Roseyland

Sometimes I get bored. It’s very sad, but I’ve found a cure. When I’m bored, I develop detailed plans that will never ever happen. It’s a blast, you should try it. I’m going to share one of these plans with you today. Settle down, you aren’t going to be able to read if you are too excited. I’ve been working on this plan off an on for about 14 years. As you might know by now, I went to Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. See this post for more information. Doane is pretty much the greatest college ever, it’s too bad you didn’t go there. Unless you did, in which case: OMG! It’s so good to see you again! Thanks for checking out my blog! See you at homecoming! Moving on… By far the best thing about Doane is its sense of community, which had a lot to do with it being a residential college where a vast majority of students lived on campus all 4 years. The only slightly bad thing I can say about Doane is that a few of its residential halls are getting kind of old. Now the college is currently starting the process of remodeling the older halls, but I like to think bigger, so I came up with my own plans. Click on any of the pictures for a larger version.

First, we need to study the anatomy of Doane. Below is the campus as it exist today. There are three traditional residence halls made up of mostly standard double rooms. These are Frees (coed), Sheldon (all-female), and Smith (all-male). Hanson hall is fairly new and did not exist when I was at Doane. It consist of suite style rooms and is only upperclassmen. The quads are also only upperclassmen and each quad consist of 4 double rooms with a common living area and bathroom. The quads are where most of the Greek organizations live. Doane has a fairly active greek community with about 50% of students being members of a sorority or fraternity. All of the sororities and fraternities are local organizations, which is one reason they don’t have houses. I lived in Frees my freshman and sophomore years, and the quads my junior and senior years.

I loved my time in Frees and the Quads, but I think it would be fun to just tear everything down and start from scratch. So let’s demolish Smith, Frees, Sheldon, and the Quads. Sheldon is actually fairly new, but I need the space it sits on, so we’ll have to tear it down. I’d like to tear down Hanson too, but they just built it. Demolishing it is a little too unrealistic for my completely unrealistic plans, so I’ll find a way to work it in. Okay, are you ready? drum roll please…. Here is the new Doane!!!

I’ve replaced Smith with three 75 person dorms that will be freshman only. One dorm will be all-male, one all-female, and one coed. I like this idea, because I think it would be cool to have all freshman living in the same place, since they are all going through the same transition to college thing together. It would also provide a common experience for all Doane students, because everyone would have started out in the freshman dorms. Sadly, the freshmen dorms would probably have to be “dry” dorms, but that might be okay. I mean rules were made to be broken, right?

The blue rectangles are on-campus apartments. As great as the residential college experience is, there will always be some students that want more independence. This is for them. I also envision this area being the quieter part of campus, so there are probably more restrictions on parties and stuff.

Okay, now for the fun stuff. I’ve replaced Frees and Sheldon with “group” living. I got this idea from some college out there that doesn’t have dorms (I don’t remember which college). They just have a bunch of big houses, and the students all live in different houses centered on some sort of common interest. Each orange square above is a 30 person “house”. In Doane’s case, I’m thinking that these houses would be filled mostly by fraternity and sororities. It would be a way to have the fraternity/sorority house experience, without forcing the groups to deal with all the logistics of owning a house. These houses would not just be for greek groups though, they would be open to any group that can provide enough members to fill the house. Maybe those crazy FCA kids could even have a house. I would also hope that Doane would allow groups to keep the same house year after year as long as they are responsible with it and can find enough people to live in it. I should also mention that I don’t intend for each orange box above to be an identical house, they should each be unique to allow for the unique styles of the groups that will fill them. Also, parties with alcohol are allowed in these houses.

So there you have it. My perfect plan. If you were paying attention, you would notice that I kept about the same number of total spaces for students and I kept the percent of students living on each side of campus the same. In addition, I moved the noisier side of campus away from the residential neighborhoods. Gotta keep the Crete community happy. So what do you think? Where would you live?

I have a special treat for you today. My college admission essay. I came across this when I was migrating data to my new MacBook back in October. I wrote this in the fall of 1994 when I was 17 years old, and it is one of the earliest examples of my writing that I have. It’s a little embarrassing to share this, but what the hell, it’s only the internet. Anyways, here it is, completely unedited. I’ll offer my thoughts after the essay.

I started swimming my freshman year and my life has not been the same since. Swimming has taught me more than any other activity that I have been involved in. Commitment, dedication, and determination are just a few of the values that I have gained from swimming. I believe that the most important thing swimming has taught me is the importance of setting goals. When I started swimming, I quickly learned that I could accomplish much more if I set specific goals to work toward. This encouraged me to set goals, not only in swimming, but also in my life. One of my goals is to achieve a high level of education so that I can become an engineer. As an engineer, I can contribute greatly to society, which is one of my personal goals. With these goals I am sure that I can overcome any difficulties that get in my way. (continue reading…)

Good news! I have unlocked the key to success. Quick tangent. How do you unlock a key? Isn’t a key the thing you unlock stuff with? Never mind. By “unlocked” I mean that I read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I love this book, it blew my mind and it reminds me of one of my other favorite books, Freakonomics. Some people are passionate about books like Catcher In The Rye, but not me, I get excited about books with statistics and sociological studies. I know, just when you thought I couldn’t get any cooler. (continue reading…)

