I am graduating at the end of this semester. In ten days, two hundred and forty hours, 14400 minutes, and 864000 seconds I will no longer be a college student. Because you are probably reading this at least a couple of days after I wrote it even more time will have gone by. This past couple of weeks has felt like the beginning of a roller coaster when the car is slowly rising and you know that in any minute it will plunge down. But before I leave UPS for good I want to acknowledge some of the people that made my experience here special: my friends. Every college student needs them. If only to have someone they can borrow meal points off of. I am going to make a list here of things my friends have done for me this semester that I am grateful for.

• Providing chocolate. I have been mooching chocolate off of one of my friends since sophomore year. When she asks me if I want any, I reply: “Is the pope catholic?” And then I start salivating.
• Exchanging cat stories. I am a cat person. And by cat person, I mean a person who will let their cat wake them up at four in the morning because it wants to be petted. I get together with my friends and coo over how our cats are all such spoiled princesses. This lets all the cat adoration out of my system and keeps the strange looks I get to a minimum.
• Sharing perspectives that are different than my own. If the world was homogenous, we would all be very bored. In college I learned that, thankfully, it isn’t.
• Giving me a robe when I get shut out of my room in a towel. This Thursday I locked my keys in my room while I was in the shower. I had work at the diner in twenty minutes. As you probably know, the diner uniform is not a purple bath towel. When I told my family about this episode they thought it was very funny for some reason. Hopefully not schadenfreude.
• Watching Netflix with me on the weekends. This has given me a reason to leave my room and prevented me from turning into a cave person. A cave person can write an elegant fifteen page paper but speaks only in grunts.
• Friends are the people you can reveal vulnerability too. When I revealed some of mine, one of my friends said that she was honored that I’d chosen to confide in her. I was very touched.

I hope that whomever’s reading this, you have friends as nice as mine.

The twinkling lights adorning the massive (probably 10ft) christmas tree, wreathes and bows across the chapel and warmth of the company exuded the holiday spirit within Kilworth Chapel while the rest of the campus labored over their last week of classes assignments and finals preparations. By the time I walked into the chapel, nearly all the pews were full, many with elderly folks in our local community eager to enjoy the holiday music. A sentiment I fully agree with after hearing the Adelphians and Voci d’Amici annual Holiday Concert, “The Darkest Midnight in December”. Adelphians is our mixed audition based vocal group, renown for many years and Voci d’Amici are the top sixteen singers on our campus, auditioned to perform acapella music. The concert also engaged Rev. Wright in readings across the many religious disciplines about the holiday season. Their concert drew the hoards of the community, as I exited one family was seen taking their annual holiday picture on the steps of the Chapel after each concert.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Adelphians and Voci d’Amici is anything but great, their musicality, performance, song choices and emotion rang true on Sunday afternoon taking me out of the fog of finals, lab reports and papers I was drudgering through to think about the holiday spirit. To tradition, to spending time with family, friends and be grateful for. My parents are sending me to college because I wanted to further my education, I am excited about biology and what I could do with in this career field of medicine and help people. Enough to send my a couple thousand miles away from home for 8 months of the year for thousands of dollars, because they believe in me and my desire to know more and be able to do more. *pause* ALL of that makes the studying, fun, and times with the friends I’ve made up here at Puget Sound all the more special and meaningful, just as being about to see all my family and friends at home who I love and will finally be able to spend time with during my break special too. I’m lucky to be able to study a ton and moan and groan about my lab reports, exams and learning all about science. Adelphians and Voci d’Amici shared amazing music with us that day, a part of their passions for singing and to remind us of the holiday spirit as much as I’m sure the elderly folks and other families there were able to enjoy.

Before coming to UPS, I read about this little self-project that you could do throughout your college years. Basically, youmake a playlist or folder with all the songs you downloaded in a certain semester or year. For example, I’ve added every song I’ve downloaded since orientation week to “Freshman Year: Fall Semester”.

The idea is that you’re able to see how your tastes in music change over your college career. I really loved this concept and have downloaded 57 songs since starting. I’ll probably add a few more before finals wrap up. Here are some of my top picks:

• I’m Just a Kid by Simple Plan – Starting off strong with some good old fashioned teenage angst. Everyone can relate to this song. We’ve all felt lonely or felt like the world was completely against us or like we don’t fit in. It’s just a good song anyone and everyone can relate to.

• You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift – What’s a playlist without some T-Swizzle? This song is a simple and catchy tune from earlier in Swift career, when she was in between Country and Pop. It’s everyone’s guilty pleasure song. Admit it, you’ve rocked out to this in your room when no one was looking. I have.

