Is Love Alive?

This past Saturday was my friend Brandi's a capella groups' Spring Concert... wow that is kind of confusing - my friend is in an a cappella group at school named Blue in the FACE, and their concert was on Saturday. It probably would've been smarter to just say that, right? Oh well, too late now. Anywho - their concert was Saturday and it was amazing. I mean, I am a little biased because I arranged The Chain by Ingrid Michaelson for them... but it was still awesome nonetheless. So now I'm thinking of arranging another song for them for their Winter Concert. Think you know what it is? It's a little cliché, but I'm thinking of doing Winter Song by Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles. If you haven't heard of it before, you need to listen to it pronto. And by pronto, I mean watch the music video that I'm going to post after this paragraph. I already talked about how much I love this song a few months ago, and I clearly have an obsession with Ingrid Michaelson, and it is for a Winter Concert, so I assumed it would be perfect:

If you didn't know already, Winter Song is actually a Christmas song that Ingrid and Sara wrote together via e-mail - they said they wanted to write a Christmas song, but they wanted it to be about love, not Jesus. Which I mean, honestly, do we need any more Jesus-y Christmas music? No, no we don't.

And now I've been listening to the song non-stop since Saturday night and it was the inspiration for the title of the post, and also inspired me to think of the actual question "is love alive?"

Think about it, and ask yourself: is love alive? How do you know? Do you experience it yourself on a day by day basis? Do you witness it? Do you even believe in love?

Obsessed with Graduate School Already?

In two weeks from today I will officially be a Junior in college. And the thought is freaking me out. That means two more years as an undergrad at Penn State. Two more years before my life actually begins. Two more years before Grad School. Two more years, yet I've already become obsessed with Grad school.

The past few days I've done nothing but look up different Grad programs and request information from different universities. I've gone as far as to look up rankings for different programs, it's kind of sick.

I had everything all planned out before coming into this year: I would graduate with my bachelors in History, then move back to Syracuse and live at home while I get my masters at Syracuse University, and then move to New York or Boston or Washington, D.C. and get a job as a translator and everything would be hunky dory.

Yeah, not so much anymore. So far the only thing that has remained constant in that plan is the becoming a translator part. Around Spring Break I began thinking I would just move to Pennsylvania, declare my residency, and then continue my studies at Penn State and get my masters here, but then I discovered the College of Liberal Arts won't accept students into the Graduate program if they were here as an Undergrad.

Sweet. So now I'm thinking big. I had my sights set on Harvard, until I found out I would need to learn German or Latin on top of learning French, and that's just not going to happen. So why not just return to Syracuse? Well, the History program at Harvard is ranked #1 along with Stanford, Yale, and UC Berkley. Where does Syracuse University fall? Well, it's #71. Cool. I don't know why, but I'm obsessed with names and rankings. Plus, I looked up pricing and it would only be $1,000 more a year to go to Harvard instead of Syracuse. Looks like I might be starting German next year...

Can This Just Be Over Already?

As I start writing this, the time on my laptop says 1:08 AM, and once again I'm physically exhausted, and yet I cannot fall asleep. For the fourth night in a row now I can't sleep, and that's all I really want to do.

The semester is almost over, but can this just be over already? Please? I'm tired or writing papers and taking quizzes and exams. I'm tired of History and French and English - I just want to go home. I'm so close to the end of this semester, and I really just need a break. I'm crashing, and pretty hard.

But I'm too close to just stop now. I don't want to do any of my work, but I do it anyway just because I know I absolutely have to. I'm not retaining any of it though, and it's probably going to come back to bite me in the ass. I could care less right now, though.

To make matters worse, we went to the gym and I pressed twice my body weight with my legs. I would be excited, except I can longer walk up stairs. Worth it? Totally.

Spring Semester Wrap-Up

Spring semester has come and (almost) gone - in one month I will be back home. Just one month - 4 weeks, thirty days - however you want to word it, I will be back in Syracuse, NY in May. And due to recent events, I'm pretty excited about it.

Stress has pretty much ruled my life since I got back from Spring Break. Stress at work, stress with homework, stress with friends, just stress, stress, and more stress. I finally got almost 19 hours this week at work, and I would be happy if I didn't have two papers to write and three quizzes to study for.

I just need a hug. I don't like being touched, so that's saying a lot. I just need to calm down for a few minutes, take a deep breath, and then dive back into my work. I haven't been able to keep up with the blog, as you've probably already noticed, but I'm sure I'll be able to post more over this summer. Which I really wish it was summer - it's been about 80 degrees here for the past few days and it's just teasing me. I want the semester to be over so I can go home and lay out in the sun for a few days before having to start working for the rest of my life. But summer means I'm halfway through college... and that's pretty scary. Not scary enough though, I still want this shit to be over with!