Wednesday, December 26, 2012

When I Grow Up

I want to be a doctor when I grow up.

I didn’t used to think I wanted to be a doctor. I thought the opposite. It was all gore and obsession with success and constant stress. It never even crossed my mind, except on its way out. I wanted to do biological research because I did well on tests and thought I could be good at it.

Then I decided that I wanted my life to be about helping people in meaningful ways, spiritually and otherwise. And I didn’t want a degree and career track that weren’t related to this. Of course biological researchers can help people too, but if I was going to put in all the years of school I wanted them to play into my future aspirations more than just tangentially.

I decided that I wanted to live overseas, but I’m holding that with an open hand. Nonetheless, if that was in the plans then suddenly a new track made sense: Medical missions.

All of a sudden it went from “Oh, I’m one of the few biology majors not thinking about med school” to “Well, I’m keeping that open as an option but not stressing about it” to “Heck, I might as well take the MCAT just to see how it goes” to purchasing an 1100 page MCAT study guide and 400 flash cards and starting studying three months in advance.

The more I sit down and think about who I want to be in 15 years, the more I realize that I want to be involved in medicine. But it’s not that clean cut. There are a ton of factors besides ignorance that made me hesitate for so long and that still make me uneasy. Here are the big ones, not in order of importance:

1) The fight for medical school admission – the stress and competition and résumé-building and worry over GPA and quality of extracurriculars and MCAT scores.

2) The torture of medical school – long hours studying, hard tests, the persistent competition, lacking time to pursue other areas of life like hobbies or wife-getting.

3) The length of medical school – four years of school and three years of residency, piling up debt and fatigue the whole way. I probably wouldn’t be finished and debt-free until I was at least 30.

4) The patient interactions – having to listen to a pestering, ignorant patient begging for unnecessary attention when I’m at the end of a ten hour shift. I don’t know if I enjoy people enough to treat patients well when they don’t deserve to be treated well.

5) The gore – even though I definitely wouldn’t become an emergency room surgeon, there would be times when I would be looking at mutilated insides. I haven’t been exposed to much gore and while I don’t get nauseous from the sight/thought of gore, I don’t know if I have a strong enough constitution to deal with a ruined, dying person and pieces in the wrong places.

6) The nakedness – routinely seeing and touching naked people. I can’t begin to get comfortable with the idea of this. And while it sounds trite, this is a nagging fear.

And the weight of all of these factors makes me wonder if I wouldn’t be better suited doing research or construction and helping people in my small way. Maybe medicine is meant for people with more resolve and vigor.

But a few days ago I got to go to the hospital where my aunt works and I got to see what primary care looks like from the side of the medical professionals for the first time. There wasn’t any flashy gore or nudity to test my stomach, but it was a chance to see what being in medicine is about. And I loved it.

I won’t share any details because I’m scared of HIPAA and I don’t know its boundaries, but I loved the whole experience. I loved trying to understand what was wrong with hurting people and finding out how to fix their problems. I loved the phone calls and the teamwork and informed opinions working together. I loved hearing that contrary to what I read, no one was making decisions based on money. I loved medicine.

I don’t know if that emotion is realistic, or enough to surmount six huge arguments against med school. But something vigorous inside of me wants to help people how doctors help people. I want to help poor people and dying people and sick children in third world countries. I want to fix broken bodies and give hope.

This is so dramatic.

But on some level, I think dreams should be.


Anyway.
I want to be a doctor when I grow up.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Why I Hate Facebook Likes

Things have gotten out of control with Facebook Likes lately.
 
Back in the day, Likes were a way to let someone know you read and appreciated their post or thought their picture was funny without having to write out a comment which would notify all other commenters and get the poster excited only to find that your comment was “LOL”. Brilliant.
 

 
It was a way to say “hey this was funny or cool or remarkable and I connected with it in some way.” And most importantly, it wasn’t that common. Posts would circulate that only got like 2 Likes but they were still pretty good posts. And people would post profile pictures that didn’t get any Likes at all. Funny, creative profile pictures, but no Likes. Likes were exciting. Likes were flirty.
 
If you don’t believe me, go look through any of your friends’ profile pictures and get back into 2011 or earlier. This will work unless you picked a really popular friend. Pick like an average friend. Even remarkable pictures have like two or three Likes. What the heck. Were we all just unlovable?
 
Now flash back to the end of 2012. Scroll through your newsfeed. If you find a post with no Likes, the poster is probably either old or making an inside joke that hasn’t been noticed by the inner circle yet.
 
 
Or the post is 6 seconds old. Boom. Now it’s got a Like.
 
Everyone gets Likes. Even the things that don’t really deserve Likes get Likes. And this inflation has carried right on over so that an average post with a bit of thought had better clear 8 Likes. And if you posted a Bible verse and got less than 10 Likes, you must have accidentally mis-transcribed some blasphemy.
 
 
And on the upper end, remarkable posts and pictures will clear 40 or 50 on a regular basis. 50 Likes. That’s unheard of. And the really amazing posts and pictures can shoot up past 100 Likes. We’ve all seen it. Ridiculous. That’s like a standing ovation in a crowded room full of everyone you like.
 
Okay and here’s the thing. This Like inflation is just a fact. It just happens. There were probably two main causes:
1) People learned that if you Like other things, people will Like your things.
2) It became friendly and not weird to Like posts by people you don’t know that well. Instant harvesting territory expansion.
 
But while this inflation is just a fact, the unfortunate problem is that humans love statistics and numbers. News, Sports, Shopping, Weather, Academics. Numbers are easy to obtain and use.
 
And here’s the bottom line: Numbers are easy to compare.
 
And that’s where friendly back-scratching Likes turn into monsters. Even people who aren’t that competitive get to see their Likes and everyone else’s Likes and they notice these things. Everyone notices Likes. They get an encouraging red number asserting their value on the top bar of their screen.
 
 
And no matter how quietly it comes in, everyone hears that little voice that goes, “Man, everyone liked that picture of yours.” Or, “Geez. That guy has way more popular statuses than you.”
 
And maybe for some people it doesn’t matter that much. They shrug off the comparison. But for competitive people like me, it can be immobilizing. Why didn’t people like that comment? That was funny.
 
I don’t think there will be a critical point where we get bored of Likes and they tail off. We might plateau, but it’s going to be at more Likes/post than 0.7.
 
And I think that’s what really gets me -- that before an average status and a dumb status both got between 0 and 3 Likes. But now the average one gets 13 and the dumb one gets 2. You know when your joke wasn’t funny.
 
I don’t want that information. But I think I just need a thicker skin.
 
 
**
 
 
I have more to say because I’m traveling and when I travel I feel vulnerable and dramatic and profound. But the other things I want to say are all about me and sometimes you just want to read a blog post about Facebook Likes. If this is you, stop here. Or three sentences ago.
 
