I have recently discovered great value in getting enough sleep. Well, that sentence in itself might reveal what these last few days have been like, but for those who don't know me all that well I guess I'll dive into a bit more detail.
After having a great (albeit full) third day of classes, I ended up going to bed at about 1am after getting off work shortly after midnight. I woke up feeling refreshed, and headed off to chemistry class. After chemistry, I chilled out with some friends in the TA lab then went to eat lunch before my bio lab. We took a pretest in lab, which I found out today I got a 39% on it, which isn't nearly as bad as I had expected since I felt like I know literally nothing it was asking. After Bio lab, I went home and worked on homework until it was time for university Chorale. I convinced my roommate from fall semester to come give it a try, and told him to add the class if he liked it (as of when I'm finally writing this post he has). After choir I went home and basically only had time to eat, take a brief nap to make sure I wouldn't fall asleep at work, and then headed to work. After work I crashed on my bed for as long as I could until I needed to wake up for class on Friday.
Friday was a pretty great day, if only because there was nothing all that bad that happened to me. I didn't have mission prep that day, I was convinced to join RHA (Residence Halls Association), and I got my homework turned in. Friday night I hung out with my roommate and his girlfriend at her apartment with all her roommates and one of her roommates' boyfriend. It was a pretty great night as we hung out and played Starfox 64, Mario kart 64, and watched movies (Thumbelina) until waayy too late with me spending time working on labs for my programming class throughout. I ended up sleeping in on Saturday pretty late (like 11:30am).
And so Saturday didn't start until the afternoon, and it was time to do laundry. After doing laundry, I ate some food and headed up to watch the men's tennis match against Weber State. It was a pretty entertaining matchup, but that was probably because BYU killed them until the final match (which I think pitted a freshman against a senior) where we finally lost a point (in the overall match - we had lost points in the individual ones). That ended up taking about 4 hours from start to finish, so I was able to get a good gauge of how long those are going to be in the future, and it was definitely interesting to be able to see what level they play at in college. For some reason, I had always thought they were super good and could probably have gone pro instead of go to college, or dropout and go pro at anytime... but from what I saw they weren't that much better than I am, and if I actually played more than a couple times a month I could probably be as good as them.
After Saturday of course comes Sunday, which was a super awesome day. It was my second day of not having church until 2 pm and it was absolutely fantastic! I was able to spend the morning doing various things to get ready for church and just chilling out. It was a pretty awesome day as after church I watched a devotional given by President Uchtdorf, which was pretty awesome about the importance of Truth in our lives. He made a great point that truth is true, even if nobody believes it. But, between church and the devotional I made some pretty tasty chicken (if I do say so myself) that was stuffed with cheese, and spiced to have a little bit of kick to it. I would have taken a picture of it... but it was my first attempt so it didn't look all that pretty even though it smelled divine.
Monday was the start of a new week of classes, which means it should be better than the previous one right? Well... it kinda wasn't. I woke up late, missed class, didn't have very much time to eat lunch, and didn't have a very good morning at all. But, at least the afternoon was pretty sweet. My mission prep teacher was out of town for his calling (he's on like the General Sunday School Board or something), and so we had his Son-In-Law come substitute for him. It was definitely different than having the actual teacher, but he was still pretty awesome and I learned quite alot about different kinds of teaching. For example, a good teacher/missionary will focus on themselves - how they look, and various other things focusing on them - while a better teacher/missionary focuses on the message they're sharing - what they're saying, how they're saying it, if it makes sense, etc - while the best ones focus on the people they're teaching and what their needs and wants are and how to best fulfill them while still teaching something. After that I went to RHA class for the first time - it was certainly an experience - we started out with the basic college introductions - name, where you're from, major, and an interesting fact - then jumped straight into planning for the February program that we're putting on. It was actually quite a lot of fun, and felt kinda like I was back on the Stake Youth Council again (ah... the glory days). Sadly after that there was no Home Evening, so far as my apartment heard about, so I didn't really do much except for homework.
