This year started with one of the best periods of my life: Interim! Interim was outstanding. I played a lot of Ultimate, legitimately enjoyed studying, and had a lot of fun. That last one is a euphemism. I had class for 2 hours each day, which got long towards the end of the month, but it was so easy to handle I had no complaints. Then I'd go to lunch and literally see everybody who was at St. Olaf because I'd stay there from noon-2, which was ridiculous, but I was enjoying myself and talking with a lot of people; so what? Then I'd get back to my dorm and just "shit out" about 2 hours of homework. I say "shit out" because I think that's a good way to explain the process of doing something that's necessary, requires some will power, but the whole experience brings some relief. Also it makes the work sound easier. So I'd "shit out" about 2 hours of homework, but more importantly be finished with all of my homework. Then I'd have like an hour or so to chill until dinner. If the homework was a little longer or tougher, I'd work till dinner and then finish when I got back. Dinner was similar to lunch. 5-well after 7 most days and that was just as much a riot as lunch. Doug, Kurt, Donny, Ian, Tucker, and I, a horde of friends, would go over and just occupy Stav Hall. See everyone, talk to everyone, make plans. We really just reveled in our lives. After dinner, I'd chill or finish homework, or hang out until about eight or nine then we'd head down to Skoglund. Down at Skoglund we'd either throw for about an hour, lift, do eight minute abs or we'd play Ultimate and do eight minute abs. Basically, I got to sculpt my body and it was awesome because the results were basically instant. I also developed as an Ultimate player, I tried to carry my intramural team, and I gave a respectable effort, but at the same time trying to do it all hurt the team. We didn't win a game. We lost our "sure" win because we were over confident, and lost it on universe point. We struggled the rest of the way, but took half 7-5 against sex panthers (hands down the best team composed of seniors that were ballers). We ended losing that game (of course), but it didn't matter we were playing and there were some highlights so who cares? I got frustrated losing of course, but after a while I got over it. In the playoffs we had to play the sex panthers because we had lost every game and they had won every game. We weren't expecting to win of course, but we realized it was possible (we took half after all). This time around they took half 7-4 I think. But we battled back and our effort was borderline heroic. We get to 11-12 but because of time we play to 13. We luck out and Evan turfs an easy throw to a wide open Emma. We move the disc around a little until Doug or somebody puts one to Lauren, but she drops it. Next possession, we don't get as lucky and Emma catches the game winner. Another heartbreak, but that's okay because it makes more sense this way. Sex Panthers go on to win it all, as they should, but it would've been hilarious for us to win our first game against the hands down best team out there.
My birthday passes, nothing incredible. Flat ball happens. Remember in the army movies when people are walking around looking at the wounded in the medical tent? It was kind of like that. People were throwing up left and right. But I stayed out of that mess. Instead I was making mischief and actually didn't get back to my room until 5 the next morning. Haha, this behavior all stems from Tom Petty,
"You have four years to be irresponsible here. Relax. Work is for people with jobs. You'll never remember class time, but you'll remember time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So, stay out late. Go out on a Tuesday with your friends when you have a paper due Wednesday. Spend money you don't have. Drink 'til sunrise. The work never ends, but college does..."
Sure this isn't the greatest quote about college, but that's how I'm trying to live my life. There are some things that'll always be present in life, so those are the things that should be taken for granted.
When the snow finally melted, I was so excited. Got outside, Ultimate outside, played a tournament in Missouri, and it really all just built up to Spring Break. Which again, was one of the best periods of my life albeit shorter than interim.
Spring Break had been hyped all year so I was pumped to finally go. I turned in my last assignment, did some last minute packing, and got in a van and St. Olaf Ultimate went. A lot of the guys got haircuts for the special occasion and I myself was sporting a fitting mohawk. A lot of friends told me it suited me well, but it felt too arrogant for my taste. 21 hours in a van, long, but great. We talked to the seniors, heard stories from previous years, I slept a lot and naturally was messsed with as a result. People found out that I snore. "Like a freight train" is the most common description that I heard. We stopped in the shadiest gas stations, ran a redlight on accident, I had an experiment in driving that nearly ended in disaster, it was a lot. We arrived and played our first tournament in Statesboro, Georgia. I can't really remember how the A-zerks did, but B-zerks had our best results of the season, some people weren't used to the heat, people got hurt, overall it was a good tournament. The guys as a whole did a lot of watching. We watched the girls make a deep run and I want to say they finished 11th overall out of a field of like 50? or something. They did really well and it was great to watch. So finally, we were going to the hyped spring break house that was about 2 hours away. The van that I was in got lost, got stuck in a ditch, but we finally found it and boy did it meet the expectations. Even from just driving up the drive way our jaws dropped. The girls and the guys teams stayed in this mansion on a private lake and proceeded to have week long party. The house was intended to hold 12-20 people, we housed about 50. We had a lot of fun, played lawn games, had an Olympic style competition between the classes, stayed up late, danced, swam at night, had some incredible dinners, it was a grand time. We still had practice during the week, but as a B-teamer it was more of a formality than anything else. Finally, when our stay was over we cleaned the house, dispersed a small mountain of garbage between the vans and proceeded to leave the beautiful state of Georgia. For some reason, dumping the garbage was the hardest part. We stopped at 3 or 4 locations until finally deciding to go to the dump. We left and drove to Chicago for another tournament. This was the windiest and coldest tournament I've ever played. We stayed at Kurt's house and come morning we had a hard time finding the field so we showed up late. We did not do as well as we did in Statesboro but after the first day, many people got sick. I slept most of the entire first day after our first game. And when it was over, we were all just glad to get the hell out of there and get back to school.