I’m on the Megabus and it’s my first time. I’m on the top level in the front row which means that I can pretend that I’m driving and also if I stretch my arms up it feels like I can just about touch overpasses, a thrill I should exhaust now because I’m headed to the land of rural flatness, Nebraska.
 
It’s hard to say good-bye properly and it’s hard to realize how much I’ll miss people even just for two and a half weeks while we’re still together. Then I get on the Metra and listen to The City Harmonic and realize that I like my friends a lot while the strings sound more profound than they ever do on Spotify in my room when I’m procrastinating writing a paper.
 
I want to write about a bunch of my friends’ likable characteristics that I’ve never mentioned to them but I feel like I would miss more than I remember.
 
I want to write about girls and flirting and how sometimes I think I just live for positive attention and how I’m tired of acting how I would hate for other people to act.. but I don’t want to be that vulnerable.
 
I want to write about how much I want to be disciplined but how by the end of every quarter I always end up sleeping in too late and eating less healthy and wasting time on the internet but I’m in too positive of a mood right now to dredge that cycle up. I might come back to that.
 
This last quarter was hands down the best quarter of college I’ve had to date. I feel like I came into college with big expectations that were decidedly not met right at first and even as I settled more into place I was self-conscious and stressed and struggling to find my groove. By spring quarter of last year I feel like I broke even and was finally living the socially connected college life I had expected. This year blew those expectations out of the water.
 
I have more friends now than I’ve ever had in my life. Incredible, loving, hilarious people. I don’t know what to do with this wealth.
 
I started taking pictures this quarter. I told myself I would take 2 a day, even if that meant that I forgot all day and ended up taking 2 pictures of Danny sleeping before going to bed. It worked great. I took over a thousand pictures this quarter, almost 800 of which made it onto Facebook. That’s over 250 pics a month. That’s information density.
 
I took these pictures so I could remember things (you might recall my nostalgic post on memories) and I think it’s worked great. I’m going to remember this quarter better than any other period of my life, as long as Facebook doesn’t crash and my harddrive doesn’t get wiped.
 
And it’s become sort of routine now. At first people got camera shy when I would pop out the camera at dinners but now all I have to do is shout “Mems!” and the group braces themselves for hideous candids to be posted later that night. And since I tote my rugged, battered Sony point-n-shoot in my pocket everywhere I go, I’ve gotten used to popping it out at almost every social event.
 
I don’t remember to take 2 pictures every day, or at every event. Lately I’ve settled into a less frequent routine that probably won’t continue to yield 250 pictures a month, but it’s consistent. Definitely the most successful habit I’ve developed this quarter.
 
That’s enough about mems.
 
I’ve been less stressed this quarter. Sorry that I’m using the word “I” a lot in this post. Usually I try to tell stories, but this is my post-quarter, post-blog-post-drought processing.
 
I used to worry a lot about tests and assignments and making sure I had things done on time. I have a little less work now because my classes are getting harder but giving less homework. But mostly I’ve learned to work on this week’s assignments without worrying about the paper in three weeks. It used to hang over me like a palpable cloud. It’s not as strong anymore. I don’t know how this came about.
 
This mindset broke down a bit over finals week. I got pretty stressed about my two finals, which I didn’t study enough for. But I never study enough for tests. In retrospect I don’t know why I was so stressed. Note to future Nolan: cool your jets during finals.
 
In general, stress has been way lower than ever before and I don’t know why but I hope it stays.
 
That’s enough about stress.
 
This quarter has been pretty spiritually dry. And it’s weird because that’s in the midst of this being the most fun and least stressful and the most generally successful quarter I’ve had. Does that suggest that spiritual discipline and fun are mutually exclusive? I hope not.
 
I haven’t read my Bible much. I don’t have time for it, between homework and music and uploading pictures to Facebook. I haven’t spent much quality time with God.
 
I don’t expect every episode of my life to be spiritually exceptional. But this quarter could have been a lot better and it’s definitely my fault. I get hung up on Jesus saying things like, “Live righteously if you want to enter the Kingdom.” And then I let my confusion be an excuse to avoid using time on God that I could be using to mix beats or stalk friends on Facebook.
 
I don’t want that to be my life, but I don’t know what my motivations are for desiring change. Do I want to be spiritually better so that I can live consistently with my beliefs or so that I can tell people I am spiritually better?
 
Why do I do the things I do? Or want the things I want?
 
That’s profound.
 
I want to know God better, but my priorities are in the way.
 
I’ll end on that note.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Memories are Stupid

It's been a while since the last post! First things first --


Cole had a tablet lying around and during my transition between Nebraska and Evanston, I borrowed it. This has two advantages over buying a new pen. First, it's borrowing and not buying, so for the moment it's free. Second, my computer's in its screen-flickering death throes and its successor won't be a touch screen so a separate tablet makes life a lot easier.

I'm in Wheaton right now, getting ready to go back to school tomorrow. Tomorrow! It's hard to believe. Mid-September sounded distant a month ago, but I guess it's here.

The last three weeks I was in Nebraska, doing construction work and trying to see as much family as possible in a brief time. I told myself I would work on recording songs and writing some fiction during my evening downtime but didn't do nearly as much as I wanted to. What's new.

After three weeks, though, I walked away more convinced than ever that if I don't wind up particularly equipped or passionate for ministry in any specific locale, I'm going to live in Nebraska.

I love the openness. I love looking in every direction and seeing horizon, speckled with the odd farmhouse or short treeline -- windbreaks. It's people existing in the middle of an unending plain. Or plane. The sky changes color at the horizon. You don't see it when buildings are in the way, but it's lighter and yellow at the bottom.

And as much as I instinctively feel that buildings obscuring 10% of a sunset should diminish its awe by 10%, that isn't the case. An open sunset is matchless. Sunsets or sunrises over the ocean are alright, but it's about drinking in fresh air, seeing sky meet land on every side and watching the texture of the endless cornfields blend together while the light fades.

Basically.

I love dirt roads, when it's rained and the tires slowly accelerate you beyond safety and the ruts in the road throw the car around but if you don't panic and oversteer, the ruts hold you on the road too. I love picking a dirt road and following it past civilization while night sets.

I love the stars beyond light pollution, when you have to take deep breaths because that's infinity and you can see the clouds of the Milky Way all in a line. And it's cold because nothing blocks the wind and there've been bobcat sightings but you still sit on top of the car and try to find constellations. The stars are so bright.

I would live in Nebraska. I miss the land and I miss the relatives there and I miss leaving the car unlocked parked on Main Street because no one steals anything.

Anyway, enough about Nebraska. This post is about memories.

I drove on a road south of town two weeks ago. The interstate is north of town so there's never any reason to go south unless you're going to the town 25 miles in that direction. I was, to visit some friends. And the summer before I had driven on that same road for the same purpose -- and during the year in between I had never touched that road because the turn to my grandparents' house comes just before it.

As soon as I started driving down that road, all the memories from that car ride last year swam back -- the dense fog, so that the lights from cars in the other direction lit up the air like daylight. My stop next to the irrigation company's building to sit in silence and try to feel God. It was as clear as if it had just happened a week ago.

