Lack of sleep

So today was the last day of school for the first semester, the very first semester in college for freshmen. The past week was a rough one and I had to find a way to grind it out. Of course, all of you are aware that our rough draft for our final position paper and our final revised copy of fourth and final position paper was due today in class. I am not the type of person who can complete an essay in parts or on different occasions. I am also not the type of person who can complete an entire essay two, or even a week early. As I see it, I am a pressure writer because I almost always end up writing a great majority of my paper. So it is now Sunday night, 12:04 am to be exact, and all I have is the audience analysis. To make a long story short it took me about six hours to complete the first rough draft of my final position paper and then i save it onto my computer and went to sleep at approximately 6:24 am. I say first rough draft because that morning I woke up to revise it one more time before class. However, when I went to go save it onto my flash drive in order to print it from another laptop it did not show up. I went back and fourth from my computer to the other checking to see if I was missing it, but I wasn't. After failing to find my essay on the the flash drive I went back to my saved documents on my hard drive to look for it. But it was not there either, at this point I am starting to get angry because my flash drive and computer failed me, plus the fact that class was beginning in seven minutes. I continued to look for my essay, however, for another twenty minutes. Finally, I left my stuff and ran to class to explain my situation to Natalie. Of course, she was understanding and she let me leave from class to go to OIT across campus in the computer and space building. When I got there they did a recovery search on both my flash drive and on my computer with no positive results, meaning that I would have to retype the entire nine page essay over again. From the moment I found out that I would have to redo it I tried to keep it positive telling myself that God stole my essay from me so that I could produce one many time better. And I do believe that I did, since the second version of my rough draft was much more well written and fluid than the previous one. I was able to e-mail the new essay to Natalie by the next day after spending another six hours retyping it. Now, moving onto the final essay, again I was up into the wee hours of the morning revising and rechecking all the little nuances in the essay and finally decided to go to bed around five in the morning because my friend did not have any ink and neither did her roommate. I figured that when I woke up I would just go back and ask her other roommates if I could use their printer. It turned out this morning that everyone in the suite had run out of ink and at 9:00 in the morning there were not many people I would try calling and risk waking them up. At this point it is now 9:20 and I am a little angry, I rush over to Susquehanna thinking "It's the English building, they must have a printer so I can print this essay out." I was sadly mistaken, however, when I got there a man in the main office told me that I could not print anything in the building and that I would have to go all the way over to McKeldin to print out my essay. It now about 9:30 am or so, and I am running over to McKeldin to print out my essay along with my sources unknown to me that you have to have a terrapin express account in order to print, if not you have to purchase a print card. Furiously I purchase one with just enough money on it to print out everything I need. So now I am ready to print and insert my flash drive into the computer and I can not open my document. Again, I feel the wrath of God crushing me. Knowing that I have limited time to print out my essay I storm over to the front desk and inquire as to why I am unable to open up my documents on the computer. He explains that, the one's I was using were not as "advanced" as the ones behind the desk and allows me to use one. And so finally i am able to open and print out of my documents and have just enough time to sprint back over to my friends house gather my things and run back to class where I handed in my fourth and final English 101 paper. With such a trying ordeal, i would like to think that God had a plan for me and hopefully i can receive a big fat A on my final essay, I think I deserve it.

Team meeting

Time is running out for students here at the University of Maryland. Finals are rapidly approaching and fall sports are coming to an end and winter sports have already become. We are all on the ball trying to fit in study time with practice time, and preparing ourselves for competition. Just today after practice the men's track team had a group meeting at the Comcast Center in Heritage Hall to discuss plans for our upcoming season and the expectations that the school had for us both as a team and individually. My coach Andrew Valmon, spoke mainly about the men's scholarship situation and a new campaign for more scholarships. then he spot about roster spots and the travel team, meaning who would be competeing in meets where we have to travel to place like New York and Miami to run. I think this made a few of us, especially the freshmen like myself, a little bit nervous because this was our first time going through everything, and even though we were performing well on the track there are still sophomore's, juniors and seniors who have spots already. I find a little bit of comfort knowing that as a hurdler as well as a sprinter, he needs me to do my job than the six or seven people trying to run for a spot in the 400 dash. We all have to perform now. Our sport advisor Antwon Goff spoke to us briefly about what he expected to us and was very blunt and to the point, he wanted us to win and perform at the level that we were recruited at and better. I thought hard about something that was in a packet that he had handed out prior to the beginning of the meeting and it dawned on me that, I really needed to take advantage of this entire opportunity presented to me, despite whether I am going to travel as a hurdler or not I need to perform for this team. I am a sprinter and of the teams main sprinters at that. I know what is in me, i know that I am well adjusted and ready to finally take this all on and prove to myself and my coach that I can be counted on to provide a solid source of points for my team. This is what I love to do and I will continue to work hard at achieving the goals I set forth for myself. It is just in my nature to do so, I just needed to see it in a different light.

