A few months ago, back in the summer, I had a mid-life crisis. I was at a relative’s house for a barbecue and my aunt asked me how old I was turning this year.

“I’m turning nine- oh.” My eyes widened with the sudden realization that I wasn’t turning 19. I was turning 20. I had a dumbfounded look on my face, so my aunt starting laughing and left me to deal with my internal crisis on my own.

I wasn’t going to be a teenager anymore. I was going to be an adult. I was going to be old. Panic started to set in as I started reaching out to different people, explaining what happened and what I was feeling. I didn’t want to grow up.

Growing up means more responsibilities. It means more stress. It means swallowing my pride acting like an adult. It means less free time. It means the fun is over. It means a dark and bleak future of eternal suffering.

Which brings me to today. My birthday. My 20th birthday. And… it’s not as bad as I thought.

Sure, I have a bunch more responsibilities. But I’m actually having a lot of fun. I love planning, so planning out all the Programming events for next semester for Beta and IFC is a ton of fun. I have a dozen other non-academic things I need to attend to before I leave. But I’m enjoying myself.

And I’m definitely not acting my age. If you ask anyone that knows me, I’m one of the most obnoxious and immature people around. You can always count on me to say something inappropriate at the worst possible time.

The fun never really ended. Things changed, but I never stopped having fun. I’ve made so many new friends and even more memories. The future is now and it’s not that dark and bleak.

Maybe growing up isn’t as bad as I thought.

So I recently moved into a new room because we have some new guys moving into Beta so we had to shift some people around in order to make accommodations. I love my room. It’s the perfect size. Small enough to be cozy, but big enough to fit a couple people that want to hang out. It’s also right near the bathroom and almost equidistant from our front and back doors. But there’s one thing.

The heater doesn’t work.

Well technically it does work, just not very well. It’s really finicky, only turning on if the knob is turned to a very precise location. And when it does turn on, it shuts off after about 5 minutes (which isn’t nearly enough time to heat up a room!).

I already talked to my GHC (Greek House Coordinator, the RA for Greek Houses) and he filed a work order a few days ago. Facilities did come and check it and another room’s heater out and fixed both. But whenever I want to operate it, it takes 6 or 7 tries to get it on.

Given the recent cold weather and a California body that isn’t used to much below 50 degrees, I kind of need a heater. Or else I might turn into a Kevin-sicle during finals. Actually, that sounds like a better alternative to finals.

I hurt my arm the other day.

Nothing serious or CHWS-worthy, but it was rather embarrassing. Ungraceful as my reaction was, I hold no ill will toward whoever lubricated the stairs. Instead, I have decided to respond in the most reasonable way possible: immortalizing the incident on the internet.

Anyway, it got me thinking about how tattered people around here are starting to look. It’s like when a long-distance racer is dashing the last hundred meters to the finish line. As impressive as the feat of getting there was, they certainly don’t look dignified doing it. In this case, people are doing less sweating and flailing and more shoving their faces into books and chugging coffee, but the principle is the same. Finals week looms closer and closer each day, and many grades will be made or broken before the semester is over.

“I wish I were a freshman again,” a friend of mine said to me in the Cellar, my arrival signaling a short break in his studying. I helpfully reminded him that that would just mean he’d have to do everything over again, but that somehow didn’t improve his morale.

My best wishes go out to the tutors at the Center For Writing, Learning, and Teaching, who are stepping up to work overtime in a number of studying and writing events within the next week even as they have their own final tests and assignments. However much help we need, give or receive, we shall all soon stumble out of this semester, panting, but smarter than we were before.

Even now, we can see that the holidays are coming. At work today we took some time out of our day to decorate the office; tiered lights and suspended snowflakes signaling the festive month that is nearly upon us.

So I just got back from off-roading for the the first time. It was pretty freaking awesome.

I went off-roading with two of my friends, Mitch and Matt. Mitch had mentioned they were going off-roading last night and invited me to come along.

Driving down the highway with the roof off.

We started the trip with the roof down. This lasted a good 10 minutes before we realized it was freezing and was about to rain. But, I was able to get a good Snapchat of us crossing the Narrows bridge before we put the roof back up.

Eventually, we got to the trailhead. It was absolutely beautiful. It was so green with a classic Washington overcast. And we were about go roaring through it in Mitch’s Wrangler.

A sign at the trailhead

Mitch’s Jeep Wrangler

We spent a good amount of time traversing the woods, hitting every single bump along the way. Mitch commented “This feels a lot like Tacoma roads, just prettier.” I mean, he wasn’t wrong.

