April Sho - er, Snowstorms

In Boston, April showers don’t bring flowers. They bring more snow and occasionally sleet. So I am having a lovely morning in bed reviewing my thesis before my defense on Monday. The first half of the week was a little crazy, but it’s slowly winding to a close.

I found out at the end of last week about all these papers I had coming due. One was postponed; one I turned in only to find out it had been postponed (but I was done, so it didn’t matter), and the two book reports I finished over the past three days. For the first half of the week, every time I wasn’t in class or in a meeting, I was chugging through these papers. But they ended up taking less time than I feared, so I ended up with some free time on the tail end of things, which is always nice.

Kickboxing and lifting are both going well, although I admit I haven’t been eating terribly well lately. When you’ve been stuck churning out papers for the last day-and-a-half, there’s nothing so cheering as being able to take a break for food – and nothing so disappointing as to remember that you’re only getting sliced turkey and salad yet again. And there were fudge brownies…

I did, in fact, get up, work out, shower, and get breakfast before climbing back into bed this morning. It wasn’t the most restful of nights. I skipped my workout yesterday, which messed up my sleep schedule and kept me up until maybe eleven. And then, at 2:30 this morning, a group of guys started banging on my door. I started to get up and open the door to let them know they had the wrong room (fyi, my name is on the door), but before I got there, it was clear from their conversation they were just going around banging on random people’s doors to see what would happen. Needless to say, I was not impressed, and didn’t answer. Fortunately, people who go around banging on stranger’s doors at 2:30 am aren’t known for their patience. And then I eventually drifted back to sleep until my alarm went off at five.

It took quite a bit of convincing to get out of bed and head down to exercise, but I finally said to myself (out loud) oh, stop being a sissy and go work out. I felt much, much better afterwards. It was an excellent start to the day. When I work out I’m happier all day and sleep better at night, and I actually enjoy the workout itself. And yet somehow, I don’t know why, I have to fight a battle to get myself to work out. Just kidding: I do know why. I just wrote a paper on the nature of evil and mankind’s impulse toward self-destruction (read: sin nature) for my Augustine class. Just wanted to point out that everything is connected, at least when you’re a philosophy major.

And besides all that, if you somehow missed it, I also wrote a blog post which I ended up submitting to the Harvard Crimson as an op-ed. The response was very encouraging. Other than that, not much else has happened here. On Wednesday we ran drill lab again, but because all the schools in ROTC are rotating Spring Breaks, none of the MIT people were there, meaning that we only had about five people to drill with. It worked out. I met a couple of friends for tea (they had coffee) and managed to make it to FUEL on Wednesday night. Oh, and on Wednesday I managed to go to Fresh Pond and get a run in before the snow started.

There are still a few highlights before the semester ends – ROTC still has events, a friend is coming to visit, and of course, my thesis defense and finals. But things are coming to a close. I suppose this week mirrors my entire undergraduate career – the first half was crazy, but the pace has moderated a bit right at the end. Here’s hoping it stays that way, because once Navy life starts, things are going to get crazy for a while again!

Pictures:

There's me inside:

 My run outdoors on Wednesday:

 Walking to a meeting on Thursday:

 Aaaand the reason I haven't really been outside since then:

 It snows and rains interchangeably, so the snow melts and gets washed away and you're just left with a lot of mud.

On to the End

Now that I’ve started kickboxing, I don’t know how I thought I could learn it without human partners to practice with. Even now, I’m slightly afraid that if I ever actually get in a fight, I’ll forget I’m going for the guy’s head and aim for his hands instead, I’m so used to punching people’s gloves. I am beginning to get the hang of it, though; the movements come more naturally now, and I’m no longer the newest person in the class, which is always nice.

I feel a little bad that all the experienced people have to practice with me, but they’re all very supportive, and because I’m southpaw (left-handed), they end up being reasonably challenged as well a lot of the time. It’s actually much easier to practice with someone who knows what he’s doing; when I practice with beginners, I generally end up hitting or getting hit in the wrong spot (my ankles are not happy). I’m glad I finally started, though; it’s a great stress reliever, and since Spring Break I’ve been pretty stressed.

I hit the ground running when I arrived back on Monday night, and I didn’t slow down until mid-morning Thursday. In between thesis meetings, ROTC, assignments, more meetings, graduation paperwork, kickboxing, and still more meetings, life has been pretty crazy. Thursday morning after ROTC I finally crashed, but yesterday I discovered that a couple of my papers were due significantly earlier than I thought, which means that I have no fewer than four major papers and my thesis defense due before the end of next week. So we all know what I’ll be doing this weekend. It’ll get done.