That was the first time I experienced such a clear memory from a location, but I get glimpses like that pretty often from songs.

Me and Cole listened to Live Your Life by T.I. dozens of times on the last family vacation before he went to college and it still recalls snorkeling in bright blue water on perfect beaches.

On our way to church, our family would listen to Casting Crowns and The Altar and the Door puts me back in the light blue Sports Rider, driving past Carrefour week after week.

Anything by the O.C. Supertones reminds me of living in Dallas back in 2002 and playing street hockey on the neighbor kids' driveway.

And there's plenty of others. The new song The Proof of Your Love by for King & Country I can already tell is pretty tied to these three weeks in Nebraska because there was nothing else on the Christian radio stations.

But here's the part where things suck, and the reason memories are stupid. Every time I listen to one of these memory-bound songs and relive those experiences, the connection gets a bit weaker. And the song starts to get tied to the point in my life when I'm listening to the song, instead of the past memory it was associated with.

So now The Altar and the Door is as much about learning guitar as it is about driving to church, and Live Your Life is about sitting on my bed with headphones in.


They don't recall the experiences as vividly -- and sometimes, if I'm not paying attention, they don't bring back memories at all.

And that sucks because my memory is awful and having these songs was a neat trick to circumvent my inability to retain memories by power of will. Every time I enjoy a memory, it weakens it. That's stupid.

I started a word document a few months ago where I tried to write down all the memories I could remember. The deeper I tried to remember, the deeper the memories went. I filled four pages with a smattering from a couple very specific points in my life. I think it would take years to write down enough memories to feel even partly satisfied.

And I've tried taking pictures, but I'm not disciplined enough so what I wind up with is a couple random and unexciting pictures from big events. But I want to remember the little events too.

As I forget more and more (off the top, I can't remember more than a few main events even from two years ago, and it gets egregious past that), I feel like I'm losing part of what's made me me. I guess on some level I have to trust that my awareness of my development isn't integral for my development.

Anyway, that's why memories are stupid. Because they're hard to remember.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

What Just Happened?

Except in rare, pensive moments, I can't believe Summer Project's over. The project's participants are scattered across America (mostly in California and the Midwest). I'm in Illinois, at Danny's house in Hinsdale.

We're not living in a ramshackle, jam-packed house with a hundred college students anymore. We're not spending our evenings on a crowded boardwalk trying to get bratty high school kids to talk about Jesus with us. I'm not working at Rite Aid (ever again).

Sometimes I feel like I get to my emotions late. I didn't cry when everyone left, in a series of scattered waves that got easier each time. It didn't seem real.

I mean, it seemed real that they were leaving. Cars kept driving off and friends kept crying for friends. But somehow the whole summer didn't seem real. I had formed some deep bonds with people, but I almost couldn't admit that to myself. It happened too fast -- as a friend put it, "You know peoples' deepest sin struggles but not their favorite color."

And I had learned so much about God and life and myself, but part of me wanted to say, "You just had a weird experience. Let's be real, you're the same person you were on June fifth, clambering into that silver Cavalier between stacks of suitcases."

Everyone stood on the sidewalk of the Ambassador's Inn bawling their eyes out at the loss of something indefinable that an intentional summer with a hundred intentional people had created, but I couldn't admit that we had ever had that in the first place.

It's only later, in little nuggets, that I get to see that indefinable something that I had been too busy experiencing to notice. Like telling home friends about project friends -- they never quite get it, but I wish I could pull them in and have them listen to Armani's laugh or see Peter in a rambling mood. If only they could have been there when we turned off all the lights and pretended to be zombies for hours on end.

And it's weird because the things I miss most aren't the things I expected to miss. And the people I miss most aren't the people I expected to miss. And I feel like even if I had back the people whose company I miss, it still wouldn't be the same indefinable project something. I don't just miss their selves -- I miss the way they told jokes in a group or sarcastically bantered with someone else, or the way their voice rose when they shared a story in front of the whole project after a night of outreach.

The more I realize how impossible it is to fully capture the essence of what project was, the more I feel an empty longing.

But at the same time, I wouldn't go back. Project was great and I learned a lot and spent tons of quality time with great people, but it was as stressful as it was fulfilling. Since I had so much work, I felt a constant pressure to use the free time I had well -- being intentional with relationships, evangelizing, having quiet times. And usually I felt like I wasn't efficient enough with my time and didn't achieve quite as much as I should have.

And it was also too surreal. Everyone was so interested in everyone else and so jazzed up about Jesus and just wanted to talk about Jesus-y things and prove that they cared about evangelism and get more into Christianity and read all those books and listen to all those sermons and things. It was crazy Christian.

The real world isn't like that and, more importantly, those same people in the real world aren't like that. They don't confess their sin so quickly at home, or build into other guys so much, or fight their pride so hard. It's sweet that that happened on project, but I'm ready to return to the real world and learn how to be a self-feeder when I'm not surrounded by guys obsessed with Jesus.

Project was awesome, but I can't wait to be back at Northwestern.

**

It's hard to think of all I learned when I reflect on project. I feel like I was a youth before project and now I'm an adolescent, but the specific lessons are hard to put a finger on. Here are, to my best recollection, my takeaways:

1) I suck in a lot of ways. I have crappy motivations for even the good stuff I do. I'm judgmental and mean and sarcastic. Even after a summer of growing, I couldn't even start to make a list of all the ways I come up short. I'm arrogant and usually think I'm right and I have a tough time thinking well of other people or being encouraging. If there's one thing I want to remember four months from now, it's how crappy I am.

2) Jesus died for my sarcastic insults and judgmentalism. God doesn't see me as an egocentric jerk, most of whose nice actions are motivated by self-interest. He sees me as perfect and humble and loving and kind. That's ridiculous.

3) Evangelism is as simple as it is necessary. All it takes is stomaching the awkwardness of the initial encounter and then being interested in what the person has to say. When I care more about Doing Evangelism than listening to the person, it gets weird. Evangelism isn't as hard as I make it out to be in my mind.

4) The majority of my sarcasm is unacceptable. I think it's all just jokes and laughs, but a lot of times it hurts more than I imagine.

5) I'm not a very encouraging person, but being intentional about noticing things to encourage in other people deepens relationships in a way that inside jokes and playful taunting never will. My lack of encouragement is not okay.

6) The quicker I confess my sin, the better I feel. And confession to Danny and God doesn't always count. If I'm harboring resentment toward someone, I need to confess it to that person. As much as that sucks.

7) I need alone time and I need time with God. If I short myself on the first, I get moody and irrational and I have trouble knowing what I'm thinking. If I short myself on the second, my life gets off track and it's difficult to remember my life goals -- I end up doing whatever feels best. But one commodity I need less than I thought is sleep. Turns out I can function alright for an extended time on six or fewer hours a night.