After that, the year continues, the academic year comes to a close, alumni weekend we have an auction of the freshman, say goodbye to seniors, and reflect on our year. Summer comes and I go to New York, but if you followed my blog over the summer, you know how that story goes. Coming back from New York was also a good time. Doug and I left early one morning, after Hurricane Irene delayed us two days and drove furiously for about 14 hours to Chicago. Doug was a mad man and drove 13 hours. When we got there, we met up with Donny, Kurt, and Abi and had a laid back time. We packed up the truck, traveled around Chicago and saw the sites, but this was just a warm up to the true adventure that awaited Doug, Donny, Kurt, and I. We went to Racine and had a pleasant chat with Pastor Bill. On the way we had to stop since the tailgate of Doug's truck had opened and the tarp we had used to cover our things was going crazy. We laughed at our good fortune of not losing anything. When we got to Lauren's we had the standard greeting, went to the taste of Wisconsin, which was excellent. At the taste of Wisconsin we ran into Donny's friend Thatcher who is actually rush chair at a frat at the University and he invited us to join him that night. Naturally, we accepted and went up to the U. Met some of Thatcher's friends and went on an adventure. A stop at Ian's pizza made us miss The Lion's Pause, we never knew we had it so good. The next morning we woke up at Lauren's, her mom made her breakfast and we left without evening meeting her dad, but only after being assured that he wouldn't take exception to it. We raced the rest of the way back to campus and moved in, excited for what the year had in store.
The academic year began with an abundance of Ultimate. There was pickup everyday for a while at the beginning of the year, then it transitioned to practices multiple times a week and then this turned into everyday Ultimate with intramurals. Doug, Kurt, and I made A-zerks, for us it was a huge relief. Donny already was an A-zerk last year so he wasn't really surprised when he made it again. Classes weren't too much to handle and I was having fun. The Ultimate community has become a close knit group of friends, maybe because a lot of us are sophomores, but we are all just cool people and we all love each other. Ultimate's been great this year. I've played well, had big games, the tournaments have gone well (we actually won a Halloween tournament), there have been laugh's along the way, a "wedding", and it's been a blast. The Ultimate achievement that I'm most proud of though is winning intramurals this fall. Our team was called "Sorry Doug" after we ditched Doug, but that's a long story. The team was mostly comprised of the same people from the infamous interim team that was winless, however we traded Doug for Mark and Tanya seceded and we got Laurel instead. Initially I was pretty upset Tanya wasn't playing with us, but it all worked out. While we had a lot of people listed on the roster, we only had 7 show up regularly: Lauren, Laurel, Emilia, Kurt, Thomas, and myself. The strange thing is we went from losing every game to winning every game (that we played). We had to forfeit games when not enough of us could make it to games, but when we played we killed bitches. Even teams I thought were vastly more skilled, we ended up blowing through with relative ease. Doug even had a nice playoff run himself, which was impressive since he was the only A-zerk on his team. The final was against Hodge Podge Pish Posh who was comprised of seniors, again vastly superior in my eyes. The first half was competitive and they took half 4-3 due to time. But then after half we exploded and ended up winning like 9-4 I think. Either way we were pumped and in disbelief. We celebrated our victory over the course of multiple weekends, pretty ridiculous. The "wedding" is actually a really funny story. At the beginning of the year, the zerks captains ordered a box of misprint discs and in the box there was an abundance of discs that had the print "Thomas & Rhiannon November 11, 2011" and listed a location in Mexico that I can't remember. Anyway for about a month we joked about celebrating their marriage with them because obviously they must be cool people who love Ultimate enough to have wedding discs. Some stalking ensued and we actually found quite a bit of evidence and they did indeed play Ultimate and were actually really good at it. So when that day rolled around the Ultimate community gathered and had a "wedding" followed by a lively reception.