I had quite a bit of ROTC this week, including this morning. I helped teach drill for lab, which I actually really enjoy (I don’t enjoy being taught drill nearly as much; I get very frustrated). PT was moved to Thursday, but class was still on Tuesday, so I had to get up for ROTC three mornings instead of two, but it wasn’t bad. For PT we were playing a sort of game instead of just working out, which was cool. And this Saturday morning we had ranking boards to determine the merit rankings of the juniors in the company – cheery way to start the weekend, but at least it kind of put me in the mood for work.

Life really hasn’t been that exciting, despite the rush. I’m focusing mainly on all the papers I have to write. I’m not nearly as centered on fitness as I was last semester, but I’m still in pretty good shape. I never go more than a couple of days without working out, despite the busy schedule; the real struggle is remembering to eat right. I don’t know what it is about stress that makes salad seem so distasteful, but somehow, all I tend to want it chocolate. Oh, well. I’ll get there.

You see, last semester, when I still didn’t know where, exactly, my life was going, I spent a lot of time on fitness; it was my project. Now, though, all that energy is going into my blog and YouTube (yes, this is my subtle reminder to check out this week’s post if you haven’t yet: https://www.rightsideup.blog/selfless-or-selfish/). Internet/social media advertising is still unknown territory for me, but I think I’m making some inroads – not least of which is my new Facebook page, Lauren Mandaville – Blogger, which you should also like and follow…

Honestly, there’s not much more to say about this week. Weather has been weird lately; it snowed yesterday, but it was warmer and raining this morning. You can never tell what temperature it’s going to be before you walk out the door. In general, it’s still pretty wintry, so if you’re coming, bring your coat. Wait a few weeks and hopefully, I’ll be posting pictures that look more like Spring. Until then, I think that’s all I have. Now I have to go and attempt to write two decent papers in two days – wish me luck! 

On the way back from kickboxing. It's snowing in these pictures. You'll just have to take my word for it.

 And then it rained... and then it misted... I guess it's improving.

 One of the lovely things about Spring Break was getting to go shopping for tea with my mom to refill my nearly-empty tea tin. (And yes, that is another full tea tin next to it. To say that I drink a lot of tea is an understatement.)

 My lovely calendar of snark, a Christmas present from Bekah. Time is flying by!

 Kickboxing (the real stuff, not the cardio kind) is fantastic. And yes, I store my gloves on top of the microwave. It's a small room, okay?

One Last Lap

I just finished rereading my blog post from after Thanksgiving freshman year, the first time I went back to college by myself after a break. It’s still hard to say goodbye, but that’s a good thing, right? Don’t get me wrong; it’s different now. I’m different. Especially now that I’ve made my room my space, and spent more time in it, and now that I’m working primarily on the things I’m interested in and plan to do in the future, my dorm room feels like home – although I still don’t fit very well with Cambridge as a whole.

And now it’s almost over – a few short months and, once again, everything will change. I know, I always wax nostalgic and moody in airports, and this is my back-to-school blog, so you know it’s going to be a little depressed. It’s a little strange, because I’m still looking ahead, looking toward the future, but nearly all I can see is endings. I’ve been a student for going on 17 years now, pretty much as long as I can remember. And now, suddenly, I won’t be anymore; it will be a new environment, new people, new responsibilities. I have certainly become better at dealing with new things over the course of college; newness is, in itself, not so new to me anymore, and I’m more comfortable being uncomfortable. But that doesn’t mean I like it.

Okay, okay, saving that for another time. It was a fairly relaxing week; I slept late, took the dog running (we went about four miles this morning) and watched Netflix. My dad and I went to an amusement park. I like roller coasters, but outside of this past week, the only day of my life I’d actually ridden them was a choir trip to Fiesta Texas in high school (with Amelia, if you’re reading this). Although I had been catapulted off the deck of an aircraft carrier in the meantime. I’d forgotten quite how fast they went, but I was mainly concentrating on not letting go of my phone. We went on the parachute drop afterwards and found it much tamer (we rode it three times) before returning to the roller coaster for a final go-round.

We did a few other things over the break. We went to the park and star-gazed, and we drew on the sidewalk with chalk we bought for Christmas stockings but kept forgetting to use. My mother and I went shopping and browsed a thrift store for random items I didn’t know I needed until I saw them. A couple of my friends were sweet enough to invite me over (and make food!). I worked on my other blog quite a bit and started a facebook page (which is called “Lauren Mandaville – Blogger”, and which you should like/follow if you haven’t yet – subtle, I know).

