A Hall Stranger

I have now become a stranger in the halls that I grew to call home. I was checked out of my room number 142 in Holy Cross House tonight. I leave early tomorrow morning to go home. I guess this is it. This was my university experience. As my last post described, it has been an amazing experience and I am so very thankful for everything that's happened this year. It's helped me and I can now tell someone that I belong in this house, even if not a STU student.

It will be weird, seeing someone living in my room next year. And all of the rooms that others have moved out of. I guess that just means others that moved out and me have to come back to the house and torment the first years. :) Well, not reaaaally.

Anyway, this is short and I might write more later. But probably not. It's time for me to go to bed soon...

My Only Year At HCH

For now, I will only ever spend one year in university. That might change as I get older, but this was my only year in residence. Oh Holy Cross, you have shown me so much and I have so much thanks. I never thought my year here would be as amazing as it was. After you have lived here for a few months, there are a few things that happen to everyone else.

-You know the sound of people's footsteps in the hall and can identify them.
-You know what everyone's towels look like from the shower.
-You know whos laundry you're folding when you want to use a dryer.
-You will procrastinate. No matter how hard you try not to, procrastination will always hit you.
-The Olympics never fails to bring everyone together.
-Even if it's three in the morning and you could swear you're the last one awake in your hall, you hear the bathroom door open and know you're not alone.
-No matter what time of the night, there will always be someone that you can talk to if you really need them.
-Inside jokes lurk around every corner and they are waiting for you.
-If you have hundreds of dollars left on your meal card by the end of the year, you're someone's new best friend forever.
-If you can find a show online for someone, they will love the most you until the next person helps them out.
-There's always a tv show that someone wants to watch with you.
-If you don't have a text book for a class, someone in your hall will.
-Looking for a shirt to go out tonight? Someone in your hall has one to spare!
-You'll eventually learn the sleeping patterns of at least half the people in your hall.
-If you have a tv, everyone's in your room at some point.
-But if you have an N64, you can't get them to leave.
-There will always be more than one person in your hall that you want to steal music from.
-If you desperately need to print something off, someone in your hall will print it off for you.
-Cars? You don't really need one of those. There's two perfectly good feet and a bus pass for you to use.
-Stickertag will be the sketchiest part of the whole year.
-It will make and potentially break friendships.
-But you know who your friends are when you make an alliance and those in your hall bring you supper rather than let you run down to the caf completely exposed.
-In HCH, you will always make friends to last. Friends that are more than just school friends you see in class. Friends that you eagerly wait the week at home to be able to see them on the weekends. Friends that also get mad at you, because you aren't old enough to go to the bars yet, but they wait until your birthday.

This year has meant so much to me and has taught me so much that I feel like I will never be able to repay the Cross for all that it has done for me. I thank everyone who's helped me in one way or another and all of the friends I can't wait to see after school's over.

NEW:

Just to make this post even better, when you live in the Cross you:
-You know where everyone in your hall sleeps.
-You know what side of the room their bed is on.
-You know which desk they study on.
-You know what kind of computer they have.
-You know where they go to the bathroom.
-You know where they shower.
-You know which shower stall they prefer.
-You know what color towels they use.
-And to add to this creepiness, you know what kind of underwear that they wear...

You Mean the Time to Grow Up is Here?

It is no longer high school and things are slowly beginning to change. As in, I can tell that there is just a different feeling about life in general between high school and having since graduated. Life is no longer about going to the dance, or what drama will happen next, who will "fall in love," how cool this person is or how much you just do nothing, because that's all you really want to do.

In high school, things just seemed  to have a sense of ease about them. In a way, there was nothing to worry about. We still fully lived at home. Parents paid for food, the house, cleaning supplies, school supplies, everything in the house, sports equipment and many other things. Either your parents drove you around or you drove their car 'cause you don't have one of your own. You had rules that you had to obey while living at home, though they were more lax than what they were in previous high school years. You didn't have to pay bills, except your phone bill which you just gave the money to your parents. Essentially, everything was simple. It was easy. School. Work/Homework. Tons of time for friends. (Unless you were a crazy AP person and took every possible AP course available at KV.)

But now that we're out of high school, things seem to be a lot different. I live in residence and most of tuition and residence fees I had to pay. I had to get a student loan to pay for some of it. Sometimes I have to buy kleenex and small things that I need in my room. I buy food when I don't want to eat at the caf. Living in an apartment means that there's so many more things that you have to do. Buy groceries and other necessities. Pay for internet, phone and cable (if you have all three.) Make sure the rent gets paid on time. Clean the apartment (if you even do clean.) Get a student loan too. Make sure you have a job so you can pay for tuition and residence/an apartment. Manage to go to class, your job and get all of your work done (which is significantly more than what you did in high school for less class time.)

But those are just the physical and monetary differences. There's emotional differences too, and that's where the big difference comes in, or so I find. When someone breaks up, it is more than just a high school break up where the couple was doomed to end. There were solid emotions attached and hearts truly broken. The desperate attempt to find a job, because rent is due and you do not have the money for it. The search for really finding who you are as a human. The true realization that you are not a child anymore. Attempting to discover what in life gives you the truest passion to make you want to pursue it. The fear of failing a paper or exam, because it defines whether you graduate on time or not.

There's so many things to worry about, so many new things to discover and so many wonders to explore that it can be overwhelming. You just, don't know what to do with it some days and find yourself wanting to creep back to high school. But you pull yourself forward, because even though it's new and exciting, you know it's the right way for you to go to feel truly grown up.

I'm not a kid anymore, and it's starting to kick in.

