The 3 Things I've Learned in College (So Far)

                                                
Before the thought even begins to tiptoe about the corners of your mind, no, I'm still not writing about Turkey or Africa yet. There are some subjects that are just too large to write about, like love and poverty and how far my heart drops when I'm making a pbj and learn, too late, that the peanut butter jar is empty.

                                         

Its been nearly a month since the spring college semester began and so far, I've learned 3 lessons. Not three things in total, of course, I've also learned loads of trivial information about the balance of pathos and ethos in arguments, utility equations, the function and anatomy of neurons, the saturation point of polyunsaturated fatty acids, and that including lesson-related doodles in your graded notes will score extra points (this is rule #3 in action). What I mean is I've discovered three laws of life and the universe at large in the course of these classes, usually at moments like when watching the clock hands stretch the last 15 minutes of class like bitter taffy.
So, without further ado, the 3 things I've learned in college (so far):

                              

#1: Every textbook you read is still a rough draft.

Education is full of rules. Rules from how to structure essays to how gravity works. The master rule about rules, however, is that every rule has it's exception; no "fact" is 100%. Think about science, in particular. There is a set of principles we call "scientific law" however none of them are concretely factual. When it comes to the way our bodies work or the planets stay aligned we have love to pretend that we've figured it out and have printed a final draft on the way the universe works, but the truth is we haven't. Every textbook you read is still a rough draft. If it wan't for a few skeptical students trying to not fall asleep in their classes a few hundred years ago we wouldn't have busted myths like that the Earth is flat or that 'bloodletting' is a safe medical practice.

Think of all the other currently accepted (if unspoken) laws of the universe that we live by:
- The law that something isn't true until posted to social media
- The law that a girl's Halloween costume has to be in some way sexy
-The law that you can't wear white after labor day
- The law that you have to read through 2 pages of personal anecdotes on foodie blogs before you can get to the ingredient list (seriously, has anyone else noticed this?).

All these laws and more could be completely re-written in the next edition of Life 101.The world isn't the final issue of a textbook, its an easily hack-able Wikipedia page.

                         

#2: Nearly everything is influenced by $$$

Take any subject you're studying and you'll find there is a 90% chance that it is somehow influenced by money. The want of money may be the root of all evil but its also the root of education. In Nutrition the way the food pyramid is stacked is largely to do with the money-hungry food manufacturers who funded the stacking. Economics is literally the study of societies make decisions in pursuit of money and the goods people can buy with money. In art history we learn to value paintings by how much money they're worth, even though the teacher cannot really explain why one painting is worth a million dollars and another, $10.

Think about the decisions you make every day, from what to eat for breakfast to who to marry. We go to college to get jobs to make money, we eat food from stores with lower prices, and even our choice of spouse can be rooted in our estimation of their ability to someday provide for a family.

When evaluating this rule I'm comforted by the fact that rule #1 exists, because there are exceptions. Just as humans unconsciously build our lives in pursuit of money, we are capable of selfless acts and strive for things far more valuable like love, forgiveness, and mercy. And writing this blog post, because I'm certainly not being paid to do this. (Though if you'd like to pay me, feel free.)

                                   

#3: How to Sound Like I Know What I'm Talking About 

Don't worry, I've stopped spouting pseudo-philosophical theories for now. The final lesson is far more beneficial to you and has helped raise many a grade: how to sound like a smarty pants student even if you don't really understand the concept. The difference between a B or an A on an essay could be chalked up to choices such as using the word 'conflagration' instead of 'fire'. A few tips for sounding smartical:

                                     

-Refer to yourself in papers as "this writer" and to other people by their last names. (e.g. "In the end of the blog post the reader began to wonder how sleep deprived Musick was when she penned the words.")

-Sprinkle relevant technical terms onto your homework like bacon bits over a salad: just enough to add academic flavor without making the consumer question if its truly nutritious.

-The thesaurus isn't a kind of dinosaur, its your new best friend.

- READ. The words you pour into your head are going to spill onto your homework, so choose wisely. If your persuasive essay is titled, "Who Wore it Better: The Red Coats or the Blue Coats?" then you might want to ditch the yahoo articles and visit the library. (And not just because libraries have free wifi, and sometimes, little cafes with scrumptious muffins.)