I didn’t do much of anything school-related. I have a couple of papers due when I get back, and of course my thesis defense, but I’ll have time to prepare for those when I’m back in my dorm room with all my books. My seminary classes were also having Spring Break this week, as it turns out, which is good, since I forgot to bring my books home with me in any case. I haven’t been as on top of things this semester; it comes from being a senior and having a sudden drop in activity level.

In any case, it’s been a good week-and-a-half. It was nice to be able to take advantage of my class schedule and grab a few extra days’ rest before heading back. My sleep schedule has completely flipped to staying and getting up late, but I have ROTC today and Wednesday to jolt me back on track. A couple more months and I’ll head hope for Reading Period and Finals Period (hopefully) before heading back to Harvard for graduation, and then off with the Navy.

And there’s one more important bit of news: my parents bought me a car! It’s my graduation present, but they gave it to me early (hard to explain the new car in the driveway otherwise). It’s a very, very nice car – see the picture below. Its name is Bree. We finally had to name our cars, because my dad now has my old car, and so our old monikers of ‘your car’ and ‘my car’ ended up just making us hopelessly confused, until we had to resort to pointing.

Well, that’s about all my news for now. It’s been a pretty eventful semester, big-picture wise, even though it’s been fairly calm on a day-to-day basis, outside of the tail end of my thesis composition. Be sure to check out my other blog tomorrow at www.rightsideup.blog! Until next week!

Pictures: It seems that when I'm home, most pictures will feature the dog.

 He would be a champ at Twister; he practices by trying to get one paw in each of the waterbowls at the same time.

 We found a friend at the dog park.

 We crashed a dog birthday party, and it was luau-themed, so they were nice enough to give him a bandanna.

 My car!

 I took this picture while out running this morning, so it was taken in selfie mode, upside-down, while the phone was still strapped to my arm. I thought it turned out pretty well, considering, but the real thing was better.

 And we're back in MA. This is the Charles River at sunset.

 And of course we couldn't skip the roller coaster (photo credit to my dad on this one).

Putting on the Brakes

Well, my thesis is turned in, Spring Break has started, and I’m back at home with my parents and the dog. Because I only have scheduled classes on Tuesday and Wednesday, I was able to return home on Thursday, so I have an extra-long last Spring Break. The end is coming up quick, but right now, I’m just enjoying the moment: watching movies, taking the dog running, and working on my other blog (be sure to check out my posts from this week!)

Alright, I promised I would explain what my thesis was about. When one of my college interviewers asked me what I would write my thesis on, if I could choose anything, I said “philosophy, because it connects everything.” And true to form, my thesis covers as many topics as I could fit in. I’m completing a Joint Concentration (Double Major) in Philosophy and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC, aka Middle Eastern Studies), so my thesis needed to combine the two of them. But the “Studies” part of Middle Eastern Studies covers a pretty wide range in and of itself of sociology, anthropology, history, foreign language, economics, government, etc. Besides which, as a future Naval officer, I was writing my thesis focusing on US involvement in the Middle East, which also included military policy and International Law in the mix.

So a lot of my thesis was just trying to pull all of that together, and make it somewhat reflect the image I had in my head (I nearly always have my epiphanies in images, which makes them extremely hard to explain.) All of this to say that to be honest, I still haven’t found a way to explain what my thesis is about. But I’m going to try.

There are two ways to look at my thesis – from specific to general, and from general to specific. Let’s start from specific. My specific focus is the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) and US policy with regard to ISIS. DDE is a set of guidelines developed to determine when collateral damage (particularly civilian deaths) is acceptable in wartime. The “double effect” referred to is the unintended bad effect that accompanies the desirable effect. So I was looking at Israeli policy with regard to DDE and terrorism and trying to determine a set of guidelines for the US.

However, in order to determine guidelines, we have to ask the larger question: how do we go about deciding what’s ethical in wartime? This isn’t only a question for the US; it’s a question for International Law. We don’t all have one ethical system or worldview; how do we agree on ethics? The popular opinion today is that worldview doesn’t matter – religion, philosophy, and etc. don’t matter. We all pretty much agree on what’s right and wrong; religion and culture are just window-dressing we add on afterwards.