Living On The Edge

Sitting alone on the edge of a battlefield. You're there, waiting. The fighting hasn't begun, but you can feel it. You want to battle to begin so this feeling can flee. Sitting. Waiting. Seeing the fear on the faces of those around you. Sensing what will come to pass in time after you have been through the battle.

But it's a battle that never seems to come. You sit and wait. Every day it feels like it draws closer when it doesn't budge. The angst and the torture of the wait slowly kill you on the inside.


There is nothing you can do.

No where that you can run.

The feeling haunts you deep inside.

It doesn't go away.


The longer the feeling stays, the more you begin to hate yourself. You're so tense for waiting for the battle to begin that you begin to let it out slowly. You don't realise what you are doing until it begins to really affect those around you.

They say that they understand, but you see the pain in their eyes at your actions. You feel even more dragged away from comfort as those who are close to you begin to drift away. You hate yourself for pushing them away, even if they don't realise it is you that causes them to do so.






The only way for your pain to end is for the battle to begin.

Low Expectations In A High Paced World

The world has such low expectations as a whole in this continent. And you can't argue with me there. The media tells us that our teen years are our years to have fun and relax and graduate from high school. Even senior adults tell us that, for pity's sake. "You just enjoy yourself while you're young." But what people fail to tell us is that our teen years are the years in which we are supposed to grow and learn things that we will need to know in order to live good and well adult lives.

This world has become very fast paced. Teens just expect that once they hit a certain point in their life they will suddenly gain all of the knowledge they will need to be able to live out in the real world and be adults. But that's all just a lie that society tells us. We need to learn these things. Have you ever heard the term "kidult?" This is what young adults are being called that never grow up. They do the same thing they did as teens. They party and hang out and skip from job to job and live with their parents. What kind of life does that sound like?

Really, what are the expectaion that people have for us? Don't do drugs, don't have sex, get good grades, graduate, go to university, have fun... What will that teach us for our long life ahead of us? To do exactly what I said. Don't do drugs, don't have sex, get good grades, graduate, go to university, have fun...

Personally, what fun is there in partying and hanging out for the rest of your life? You'll never know what you could have become, who's life you could have changed, learn about the world around you, inspire someone to attain great heights, the possibilities for what life have to offer are endless. You just have to be able to want to fight for them. But the world thinks of us as lazy teens that only think of ourselves. It's a lie that has been decked up really pretty.

Alot of teens that I go to school with are lazy and slack in class. There's no real expectation in the classes. Teachers hardly expect people to do anything. They don't push their class and then wonder why the class average is so low. Teens aren't pushed to do their best; they do what they can to get by. I took two classes second semester last year that I failed to learn a single thing. In one class I got a 92% and the other was an 86% as final marks. I hardly did anything. I never studied. I talked with my friends or listened to music for most of the classes. There was also a lot of movies in those classes. And no one in my class really cared to do their best. But is our best, really our best? Or is it "just enough" to get an A. Yes, it's an A, but in most cases it's not good quality and it's n-o-t g-o-o-d e-n-o-u-g-h to be the best.

But do some teachers see that? No, they will do what they can to get students to pass so they can graduate, instead of everything being the student's ability and desire to do well. Why? Why do teachers do that to us? It really hurts us as people in so many ways.

At home, what do you do? Make your bed, walk the dog, take out the trash? Something simple along those lines? Well, why don't you cut the grass, rake the lawn, cook supper, dust, vaccum, mop, do the dishes, clean your clean, clean the toilets? Why don't you have a list of about 20 things to do after school? Alot of people probably don't even know how to do half of those things poperly. Which is terribly sad.

In your community, what do you do? Go to the movies, the park, the mall? How does that help you in any way? I would say atleast 90% of teens do NOT do any volunteer work. It's [vital as I believe to grow and learn] a very important part of life. Helping others, learning whilst helping and showing the world that "Yes, I can do something worthwhile!"

We're in our teen years. We have the time, the ambition, and the ability to do so many things that we don't. These are the times in which things are supposed to happen. This is the time where we're supposed to grow into our maturity. It doesn't just snap into us as MANY people belive. I used to be one of them. We need to prove the what society has become wrong. We are more than what they think we are.

Who's in?

Getting Out, Growing Older, And Still A Little Kid

As for most who read my blogs, university is dawning. It's here, coming soon, you're moving out and moving in, it's in a year, time to start saving, grades are freaking you out, awaiting on a letter. Jeez...that's a L-O-T to think about. It's also very stressful. But it can also be so very exciting.

Come on, I mean, for people like me [whom are going away for university or atleast are planning on it] you're moving away from home and living with friends. There's so much freedom! No curfews, no one telling you to vaccum the floor every week, or do the dishes [yet I know I'll be the one enforcing cleaning the place] what's not to like about that. Well, freedom in the sense that you can do free things. There's buying the groceries and there's paying rent...and internet...and a cell phone....and work...and studying........and well....little personal time.

This is just kinda me going on a bit, but do you think that kids in "university" [big 'ole scary word for us high schoolers] grow up to have fun and live differently? As in, going to parties and working and hanging at bars with friends and going to school because they have to or they'll be kicked out. Do they ever spend time doing things they did when in high school, when they really were free? Randomly calling up a friend because they're bored and want to hang out. Grabbing some ice cream down after biking with one friend to see another. Going to the park late at night. Walking along the beach. Random bonfires at the beach. Staring at the night sky. Walk or bike instead of drive. Do they ever just...be a kid. Since really, that's what teens are. Kids, with a few responsibilities. Does going to university or moving out mean you HAVE to grow up? I mean, I love that I'll be going to school with people that kinda want to be there. But, I'm scared that I'm going to grow up so much that I'll forget what it really means for me to have fun and enjoy what I have. Doing things I do now. Especially biking. I love biking [I just don't do enough of it =P]

Anyone else scared like me?