Shannon

Back to Work

Hi there!

    Well, I'm back at Scholastica and trying to face the reality that Thanksgiving break is over. It was a great break, but now it's time to get back to work. I'm not exactly looking forward to the next two and a half weeks. However, I'm terribly excited for what is after those two and a half weeks, Christmas, and I think that will be my motivation! :)

    Finals are going to come fast, which is a good and bad thing. My goal is to stay on top of my reading and studying so that I don't have to do any cramming, because that's no fun. I'm pretty lucky because I think I only have two "real finals". I have one in biology and medical terminology. We don't have an actual written final in communicationsbut our last speech, the pursuasive, is taking it's place. I'd rather have a written test...haha. I feel like I have so much to do already! Ahhhh! It will be fine, though. The biology final is my biggest worry.

    I suppose I should go and tackle some of my homework before it piles up tomorrow. I think I'll do some reading for medical terminology and get that out of the way. Have a happy Monday!

Out for now...

Shannon :)

Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Hello!

    I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving! We went to my aunt and uncle's house in St. Cloud. The food was delicious and we all had a great time! I really appreciate homemade food now more than I ever have, since I have to eat whatever the Greenview serves up. I was looking forward to coming home and eating a good meal. Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday couldn't have been better and was exactly what I was looking forward to. :)

    My mom, Laura, and I spent the night there. We had a blast playing the game "Catch Phrase" with my aunt and cousin Emily. We laughed so much! It was so much fun. After going to bed around 12am, the five of us got up at 3am for our annual Black Friday shopping extravaganza. With only three hours of sleep, we were pretty much in a daze...well, at least I was. Our first stop was at Herberger's, which opened at 4am. Then we went to Target. We got there just a few minutes before it opened and there was a very long line, so we helped make it even longer. We went to a few more stores after that and then it was 10:30am. By that time, it felt like 5:00pm and we were hungry. So we went to Perkins and had breakfast. After that we were all so tired and just needed to sleep. We went home and took a long nap. Getting up that early was definitely worth it, though, because we had a good time and many good laughs.

    Today has been pretty lazy. We started decorating for Christmas earlier today and tonight we're going to put up our Christmas tree and decorate it. I'm excited, because I love doing that. I'm going to get some homework done tonight, as well. Laura and I have to head back up to Duluth tomorrow afternoon. I'm not looking forward to going back. It's been a really nice break, though. It won't be long and I'll be back for Christmas break, which is much longer! I better go now, because I think we're going to put up the tree!

Out for now...

Shannon :)

Just One Class!

Hello everyone!

     Only one more day to go, actually, only one more class to go before I go home for Thanksgiving break! I'm so excited to go home for six days. I'm really looking forward to seeing my family and eating good food. It's my dad's birthday on Wednesday, so I'll be home to celebrate that, too! I can't wait! :)

     Today was a very boring day. I didn't have anything going on in any of my three classes. I can honestly say that this was the first time I was bored this whole school year so far. I'm usually constantly on the go and busy with homework. Since cross country has been over I haven't been busy with that, but my homework load increased last week so it felt like I was just as busy. Things have finally slowed down for a little while but it won't be long, the break will be over and I'll be back to being busy again. It's nice not having bunch of stuff going on and a lot of homework and studying to do, but when I'm bored I just don't know what to do with myself. I guess I shouldn't complain.

     Finals are going to creep up very fast, so I should take advantage of my boredom and get studying for them. I have been doing that, but I could probably do more. I'll probably do some studying before I go to bed.

     The only class I have tomorrow is communications! That's going to be nice. :) Then I'll wait for Laura to get done with her internship and we'll head home. I can't wait!

Out for now...

Shannon :)

 

Lazy Day

Hi everyone!

     I hope the rest of you're weekend was wonderful. Mine was pretty good. It was a very relaxing weekend, that's for sure. I feel like I didn't do anything today, which isn't a good thing, but it's okay once in a while. I studied biology and chemistry quite a bit. It made me really tired, though. So then I took a nap with the intention of it only lasting an hour...but it ended up turning into a two-hour nap. Oops! I'm sick again with a cold/cough so it was probably good for me. At least that's what I told myself. :)

     Tonight Becca, Kalie, and I went over to Tower (the Castle) to explore. It's really cool at night and kind of eery. We found this one wall that looked like it could be a door but not really, so we tried to open it by sliding it and it moved a little bit. We think it's a secret passageway. Not really, but wouldn't that be cool? It was a lot of fun!