8) I could never work as a cashier for any length of time.

**

That was a life-changing summer. Definitely a one-of-a-kind experience. Thanks for your support, whether that was money or prayer or encouragement.

I'm excited for the year ahead.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

New York City and Winding Down

Yesterday we went to New York City. It was a pretty hot and muggy day but worth it because it was the first time for a bunch of us. We took a ferry over from Staten Island to gaze at the Statue of Liberty and the skyline but there was a lot of fog and the statue was also much smaller than anticipated.

If you haven't seen it before or interacted with its reality, the statue is much less impressive than you think it is if you're the same person as me. It's not the size of a skyscraper. It's not that well proportioned. 70% of the statue is its base and the statue starts large and ends in a tiny head that doesn't look that intimidating.

I know the French spent a long time on it, but I just think they could have done better if they'd drawn up a sketch first or spent more time planning.

Anyway. After that anticlimactic intro, we hit up all the big scenes -- the Twin Towers Memorial, the Empire State Building, the New York Public Library, Grand Central Terminal (not Station, don't you dare), the Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Central Park, Chinatown, Times Square.

It was a blast.

By three in the afternoon we were ready to call it quits but we chugged some iced tea, rested in the toy store that the one in Home Alone 2 was based on, and pressed through until the 10:30 ferry granted our aching feet a reprieve.

All this to say, we had a pretty good trip.

And my boss has all but guaranteed that I will be putting in 40 hours for both of the next two weeks, right up until I leave. And given scheduling history, I'll probably be working on my birthday. And my day off this next week is going to be a cleaning day.

All this to say, New York City was the last little hurrah of my Ocean City experience.

And also to say that I'm still not over the fact that people are finishing their jobs now and I still have to work for two more weeks and they're going to be having fun times and every day all I can think about at work is, "Oh great, a bunch of hours of boredom and then tomorrow there's going to be more boredom." And there appears to be no chance for ministry or entertainment at work so I become bitter and resentful by like 8:30 AM.

All this to say, I've identified another heart issue to work on.

In other news, I'm also starting to gear up for not being at Ocean City anymore in a couple weeks and the weeks right after project seem incredibly scary because I know that when I come off of the high of being in such tight and constant community, I'm going to feel dead and apathetic and I'm going to waste the time that I could spend reading all those good Christian books that I'm not reading now.

But then the weeks after that when we hit campus again and can dig back into the community of friends that we've already gone deep with and can start doing ministry with the incoming freshmen seem like awesome weeks and so I would go so far as to say my feelings about the future are ambivalent.

That's not correct grammar.

I would go so far as to say I'm ambivalent about the future.

Good night.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Useless On My Terms

Recently I've been a bit overwhelmed and a bit frustrated and a bit relieved.

Overwhelmed because I feel like I've finally peaked in the amount of busyness (to be distinguished from business) my life can take. Tonight was literally the first time I've been able to check email and Facebook since Monday afternoon. That's 3 days ago, in case you are reading this late.

And that's not because of media fasts or smart decisions. The internet dies at 11, which contributes to my deprivation, but mostly this interim was a result of constant activity from work at 8 AM until meetings and commitments end and I go to sleep -- still usually too late to get a full night's sleep.

This week is an exception because I'm on dinner clean-up duty and I had to switch work shifts with a coworker, eating away at the brief snippets of time the evening usually affords. But clean-up duty aside, I feel buried in scheduled activity.

And what it makes it worse is that I'm nearly incapable of assessing my status in life without comparison, and all around me are people without 40 hour/week jobs who have multiple days off every week (technically I do too, with Sunday and another day but Sunday is so scheduled it might as well be written off). And I can't help but feel jealous and slighted when they talk about long times spent in the Word or hanging out on the beach or reading solid Christian books or visiting New York and Philly or just hanging out and bonding with project peeps.

Part of me feels like I'm missing out on what project's supposed to be about. But when I take a step back and think about things (like now), I'm missing out on a lot of fun stuff but besides the Bible and Christian literature, I'm nabbing most of project's spiritual elements so I don't have that much to complain about.

I just feel better when I complain. It's like scratching an itch.

Speaking of which, one of the chief remaining causes of my frustration is a continued bout with poison ivy and ringworm. Both of these are little teases. The poison ivy seemed to be clearing up and the itching was mostly done about four days ago, but then a new wave of bumps popped up all across my feet and the itching began anew. There're actually some neat lines of bumps packed so close that they look like stretches of raised skin, where you can tell that plant leaves ran across the skin. By neat, I mean incredibly itchy and resilient.

And once I got antifungal cream on it regularly, the ringworm seemed to be dying as well. The swelling and reddening faded and the bumps disappeared. Then a ring of bumps popped up around the perimeter of the original site. The internet said four weeks, but I was definitely hoping it'd die faster.

Anyway, as frustrating as that's been, that's just the icing on the cake. The gooey, fattening interior is about my relationship with God, which has been as unsatisfying here as it might have been at home, just without isolation to allow apathy.

I can't help but try to prove myself to God and people through how well I can stay spiritually disciplined, and I have so many twisted motives behind everything I do that I only get to see piece by piece as the Holy Spirit digs into my psyche.

I feel spent and empty and I want an intimacy and reality to my faith that I don't know if I've ever experienced or if it's even realistic to expect. And then I'm quick to turn around and say, "Well everyone else clearly has this thing and somehow they get what the Christian life is all about and experience God in this way that I can't."

And lately the thing I've been realizing (slowly and in a not-fully-internalized way) is that it doesn't matter how I perceive God or if I'm frustrated by my relationship with him or if I'm doing all the right Christian things. Because at the end of the day, I'm saved and Christ paid the debt for the sins I'm doing right now and I'm not responsible for working out all the pieces of my sanctification.

And that's so satisfying and relieving. As important as any of that other stuff is, it's all totally secondary to salvation. Sanctification is great. Whatever. I'm saved.

I forget the Gospel so easily.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

All These Firsts

Recently I’ve had a slew of firsts. And they’ve all been bad.

Two weeks ago, I got pulled over for the first time while I was the one driving. And I was doing 61 in a 40. And I got my first ticket. But I have yet to get a speeding ticket because what I wound up with instead was an “air freshener ticket.” That was confusing because I hadn’t heard of that rule before, but it was $54 instead of $200 and the insurance company won’t hear about it so I guess that’s pretty nice.

I looked it up later and the infraction was technically a “Windshield Obstruction” but I’ll forgive the cop for his error because he saved me a lot of money and also responded well when I started throwing papers at him from the glove compartment, sobbing, “I don’t know what I’m doing, this has never happened before!”

Also, I got poison ivy for the first time. Last Tuesday, I caught a glimpse of the sunset between some buildings during date night with Jesus and resolved to get an unobstructed view before the scene ended, so I raced South down the island in my car and wound up hiking through some brush before ending up on a beach next to a huge, open field.