                                        

One of the best parts of being in college is this: You FEEL Smart. Sometimes after struggling through a tough chapter or watching Youtube instructional videos until you understand a concept, this rush of smarty pants chemicals rush into your body and a warm, fuzzy feeling of, "Yeah, I KNOW STUFF." is released. Be warned, though, as a side effect of these temporary educational-highs you may begin unconsciously signing Dr. in front of your signatures and write rambling blog posts about the unspoken laws of the universe.

A+,
-Hannah

Crocodiles, College, and Other Scary Adventures

So I recently got home from a mission's trip to Turkey and Burkina Faso, Africa and people generally ask, "Oh my goodness! How was it?"

The real question is: How do you expect me to answer that question in under 20 minutes without a slideshow of several hundred travel pictures? You can't, thats how.

(Hanging out with Whendenda, one of the sweetest souls I've ever met.)

You just can't take thousands of miles, hundreds of smiles, and one-too-many airline meals and convey it fully. A picture may tell a thousand words but you still can't feel the breeze off the Bay of Izmir, the frantic pulse of music in a Turkish taxi cab, or the taste of mystery meat stew over an African cooking fire. (Nor would you want to in some cases for that last one there...).

The A Team and I (several men and women from the Global House of Prayer in St. Louis and my church) went on some amazing adventures. We climbed (probably illegally) on ancient ruins in Ephesus, we fitted and wrestled TOMS onto little African kid's feet (NOT as glamorously hipster as it sounds but totally worth it), and sat of the backs of sacred Burkinabei crocodiles; the list goes on. I would move on but can we just pause for a sec and all admit the crocodile thing was pretty cool beans? K, thanks.

But right now i'm not going to talk about my trip, not in this blog post anyway. I know, I know, thats not what you want to hear but life is tough, buttercup. This is my blog and right now the thing first and foremost on my noodle is Kentucky.

Admit it, the first thing you thought of when I said Kentucky was chicken. You saw the benevolent, mustached face of Colonial Sanders surrounded by the magical, deep-fried drumsticks that are Kentucky Fried Chicken. Or maybe thats just me. Maybe you thought of one of the many other things Kentucky is known for like horses or bourbon or...nope, I keep coming back to chicken. I can't help it. Obviously my knowledge of that Southern state is lacking.



By this time next year, however, i'll know a lot more about Kentucky...because I've been accepted to a college there!

*Que release of balloons and glitter and fireworks*

                                            

 After a long and arduous application process fraught with last-minute road trips and late-night personal essay writing, I finally received a piece of paper that began with "Congratulations!" not, as i'd feared, "Thank you for applying but take a hike, sucker." (Ok, no proper collegiate institution would send a letter saying that but hey, i'm paraphrasing. And considering this college's picky application process, it was a slightly well-based fear).

                  

The way people react to the announcement of a college application is funny. If I announced i'm moving to Kentucky people would gasp with surprise and concern. Say I'm going to college, however, and its a whole different ballgame. "Oh, college? Well, thats nice for you. Its in Kentucky? Huh, interesting!" Its like you tack on college and it undermines the whole shock factor of moving to the other side of the country, like college is an airport. Like yeah, you might be in Paris but if you're just in the airport on layover you aren't really in France, you're on international ground. Far away, but safe.

                    

I've learned more and more in the past few months the truth in the what Ralph Waldo Emerson once said:

"Life's a journey, not a destination". 

Sometimes the joy of travelling isn't just landing in an exotic locale but the conversation you have with your seatmate on the plane ride. People (aka, my mother) told me to stop freaking out and saying things like, "What if I go to college and I flunk out of all my math classes because I have an irrational fear of mathematics and I fail and have to choose between becoming a bourbon-brewing redneck hermit in the depths of the Appalachian mountains or hitchhiking back to Missouri in the back of a station wagon under bales of hay to live out my life as a college drop-out who lives in her parent's basement and lives on ramen noodles and writing Whovian fanfiction? What if, mom?! WHAT IF."



But in all seriousness, half the fun is in the freaking out. Every new adventure in one's life should simultaneously fill you with electric excitement and scare the bejeebies out of you. Part of the journey is in creating your college pinterest boards and daydreaming of the best and worst outcomes and planning the color of your English notebooks months in advance. True, I probably should be planning the color of my notebooks for this semester, but i'm not always the best at focusing on the present. Lets keep in mind that one of my first College drop-out Plan B's was becoming an Appalachian bourbon hermit and rule out the likelihood of logical thought.

