i think a lot of people have very different college experiences, and they are defined by and derive from choices that they make in terms of what is most important to them, who is important to them, and what they are willing to put in.

this is rude, but i don’t care — sometimes i see facebook albums from people i am friends with on the site (thanks, mini feed!), and i just think “wow every time i see an album with this person in it, s/he is hanging out with the same people and doing the same thing.” i wonder if people realize that the “awesome time!!!!” they had this weekend looks exactly like what they did the last, or if they noticed that they are friends with the same ten people and never broaden their circle of friends. i think i mostly just feel bad for these people. (since i feel genuinely bad for them, this actually isn’t rude to bring up, right?)

i am no exception, for example, i often think about how very different my life would be if i were involved with the athletics department and had games/meets/etc and hung out with a pre-defined group of people for that reason, or something like that, but i realize that my own unique college experience has been entirely great and i am glad things have happened and worked out the way that they have.

i’m not saying i have the best group of friends possible, but… okay actually i am saying that.

happy new year 2009!

This weekend my housemates and I had our LATKES AND VODKAS holiday party! Latkes, if you don’t know, are a traditional Hanukkah food. They’re essentially potato pancakes, fried in olive oil, because of the Hanukkah story, which has to do with olive oil. Anyway, I had never made them, but Cory bought a grater and Paul-William helped me peel and grate EIGHT POUNDS of potatoes to make a huge batch for all our guests. Zach, Cory, and Paul-William also worked on an epic 20lb turkey, and our guests brought other dishes, like stuffing, brownies, pot pie, and rice krispie squares, not to mention vodka!

It was a really, really awesome party, everyone had a great time. I set up a photobooth in my room, and we had a big gift exchange, where we all brought small gifts, put them in a pile, and then everyone got to pick one that they wanted, based on random drawings for the picking order.

The next day I went to Frederick, MD, for my best friend Shan’s birthday. We watched Into The Wild, and we also headed to the AFI Silver theatre in Silver Spring to see Synecdoche, NY, which was pretty decent, but not amazing.

I just finished a day-long shift at commonvision (working on some Winter Welcome Week designs, as well as UMBC ART WEEK 2009 advertising/marketing stuff with Jenna Ullrich, my bff/co-worker/fellow design student, and we got a lot done. We just closed though, so now I’m headed home!

Last final tomorrow for my history class, and then I’m done for the semester!

thanksgiving dinner was awesome and leftovers for friday lunch was awesome too. been taking naps, and getting through this major design project i need done for monday. i still have hours tonight and all of tomorrow, so it’s hard to stay motivated. i need winter break so badly you have no idea.

last day of classes: december 9th
remaining days of class: december 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9
graphic design final class: december 12th

i need to find out when my finals for my two history classes are!

This is what I am working on. Times New Roman monograph (booklet, basically) comprised of the paper I wrote earlier this semester. I’m working on the spreads in InDesign right now. I have to add in the citations, and do the cover / title page / ISBN page / citations / colophon / back cover still. plus add more images and some more fun stuff because it has slow parts.

today UMBC president Freeman Hrabowski took me onto the roof of the Administration building to look out at the UMBC campus, downtown baltimore, and beyond. then we sat down to chat and he basically gave me a series of strong compliments that i will never forget.

it’s all going to appear in the fourth and final episode of “adam’s AWKWARD AWESOME UMBC” and i can’t wait to share it with you! of course, episode three is still on the way too, and it’s going to be good!

other than that, today my design class spent time with poet and type wizard Robert Bringhurst, and it was a nice time. it was fun to hang out with my classmates together in a somewhat different setting, and Bringhurst had some things to say about type and whatnot. He is lecturing in 40 minutes in the AOK Library and i’ll be attending that as well, though i believe he’ll be talking about his poetry, not design.

i also ran the first proper ArtWeek 2009 committee meeting today, which was successful. i am also tired. i also got an evite for the Student Government Association end-of-semester dinner, which i think is supposed to be pretty nice, i’ve never been invited before.

Lots going on this week, but then, there always is. SEB brainstorming meeting to come up with events for next semester… some awesome stuff is happening! Plus we’re putting together this big Harry Potter Yule Ball for December 6th. It’s gonna be great!

commonvision work is getting done bit by bit. Event promo stuff for the Persian Student Association’s “Yalda” event, RSA’s “Midnight Breakfast,” and Sigma Alpha Epsilon Pi’s “Hanukkah Party” event, their first-ever event (they’re a new sorority for Jewish women). Anyway, I’ll throw up some pictures at the end of the post!

Monday I went to the 9:30 Club to see Conor Oberst. He was boring as hell. I used to love Bright Eyes but I guess everyone has to grow up sooner or later, and Conor decided to grow up by getting really boring. Or I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for it. Wednesday I went to Sonar to see The Count and Sinden play a free show sponsored by Scion, which was cool. Scion has done a handful of free shows since the summer, and I’ve been to almost all of them, I think. Last night a ton of us went to Hard Rock Cafe for our friend Carla’s birthday. It was not necessarily my favorite restaurant, but we all had an awesome time and Carla definitely had a great birthday, haha.

Today I am supposed to be doing a bunch of work, but I am doing laundry and feeling lazy as usual so maybe I will sort-of poke at my homework and then do it tomorrow. I wonder if people are doing anything tonight…