The sky was lit up in every direction and it was magnificent and seemed totally worth the work to get a good vantage point until about four nights later when my feet broke out with a smattering of incredibly itchy bumps that leaked gobs of clear pus when popped. Never had that experience before.

Since then, the bumps have spread to places on my thighs and arms and I caved and bought some ivy spray but they still won’t go away. Plants suck.

In that vein, I also got ringworm for the first time – at least the first time that I remember. Perhaps I was a fungus-ridden little child, but it seems like a first to me.

A staff member’s kids wound up with ringworm a couple weeks ago and he warned us to avoid hanging out with moldy towels to avoid a similar predicament. Once the staff left, the alarm faded. But a bump on my hand that I attributed to poison ivy formed a ring of blisters yesterday, confirming that our fungal friend is still a member of project.

Today another ring crystallized from the mess of poison ivy all over my ankles and I’m now on the alert and smattering my limbs in antifungal cream in between dousings of ivy spray.

Fun times on summer project!

On a more spiritual note, there have been some other firsts and I’m going to rescind my initial statement that all of the recent firsts have been bad.

On Monday night, I was discipled by someone my age for the first time. His name’s Jake and he’s from UCLA and let me explain. The staff that were running project left last Thursday, turning the reins over to the students (we were all given roles to keep things functioning, like I mentioned before). A lot of roles were practical, like running finances or planning the weekly meeting or keeping the house intact (my role) – and then there’s also Action Group leaders who work on Bible studies and disciple other students which is sort of a weird dynamic, let me tell you, but also really neat.

I feel a bit naked without a wise, experienced staff member at my beck and call to give me advice on a situation or call me out on sin in my life, but it’s been humbling to see what a fellow student has to offer, which is a lot more than I expected.

And it’s also been neat to just talk about sin in my life with other students – or things that I’m struggling with in my relationship with God, like a consistent drive to prove my worth to God and other Christians by my own effort – and to see how much experience they have dealing with similar things and the great advice they have even though they haven’t been formally trained or whatever. It’s a good reminder that growth happens even absent of older, more mature Christians intentionally pouring into me.

So I guess it’s the first time that I’ve been on Summer Project in Ocean City without staff around and have seen growth in my life nonetheless.

And this is the first time that I’ve written a blog post in a Wendy’s in Ocean City, New Jersey.

And that was the first time I used the word ‘Wendy’s’ in a blog post.

I’ll stop there.

God’s good and I forget about him a lot in the midst of trying to be spiritually disciplined and I have a lot of things to learn, but I think I’m in the right place to learn them.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

How It's Going

I definitely thought I would be updating more than this. I knew Ocean City would be busy, but I didn't think it would be this crazy. Also, I didn't think I had no self-control.

To make up for this, here's an update about everything!

Days in Ocean City are awfully full. Time has flown by. It's weird because at the end of every week it's like "What. We just started this week." But then I think back to when we first came to OC less than a month ago and that feels like half a year ago.

Days at work are the opposite. Time drags by all day while I try to find ways to entertain myself. Then at the end of the day it's like "Well, literally nothing happened all day. These last eight hours might as well have not existed."

Anyway. So things are busy. I have work five days a week, and I'm proud to say that I'm still very much a robot. Recently I've started to take a little more control of my work place. I've learned that time passes slower when I stand behind the register looking at the clock every few minutes, so I've been making an effort to get on the floor, especially to straighten my sunscreens. Time flies when I straighten those sunscreens.

Also, me and my coworker Hannah have started a game where we mispronounce words when we talk to customers to see how they respond. We have pretty consistent mantras for every customer, so we practice saying those phrases wrong and then we can pull it off without snickering. "Do you want the rissit in the bayg, ma'am?" "Do you want some maytches?" "Do you have a Roit Aid cod?"

To be honest, most people aren't phased by our tricks. But every now and then someone's like, "Hmm? What? Maytches?"

And then I'm like, "Yeah. Some maytches for your cigarettes."

And then they just stare. And then they're like, "Oh! Matches! Oh, no, I'm fine."

And then me and Hannah smirk ridiculously until the customer leaves and we start laughing.

Anyway, so that passes the time alright and even when time's dragging it's still a great job because it's bringing home the bankroll and also it's in the air conditioning and these have been some hot days for people who have jobs outdoors or in places with no A/C. The only downside is that I work 40 hours a week, and project has been very good about filling in the rest of those hours.

Most days go like this: Wake up way too early, roll around on the bed for 15 minutes until it's time to rush to get to work on time, get to work at 7 or 8, work until around 4, take a nap until dinner at 5, eat and fellowship, have a project activity, get back to the Inn around 9:30, play games and have significant conversations until late at night. Then there's an option because most people go to bed but a small group stays up to have deep talks and it's either bedtime around midnight or a series of bad decisions and bedtime in the wee hours of the morning. I've picked the latter almost every time.

But despite running on almost no sleep and feeling strung out and constantly busy and craving alone time, project has been awesome.

I've learned a lot.

I've learned that the Holy Spirit should be a constant part of life and that it's also the engine behind any real change. I've learned that we should be confessing sin whenever we see it. I've learned what it looks like for a community to push each other toward improvement in dealing with sin.

What sucks is that I've also learned that despite how mature I see myself and despite how much growth I've seen recently and how proactive I've been in confessing sin -- and how together I like to think I am -- I really suck.

I lie a lot to present a better image of myself -- little subtle lies that cover up me being an idiot. I have loud, strong opinions about things I'm wrong about, and things that don't matter. I'm arrogant. I look down on most people I know in one area or another. Actually, I would say I probably consider myself superior to every single person I know in at least one area, whatever that might be. I judge people a lot and most of the time I'm wrong and other people are a lot smarter and a lot more sincere and a lot better communicators than I am, even though those are areas I pride myself in.

And that's just a sip from the basin of sin in my life. And that apparent basin is just the sin that I can see and there's a lot of uglier stuff in there that I'm not even aware of.

And it's not easy because as much as I can sit here and write this and pray about it sometimes, someone will say something and I'll snap right back into thinking, "Oh wow, you're super Jesus-y when people can see you, aren't you?"

And this next week the staff are leaving project and the students are going to be in charge, which means we're going to be assigned roles to run the remaining five weeks of project. And some people are going to be leaders and some people are going to have cool, sweet jobs and some people will have quiet background job that don't get noticed and that seem to indicate that the staff don't think they deserve leadership.

And I know that regardless of how things shake out, I'm going to feel shafted and I'm going to feel jealous of people that I don't think deserve leadership -- and I can already taste that bitterness on the back of my tongue. It's that funny place where I can see the sin in my life but I'm not dealing with it.

Thankfully, according to the scriptures we've been reading recently, that's on the Holy Spirit's plate and not mine. He's going to pull this heart change off if that's in God's will / if I'm open to his work / I'm not really sure what my role is and what God's role is in all this but I know that the brunt of sanctification is his job.