In my opinion, this is backwards. Out moralities come from our beliefs about the world. Without God, I have no reason for believing that there is a right or a wrong; if we believe in different gods or different religions, we are going to come to different conclusions about things like abortion, homosexuality, and (as it turns out) the Doctrine of Double Effect. So we can’t legislate these internationally; we can’t agree on them, and we can’t force other countries to agree with us on them. So we have to let each culture work from its own assumptions about the universe to come up with its own guidelines.

Then we return to the specifics and try to figure out, given the United States’ assumptions about the purpose of government and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, what sorts of collateral damage are acceptable. This, ostensibly, was the purpose of my thesis, but I was much more interested in the larger point I’ve pointed out above. It’s not a very popular view in academia at the moment, but it’s more popular in the philosophy and cultural studies departments than elsewhere, as one would expect.

Okay, so that’s my 95-page thesis summed up very generally in a few paragraphs – hopefully it made sense. I’ll find out if the longer version did when I have my oral examination board in a couple weeks. I hope everyone has a lovely Spring Break – check out my blog! – and I’ll see many of you soon!

The ice on Fresh Pond is just a memory now.

 My thesis! In triplicate:

Every year about this time, the Harvard SHARC (Sexual Health and Relationship Counselors) hang condoms and lubricant on my door. Yay college.

 I just really like taking pictures of Fresh Pond.

 The climate's a little different in Texas, but I love them both.

 Breakfast at IHOP with my parents!

 Tikvah is still as adorable as ever.

 He wanted to drive.

 We tried to take a selfie, but he's very easily distracted.

 Playing hide-and-seek at the dog park:

Thesis Throes

Hi everyone! I don’t want to swamp you with too many blog posts too close together, so I’m going to post these on Saturday mornings instead of Friday mornings from now on. If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out my new website at www.rightsideup.blog – posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays! But for now, time to catch up on two weeks of news.

Not a terrible lot has happened. Spring Break is not this coming week, but the week after that, which means that my thesis is due this coming week (aaahhh!). So that’s been a large part of the last few days and will probably be about all of the next couple of days. I’ve been having trouble contacting two of my three readers (graders), so I’m just now getting a lot of their feedback, which means I’m much more rushed than I usually am leading up to these, but I have plenty of hot tea and a weekend to finish, so hopefully this marathon will end well.

Speaking of marathons, I did go running a few days ago around Fresh Pond. It was chilly, but I warmed up soon enough, and I realized I’m much more in shape than the last time I went running there; I was barely winded. We’re getting into that ambiguous part of spring where it’s either just warm enough to survive in short sleeves or just cool enough to survive in a jacket, depending on the day. Somehow, I always guess wrong, but my run took care of the cold everywhere except my ears. I’m still enjoying weightlifting as well. I did kickboxing yesterday and managed to hurt my ankle (both of them, actually), and I’ve been a little under the weather lately, but it’s not slowing me down too much.

What else has happened? We had our Joint Service Ball (Army, Navy, and Air Force from our side of the river – MIT as opposed to BU) last night. It was at a hotel just a few minutes away from my dorm, which was very exciting – nothing ever happens near my dorm; I always have to take a taxi. The guest speaker was the former Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, which was pretty cool (he’s a Harvard Law School grad). All the seniors were announced with our service assignments, and afterwards we went over to someone’s room at Harvard and hung out a while. It was our last Military Ball at Harvard, and we had a pretty good time.

That’s really about all that’s happened; I’ve mainly been consumed with my thesis, a few more minor written assignments, starting my website (hint hint!) and a good bit of Netflix thrown in for good measure. I would explain my thesis to you, but according to my advisors, I still haven’t figured out how to do that clearly, so I’ll wait until next week and spent most of my pre-Spring Break post laying it out for you.

I am over 90% done with my college career – isn’t that strange? I’m not exactly entering real life – the Navy is kind of a world of its own – but I’m definitely preparing to start something new. People keep asking me if I’m excited, but honestly, I’m not really sure. For one thing, nothing is going to happen for a while yet; I’m sure I’ll be able to muster up the appropriate level of stress when the time comes. For another thing, I’m usually excited when I’m about to begin things, and while I’m sure there will be plenty of projects to begin later, the idea that I’m going into the Navy is so old by now it’s a matter of course.

Finally, I’m kind of nervous about moving out into the world (as I suppose I should be). I’ve been doing just about the same thing for the past 16 years of my life, and now I’m entering a completely new environment where I need to perform well. It’s a tad stressful. But I suppose that’s what makes it fun. Until next week, then – wish me luck on my thesis!