Another thing I've learned in the past few months is that the future is unpredictable:

"A man's steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand his own way?"
 (Prov. 20:24, NIV) 

I have my plans and pieces of paper but ultimately i'm not steering this boat, i'm a passenger along for the ride. Nothing about the future (where/if i'll go to college, jobs, where I'll live in a few months, what i'm eating for dinner) is set in stone so i'm going to sit back and enjoy the ride and remember some travel tips that apply to both travel and life: Its not where you are but who you're with, bring granola bars, don't drink the water, and feed the crocodile before you sit on it. Well, maybe not as universally applicable tips as I thought...

Toodles and Gluten-Free Noodles,

Hannah

                                         

The Inn of Tulips and Truckers

I'll give you a few hints to guess where I was this weeked: Wooden tulips, fabric tulips, painted tulips, lighthouses, and freezing drizzle.No, not on a poorly decorated igloo. Or a roofless craft store in bad weather. Honestly, how ridiculous.

I'm in.....HOLLAND!

...Michigan.

It must be both wonderful and horrible to live in Holland, MI because you live in a gorgeous place but have to go through telling people you live in "Holland- no, not the real Holland, the one in Michigan." all the time. You see, Holland, MI is not quite the land of wooden clogs and windmills but the transplanted version that somehow has made its home in the flat planes of the American midwest. From what I observed this means that they have a traditional, quaint tourist town but throw tulips and windmills everywhere. Literally, everywhere. At the hotel we were staying at their were vases of fake tulips hidden on top of the vending machines. Why? Ancient Dutch tradition? Lazy housemaids? We can only wonder in awe of the Dutch's mysterious ways.

If I could describe our hotel (booked last minute over the internet) it would be Yellow. Or Fishy, either way not adjectives one desires their place of rest to be associated with. The walls were a hazy pastel mirage of lemon and pale green, the "beach-inspired" artwork looked less like a weedy sand dunes and more like a fat man's thinly stubbled chin spotted with seagulls. To further evoke the sandy atmosphere we're pretty sure the hotel staff hid some cod in the hotel room. There is no other way to explain the distinctly fishy aroma that pervaded the inn. But after driving for hours upon hours with only sketchy billboards such as the dentist advertisement with the slogan "DON'T DIE WITH YOUR TEETH IN A GLASS!" for entertainment? The bed could have been full of fish and I wouldn't have cared less.

Our equally disturbing door plaques. "Oh, clogs! Where to bury the body?"

The yellow theme continued the next morning when we checked out the most important part of the hotel: the breakfast spread. I kid you not, every food was yellow excluding the apples and 70% of the fruit loops. Bananas, waffles, butter, mysterious spongy ufos that I think might have once been eggs, biscuits, lemon danish, orange juice, honey; the breakfast buffet's redeeming virtue was that they played nature documentaries about baby seals throughout the morning. Baby seals can make any situation better, though they made me think twice about eating the sausage.

Our purpose of visiting the charming lake-side town of Holland was to visit Hope College and was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Everyone was friendly, the professors were welcoming, and the cafeteria was the stuff of dreams. However, the tuition price was also the stuff of dreams, but thats another blog altogether.

After a long day of making collegiate small talk and collecting souvenir pens my mom and I decided to explore Holland's hidden gems. We went hipster-watching in downtown Holland, visited the campus library, and, of course, went to the beach. I got sand in my shoes, the freezing gale-force wind attacked my hair, I got sprayed by a breaking wave, and it was still completely worth going to see. Standing on the breakers that stretched as a bridge between the shore and the lighthouse, I felt like a more sane, post-anger management Captain Ahab on the deck of his ship in the roiling sea, watching for white whales on the vast horizon. Except I didn't see any sea creatures, just utterly insane windsurfers in wet suits being tossed by the waves and waddling around in the permanent wedgie only a wetsuit can give.

Moi marvelous Mum

Moi and a marvelous lighthouse

After exploring the beach, climbing the dune mountain overlooking the lake, getting lost, finding a restaurant, and eating the best gluten-free burger to ever grace the Earth, we gladly crawled back into our fishy box. Speaking of which, it it well past time for me to burrow into my very warm, cozy, and not fishy or yellow in the least bed. I cannot extol the joys of travelling and last minute road trips enough but there is nothing, NOTHING, like arriving home and belly-flopping into your own bed. Now if I only had a maid that would make my bed every day and leave those mini hotel shampoos and soap bars lying around....

Windmills and Whirlygigs,

-Hannah