Anyway, so here's hoping I'll put into practice all the sweet stuff I've learned this summer and crack down on some jealousy and bitterness over the next couple weeks.

By "here's hoping", I mean "you can be praying that", but I'm allergic to Christianese.

To wrap things up, a broader scope of what project has looked like recently. Two weeks ago was Killing the Giants week, like I said before. We shared the Gospel a lot. It was very numbers focused and probably not healthy for me in some ways, but it built all of our confidence walking up to snarky punks and saying, "Hey there, have you taken this quick five question survey yet? ... Oh, you have? Oh. Okay. Have a nice day."

Then last week was All For One week where we built unity by telling secrets and harassing the staff before losing a staff versus students softball game.

And this week we're wrapping up World Vision week, where we've focused on what it would look like to reach the world with the Gospel. The staff are big on using interactive methods to present their lessons, which in some cases sucks but in other cases is pretty eye-opening. It's making me a lot more confident that I want to do full-time ministry in the future, probably overseas.

But I'm also kind of worried because I feel like I don't have as much of a heart for the lost as most other people seem to. But then I'm like, "What does that even mean?" And I do want to go to other countries.

So there's been a lot of thinking.

Alright. That's long enough. Sorry if you started to read this wanting to catch up on my life and then I wasted a lot of your time, or if this post was prohibitively long and you still don't know what's going on. Thanks for praying, if you've been praying. Things have been sweet.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

I Am A Robot (and I like it)

I had my first shift at Rite Aid today. It was an 8 hour day. I had to get there at 8am, which is 2 hours earlier than the earliest I had woken up on project before this morning.

I began by doing paperwork and then CBTs, which are Computer Based Trainings. I did about an hour and a half of CBTs, which is apparently small potatoes compared to some later CBTs but that was enough to get me well bored.

Then I got to man the cash register. I picked it up pretty quick, but I guess I'm going to relearn all of the things I learned today in CBTs later. Yippee.

It was a pretty straightforward procedure. "Hello, do you have a Rite Aid card?"

If no: "Would you like to sign up for one? ...... No? That's fine. Cash or card?"

If yes: Scan the card. Scan items. Bag them. Press the 'Debit/Credit card' button on the register or the 'Cash' button depending on the medium tendered. Try to press the button before they swipe their card. If you're not fast enough, press the button and then say, "Go ahead and try that again."

If fewer customers show up and things slow down, go and straighten the shelves near the register. Not like the actual shelf. The items on it.

This was actually a huge highlight. There was a big rush all morning because people show up on Saturdays -- and that made time go quick, which was nice -- but straightening is one of my things. I do it sometimes in stores that I don't work at. So I would scurry over and stand up the toppled sunscreens until the shift manager would bark, "Nolan to the register!" and I would look up and see that there were like 40 people in line that I hadn't noticed.

And then I would hurry them through and scurry back to my array of sunscreens.

So parts of work were definitely kind of a blast and my coworkers were really friendly and time went by really fast until the last 3 hours which were really, really, really slow. So overall, positive experience.

But when I stopped for my employee-discounted less-than-five-dollar lunch, I took a moment to reflect on my day and realized something a little alarming.

I had turned into a robot.

I couldn't remember what I was like behind the register. I had no perception of my own appearance. I couldn't remember any thoughts I had. All I remembered was saying over and over and over: "Do you have a Rite Aid card?"

It was weird. I was a robot. I was a clerk. I wasn't a human with emotions and feelings. I was part of Rite Aid. I smiled and doled out cigarettes like a cancer-spreading fiend, and tried not to act embarrassed when the lady on the phone said, "Oh my gosh, I am being so rude to this boy right here. Hold on a moment."

I tried to make jokes, but they were weird coming from an automaton and the recipients patiently smiled as if to say, "That's nice, metal man. Maybe you should go straighten those sunscreens over there." So I stopped making jokes and just tried to smile.

Anyway, the day wasn't that bad. My feet hurt from standing so long, but it was a really friendly atmosphere and not a bad time and I'm not dreading going in at 8am on Monday that bad yet.

Also I get a 20% employee discount so I know where my paycheck's going. I bought 4 of the big Gatorades today and some pretzels. Delicious!

Anyway, so work's going to be alright.

Also, if you're the praying type you could shoot some up this next week because it's Killing the Giants week and we're going to be doing evangelism as hard in the paint as possible. We set some number goals which I'm still ambivalent about, but the big thing is that we're trying to push ourselves to get past the limits of our strength and then to trust that God's going to make stuff happen slash give us energy.

It's gonna be tiring but crazy sweet.

Friday, June 15, 2012

A Quickie

I was going to write a long update today about how I found a job and how I'm making some close friends and how I've already started to learn how ignorant and stubborn I've been about so many spiritual things and how excited I am to learn truth.

But first I worked out, then there was basketball, then clean-up, then frisbee, then a long dinner, then Kmart, then games in the basement. Days are a blur. Sometimes I stop and wonder where all the time went.

And now for the first time I'll actually have an excuse for never having time to blog or write emails that I need to be writing, because tomorrow I start working. My job's at Rite Aid -- a small pharmacy 3 blocks from the house we're staying in. The manager is very friendly. We already talked about the tragedy of Vietnam and how unions only exist to help slackers get jobs.

So basically it turns out I don't have much to complain about. I actually have a lot to be thankful for.

In fact, if I had my tablet pen, life would be perfect.

Thanks for listening to my whining. This is going to be a really cool summer.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

First Impressions

I haven't blogged in a little while now. There are two reasons.

1) There's not very much time in Ocean City. There are always things to do and when there aren't things to do I feel compelled to find people to hang out with, at the risk of being alone for the rest of my life the summer.

2) I lost the pen that I use for illustrating so if I wanted to do a picture post I would have to use my finger and we've seen how that goes. And I really wanted to do a picture post so there wouldn't be two text blob posts in a row. But for the time being it's going to be text blob posts, and it took me a while to come to terms with this and just write something.

This is my fourth day in Ocean City. Absolutely unbelievable. These days have raced by like a herd of furious stallions.

I'm going to try to recall all my impressions because there have been a ton of emotions every day and sometimes when things are okay it's hard to remember what it was like when it wasn't so great.

Day 1 was great. There was the expected level of awkwardness and the expected number of handshakes and "Hi, yeah, I'm not gonna remember your name but what is it" conversations. Everyone was very friendly and I had the spiel down to a science. "I'm Nolan. I'm from Northwestern. I'm a bio major. I'll be a junior next year. What's your name, school, major, year and, if we're going to be walking next to each other for a little while, life plan?"

We had our timing down well because in the evening of the day we got in, there were Action groups, which is like Bible studies with the guys (or girls if you're a chick) from your room. So it was a chance to hang out with the guys that are going to be our bros for the summer, which is something that most quarter students won't get to do until next week.

The next day was the awkward one. We weren't quite new anymore so we weren't such a hot item and then it started to feel like the semester students wanted to hang out with the semester students who they already knew and had done bro-y things like wrestling with. I always felt like I was inserting myself into conversations to the chagrin of the conversationists.