Pictures:

Still working out!

 This is an ad for my church, as well as one of my favorite quotes, on the wall of the T station:

 You can generally tell the state of my life by the state of my bed - in this case, both are still reasonably organized, but slightly out of control.

 Fresh Pond on a gorgeous spring (technically, still winter) morning:

 I was walking across the Yard when it hit me again just how lucky I am to be at this place.

 Joint Service Military Ball (or JSMB, because acronyms):

And Now for Something Completely Different...

First of all, I would like to admit that I’m a little frightened of doing this. I don’t like doing things unless I’m sure they’re going to work, and I especially don’t like admitting that I want them to work unless I’m sure they will. That’s one of the reasons I usually don’t tell people about things until I’ve finished with them. But this, by its nature, I can’t do without other people. So this is me asking for help.

More clearly put, this is my announcement that over the past week, I’ve started both a website and a YouTube channel. The website is here, and the YouTube channel is here. I would of course appreciate it if you’d go check them out, subscribe, comment, like, recommend, and etc., but first let me explain what they are and why I started them.

Truth – living, active, truth that influences people’s lives – is the great passion of my life; I am wholly devoted to it. I believe that belief influences our actions, our attitudes, and our behaviors. I believe that right belief can give meaning, purpose, and vitality to life, and that wrong belief can sink you into a pit so deep, you can’t find a way out. I believe that truth is more than logic, it is living; it is not only right thinking, but right feeling; not only right judgment of the world, but right reaction to it. It’s hard to describe how I feel about this, but it is the center and driving force of my entire life, and it is inextricably caught up in He who claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life combined in one.

Nothing makes me more angry than the spread of willful ignorance – that is, people who don’t bother thinking out what they believe. They just believe whatever sounds nice to them, even if it’s completely nonsensical, and then they talk about it until other people start to believe this, too. I don’t just think these beliefs are wrong; I think they cause actual harm to people. And it makes me angry that there are so many misconceptions being perpetrated in society, that we can never get to the truth, the truth that we need to be truly human, because we can never have an honest conversation without its getting clouded in thousands of fallacies and rabbit trails.

It is not my nature to speak up about things the instant they annoy me, because I need to be sure that I’m in the right. My mother will tell you that even when I was little, whenever I entered a new environment, I would just sit and watch everything until I knew how it worked, and then I would suddenly jump in and be completely confident. I still operate this way.

For the past four and, to some extent, the past eight years, I have been sitting and watching: watching our culture, watching our institutions of higher learning, watching how people interact and think about the important questions of life, watching Texas and Massachusetts, Ireland and Israel. I have listened from the boxing gym of Boston to the bazaar of Jordan, from the faculty club of Harvard to the dive bar of New York. Harvard and I disagree on a great many things, but for the past four years I have sat in near-silence and I have listened, and I have thought, and I have waited. And now I am done waiting; something has awoken inside of me, and it is time to start speaking.

So this is where I’m starting. First, I have started a YouTube channel, in which I point out inconsistencies and inanities in the philosophy of movies and TV shows. I’m starting small at the moment; you won’t find much there yet. But I do this by second nature; I regularly startle people in restaurants by picking apart the lyrics of songs they hadn’t even noticed were playing. (Eg – “Say you’ll see me again, even if it’s just in your wildest dreams?!” If I just broke up with you, you keep your wild dreams away from me, thank you very much.)

To me, this nonsensicality in movies/TV shows/music/etc. represents a larger trend in the world, the idea of saying things that sound nice, even if they don’t make any sense, because we can’t be bothered to think seriously about the larger questions in life. So I am calling these movies’ bluff; they don’t know what they’re talking about (not to say that I don’t still really like some of them). Warning: I’m an extremely sarcastic person when I want to be.

Secondly, I am starting a website, centered around a second blog. This one isn’t about me; it’s about issues in society, things I think we’ve gotten backwards or upside-down, because we’ve forgotten to go back and check our premises, and so our deductions are wrong. The blog will include commentary on movies, generally linked to my YouTube videos, as well as thoughts on current events and where they’re really coming from – ie what is the debate over abortion really about? What are we disagreeing on, and can we resolve these differences? What assumptions are we making, and why? And it will include a little gratuitous philosophy; I am majoring in it, after all.

Finally, I have published a short ebook – the Idrealist (yes, that is spelled correctly) which you can either buy on Smashwords, or receive for free by subscribing to my blog. This, more than anything else, is my response to the past four years of listening; I wrote it in less than a week, but it’s the product of months and years of thoughts finally coming together in a cohesive form. Harvard taught me a lot of things, but it taught me more by the things it left out than by anything else. So please pick up a copy!