• All Star by Smash Mouth – It’s a classic. I mean, that’s really all there is. It’s the epitome of the late 90’s and early 00’s.

• Hey Ya! by OutKast – Like All Star, this is a classic. If you don’t like thissong , I’m not sure if we can be friends.

• Never Forget You by Zara Larsson & MNEK – When you first listen to this song, you’ll think that’s it’s Rihanna singing. Zara is actually this teenage Swedish girl, possibly the furthest from Rihanna you can get. I promise you, this song is worth a listen

• Roses (ZAXX Remix) by The Chainsmokers and ROZES – This remix is a fresh look at Roses, which the Chainsmokers dropped earlier this year. It kicks up the beat and makes the song great to work out or dance to.

• Coming Over (Filous Remix) by James Heresy – Kygo may have brought the world’s attention to the Tropical House genre, but producers like Filous are keeping people listening, it’s definitely kept me in the genre.

• I Write Sins Not Tragedies by Panic! at the Disco – What kind of person would I be if I didn’t finish off this list without some more angst?

So that’s my list. It looks like I’m an angsty little raver that’s stuck in 2005. I’m really looking forward to what the next few years will do to my tastes in music. Maybe you should try it out. It’s never too late, the next semester is just around the corner.

Holidays can be a great reminder of what you have. A couple of New Years ago my family and I all drank Martinelli’s and sang Auld Old Lang Syne. Then when I kept singing after midnight my sister threatened to hit me. I was genuinely moved by this. But the holidays can also be stressful. Just watch one of the gazillions of movies about estranged Dads trying to connect with their kids on Christmas. Or ask whoever does the cooking on Thanksgiving.

For the past few years my family has kept Thanksgiving simple. My freshman year we had tacos. Sophomore year it was pizza. Last year we went to a friend’s house, so someone else was cooking. And this year we went back to tacos. This was a good thing because by the time my family was ready to make dinner I was ready to eat the table. And when I’m that hungry I start to mutter under my breath a lot and the situation deteriorates from there.

But the tacos were delicious and easy to make. I think it took about half an hour. We ate on the couch in front of the movie Hot Fuzz. It was about a cop having a shootout with the village benefit society which, as it turns out, is actually kind of a cult. Nothing says Thanksgiving like hearing a bunch of people in medieval-ish robes murmur “the greater good” in perfect unison.

That Thanksgiving we watched a total of three movies. We saw the second part of Mockingjay, Hot Fuzz, and Coherence. Mockingjay was depressing, lots of explosions and dead kids. Hot Fuzz was hilarious. And Coherence blew my mind. It was about people meeting versions of themselves from different realities. I ended up really confused but I did get to learn my family’s strategies for what to do if this happened. My mom would hop in her car and not stop driving till it was over. My sister would just stay in whatever reality she ended up in. As for me, I’m not sure what I would do but it would probably involve swearing. And possibly tacos.

One of my interests that I listed in my biography is hair dye. In the interest of ignoring all of the work and research I have to do in the next few weeks*, I’m going to tell you about it.

A picture from when I redyed my hair a few weeks ago. Notice the paper towel underneath it so I don’t get pink everywhere.

I’ve been dying my own hair for a few years now, and I’ve recently started dying some of my friends’ hair when they asked — they think that I’m magical or something because it always turns out stunning but really, in the interest of full disclosure, hair dye is just guesswork. The actual dying part is easy, because all you have to do is paint it on the hair with either a brush or your fingers**. So is mixing the dye. You choose either a color or colors, and maybe some white conditioner if you want to make it lighter, and mix them all together before dumping it on someone’s head. The proportions are what’s difficult though. It’s choosing the proportions of colors to put in the mix that involves the most guesswork.

Do I want one drop or two of the reddish-purple? Do I want to put a little or a lot of purple into the blue? It all depends on what color you want, and, potentially, whether you mess up and put more color than you were expecting to into the mix (sorry Rachel. I did not mean to make your hair reddish purple instead of orchid).

It’s a pretty simple thing, actually. I might make a post about bleach later, because that is much more difficult and can be legitimately dangerous if you do it wrong. But dying hair? Is just painting. And, if you do it enough and speak confidently enough about different colors and stuff, people might just think you’re a wizard when their hair magically turns purple.

* I am definitely going to do it, and I am pretty well prepared for it. Sometimes it’s good to take a break though!

** I would definitely recommend using disposable gloves if you’re going to do this at home though and especially if you’re going to use your fingers instead of a brush to paint your or your friends’ hair — no one wants bright blue hands for a week. No one.***

*** I may or may not be speaking from experience about that.