     That's all I did today, which isn't much at all. I'll probably do some more studying and then go to bed. Have a good night! :)

Out for now...

Shannon :)

Tea Parties and Scary Movies

Hello!

     I hope you're all having a terrific weekend so far. Mine is going great! :) My sister, Laura, and I had a sister night last night and it was really fun! We went to the mall, did some shopping, ate some food, did some more shopping, and then we went and rented a couple movies. Then we went back to her apartment and made popcorn (the old-fashioned way) and watched a movie. It was so freaky! It was the movie "The Attic". We love scary movies...but that freaked us out a little bit. It was pretty good because it made you think, but I'm still confused about the ending. It was so nice to have a fun night after a stressful week. I think we both needed it.

     Yesterday afternoon I attended a tea for the recipients of the Sister Monica Laughlin Music Ensemble Scholarship. There were nine of us students there from either band, orchestra, or choir. The directors of each of those groups was there, other music department professors, and Sister Monica herself. The tea was held in the monastery parlor, which is a really nice room in the monastery for such things as tea parties, I guess. It was held so that we could meet Sister Monica and each other. Although I'm not a fan of tea, it was really nice. Sister Monica is a really nice lady and she's funny, too. It was a great first tea party. :)

     Those were the highlights of my day yesterday. A tea party in the monastery parlor and a night with my sister, what could be better?

     Becca and I did laundry together this afternoon. Laundry is a lot more fun when you have someone to do it with. All but one of the washers are fixed and I think all of the dryers work. That's nice since for a while there were only three washers and only a few dryers that worked. It's been kind of a lazy day. After we did laundry, we did a littlehomework, and then took a nap. When we woke up it was dark out. It scared me at first because I thought I had been sleeping for hours, but it was only one and a half. Then we went down to the Greenview and ate supper.

     Well, I suppose I'll go do some more studying. I'm going to study nomenclature for chemistry. It's so much fun to name molecules! I think it's almost as fun as balancing equations...I don't know for sure, it's close. :) Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Out for now...

Shannon :)

It's all uphill from here!

Hello!

    I'm so excited to have the hard part of my week over with. I handed in my almost five page paper for communications about our group project today. I'm glad to have everything that has to do with that group project done with! It wasn't fun.

     Tomorrow is finally Friday! This week seemed to drag on for a long time, even though I was really busy. It's all uphill from here. I have biology and chemistry tomorrow, then I'm done for the week. This weekend should be nice and relaxing for a change. I'm not traveling long distances, because cross country is over. I won't be going home, either, since I'll be heading home this coming Tuesday for Thanksgiving. I won't have any homework or tests to study for, either. I'll probably hang out with my sister this weekend and that should be fun. :)

     Next week is going to be nice and easy. I'm looking forward to it. I have biology,  chemistry, and band on Monday. Then I only have communications on Tuesday, so I'll be done earlier than usual. Yay! I don't have my biology lab or med. terms that day. :) I better get going...

Out for now...

Shannon :)

Thank goodness!

Hello everyone!

     Now that today is over, my craziness is over too. Thank goodness! :) Today my group and I presented our group prjoect for communications. That was causing a little stress in my life...so I'm really glad it's done with. I had med. terms after that, which was fine as usual. We did something really fun in biology lab this morning! Using the process of agarose gel electrophoresis, we found the size of the pieces of DNA of lambda (the genomic DNA of a bacterial virus). It was so fun! We didn't analyze our results yet, but we have to stop in tomorrow to check it out. :)

     I had my first college band conert tonight! It was pretty cool. I think we performed very well. The piece "The Music of Disneyland" was especially good, in my opinion. There's a really tricky polka spot in it for the clarinets and tonight I played it the best I ever have. :) As a matter of fact, I think the entire clarinet section sounded better than ever at that spot! Tomorrow we start working on Christmas music for our Christmas concert on the ninth of December. It should be fun...I'm excited. :) That concert is going to come very fast, though. 