And that concludes my little aside blog on my projects: website, YouTube, ebook. It makes me nervous to launch them, because I really don’t understand how internet dynamics work, and I’m rather afraid I’m going to fall on my face. But if I do, I’ll just dust myself off and get up again; it would hardly be the first time. In any case, I’d very much appreciate your help and support. I won’t be posting on Facebook every time I put something new on the blog or channel, because my Facebook wall would end up being a long list of notifications. But please subscribe to them so you’ll receive the notifications by email. And if you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know! Thanks for taking the time to read all of this!

Selections

Alright, it looks like my blog style is going to have to switch a little bit. I’m not involved in that much at the moment, besides my independent projects, so I don’t have a bunch of activities to list off or classes to discuss (although those are going fine). Instead I guess I’ll talk more about the fewer things I am doing, starting with working out.

I’ve been putting off going to kickboxing lately, for a few reasons. First, it requires walking through the snow and sometimes rain, which is never pleasant. Second, it requires doing something I’m not terribly good at in public, which I avoid whenever possible. I know I need to push through it until I am good at it, and I will, but it makes me less dedicated than I should be. Never fear, though – I paid for these classes, and I will get my money’s worth one way or another. I did have a good session today. I get frustrated, because my muscle memory doesn’t learn nearly as fast as my academic memory, but then I get to kick stuff, and it feels better. I’m also lifting, although I didn’t realize how hard it would be to get up early without ROTC nearly every day to force me into it. I am utilizing the larger gym across the street from my dorm much more, though, which is nice. It has a lot more variety than the little gym in the basement.

I did go out a few times this week: I had ROTC Tuesday and Wednesday morning, for one. Tuesday started with PT: an ab circuit and then run/jog/sprint progressions. Freshman year I hated PT, but the more I get to know the people in the unit, and the better shape I get into, the more enjoyable it is. It ends up being just a nice workout with friends, for the most part, instead of a dreaded part of my morning, although cardio still isn’t my forte. After PT we had class, but I mostly spend class clarifying random points in the discussion, since I already know the concepts. We have class at BU now, which means I have to drive and park in the snow, but also means we have time to stop and get breakfast on the drive over. In lab on Wednesday we had a debate tournament. I’ve noticed that it’s always the freshman and sophomores who make it to the final round; the rest of us... well, I’m just going to stop there.

I’ve also been re-watching a bunch of Marvel Films and nitpicking their philosophy. It’s pretty easy with superhero movies, because people are always soliloquizing into the distance on grand topics, and the villains are always offering some sort of motivation that doesn’t make much sense. I’m okay with the villains that straight-up embrace the role: I want money (Hans Gruber) or I want power (Sauron) or I’m just plain evil (Palpatine) or I’m mad (Loki) or some combination of the above. And you have the occasional bad guy who actually seems to have a point (Magneto, Khan). But usually they have some other sort of motive that they can’t seem to figure out, that makes them the good guy. In any case, I think it’s fun. I do this a lot; I also tend to analyze song lyrics on the radio – which generally confuses people, because they weren’t listening to the radio, and then I make some out-of-the-blue sarcastic comment. But I digress.

Okay, I promise big news: we finally had Ship Selection for Surface Navy, so I know where I’ll be headed after graduation! I’ll go to a couple months of training, and then I’ll be headed to Mayport, Florida and the DDG-80: the USS Roosevelt. Ship Selection was a little strange; at the Naval Academy it’s a big ceremony, so they were trying to do somewhat the same thing for ROTC, but virtual ceremonies are always a little strange. We had the option to do Google Hangouts (audio and video) or just phone calls (audio only). All of us at the MIT unit chose phone calls. Firstly, it’s much easier to fake-scream like there are a lot of people in the room over the phone. Secondly, you don’t accidentally have conversations that ROTC Midshipmen and Instructors all over the country overhear. And thirdly, you don’t have to wear your uniform. What more could you want?

Well, let me know what you think of my new blog format; the paragraphs have certainly gotten longer, if nothing else. I went to kickboxing and got this up before nightfall – I’m going to call today a success!

It's been a little chilly around here.

 I did manage to drive this car.

 If you don't recognize this field, that's because it's not a field; it's Fresh Pond, iced over and snow-caked.

 There was a little space left for the ducks.

 Snow is pretty and romantic... ha!