Reflecting Jeff... my life at Calvin College

Easter Weekend

Having a short week and a long weekend was a really nice transition back to school after the much anticipated Spring Break. Unfortunately, I did not get to see my whole family over Spring Break as I went down to Florida. I actually only saw my family for about an hour on way through Ohio, so I was definitely ready to be home and spend the weekend with my family. After classes on Thursday, my friend Ben and I headed back home after our classes were done for the week. It was going to be a great weekend as I would be relaxing, eating, visiting with friends and family, and watching college basketball.

Spring Break-Florida

Its been a while since I last posted, but things have been pretty crazy. Leading up to Spring Break, my weeks were pretty stressful. It was so convenient that all my projects, papers, and exams fell in the two weeks leading up to Spring Break. It all started with my Math exam, followed by Psychology, Religion, Geology, and I even had a Geology Lab exam in which I had to identify fifty rocks and minerals. Normally this would be really tough to get through, but it was even harder with Spring Break around the corner. Needless to say when all this was done, I was ready for Spring Break.

NBA All-Star Weekend

There was a different atmosphere on campus this weekend. It was sibling�s weekend, so besides the typical college students on campus, there were a lot of kids ranging from all ages and parents too. It was a little weird seeing a lot of younger kids around in the dining halls. Unfortunately my little brother and sister could not make it out here, mostly because I forgot to tell them about it. However, it�s a pretty long trip out to Calvin for me and it would have been hard to make the trip with the weather as bad as it is. Throughout the weekend, I got to meet quite a few different siblings of some of my friends. This weekend in general was just a good weekend, because I did not have as much work to do as in past weekends. It started on Friday afternoon, as soon as Religion was over, my weekend had started. After Religion class, I met a couple of my friends to workout. After our workout we decided to shoot some hoops for a while. We definitely needed the practice after suffering an embarrassing loss earlier in the week in our intramural basketball game. There were a couple of our team members that needed to work on their shooting. We shot around for a while playing different three point contests. After we shot for a while we decided to play some 2 on 2, which was a lot of fun. I thought I was still in decent shape from the soccer season, but it turns out I was wrong. Basketball is pretty tiring.

Sports and Weather

Intramurals have finally started back up. I was disappointed that I was too late to sign up for any intramurals over Interim, so I made sure to sign up early for Spring Intramurals. I am playing on both a dodgeball team and a basketball team. We had our first dodge ball game last week, and I was a little disappointed on how it went. I thought it would be a lot more action packed and that games would go quick. It was actually the exact opposite. The games actually took a good amount of time. We had to play in one of the big gyms rather than the small gym behind the main gym and that probably had something to do with it not being as great. Since the game was in the big gym we used the basketball lines as boundaries. It took a while to win two out of the three games. The other team would just sit back as close as to the end lines as possible. Every once in a while you would get a kid that would run up to the line and try and throw, but that was not very often. Along with taking a while, the dodge balls were also terrible. They were very old and had holes in them. That did not help contribute to the speed of the game. In the end, we won the first two games and did not need to play the third game. However, I found out that the only reason we played in that gym was because a sports team was scheduled to do something in there the time of our game. Also, the school ordered new dodge balls. This will definitely make a huge difference when it comes time to play our second game on Thursday.

Super Bowl Weekend! Go GIANTS!

Finally after four classes on Friday, it was the weekend. My first week of second semester has gone well so far. I have a much different schedule this semester than I did last semester. Last semester I had a lot of reading and writing courses in taking Philosophy, English, and History. However, this semester I do not have as many reading and writing courses. Geology requires some reading, but I am excited to take my first lab at Calvin. Also, with Stats, I will be doing problems every night rather than writing. Needless to say I was ready for the weekend. After classes on Friday, I worked out with some of the guys on the soccer team. Since we are not in regular season, we have to stay in shape somehow. After the workout I met up with some friends for dinner. After dinner, we decided to go see a movie. We went to go see Strange Wilderness. I did not know very much about the movie, I just knew that some of my friends wanted to go see it and so I tagged along. The movie had some funny parts, but it was not a very good movie. After the movie, I came back to Calvin and hung around talking with friends. I did not get to bed till sometime after 3 o�clock. It was nice to just hang around and blow some steam off from the first week back to school.

Back into the Routine

Interim finally has come to an end, but before second semester started I got to enjoy my interim break. After debating what to do for a while, I finally decided to head back home for interim break, rather than hang around Calvin. So on Wednesday after my grueling two hour exam for DCM, I headed over four and half hours back home to Stow, Ohio. The weather was not great, but I was so excited to get home that nothing really phased me. Wednesday night was pretty low key as I got to spend some quality time with my mother and my little sister Nicole. We went out to eat at the Mexican Restaurant Pancho and Lefty�s. It was a lot of fun as I got to catch up with what has been going on back at home and in the family. After dinner, we rented a family movie and watched that until we were all ready to go to bed. The next day was just a day to relax and blow off some steam. I played video games with my brother Steve and just hung around the house not doing too much. At night my mom made one of my favorite meals, chicken piccata. I had missed home cooking and it tasted so good. That night I just spent more time hanging around with my family. I got to bed early because on Friday I had big plans.

Hitting the Slopes

As the snow continued to fall, I kept wandering what would be something fun I could do in the snow besides the typical snowball fight, sledding, and football game. A group of my friends quickly came up with the idea of going skiing or snowboarding. I thought that would be a great idea, but I ran into a problem, I did not own my own ski equipment. Snowboarding and skiing is a big thing at Calvin as many students go every weekend and even during the week throughout winter. I was worried that ski rental would be expensive at the place we were going, but it turns out this place ran specials for students with a college ID. So Friday afternoon I took off with my friends Kurt, Alex, and Bart to go skiing and snowboarding at Caberfae for the night. On the hour and half trip up to Caberfae, I thought about the last time I had gone skiing and soon realized that it had been a long time. I started to get nervous because I was going with a group of experienced skiers and boarders.

My First Interim

I was a little bit disappointed about having to return from Christmas Break. Christmas Break was so much fun as I got to see a lot of friends from home that I had not seen since we all parted our separate ways for college. We spent a lot of time catching up on how our social, athletic, and academic experiences had gone so far. Along with seeing all my friends, I got to spend a lot of time with my family as well as my extended family which I had not seen since coming to Calvin. I was disappointed that Christmas Break was so short and that it flew by so quick, however I was ready to see all my college friends and to begin my first interim. I did not know what to expect with interim classes because I heard some people talking about great experiences and also not so great experiences with interim. I was a little bit nervous, but excited for my first day of class.