Last Names

It’s the start of the new semester and I’m sitting in a class of forty or so people.  The professor passes out the syllabus and then picks up an attendance sheet.  In an attempt to learn our names, he or she decides to call out names instead of having us sign in for the first few weeks.  And so, the professor begins to call out names.  ‘Thomas, John, Sarah, Emily, Natalie, Sarah, Peter, Sarah…’

What’s missing?  Last names!  Why do professors take attendance using first names only?!  It’s one of my biggest pet peeves about professors.  In a class of forty or so students, there will undoubtedly be at least three Sarahs.  It was the third most popular name in 1988.  So, how am I supposed to know which Sarah a professor is talking about when they take attendance?  I don’t want to raise my hand for some other Sarah and give them my attendance point.  And if that other Sarah is actually in class and we both raise our hands, one of us is bound to look like an idiot.

After the first two or three days of class, I can figure out which Sarah I am, the second or third, but that first day is always the worst.  I can usually bet that if one of the first names a professor calls out is Sarah, it’s not me, since my last name is towards the end of the alphabet, but it’s still irritating.

It’s something that’s easily solved.  It’s not difficult to call out last names as well; they’re right there on the list.  Students are stressed enough, don’t add to it by making them wonder if they’ve claimed an attendance point for another student instead of themselves.  Use last names as well.

Although, on the other side of the spectrum, I had a professor use last names and no first names.  It didn’t help me much since my last name can also be a first name and when he called it out I thought he was using someone’s first name.  So, professors, using both names is useful.

Car Shopping

The time has come for me to buy my own car.  For the past four years I have been driving the Saab 9-5 that my parents bought for me to use to commute back and forth from school when I was at community college, and while I absolutely love that car, it’s not technically mine and I need my own before grad school next year.  So, for the past few weeks I’ve been test driving and researching different cars, trying to find that perfect one.

My dad absolutely loves car shopping, so he’s been looking at them online, comparing, looking up crash test ratings, and carfaxes.  It’s really the only kind of shopping he does like and he only gets to do it every few years.  Of course, even after he does find the perfect car, he keeps looking at them online and wondering if he should have bought a different one.

What I really want is another Saab 9-5, but unfortunately there aren’t any at a good price, with decent mileage, and new enough within a 100 mile radius of where I live.  Actually, there aren’t any in all of New York.  There are a couple in New Jersey, but I’m not driving that far just to buy a car.  So, unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be getting a Saab.  Instead, we’re looking at Ford Five Hundreds, Chevy Malibus, and Dodge Avengers.  We had been looking at a few types of Volvos, but ran into the same issue as the Saabs.

It’s always interesting to see the different types of car dealers there are, too.  We looked at a Volvo at this one dealership and the salesman was so pushy.  He insisted on going with us when we test drove it (while that’s common downstate and in NYC, it’s not where I live), which I find incredibly annoying, and he keeps calling us and asking if we want him to ‘run some numbers’ on it.  While it’s a nice car, my dad thinks it’s too old and has too high of mileage to bother getting.

We test drove an Avenger from a used car lot where the saleslady didn’t even ask us if we wanted to put an offer or anything up on it.  She just let us test drive it and that was that.  Then the dealer who had a Malibu as well as a Saab 9-3 was really nice.  He wasn’t pushy, but was friendly and even introduced us to the owner of the dealership.  The owner is actually the one who gave us the idea for the Malibu, which I really loved.  I only got to test drive it for ten minutes since the dealership was about to close, so I have to go test drive it again, but I liked it.

More Than a Book

I have tried my hand at poetry and this is what I came up with.  It’s about LeakyCon.

More Than a Book

Words on a page
Just text and lines
That’s all you see
But I see beyond the spine

When I look at that book I’m all smiles
I think of the memories I wouldn’t have without it
Cities traveled to, far away by hundreds of miles
For reasons contained in those seven books

Enjoyed by millions all over the globe
When most finished reading, that was it
For me it was just the beginning
I kept unraveling the mysteries, bit by bit

A lot found it funny, crazy, and weird
To travel so far
I didn’t care, their opinions didn’t matter
I just hopped in the car

Those four days flew by too fast
The four days when wizards took over Boston
They were filled with dozens of what would become inside jokes
Like fire alarms, GITs, smashed guitars, and bacon

Thirteen of us met there
All at various times
Some would say the number is unlucky
We say, thirteen’s not a crime

We all live far away
In places like Virginia and New Jersey
Brought together by a book
From places even as far as Germany

Too soon it came to an end
We had to say goodbye
To strangers who had become friends
And it was hard not to cry

We had all agreed
Harry Potter was more than just a book
It brought us together
That was all it took

Best New Year’s Eve Ever!

A few minutes into my shift at work on New Year’s Eve, some old guy asked me if I was going to get wasted that night.  I awkwardly told him no, and what I did do on New Year’s Eve was far better than getting wasted.

I never do much for New Year’s Eve, and I didn’t think this year would be any different.  I played Mario Kart with my siblings and one of my friends and then someone suggested we go look at the blue moon.  Once we got outside we realized it was too cloudy, but there was a few inches of snow on the ground and it was perfect packing snow.  We started an awesome snowball fight that only stopped when midnight arrived and we went inside to watch the ball drop and toast in the new year.  Then the fight continued and it was so much fun.  We were all completely soaked by one in the morning, but it was definitely worth it.  Snowball fights are so much fun at midnight.

My youngest sister won best quote of the night while we were drinking sparkling apple juice, when she exclaimed, “If champagne tasted this good, I’d be drunk all the time!”