thanksgiving food

For the past month I have been talking about how excited and ready I was for Thanksgiving to finally be here. I was looking forward to the feast that usually takes place either at my house or a relatives and whenever the topic of Thanksgiving came up I let everyone know exactly what I wanted to eat. "First I want to have main plate, more like a platter filled within a little bit of turkey, rice, macaroni and cheese, string beans, collard greens, stuffing, sweet potatoes, tomato collard greens, yams, and of course the staple of my meal some honey glazed ham, as well as some cornbread slices." After that, if I had any room left I would help myself to a second plate filled with all of the same ingredients and then just relax and watch some television, probably some basketball and then later on that night I would gear up for some desert which would simply be some warm apple pie with ice cream on top. That to me would be a complete meal and a traditional Thanksgiving. However, Thanksgiving did not happy according to the way I had envisioned it. I do not really want to say that it was lame, but it was not what I had expected at all after coming home from college. Of course we had the traditional turkey, all though not my favorite thing to eat, it is an important part of my family's Thanksgiving tradition. We had stuffing, some good stuffing, some collard greens, string beans, sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese and biscuits with cranberry sauce. There were no collard greens slowly simmered in tomato sauce, and that got me down a little bit. But I have to say I was most upset that I did not have any honey glazed ham, or any ham at all. I had been talking about it with my mother for over two weeks and she did not get any ham for us to eat. All in all I guess the Thanksgiving feast was good, I mean the food that was on the table was on point I was just looking for more. On a good note however, I did end up enjoying some hot apple pie with some vanilla ice cream melting on top of it while I watched a basketball game. I am Thankful however for the food that I was able to receive and I can't thank my mother enough for all the cooking that she did. I am now looking forward to Christmas and all the good food that will be on the table there. I am not about getting presents, I do not ask for much if anything at all in recent years because times have been tough but I do want some good soulfully cooked to perfection food.

thanksgiving

So last Wednesday I went back home to New York for my favorite holiday of the year, Thanksgiving. I left the school at around twelve with my teammate who took me into D.C where my bus stop was at G and 11th street. From my bus top you can see the capitol, it was kind of cool and unfortunately I did not have enough time to see it up close. I grabbed something to eat real quick and then I was on the bus and on my way home. I was unaware that it would take over eight hours to get home, almost double the amount of time that it took to get home the last time it took for me to get home. The trip started out well as we left the nations capitol, but after only an hour we hit a wall of traffic that held all way until I got into New York entering the Holland Tunnel. Finally, I got into the city and caught my train, I was home in 20 minutes. When I got home to my family I got some hugs and kisses from my two main ladies, my mother and my sister and we talked for a little before I decided to see some of my friends from high school. After almost four months I finally got to see my best friend, Eric. When he found out that I had finally gotten home he scooped me up within a hour of me being home and drove me to meet up with some of my other friends. In the car with him when I got in was my other good friend Steve, he now goes to Maritime and I could tell how much his demeanor changed. He used to be a constant joker, always playing around being sarcastic, now he was exuding a more reserved manner and a seriousness that caught me off guard and surprised me. Thankfully, by being back home with his boys, he lightened up and fell back into his old clowning self. However, being back home did not necessarily mean that there was going to be that many things for us to do- at least not for us. We just ended up chilling and riding around and then going to get some Checkers. Throughout the rest of the break I saw most of my other friends at some point, and over Christmas break I expect to see a lot more of them.

hills

It is 7:24 am and I have just arrived back in my room after running 12 hills at the Comcast center. For any one who has ever been to the Comcast Center or is wondering what hill I am talking about, it is directly to the left of the main staircase entrance. It is a double hill rolled into one, we start off in flat ground and then begin to stride over the first hill which is some what gentle compared to the second one. After that first hill I maintain my stride, which has been improving since I got here, and then gradually begin to accelerate as I reach the bottom of the second hill. There is a rapid acceleration needed in order to successfully advance this second hill because after the first hill there is somewhat of a slight downward slope that turns back into flat grass. If you can picture this: it is like running a 110 degree angle. That is how steep the hill is. The first four were fairly regular as we started and ended at the points we normally start and finish at. However, after the fourth hill my coach began to move the cones further and further back with each hill until by the ninth hill we stopping right before the entrance to the garage. And once we hit the tenth hill my coach basically threw a cone into the garage and told us to go and find it. It was funny because he hid it all the way in the back of the garage, I might as well had gone back to my dorm, that is how far we had to go. The final two hills my coach put on us, he gave one person the opportunity to decide where we would stop, being that we are all a bunch of competitive jerks it really did not matter who he gave the responsibility to, I knew immediately that we were headed all the way back to the end of the garage because that is what I would have done. That is exactly what we did too, unlike the girls who stopped right as they got to the top of the hill, we pushed ourselves all the way to the end of the garage-three times we did this. I must say though that it was one of the best workouts I have completed since I have been here, I felt light one my feet and I seemed to just roll up the hill and cruise past upperclassmen boys and even some of the girls who start before us. I am beginning to feel like I did when ran all the times that got me here. I am beginning to become me again, the sprinter that never quits. After being disappointed in myself so many times after workouts I am now leading. It is a place that I like to be and a place I see myself staying at now that I have fully adjusted to the intensity of practice. I am happy to be back.

