Happy Halloween…ish! I basically just spent my first Halloween in college doing laundry and watching YouTube videos with what was left of my hall, and it was pretty much the greatest night ever.

There’s nothing wrong with going to Halloween parties at the frat houses and whatnot [not like I was invited, I am so the opposite of cool] but if you’re a lazy homebody like me, there’s also nothing wrong with sitting in your room on Halloween!

It didn’t feel much like Halloween to me, though, because last week was Furman Fall Fest and we all dressed up for that! Furman Fall Fest is basically where kids from Greenville come trick-or-treat and do… other… Halloweeny … activities on Furman campus because it’s too dangerous in their own neighborhoods. Our hall was a trick-or-treating hall [some other halls were haunted] and we basically put “Thriller” [Michael Jackson’s, not Fall Out Boy’s!] on repeat on the iPod speakers and dressed up as…whatever we could find in our closets!

The Halloween Village People.

 

It was somewhere near the most precious thing I’ve ever witnessed, not gonna lie. That was all the Halloween I needed, and that’s coming from a person who has only NOT trick-or-treated two out of her 18 years of life.

That’s pretty much it. I’m done with midterms and I did pretty well on all of them. Life goes on in general!

Over and out,
Miss Joya



P.S. I thought I’d leave you with something different this time, because I realized last.fm updates automatically no matter which chart you post, so the last.fm chart from my last post is updated with how much I’ve listened to each artist over the past week. How about recently played tracks?

Please excuse my [dear aunt sally] lack of updates as of late; first there were some issues with the internetz on campus, then I had to get a new screen on my computer because I cracked it like a spaz. But, I’m back now!

Today was another Fall For Furman and there were two good things about it: 1. We get SUPER good food in the DH when there are visitors and 2. I LOVE prospectives! I love to be able to answer people’s questions about Furman and about college life in general, because I made the mistake of pretending I knew all there was to know about college, which made for a whole lot of anxiety once I got here! So if you’re one of the prospectives I spoke to…hi! Don’t be afraid to leave a comment so I look like people are interested in what I’m saying ☺

But I digress; most of the parents had questions about academics of course, and all the students wanted to know about was what there was to do on the weekends, which leads me to my next point:

HOMECOMING!

Okay, so, Homecoming is literally the greatest thing in the whole world except for, like, Less Than Jake [my favorite band!] and vegan stuffed peppers [my favorite food!]. I don’t even want to give away all of the awesome craziness that happens during Homecoming week, but the dance was so incredibly fun.

I went with a big group of girls and we got lost downtown trying to find somewhere to eat because of Fall For Greenville [did we steal that from them or did they steal that from us?], so we ended up just coming back to go to Monterrey. Delicious food, low prices, and hilarious wait-staff. I loved it.

Then we got lost AGAIN trying to find the actual venue [Webb Rd. does not equal Mall Connector Rd., whoever wrote those directions!], but once we got there, it was SO much fun. Trust me, one of my friends was my half-date so I know both perspectives, you can have crazy fun with or without a date. It was a LOT of fun.

That’s basically it. Note that I’m just pulling things out of the air when I write these entries, so if there’s something specific you want to hear about, let me know and I’ll look into it for you!

Over and out,

Miss Joya

P.S. Some of the shelves in the library move ELECTRONICALLY. As in you PRESS A BUTTON and the shelves move. I love this place.

P.P.S. I'm going to TRY to remember to post my last.fm each week when I update just because I know I really like seeing what other people are listening to, so that automatically means you are interested in what I've been listening to. If you don't know, last.fm is a program that works in conjunction with iTunes or whatever you have to make charts of how many times you listen to certain artists or songs. Here you go!

Those are my top artists for the week. Share if you have one too :)

Before I came to Furman, I led quite a ….sedentary lifestyle, if you will. I hate[d] sports, I hate[d] physical exertion and if it didn’t involve food, TV and my bed, it took a lot of convincing to get me to do it. I wasn’t exactly lazy or anything, I just hated…you know, the sweaty, tired thing.

