Saturday was spent at the State Fair (which is held in Syracuse for reasons that I can't begin to guess. It's not the capital. It's not the biggest city. It's not the fairest of them all. Why is it here?!). And it was hot, sure, but that's kind of what you expect when you go to the fair. Muggy air! Stuffy tents! Greasy food! People who are all up in your personal space! Heart! With our powers combined, we are AN AMERICAN STEREOTYPE!

The following Sunday, Logan and I decided that we were going to drive to Canada. We were within driving distance of Canada, so why not? We figured we'd get up early, drive to Niagara Falls, spend a pleasant day on the lower brim of America's hat, then come home. Little did we know…

Canada, the land of Mounties and moose and maple syrup, was hotter than Hades. It was disgustingly, dehydratingly hot that day. Logan and I were both wearing jeans-foolish, I know, but we thought "Hey! We're going to Canada! Everything is pleasant up there, so the weather should be, too, eh?"

I swear to Her Majesty the Queen that I felt like I was walking around on the surface of the sun. It was miserable. I mean, it wasn't miserable because we were in Canada and how could you be miserable in Canada, but it was pretty darn uncomfortable. It was beautiful and awe-inspiring, but uncomfortable. Watching thousands and thousands of gallons of water gushing past you really makes you conscious of just how thirsty you are.

It was HOT. Much like the New York State Fair, the area was crowded with people. Unlike the New York State Fair, we didn't walk into Canada expecting to be sweating balls of sweaty sweat when we left. It was an entirely unwelcome surprise (not to mention that the cheapest bottle of water we could find was $3.00. Ugh.).

I keep waiting for the cooler weather to come in. People have been talking about how great it is to go apple-picking in the fall, how the leaves should be changing soon, how pumpkin-spice everything is back at Starbucks. And I'm just off on one side in a tank top and shorts, sweaty and fanning myself with a newspaper and quietly brooding in the lies that make everything feel just a little bit hotter. I feel like a grinchy, sticky, dehydrated Cindy-Lou Who: Where are you autumn? Why can't I find you? Why have you gone away?

I know that soon enough, the leaves will fall off of the trees and the boots and scarves will come out and my insatiable thirst for hot chocolate will rear its ugly head again. But until then, I'm just going to sit here in my air-conditioned apartment, sulking until I no longer have to worry about pit stains or heat indexes. One day my breeze will come.

End log.

Post-Log Update:

I wrote this post in the middle of the week, when I felt like I was on Alderaan as the Death Star was blowing it up. While it is still a bit sticky outside, the temperatures have levelled out to a more seasonally appropriate…uh…level. So I guess you can disregard everything I wrote above. Awkward…

Chemistry is a Dementor

Annie’s Log, 09/07/2015: Chemistry is a Dementor

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how exactly I ended up here in Syracuse. It’s a really massive turn from what I thought I would be doing post-grad when I started school at UNC four years ago. I was dead set on majoring in Exercise and Sport Science, becoming a physical therapist, and specializing in pediatrics. It was a solid plan, and should have been foolproof:

·        Step one: get good grades

·        Step two: everything will be awesome.

Boom. Done. Moving on.

So what made everything change? The short answer is this:

Chemistry.

Chemistry became the bane of my existence in college. I did fine in chemistry in high school. I got A’s and foolishly assumed that I was good at it, or at least decent. I was wrong. I was very, very wrong.

Chemistry is “the branch of science that deals with the identification of the substances of which matter is composed; the investigation of their properties and the ways in which they interact, combine, and change; and the use of these processes to form new substances.”

But it’s not, really.

Chemistry is, in fact, the science of lies and sadness.

I once heard someone describe chemistry as a dementor: it sucks all of the cheeriness and warmth from your body and leaves you feeling like you’ll never be happy again. That’s certainly what my experience with chemistry was.

Chemistry is “technically” a science class, but it’s not like biology. I love biology, particularly human anatomy. But chemistry is not either of those. No, chemistry is math cleverly, probably maliciously disguised as science. You go into it thinking that you’ll be doing cool experiments with glowing liquids and smoking beakers and Bill Nye the Science Guy. Instead you have to calculate molarity and titrate things and there’s Avogadro’s number and just a metric CRAPTON of math and anger.

I had no problem memorizing the elements or drawing out Lewis dot diagrams. I understood electron shells and balancing equations. But the math. Oh, the math. I didn't really help myself by taking an ACTUAL math class at the same time, but hey, no one is perfect (especially not the adviser who totally told me to do that and said "yeah, you'll be fine, no worries, lots of people do it." But I'm not bitter or anything.). 

So I had to take chemistry. It was actually the first class that I went to at UNC, 8:00am on Tuesday. In case you couldn’t guess where this was going, my Chemistry career did not go well. (Neither did Chem Lab. If Chemistry was a dementor, Chem Lab was Azkaban).

So I opted out of taking any class that was even remotely similar to chemistry ever again and switched away from science all together. I switched over to an English major because English was always my best subject and I figured I might as well do something that I was actually good at for a change.

Taking English classes on classical literature turned into taking classes on modern literature, which turned into taking classes on digital literacy and the digital humanities. I found the CRaDL minor (which stands for Composition, Rhetoric, and Digital Literacy) and really got interested in it. From there, I looked into Information and Library science and applied to some schools. Spring Break led to a tour of Syracuse University’s iSchool and I was sold. And now I’m here, thinking about the path I traveled to get here.

It was a path strewn with strife and tears, with acids and bases, with late nights and atomic numbers, with periodic tables and covalent bonds, with crumpled up papers covered in conversions and an out-of-date Chemistry book that I can't get rid of because no one will buy an expired edition of that stupid textbook. To anyone who took higher levels of Chemistry, particularly those who enjoyed it, I salute you. Now excuse me while I go throw up or chop onions or run sprints or do something equally more enjoyable than chemistry homework.

End Log.