And it was that place where it was like we all knew that we wanted to be pals and we knew we'd get there eventually but we still just didn't know each other that well and there's subtle things that make it harder to hang out -- like you don't value it as much when you laugh at each others' jokes and you don't know who's friendly and who's shy and who's being sarcastic.

Everyone was still friendly, but all of a sudden I wanted to be bro-y, not friendly.

Event-wise it was still sweet though. We ran around looking for jobs all day and then there was group dinner in the evening followed by a large group meeting at a local church that is apparently very fond of Cru as long as we wear nice pants to service. But it wasn't service, it was large group. So we wore shorts.

Anyway, it was a great time and then we went to an amusement park afterward despite lightning and rain because the rides were one ticket each for that night only and the lightning let up but a couple of us Northwestern kids didn't ride any rides because we have feeble constitutions.

Friday, things got better. By and large, the semester kids were phenomenally friendly and tried to make us feel at home by slapping our butts when they walked by or saying our names when they saw us to let us know that they remembered our names. I was starting to feel more bro-y than friendly -- but there was still a hard balance to keep because the people I enjoyed being around most were my Northwestern friends because we have so much history, but if I ever wanted to integrate then I needed to hang out with people that I didn't enjoy as much.

We went to the beach and played Spikeball and this is where it'd be real nice to draw a picture but I'm going to draw one with my words instead so hang on tight!

You have a round net in the middle, like a small trampoline. And there's a little rubber ball. You have two teams of two and you spike the ball back and forth on the net, playing like volleyball (3 hits each team, no double hits). You can't have double bounces on the net, and you can't hit the rim of the net.

You end up running around flailing and yelling and, after you get the hang of strategy, feeling like a boss when you make spikes.

We played Spikeball again today. I feel like it's going to be one of those things we do this summer.

Okay. And then today I did job stuff in the morning and then hung out on the beach all day and then came home and tried to squeeze in writing this blog post before dinner.

Three more things before I wrap this up:

1) Job searching is a huge pain. The semester students got here a week before us and took all the jobs. McDonalds is the only easy option left but I need more hours than they would give in order to pay for project so I'm putting out a ton of applications to other places. Didn't realize it was going to be so hard. Thanks for the heads up, guys from previous years who told me what to expect. But I've got a lot of prospects now so it might turn out okay. Just kidding. God's in charge. It's going to be fine. It's just hard for me to tell myself that sometimes.

2) Making new friends was as awkward and fake as I expected but it's also progressing through the awkward fake stage a lot faster than I thought it would. I'm starting to feel a little bit comfortable. That's a big plus.

3) I'll just go ahead and throw down a quick weekly schedule here for those people who would be trying to piece it together from the tidbits:
Sunday - church, something, something. I forget.
Monday - work, dinner, large group, hangout
Tuesday - work, dinner, date night with Jesus, hangout
Wednesday - work, dinner, Action group, hangout
Thursday - work, dinner, large group, hangout
Friday - work, cleaning up, chill
Saturday - chill, hangout, dinner, outreach
Discipleship squeezed in there somewhere.

This is going to be a tiring summer. I'm annoyed that I lost my pen. I'm annoyed that it's hard to find a job. I'm annoyed that I didn't get to show up with the semester students.

But there's already been several boardwalk outreaches. We're going again tonight. We had a worship night last night and people crowded around to see what was going on. There's a huge amount of people who need the Gospel passing through Ocean City, walking down the boardwalk two blocks away from where we sleep. God put us here.

And this is going to be a great summer.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Why I Hate Making Friends

So Ocean City is almost real. It's been something potential hanging overhead for this whole year, but in four days we're going to be on the road. What the heck? Four days!

Which means I have three days to pack my life up, in the midst of working, trying to squeeze in everything left to do this year, teaching Danny and Jeff (fellow road-trippers) to drive stick, and studying for two finals on Monday. If this is possible, which is sort of unsure right now, we're going to hit the road in the wee hours on Tuesday morning and drive through all day Tuesday. What will happen after that is a little up in the air. We might stay at Jeff's house in Philadelphia Tuesday night or we might drive on into Ocean City. It'll be a road decision, as they say.

When I say the possibility of finishing packing is a little unsure, I sort of mean it. When I look around at this room, packed to the corners, I can't even imagine shuffling necessary things into the right boxes and other stuff into other boxes and making the right calls and condensing it down and not forgetting 200 things.

Packing is one of those things that drives me up the wall.

Here's another good source of stress: Change. And more specifically, change into a less comfortable environment.

We quarter students are all part of the Ocean City 2012 Facebook page and so we can go on and look at the stuff the semester students are up to and wish we didn't have finals. Some things seem kind of neat -- living space rivalries (the mannex or the womINN) or stories about people raising support in unexpected ways.

But some things are decidedly not neat. Having an outreach just a few days after arriving, scrambling around trying to find jobs, and the biggest thing: making new friends.

Don't misread that! Friends aren't the problem. Friends are nice. Sometimes I enjoy the ones I have.

But what sucks, and what makes me feel as nauseous and inadequate as when I was preparing to come to college, is making this whole new set of friends.

Getting to know people is a huge amount of time and effort. My current friends-- we've hung out. We've played games together and learned that we're competitive, and they've seen that I enjoy basketball, and I've seen that they enjoy singing, and they've seen that I'm stubborn and hurtful, and I've seen that they love God a lot even when they don't act like it.

But no one in Ocean City has seen that I like to shut the door to my room and play guitar for a few hours when I'm stressed. And I haven't seen that when they sigh and fidget with their shoes it means they have something to talk about. So we're going to have to learn all this about each other.

But learning takes time and effort and energy and right now I don't care that their favorite color is brown because it reminds them of home, and I don't want to learn why they like Carrie Underwood more than Taylor Swift.

I already have friends!

I don't want to put in this time and energy and cheery smiling and acting like I'm interested in getting to know someone who I could care less about -- and then after we've pushed through the unpleasant fake phase, to let it all just drop because they go to UCLA and I go to Northwestern and let's be real we'll probably never see each other again. It's an abuse of relational energy.

And what it makes it worse is when I look around and see everyone else being super friendly and digging into this trove of new friends. And part of me wants to start friending people on Facebook and part of me wants to suck it up and be fake for a little while until I can get to know people and actually be interested in their lives and part of me wants to say "Who cares if it's just for a summer?"

But then part of me is like, "Don't be ridiculous."

And that part of me is ridiculous. But sometimes it's hard to argue with yourself.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The People of Dillo Day

For those that don't know, Dillo Day is a day in Northwestern's Spring quarter -- the last Saturday before Reading Week -- where the university brings in a bunch of bands and sets up a bunch of stuff next to the lake and everyone on campus hangs out and eats food and gets phenomenally, mind-blowingly drunk. It has been described as the one day we act like a state school.