On Tuesday, after going to bed pretty early on Monday I actually got up on time for classes (the one time this week that has happened - except Friday since that day hasn't hit yet) but missed the bus because my nose started bleeding right before I was going to leave and took forever to stop. It was actually rather inconvenient, but I ended up getting homework done that I hadn't planned on doing until Friday evening finished. I also ended up going into work for a little while to help out and teach one of the newer people how to do a few things. I of course made it to University Chorale (I don't think I'll ever miss that class unless something comes up... it's soooo late in the day), and had a total blast there since we're singing some pretty awesome songs. I'll try and find some good videos and post the links in my next post. After choir, I went with my old roommate to the bookstore so he could buy the music, as he had decided to add the class after singing the right part (on Thursday he sung my part - tenor - which he doesn't like very much, he prefers baritone). After that I headed home and devoured some food in preparation for spending another grueling four hours at work on a tuesday night. Tuesdays are unusually busy, largely because all the Resident Assistants (RAs) have staff meetings throughout the building. After work I ended up not being able to sleep, and instead spent a couple hours cleaning and organizing my room - which in retrospect was not the greatest choice, but I did it anyway because the clutter and inability to find anything was really getting to me.
So, after staying up insanely late, I of course, woke up insanely late and missed class (it hasn't been a good week so far) and ended up using my new-found time to bake cinnamon rolls and snicker-doodles for my good friend's mission call opening that was to be later that night. I did go to mission prep and RHA, as those classes are fun and late in the afternoon, and then came home to finish baking. After that was done, it was time to go up to American Fork for her mission call opening, so I went over to my friend's apartment who was giving me a ride. We crammed the four of us into her little car, and headed to go pick up another person who was also going who lives over in Heritage. After picking him up, we started headed towards the interstate, but at the intersection of university and 450 East (by the Marriott center - worst intersection ever by the way) my friend's car started having issues - like the radio would randomly shut off and her lights would flicker in and out briefly - so we were talking about how her battery was probably dying (in addition to it having a crappy transmission so it didn't work all that well - thanks dad for not having crappy cars! ) and she thought since it didn't look like it was going to move anyway, it would be a great idea to try turning it off and turning it back on. But, since the battery died after turning it off, we couldn't get it to turn back on. And so, the pushing began, in the freezing cold weather, the other four of us got out to push the car out of the intersection and to try and find a parking lot. Luckily, because we're in Utah and not Florida, we happened to be on the top of a hill, so once we got it going it rolled away from us and the four of us pushing looked pretty comical trying to catch up to it. After the driver went past about 4 entrances to various parking lots by the stadium, we figured she was going to try and make it back to Wyview so we stopped running and just walked until we caught up to her. So, she eventually turns off into the stadium parking lot and proceeds to take up about four parking spots with her car parallel to the parking spots. We decided that four of us would run back to Wyview and retrieve the car of another girl in our group , but neither her nor her roommate that was with us had keys to the apartment and so they had to stop by my workplace to get one. After running back to Wyview (a total of about 1.2 miles of running from start to finish) we hopped in the car and went to pick up the guy we had left with the other car. We picked him up (and the treats) and left that car there taking up four parking spots while we headed off to watch our friend open her call. After we left - she got called to Lima Peru West by the way and it was super awesome to be there - we dropped off the fellow who lives in Heritage and went to jump the other car. We discovered - much to our surprise - that there was a basketball game that night and every single parking spot had been taking in the lot we left the car - except for the four it was taking up. Luckily we had left it with the battery on the correct side, and it was pretty easy to jump the car and head back to Wyview. After that wonderful adventure (it might have been the first exciting thing I've done since I got here!) I went to sleep in hopes of getting up on time for class today.
Which of course didn't happen. It's just been one of those weeks where I haven't been able to sleep all that well during the night, and end up not waking up when I need to, either way before and going back to sleep or way after and freaking out because I miss class. So, after missing my first class today, I headed up to Bio and took a quiz and learned the stuff I had missed yesterday (Score!) from my TA. She's super awesome and actually helps us to understand what we need to, and I was definitely glad I went to lab. After lab, I hung out with my old roommate (who is in both my Bio section and choir with me) until it was time for choir. After having a blast in choir singing some incredibly fun songs (still planning on getting those links... this is actually still the same post that I promised that earlier in), I went to take a pretest - which I again got about a 40% on. Those have shown me the obvious need I have to attend class this semester - which I'm working on - I've started working with my roommate so that both of us actually get to class on-time, and after this depressing week it'll probably actually work. Anyway, after that I went home and ate some food and watched some HISHE (How it should have ended) videos before coming to work and spending forever writing this marathon post - terribly sorry about that by the way - and so I have finally caught up!
From here on out, I'll try to post every other day (maybe daily if I can pick a good time) regarding my insights, things I've learned, and done that were of any note at all. Anyway,
Until next time,
Jordan Nielson
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