Me on the field with my team. So intense.

Somehow, being at Furman has not only provided me with different means of trying new things that I never would have thought of doing before, but also the mindset of “Why not try it?” In my Freshman Colloquium class, every week we discuss different aspects of being a music major, from practice techniques to stress management to different career paths you can choose with your music major. When we talked about practice techniques, the lecturer was a clarinet player so my thought was “This will be a great time to tune out and theorize about Lost before the new season comes on,” but when I actually found myself listening, I realized he had valid points. He talked about how he worked out in the PAC so he would have healthy lungs, because you have to have good breath support to play the clarinet.

So I’m thinking “Hey, I’m a singer, I have TERRIBLE breath support,” [which I totally do; I admit my faults] “Maybe I should try this.”

Needless to say, the PAC intimidates me for the moment because I assume REAL athletes go there to work out and if I go in there and start clanking two pounds of weight around they’ll all think I’m a freak. But, this happened to be the

week my hall was short on players for our weekly intramural soccer game. I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t get out there and make a butt out of myself on that field, but my hall staff was begging me and so I caved. What did I have to lose?

This is my soccer uniform. See, totes was not kidding.

So I get out there, I’m, like, HALFA MINUTE into the game and my lungs are burning, I can’t breathe, I’m about to die and I think “Oh, THIS is why I have terrible breath support!” Don’t you ever tell any of my hall staff this because I have them convinced that I hated it, but it was pretty much the greatest 50 minutes of my life. We got our butts kicked up and down the field because the other team was really good and they all seemed to have played soccer before, but it was still all kinds of fun.

The point is…for real, especially if you knew me in high school…SOCCER? ME?! The likelihood of that is pretty much the equivalent of the odds of Michael Jackson running through Timmons Arena nude 24 hours a day while George Bush cheers him on in a cheerleading outfit with pom-poms made of plutonium […for lack of a better example, I’m sorry for that mental image]. I even go walking or jogging a few times week after dinner. Of my own volition. As in no one makes me!

So basically, I went from sedentary to soccer star [soccer star, right. I stole the ball from my own teammate once] just because of what was put in front of me. I made an effort to try something at the risk of looking like a freak and now I totally love it AND it's good for me. Hooray!

Over and out,

Miss Joya

The pictures in this post are going to have nothing to do with the post itself, just know that!

Okay, what is the most overused phrase concerning college life? 

Survey says…”Time management!”
Me before President's Dessert! Apparently, this will be the only picture.
I’ve never heard so many people talk about time management and never seen it on so many syllabuses [No, it’s not syllabi] in my LIFE, to the point where sometimes I think it’s tattooed on the inside of my eyelids because I see “TIME MANAGEMENT” in my sleep [Yes, I realize that’s not really possible. Stop thinking so much, nerd!]!

The truth is…that really is what it’s all about. It’s not that college classes are a whole lot harder than high school classes; they’re not the same either, but they’re definitely not an insanely huge step up from what anyone’s used to in high school. It’s not even that you don’t have the time to do what you need to do; sometimes that might be the case when you just happen to have a lot of things due all at once and you might have a miserable night once in a while, but only once in a while!

The thing that changes about college is that you have virtually no boundaries. No one is really going to stop you from laying in bed and reading Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!) all night [HILARIOUS book.] rather than doing your music theory homework…but you definitely have to be the one to put the book down and pick up the staff paper.

There’s usually plenty of time in the day to get everything done as well as relax and whatnot, but there’s always so much MORE to do. Especially at Furman. This school definitely makes sure you have a good time while you’re here. I found myself going to so many fun activities that I’d get back to my room and be like “I JUST WANT TO DO SOMETHING ACADEMIC, GIVE ME HOMEWORK!” For real, foam parties and awkward proms [a.k.a. My Tie] and enormous dorm-wide games of Assassins…it can get to be a little much.

So here are some steps (because I’m running out of things to write) that come straight from a college student that usually has to pencil in time to blink, but still finds time to have fun.