There's a few different crowds you'll encounter if you cruise through Northwestern during Dillo Day. In case you decide to stop by next year, I'll give you the rundown.


The 7am-ers


These guys are serious about their Dillo. They go to bed early Friday night and wake up earlier than they ever did for a class during the school year. They like to kick their mornings off with a 4Loko and then build the intoxication from there. If they aren't passed out by noon, something is going wrong.

It takes 7am-ers with careful planning to stagger their binges to survive the day without dehydration or unconsciousness, but those that manage it squeeze in an entire day without a single sober thought. These guys are the overachievers. 


The Music Lovers


These cats are a rare breed. They actually only enjoy Dillo for the music. They've heard of all the bands and they don't consider them outdated or passe. They sleep in until the concerts start and then spend their day doing permanent damage to their auditory systems. (For reference, a useful graph).

Of the seven or eight genuine Music Lovers on campus, there's a few different varieties. Some are refined enough to simply stand or sit back from the action and be casually saturated with melodious sensations.

Others need more interaction and stand at an awkward distance from the stage that isn't quite part of the pack but isn't with the casual enjoyers. They usually dance, and are usually inebriated.

The last kind gets right into the mess of things, moshing to any style of music because if it is Dillo Day then there is a mosh pit. These guys are the mosh pit.


The Ragers


This group is composed of legitimate pleasure addicts. They sleep in because they don't want the discomfort of an early morning. They take their time getting a bit of nutrition to sustain their day's activities. Then they find a party, plug in, and begin to consume alcohol with alarming gusto.

Because they usually take their parties off campus (away from the police), Ragers aren’t always spotted unless they take brief retreats from the alcohol consumption to wander along the lakefill making loud, crude remarks and teaching the campus to hate fraternities.

If you need to locate a Rager, look for keg stands, loud conflict, and ambulances.


The Good Students


He sits in the library with a weathered copy of "Organic Chemistry: Seventh Edition" and eight empty Starbucks cups.


The Movie Watchers


A day off school means an entire day potentially spent catching up on a long list of movies to watch. This crowd doesn't need beer and music -- all they need is their Netflix subscription. You can't blame them, after the string of papers and assignments from the last week they need to recover from.

But regret follows entertainment, and a few days later you'll find the Movie Watchers every bit as stressed as the Dillo Day enthusiasts.


The Rulebreakers


With everyone either on the lakefill, in their rooms, or at parties, the greater part of campus is entirely empty. And the police are a lot more concerned with the hordes of drunk people storming around than with a few sober kids trying to have a good time in restricted areas.

This last Dillo Day, we started by playing sardines in the library (for the unindoctrinated, a game that's the reverse of hide and go seek -- one person finds somewhere to hide and the rest of the group scatters to look for them). There weren't that many hiding places, so it was more a game of running around being loud in the middle of the library.

Later in the day we headed to the Technological Institute where we took over the largest lecture hall and put on a pretend musical. When that got old, we hooked a Nintendo 64 up to a projector in a smaller lecture hall and played Super Smash Bros.

At different points during the day, we found our way to parts of campus that aren't intended for student access. For the sake of these areas remaining accessible, I'll end that description here.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Concerning Facebook

But first, a quick Ocean City update! We are officially two weeks away from arriving in OC. We leave the morning of the 5th and will hopefully arrive by the 6th. Three hundred and thirty-six hours from now, I will be squishing sand between my toes on the Jersey shore. Time is flying by!

Anyway! Segue.

I have a brief history to share. Roughly fifteen months ago, give or take awful memory, I deactivated my Facebook for a number of reasons. Most of these reasons were time. I wound up with too many friends that weren't close friends and they would all show up on my News Feed and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of this gamut of uninteresting news and I would compulsively read every update on the Most Recent list because if it's there, I will read it. So this mess of information I didn't care about began to absorb my time.

Also, I started to put a lot of value in how well I was presenting myself on Facebook -- how many pictures I had, if I looked like a dork in those pictures, whether people were commenting on and liking my stuff, if I was chatting with cool cats.


Plus I was pretty deep into the stalking scene and it got to the point where I would have to consciously force myself not to bring up certain bands with certain girls to start conversations. I started to feel a little weird for good reasons.

So I finally summoned up my tiny paw of willpower and deactivated Facebook, swearing to never return ever.

Unless I wanted to.

My encouraging friends gave me a scope of estimates for how long I would last, the longest being somewhere in the one month range and most clustered around a week. More out of pride than wisdom, I resolved to prove them all wrong and stubbornly stayed off as the weeks stretched into months and inside jokes popped around out of my sight.

Eventually, like a detoxing crack addict, the craving subsided and I started to come to terms with my Facebook-less existence. I told myself it made me appreciate real life interactions more.


And I definitely had more time that I could put into better pursuits like YouTube, Stumbleupon and Starcraft II.

And as time passed I started to care less and less about the flurry of status updates I was missing. As long as I couldn't see it, I didn't care what went on in the digital world. It seemed trivial and I felt above it all.

But secretly, somewhere inside part of me really wanted to post a status about a funny thought I had or like a picture in someone's album. Just one little like. Any album.

At some point last year my friends concocted a fictional character named David Murphy (after a confusing situation where a real person was incorrectly identified as David Murphy and the name spread) and talked him up like a real guy, a freshman engineer. We had the brain blast to make a Facebook account for David Murphy to further the confusion.

As part of the creating committee, I made sure to obtain the password to this doppelganger account, secretly planning to use David Murphy, who would be friending all of our Northwestern friends, as my conduit to the trivial updates I was missing. It was a perfect plan, but let it be known that in total I used the fictional Mr. Murphy like 15 times during his existence. This wasn't like an addiction or anything.

Ahem.

This history is coming to a close. A few weeks ago when I was finally settled on going to Ocean City, I wanted to get my Facebook account back to join the Ocean City group and see who all would be going on the trip. My ever-wise and levelheaded roommate (jokes!) convinced me that I could see what was going on through his account if necessary and that there wasn't much to see anyway. I restrained myself.

Then I started updating this blog again and I wanted to advertise to a wider audience than Twitter. I held back again, but another point in Facebook's favor.

Finally, the breaking point came last Monday. We had elections for the Biology Students Association and I became the publicity chair. I was thinking posters and chalk and Twitter, but it quickly became clear that our biggest tool would be Facebook. Everyone is on Facebook. How are you supposed to get your name out without cheesy, derivative contests?




Just kidding. Facebook reach is a lot broader than that and a lot more important than I gave it credit for. I considered my alternatives -- use someone else's account to run the page, create a new account with no friends just for admin purposes... But the combined weight of my previous reasons won out and I crumbled like week-old coffee cake.

I got my Facebook back last Monday.

Anyway, it's been cool so far. I got to friend all the people I've met in the last 15 months, start catching up with people I don't get to talk to much because of distance, advertise this blog post, post statuses about my dumb thoughts..

And like some pictures.