This is my new girlfriend Meghan. I know what you are thinking. What about Reese? Reese is still my number one girl, but she knows a man like me can’t be tied down to just one amazing woman.* I’m like Hugh Hefner, minus the grotto. This new relationship has been very exciting. Megan is not like any girl I’ve ever dated before. She is very opinionated and we disagree on several issues. There is a certain tension to our relationship, and I like it. Megan and I do agree on one thing though, the Republican party has a major branding issue. Silly republicans. Never fear though, the Roseyland organization is here to help. (continue reading…)

Let me warn you ahead of time, this is going to be controversial. You may be offended. Last October I did something dramatic. I switched to Mac. This was a big deal for me, because I have always been a PC guy. My first computer was an Apple IIc way back in the day, but in high school I got a Packard Bell with Windows 3.1. It had a 100 MHz Intel 486 CPU and a 200 MB hard drive. Ever since then I have had Windows PCs. I built my last computer myself, which I absolutely loved. I researched and hand picked every component, ordered them from Newegg, and put it all together. It was so much fun that I talked my Dad into letting me build his next computer. So why switch to Mac? A lot of it had to do with my iPhone. I love my iPhone, which led me to love going to the Apple store, which led me to consider getting a Mac. Beyond that, I just like trying new things, especially computery gadgetty things. (continue reading…)

I’ve got style, I’ve got grace, Rita Hayworth ate my face. Who in the hell is Rita Hayworth, and why does she eat faces? Never mind. Not important. So about a week ago, I figured that I should finally backup my blog and upgrade to Wordpress 2.7. That was easy enough. Then I figured, while I’m at it, why not give my blog a facelift and change my theme? All that gray in my old theme was starting to drive me crazy. I found the Pixeled theme in the Wordpress Theme Directory, and I loved it. Pixeled is by far the most popular theme in the directory right now, so as an added bonus, I will no longer feel the pressure of being original. Now if by chance you have been reading my blog, you may have already figured this out, but let me just come out and say it… I’m anal. I need everything to be just perfect, even things no one will ever notice. So I started the process of modifying the Pixeled theme to fit this here personal blog of mine, and it turned into a nightmare. See the picture above, this is where I stayed up until 1 or 2 am every night for the past week staring at CSS code. Also, those books in the picture, not helpful at all. (continue reading…)

Flickr : Darren Hester

I was bored the other day, so I decided to solve the healthcare crisis. You are welcome. The first thing we need to do is stop being scared of the word “socialized”. I have socialized healthcare, and it’s the best healthcare in the world, literally. I work for a large company and I pay $0 every month for my health insurance. Yes it is a part of my compensation, but they give me a decent salary too. I don’t have to worry about preexisting conditions, I can see pretty much any doctor I want, and I only have a $10 copay. I’m not sure what my prescription drug benefits are, but I’m pretty sure they are good. I also get dental care and a good discount on glasses. If I had 10 kids, they would get the same health care for no additional cost. Why is my healthcare so good? Because I’m part of big group of people who all get the same healthcare and the cost is spread out over all of us. It’s called socialism. The only people who don’t have socialized healthcare are those who have an individual plan that they purchased on the free market. These people’s healthcare is expensive and it sucks. I’ll take the socialist group plan thank you. (continue reading…)

I saw Bill Maher’s Religulous last weekend. I can not resist a good documentary, especially when it is about religion or social issues, so I knew that I had to see this film. I had high expectations for Religulous. I have lots of issues with religion and the things religious people do. I was hoping that Bill Maher would lay it all out there and put the hypocrisies and injustices of religion on full display, but I also hoped that he would look at the positive aspects of religion too. I wanted Religulous to seriously ask the question of whether religion has a positive or negative net affect on today’s society, and maybe even provide insight into how religion could evolve for the better. While I am glad that I finally saw Religulous, I was disappointed. (continue reading…)

Back in October, I went back to college for homecoming and my fraternities 125th anniversary. I couldn’t wait to blog about it, yet somehow I’m just now getting to it. Hmm… I considered just scrapping this post, but I knew you would want a tour of my college. It is the greatest college in the universe after all. I went to Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. Doane is a small liberal arts college with about 1000 students and Crete is a small town of about 5000 people. Doane had a great community. Everybody knew everybody and all that stuff. At Doane, I was a double math and physics major with a minor in computer science. I was also a member of the Delta Kappa Pi fraternity. Which is odd, because I’m not really the frat guy type. My fraternity was great though. It gave me this incredibly active social life that required zero effort on my part. I’m a big fan of things that provide big rewards for minimal effort. I should totally put that on my resume.

Let’s start the tour, please keep your arms in legs inside the tram at all times. This first building is the new education building (I think). This building did not exist when I in school. It looks very prestigious though, I’m impressed. Doane has a lot of education majors, and they spend their entire college careers cutting shapes out of construction paper, or so it seems.

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This is one of my favorite recipes. Scotch-a-roos. They are sort of like rice crispy treats, but denser and richer and better. Instead of marshmallow holding the rice crispies together, scotch-a-roos use corn syrup, sugar, and peanut butter. They are topped with melted chocolate and butterscotch. I love butterscotch. Not many people have heard of scotch-a-roos, which is a great tragedy. Fortunately, my blog is here to save the World. Here are the ingredients: (continue reading…)