Iron Night

Well, I'm not often a sucker for super hero movies, but I must say: Iron Man was pretty bad ass! It was quite the blend of humor and action, pulled off in a tongue-in-cheek fashion I should have expected given the movie's leading man (Robert Downey, Jr). Gwyneth Paltrow was an unexpected but brilliant addition to the cast, as was Jeff Bridges. To top it all...it had robots! Robots with personality! Gah...adorable. =)

While this will undoubtedly be the peak of my evening, I must exude some iron will of my own and push through to the morning with packing. It never really occurs to me how much stuff I have until I start to pile it up in categories and observe for a few minutes. On the bright side, my belongings have at least been easy to sort and organize. Finding enough containers for all of it will be the real challenge.

Though training did wrap up today, I feel like it was mostly a day without many insights. I have definitely come to enjoy the way in which I put myself out there for other people to see and interact with. I've always been the type to go with the flow, but few people seem to catch me in their wake. Perhaps someday soon. Good night to the rest of the world, good morning to me...

Rapid Change: Initial Thoughts

I was listening to Nancy Cathcart give a presentation on how community service requirements will be integrated into the first year for residential students through the LEAD program, and someone mentioned that the Peer Advisors should also be attending these activities. My initial thought was this: I don't have time for that! I never let go of that thought, but I did start to wonder how community service and game development can be brought more closely together. The idea that I came up with is something I'd like to call Rapid Change.

Over the course of the past year, having attended a number of conferences and gotten used to the quick and dirty production of games with minimal content and maximum punch, I've become a huge fan of rapid prototyping. These games do not usually have mechanics that require a gamer's mentality and strategic analysis. But they still carry important messages, and they still provide enough interactivity for the user to become engaged, if not completely immersed. What if students volunteered to take controversial or critical issues from the local, national, or global community, and presented them through rapidly developed games? If these games were hosted on a school website and were publicized on a regular basis or made readily available to students when they have a few free moments of time, imagine how much impact they could make, how much public stimulation they might provide in an effort to elevate student interest and discussion.

I'm quite fond of the idea, but I feel certain that I lack the resources, particularly time, to orchestrate it. Also, I have no idea where these games might be made available for students to access. No one's going to jump on a computer and play a game off of the school portal in their free time; they would most likely go straight to a site like Addicting Games. Perhaps we could offer some incentive within the community to play these games. People could collect "Awareness Points" and win prizes for being the most "aware" student of the month. We could even try to supply stickers or some other kind of tangible representation of the online achievements.

Just something to consider. I'd love to see it become a reality, but my obligations for this summer and next year are grossly inflated as it is.

An Off Evening Turned to Off Morning

After a rousing hour of DDR that brought my calorie-burning count up to 500 for yesterday, I sat down for a while and wrote in this space. When I stopped, my room was absolutely frigid. I decided to curl up under my blankets and read more of the book that Wes gave me for my birthday, but the toasty lull of my bed was too much; I passed out around 10:30.

Opening my eyes again after what felt like only a moment, I looked to my computer and found two conversations open. These people had only last talked to me around midnight; I figured it couldn't be much later than that. Casually glancing at my clock, I was flabbergasted. It was 3:30 in the morning. While one person was still awake to talk to me, the other had gone to bed hours ago. After 20 minutes of chatter, I shut off my lights and music and fell back into bed.

My dream time has been filled in the past couple days with incredibly mundane sequences where I'm still in Disney World. It's terribly boring and I have no idea what it means. This is my first thought of the morning, where I've woken at 7:10 instead of 6:45 and have no time for DDR because I forgot to do reading for today's training. Boo. =(

It's funny how little things can pile up and influence your outlook on the day. I know that I will most likely forget most of this in the coming hour. Even now, my stomach is starting to grumble, shifting my attention towards breakfast. Similarly, the light beating down on my window shades looks to be quite bright and warm, despite the weather forecast. Even if it's cold out there, a beautiful day will perk me right up, no question.

This isn't a very thought-provoking discussion, but it's only 7:45 in the morning.

What's in a Name?

Names seem to be an interesting topic lately. In our training today, we were asked to share the story of our names: why our parents chose them, what significance they may have. This was my little blurb:

My name is Lauren April. I suppose my mom and my dad chose to give me the middle name April because yes, I was born in April, but both of my parents were also born in April; My birthday is 20 days after my mom's and exactly 1 week after my dad's. While my sister was born at 10:10 on 12/12, my mom was 26 when I was born on the 26th; number repetition seems to be our thing, but that's a tangent. My first name doesn't seem to have any particular significance to my family. I know that I was going to be named Lanie, but because my grandparents have pronunciation issues, my parents didn't want them calling me "Rainy April." I think it would have been cute, but Lanie would have been far too cutesy a name for me. Despite the inner happiness I feel now, I've been weathered by a lot of teenage angst; as much as I would have loved to skip out on all of it, I think it's done a lot to bring me to the state I'm in today.