     Tomorrow should be a pretty relaxing day for me. I have biology, chemistry, and then band. I have to work on a paper for communications, too. That's about it, though. I better get to bed because I'm exhausted. 

Out for now...

Shannon :) 

What a Monday!

Hey!

     Wow, today was officially the busiest day I've had yet. I'm kind of surprised, though, since cross country is over now. I can't even imagine how busy it would have been if I would of had to run. Yikes!

     I had my biology test this morning at 9:15. After that I worked on a paper for Dignitas until 12:30-ish. Then Becca and I ate lunch. After that I went to chemistry. Then I finished my Dignitas paper. By then it was time for band. Right after band (5:00-ish) I rushed to the track meeting. After the track meeting I collected food for our Dignitas food drive with two others from my class. After collecting food, I went to the library to meet my group from communications to work on our presentation that we're giving tomorrow. We were having some technical difficulties with our PowerPoint and it ended up taking us two and a half hours before we got things somewhat figured out. I'm really nervous about it and I just hope it works tomorrow, since we've put so much time into it. I think we've spent about six hours total working on it.

     I just finished studying for medical terminology and now I better get to bed. I have my biology lab at 8am tomorrow morning.

Out for now...

Shannon :)

A Day in Grinnell

Hello everyone!

     Well, I'm in Grinnell, Iowa right now. We have the region cross country meet tomorrow and it's our last one. It's just the top 7 runners from the girls and guys teams that will be racing. It's going to be a fast race since it's the fastest runners from each college. I'm a little nervous, but it should be fun. We ran this same course earlier in the season and I really liked it. I'm just hoping to run personal record. :)

     We left Duluth yesterday and stayed in Clear Lake, Iowa last night. This morning we finished up the trip and arrived in Grinnell around noon-ish. The bus ride seemed very long, even though it got split up into two days. I got a lot of studying done for biology. I have an exam in that class on Monday, which I'm not exactly looking forward to.

     Tonight we ate at a fancy restaurant called "The Depot". The food was pretty good. I had chicken fettuccine alfredo, but it wasn't the best I've ever had. It was a lot of fun spending time with my teammates, though. They're really funny.

     It's been a very relaxing day here in Grinnell. We didn't do a whole lot, but that's probably a good thing since we have a big race tomorrow. Well, I should get back to studying.

Out for now...

Shannon :)

Hot Chocolate and Homework

Hello everyone!

     Wow, it's been almost a week since my last blog post...sorry! I guess that shows how busy I've been. I went home last weekend, which was very fun. Beauty and the Beast was absolutely amazing! It was really fun to hang out with my friends again. I didn't realize how much I missed them until we all got together again. My Aunt Karen, cousin Sarah, and Grandma Mary came to visit us, too. I was glad to see them again. The weekend just sort of flew by like they always do and then I was back here.

     I've had multiple tests and projects to study for and work on all week so far, which is why I've been so busy. I took my weekly med. terms tests on Tuesday, a chemistry test today, and I've been working on a group project for communications in between studying for those two tests and other studying.

     I was supposed to go and see the musical Wicked tonight with my mom and sister. Unfortunatley, I had to make the decision not to because of my busy schedule. It was the right decision, although it was extremely difficult to make. Wicked is my all-time favorite musical! I have already seen it once, though, so it's not too much of a big deal. I was mostly looking forward to spending the night with my mom and sister. We were planning on going out to eat beforehand and it was going to be a girl's night out. With everything I had going on, it just wasn't worth driving 2.5 hours home and then another hour there and then all the way back up here, because I had a bunch of homework and stuff, too.

     I'm glad I decided not to go, because I've been very productive tonight. I have most of my homework done already. Becca and I just got back from the library a little while ago, where we had been doing homework for about an hour. We went up to the third floor. It was really nice and quiet. :) I think I'll go there more often, because sometimes it's hard to study with all of the distractions in the suite.

     Now I'm back in the suite sipping on my hot chocolate and soon I'll be back to studying. I'll talk to you later.

Out for now...

Shannon :)