Probably should not have been standing here as the car was going down a slope…

After some time in the woods, we came across a massive muddy area to drive around in. Mitch drove through a couple puddles before allowing me to take the driver’s seat. Mitch encouraged me to drive through the biggest puddle in the area, while Matt was just fearing for his life. Mitch just instructed me to floor it so we wouldn’t get stuck.

Well as it turns out, that puddle was pretty deep. It was deep enough that the water almost came up over the hood. I basically almost turned Mitch’s Jeep into a boat. We were all freaking out. Thankfully, I never took my foot off of the gas, so we managed to make it out.

When we emerged from the water, steam vented from the engine, while streams of water flowed down the sides of the car. For a couple of minutes, we couldn’t stop talking about how awesome that was. Mitch, then let me drive around some more while he took some awesome slo-mo videos.

TREES

After some more driving, we parked on the side of a hill and dropped the roof. We climbed on top of the roll cage and just took in the sight before us. It was green as far as the eye could see. Just rows and rows of the most beautiful trees I’ve ever seen. We all sat there for a while, listening to music and enjoying the forest around us. I can’t even begin to describe how perfect it was. All I can say is that we all agreed it was one of the top 5 moments of our lives.

Friends, music, nature and a Jeep. Absolute perfection.

Trees as far as the eye could see.

Then the rain started to come down. After some struggling to get the roof back up, we all climbed into the car. Then we realized we didn’t know where we were.

In what remain trying times for many people in our nation, it is important that we take a moment to step back and remember all the things we still have. In light of this, I hereby present some selections from the list of things I am thankful for:

1: Clean Drinking Water

I know it’s easy to take this for granted, but it pays to remember how long it took us to get to this point. How many people still don’t have access to water that won’t kill them. I was at a seminar earlier this year that talked about water collection in rural Kenya, and the statistics presented were sobering. There are women out there spending half their waking lives collecting water while we can just flip on a tap.

2: The C-Store

It’s so much more convenient to just wander into the C-Store at night to grab something than it is to walk half a mile or however far it is to Safeway.

3: Math

Can you imagine living without math? It would be so hard to keep track of anything at all. Also, engineering modern technology would be substantially more difficult. I know not all of you like studying math, but it really deserves some credit here.

4: Thanksgiving Break

Anyone who tells me they aren’t thankful for it is either lying or cursed with a terrible family.

5: Language

Point. Grunt. Point. Wave. Gesture at mouth. Gesture at ear. Shrug. Snort. Grunt. Point at nose. Grunt. Snort. Point at eyes. Touch mouth. Touch ear. Touch head. Grunt. Snort. Flail arms. Stomp. Grunt.

I hope this list made you reflect on something you’re thankful for and experience a positive emotion. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get ready to watch an appropriate seasonal movie.

Caryln Sampson from Rebuilding Hope! Sexual Assault Center of Pierce County (SACPC) came to visit my fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, at our chapter meeting today. For those that don’t know, SACPC “offers support toward healing through advocacy and therapy for those affected by sexual assault and abuse” in the Pierce County area. Alongside supporting victims, SACPC also offers intensive trainings to police, medical professionals and other people interested in becoming advocates for victims. SACPC is Beta’s philanthropy and Carlyn is our primary contact with the organization.

Personally, I support SACPC, and sexual assault prevention in general, because I think that sexual assault is totally unacceptable (as any logical person should). Beta choosing SACPC as its philanthropy just aligns with my core values.

Carlyn came to introduce herself to us and lead a discussion on sexual assault and the role that SACPC plays in it. And holy shit it was refreshing.

In my experience, sexual assault prevention trainings and workshops tend to just make me feel terrible. Men are almost always portrayed as the perpetrators and women as victims. There is always this accusatory tone towards the male gender. As a male, this obviously doesn’t make me feel too good. While I am passionate about the topic, the feeling makes me apprehensive to participate in discussions. I’m made to feel that as a male, I have nothing to and should not contribute.

But Carlyn wasn’t like that. Carlyn was incredibly informative, spouting knowledge of every step of the sexual assault reporting process and the different resources that SACPC offers, just to name a few of the topics she discussed. She even mentioned the program she started last year that supported victims of sex trafficking in Pierce County.

Throughout her talk, the tone she took was evenhanded and just generally not accusatory at all. For once, I didn’t feel like a terrible person. Carlyn even mentioned that the idea of men becoming uncontrollable cavemen around women was an archaic and just ridiculous idea. She said that she wanted to help us fight that stigma against males (particularly fraternities) in conversations about sexual assault. All of our members agreed that they thought that the discussion was refreshing and just plain amazing.

Carlyn is expected to visit us again next semester and looking into the possibility of getting us at least part of the same training that SACPC offers to law enforcement and medical professionals and requires of their volunteers and staff.

I can’t wait!