1.    GET A PLANNER. No you can’t use iCal, no you can’t use your Gmail calendar, no you can’t use anything digital! Just…trust me. You’re not going to be the nerd who whips out your computer in EVERY class, because it’s really not necessary, and what if your professor tells you something and you’re like “Oh, I’ll put it on iCal when I get back to the dorm”? YOU WON’T. Get a nerdy little planner, or use the one Furman sends for free, and take out a pencil or a crayon or a quill and write whatever it is down as soon as you hear it.
2.    For the love of all that’s good and holy, look at the planner! It doesn’t really help to write it down if you don’t...look…at what you wrote. Personally, I have huge desk calendar on my desk and a small one I carry with me. I write academic stuff in the small one first and events/fun stuff in the big one first, and transfer everything important to the big one. For instance, if I want to go to see Chuck Norris speak [which is totally happening, and I’m totally going] but I have a crazy huge Calculus test the next day, I can see that it could be an issue. Hooray.
3.    Don’t be a nerd and skip all the fun stuff during one week because you have a big test on Friday, you’ll just be sad!
4.    Don’t be a huge social butterfly and try to go to EVERY fun event, because you’ll probably implode.


There, that was helpful, right?

-Miss Joya

[p.s. I'm totally trying! Now, I can't figure out how to get more than ONE picture to show up in the posts. I'm a total caveman, I know, I'm sorry!]

I was totally going to write an entry about how fun My Tie was and how cute everyone looked and how the dancing was….um, well, anyway. But I didn’t have time.

Then I was going to write an entry about how surprisingly accommodating the DH and PDen are to vegetarians and vegans...but I didn’t have time.

THEN I decided, “Why not write an entry about how much time I DON’T have?”

So after most of my hall came into my room [Yes, we all just walk in. We love each other.] saying “JOYA WHY ARE YOU THE ONLY ONE WHO DIDN’T UPDATE YOUR BLOG?!” I decided that watching a new ANTM episode and eating a delicious veggie burger from the PDen was a perfect setting for me to fill you people in on how my life is at the moment.

….AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

There.

I decided before I came to Furman that I would double-major in chemistry and music/vocal performance [cue everyone looking at me like I have three heads]. My assumption was that I would sing a couple hours a day and be doing chemistry homework and labs and experiments and walking around campus in my lab coat [just to be funny] the rest of the time. Oh, PLEASE. I think in the past three weeks, I’ve been in the music building more times than I’ve seen my own mother in my whole life. Voice lessons, classes, studio, recitals, not to mentioning finding my own time to practice. IT’S NUTS.

It’s not totally tragic, though. Everything we’re doing is super, super fun. Even music theory! But I am one of the select few who finds theory unnecessarily interesting. Every day, I get to learn new ways to make music and express music, and since music is one of my favorite things in the whole world it’s always amazing to be able to learn new things about something you really enjoy. I wasn’t planning on majoring in music because a) I didn’t think I was good enough and b) where’s the money?! Furman’s music program accommodates to everyone, though. Even cowards like me! I was afraid of being the only voice major in the history of voice majors who’s never actually taken voice lessons before, but the teachers are more than willing to work with students who are just starting to pursue music seriously and even seasoned veterans. And as for the money, there’s a class in which at least a whole class period is devoted to telling you HOW to get money with your music major. How cool is that?

Don’t let me sound like I’m knocking chemistry; it’s almost unholy how much I enjoy chemistry, and once I do start getting into the classes for it, I expect it to be pretty challenging. I’m just saying, I don’t think I’ll be on stage at the Met singing the periodic table or listing salts that are soluble in water. That’s the backup in case I CAN’T find the money in music. I have high hopes, though.

So basically the point is…don’t be a music major if you like to eat three meals a day and breathe occasionally.


I’m kidding! It’s loads of fun, and from the third laziest person on the planet, it’s never really more than you can handle. Just lots of fun.

Also, I promise there will be more pictures once I figure out how to get them to not look ugly on here. I am not internet-savvy, do forgive :(.