Last night, I also had a brief conversation with Wes about giving him a nifty Japanese name. It was a little thing, but I got into it quite a bit and stayed up until 1:30 reading common male names and sifting through the good ones. I did even more refining in the morning, leaving little time to prepare for the day. Having it on my mind, I found the training discussion amusing. As a note, here are some of the most interesting ones I came up with, accompanied by meanings:

Hideki: splendid opportunity
Hiroki: abundant joy/strength
Hotaka: step by step, derived from the name of the tallest mountain in the Japanese Alps
Kunio: countryman
Masaki: elegant tree
Masuyo: increase the world
Michio: man on the right path
Mikio: tree trunk man
Minori: beautiful harbor
Mitsuru: full, growing
Naoki: honest tree
Takumi: artisan
Tetsuya: become iron, clear evening
Tomio: treasured man
Toshio: alert, genius, valued man

Last names were a completely separate beast that I'd never thought much about before. I'd realized that surnames were most commonly comprised of two kanji, an adjective and a noun, or sometimes two nouns with one used to describe the other. Some of the cooler ones I found:

Nouns:
hama: beach
shima: island
to: gate
taki: waterfall

Adjectives:
taka: high
tomi: rich
naga: eternal
fuku: lucky

Nouns as Adjectives:
moto: origin
guchi: mouth, entry
kuma: bear
(I had to include kuma in honor of the Japanese class ^_^)

You can really make some wonderful names with these simple combinations. For example, Minori Takimoto would mean beautiful harbor at the origin of a waterfall. Pretty neat in my opinion. More food for thought. Tabete kudasai. (Eat it!)

Life and Love

I suspect this is one that people will want to skip over. It's also one of those things that I don't have the patience to bug other people about. So it's being dropped into this relatively safe space, left to float down onto the top of the pile and to be picked up by someone else whenever they so choose.

I mention love in the title, but love is a simpler thing than I think most people allow it to be. I have a twisted view of love, which to some people comes off as naive, but I don't think they see the whole. When I love someone, it is wholehearted and unfettered by anything else in my life; I love to the full capacity that I am capable of in relation to any given person at any point in time. Whether I'm in a relationship or wandering around the world alone, my affection for other human beings is unchanged. It would be naive of me to say that whoever ends up on top of my affection chart is the one that deserves my overtures and commitments.

There's a practicality to relationships that I can't escape. I have found it easy to love others more than I love the person I hold current commitments to. But that person has agreed to the relationship in a way that no one else has; I am able to be completely honest, to maintain my busy schedule and make time for interaction whenever I get the chance. I have even been able to shake the relationship down to its core, shatter its foundation and build it up anew. It takes a powerful agreement to leave that space open, to risk everything in the hope of making it better. I realize this is something that most people don't understand; if they do, they're very good at making me feel like I'm on my own here.

I've become very aware of how different my attitude towards other people is over the course of the past year. I will tell anyone anything about myself if they ask. I can love anyone for almost any reason if they request it of me. But I have a disgustingly rigid sense of morals, and once the alarm sounds, the offending individual goes into quarantine for life. Fortunately, few people have gained that kind of status in my mental prison of justice. Unfortunately, few people have asked for anything else.

On top of this, there are some ethical questions that appear to weigh more heavily in my mind than they do on average elsewhere. Can a relationship exist between professionals? More casually than that, what about a classmate that you lean on whenever possible? It's bad enough when a relationship ruins your personal life; should you give it the power to ruin your intellectual and career life as well? It was a heated topic today, and one that I remain relatively silent on. It's a case by case, in my opinion. I think I can safely say that I've only met one individual thus far that comes even close to being worth the risk. Even at that, I can see that there is no need to think of it at all. A topic better left untouched in the end, it would seem.

Starting Summer

Well...thoughts have come and gone about life, careers, the future of society, and a whole slough of other topics in the past few days. I've been so tired and partially confused that I've found no time to write. However, a day full of training and DDR has left me energized: no three hour naps today!

To sum up my experiences since I last wrote, I met a lot of amazing people and I enjoyed an array of new activities and places. It was strange to return to my room and find it half-empty, but my clutter from unpacking has already filled the void. This does not bode well for my repacking process, which ought to commence in the next few days, but I choose to gleefully ignore this fact for the time being.

I've started my Peer Advisor training, which will last until the end of the week. I was a little disheartened by the number of freshmen in the ranks; I'm not entirely sure, but I think I'm one of the only up-and-coming seniors involved in the process that hasn't been placed in a more senior position. Admittedly, leadership has never been my strong point. Being in charge of a handful of young adults scares the crap out of me. But if I could manage high schoolers for GIVIT, I should be able to take on a few slightly more mature incoming Champlainers.

It's strange to hear other people's opinions of me, and yet it seems to be coming up more and more. I hate to reference Harry Potter, as much as I love the series, but I truly feel like I'm in an HP situation; my power dwells in the faith that other people put in me. I made one mention of the fact that I was thinking about ditching the PA position, and Wes jumped in to label me as a role model. Heather, my roomie for next year in the suites (squee!) voiced her agreement from a nearby table. I literally ran into the library to talk to Sarah Cohen, the Information Literacy Librarian, and when I mentioned that I was in training, she expressed how glad she was to hear that I'd be filling that kind of role. Perhaps most importantly of all, Shelli Goldsweig, the Staff Advisor for LEAD, expressed her opinion that I would be a good mentor for others and that she really wanted me to participate. I'm not saying that I should have to hear other people sing my praises in order to believe in myself, but what good is self-esteem if other people can't see you in that light?

That was a rant that I didn't really mean to go off on, but it's been stewing in my head a little today, and comes as close to a theme for my routine of late as anything can. Basically, I've decided to give up on questioning others when they compliment me for one thing or another. It's not going to my head, but it's definitely putting a spring in my step. And with summer on the way, there's next to nothing for me to complain about!

There have been a lot of other things on my mind lately, but I'll break them into more easily digested and navigated chunks, even though I'm sitting at my computer churning out the stream of consciousness.