thanksgiving

The countdown to thanksgiving break has begun, at least for me it has. Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday point blank. For me it is all about the delicious food that my mother makes and just me being back with my family, just the three of us. I've been home once already but that did not afford me nearly enough time to really get the feeling of being back home. I mean I did not really even get an actual home cooked meal because I was not there long enough. But this time around, Thanksgiving, I am not only guaranteed a home cooked meal, but a bountiful feast. I believe that nobody does a better job at preparing a Thanksgiving dinner than my mother. Over the years whether we have stayed home or gone to a relatives house my mother has always managed to provide a part of the meal where people say "MMMM, who made this?!?" Besides that my mother also picks up recipes and ideas from other people and adds that to her repertoire. I really just can not wait to be sitting at the table over some egg nog and the feast before me. However, I know that the week ahead, the last full week before Thanksgiving break, is going to be slow and rough. Aside from the papers and test that I may have, practice this week is going to be a killer because it is right before we go home. It starts early tomorrow morning waking up at 5:30 in the morning for twelve hills at Comcast and then continues throughout the week with other workouts, not to mention weight room sessions where we will be tested to find out what our maxes are. Because I am a hurdler/sprinter I am not afforded as many days rest as some of my other teammates are. This week in particular is going to be a challenge because it looks as though I have workouts almost everyday. By the time Thanksgiving comes I may be to tired to eat. It is not that I will not get through the week, I will, it is just that I know the toll it is going to take on me when the week is done. Right now I am trying to maintain a positive outlook, and I am using Thanksgiving as factor in my motivation for this week. I am really looking forward to going home not only to see my sister and mother but some of my friends who I have not seen since we left for college. Two of my best friends were supposed to come visit, but the plans always fell through so now being home for a few days provides with ample time to see all my friends. It is going to be like a big reunion when all my friends get together during the break just to chill and hang out without the stresses of school and practice at the front of our brains. At least for some people, I know that there is studying to be done at home as well as workouts that I have to do on my own at home. This is all apart of the job I have at accomplishing my goals, and of course I will do what it takes to get there. But above all Thanksgiving is the greatest holiday given to man, we should all be grateful because I know I am.

weekend

This weekend was pretty eventful and a little different from a normal weekend. I attended my first Maryland basketball game against Bucknell, the first of many. Anyway I met up with two of my friends and one of their friends from out of town and we arrived at the Comcast Center, where all the home basketball games are played, just as halftime was beginning. Just as a side note I would like to add that the cheerleaders at both the football games and basketball games lack that necessary skill called dancing. OK, anyhow my friends and I, despite arriving at halftime, got seats that were only five rows above the court level and directly to the right of the hoop, we were basically on top of the players when they flew out of bounds for a loose ball. I would guess that the reason we got such good seats is because we were playing Bucknell. I mean when we got to the game at the half we were already up by more than twenty points and when the second half began the Maryland men continued to dominate them. I know many of the basketball players because we all have to go to study table together. I had not really seen any of the them play though and it was special, the team does not have just a few good players, every person that came off the bench and into the game was able to contribute something either offensively or defensively. I was impressed by how much quicker they were than even I had expected, some of the players just blew past their defenders and finished acrobatic layups at the rim. Even the new Korean player, Kim, impressed me because even at his height he had enough speed to run with the guards of the other team. I can not even explain how crazy the crowd went when Kim stepped behind the three-point line and made it look easy. We ended up winning the game by thirty points. After the game and went back to my dorm and took a nap until about 12o'clock and then went back out to meet back up with my friends who went to the game with me. They had gone to Bentley's and had thoroughly enjoyed themselves at the bar. I had to guide them back to my friends apartment in the commons where they ate the Hawaiian pizza they had gotten from domino's and then we watched family guy, one of my favorite television shows until about 4am. I was pretty much spent from the day and passed out next to my friend on her bed.
On Saturday I woke up just early enough to run home and change my cloths to go the football game. Again I met up with my friend and a teammate of mine and together we enjoyed the football game in the rain. Even though the game was good we only stayed until halftime because we were all both hungry and freezing. I just want to say that Panda Express is the most delicious fast food place that we have in Stamp and it really hit the spot after being out in the rain for so long. After we dried off my friend Ashley and I went to the mall to pick up some things and then we headed to Bentley's. Despite having to wait on the line longer than usual in the freezing cold in just a button down shirt it turned out to be one of my better Bentley experiences. At the end of the night I was exhausted from all the dancing and pushing so I headed back home all the way across campus and passed out. All in all, it was a pretty good weekend, and I can not complain.