I also started working at the Pause this semester and it has been bomb. Making pizza is an art and it's a lot easier to mess up a pizza than one would think. It's easy to make a pizza that tastes good, but it's hard to make it look like the best thing you'll ever taste. I love working at the Pause and I'd actually be okay with working there for the rest of my life if it came down to it. I get to work with people who like to have a good time, which means it's a good time and I get to sing and dance. However, the only time the Pause does not rock is when less than stellar workers are working. It's not like they are less fun, they are just not very good at the job. They make pizzas that look terrible and taste worse, food is stored incorrectly and at times it's baffling what their thought process is. Otherwise the Pause is great, but when people getting food are unhappy because of poor service or bad food, it is less fun.
I had a lot of fun this year, and maybe Karma got me back. I took this Environmental Policy and Regulation class and it was not awesome. We had to write a paper about the environmental state of our hometown and it was miserable. 20-40 pages and portions were submitted over the course of the semester. It was difficult because the prof didn't provide a lot of guidance and there was so much information to sift through. My friends and I joked that it would drive us to an alcoholic oblivion or we'd drop out of college. While most people find comfort in the fact that when something like this is over you feel accomplishment, none was achieved. There wasn't a lot of relief either. It just ended. I can't find words to describe the emotional toll of this assignment.
That brings me to about now. Over Christmas break I had resolved to write something substantial and I have failed miserably. I started writing an autobiography of sorts, but I keep changing how I'm writing it, the subjects I am talking about, and overall how I am presenting it. It's not really frustrating though, it'll just take time for me to actually come up with something worth reading. I've read a couple books and written some pieces, but nothing that I can put into my "autobiography". Something I said while having dinner with a good friend,
"I enjoy writing because I like the idea of being able to use words to give someone a particular feeling or emotion."
And I think this is why my writing comes up short. While I can see and feel what I'm trying to express I only paint half the picture. It's like I paint the foreground, but leave the background white. It's still a good painting, but the picture is incomplete. I find myself writing things, erasing, rewriting, editing, scrapping, and again writing. Is it because I feel like my writings no good? Maybe a little, I know it's good, but I feel like it's too serious, too emotional, or too depressing that it comes across as silly. (I've also taken about six hours to write this entry). After all, who am I to discuss such large ideas like life, love, happiness, and morals? Who am I to tell you how it is? I know I'm allowed to put it out there and it's your choice to decide whether or not you read it, but it still makes me uneasy. I think I'm just looking for validation. I was talking to my eldest sister about what I'm doing with my life and my mom started telling me what I should do and for some reason I was getting really frustrated with her. I suppose I wasn't really asking what I should do with my life, and was looking more for someone to say, "Yes Vinh, the way you're seeing the world is valid. You believe in things that are good and you are trying your best to live well and you're doing alright. Just keep doing what you're doing. And yes you are right, it is a shame that people do not see eye to eye with you. And that is not because most people are taller than you." That's a joke; everything I've ever heard is telling me that I'm headed towards a dead end and I try to do "what I'm supposed to" but my heart's not in it.
For those that are curious, this is the piece I wrote:
Maybe it’s different for everyone, but for me, she is attractive but not jaw-dropping, she’s got wit, she’s cautious, but she likes to have fun; but the difference between her and another girl? She brings a calm. There is ease, there is an aura of tranquility and she has all of these things from the moment I see her. I don’t even know her. But she has these qualities. There are plenty of girls who are beautiful, intelligent, and outgoing, but when it’s someone different or worthwhile, you simply know. Some girls are outrageously beautiful, funny, eccentric, energetic, but not this one. She is not excessive in any sense, but she satisfies in every sense. There’s an intrigue, a mystery. Here is a stranger whom you’ve simply just met, but you find yourself with a smile. It’s not a grin of ecstasy; it is a small smile as if she is exactly what you had in mind. The thought of her brings a particular serenity. When you are together, it is peace, contentment, happiness; and for once it feels like the universe is on your side. Sometimes, it’s not meant to be. Maybe one of you has reservations, maybe they made a mistake, or maybe life got in the way. Either way, looking at this person no longer brings the familiar serenity; rather it evokes the bitterest of bittersweet emotions. There is frustration, hope, reluctance, acceptance, and everything in-between. However, you cannot let this one person define you; you cannot hold on by a thread and hope that one day she will come back to you. If the thread is strong enough, like how it is portrayed in the movies, then she will come back to you on her own. But until then, there will be another, she will bring another calm, and she will bring another storm.
The parts in red are exactly what I wanted to say or I like how it sounds. The parts that I highlighted are parts that I am unsatisfied with. Feel free to leave thoughts, criticism, or any kind of feedback. In the meantime, I wish everyone a happy New Year.
Spring Break had been hyped all year so I was pumped to finally go. I turned in my last assignment, did some last minute packing, and got in a van and St. Olaf Ultimate went. A lot of the guys got haircuts for the special occasion and I myself was sporting a fitting mohawk. A lot of friends told me it suited me well, but it felt too arrogant for my taste. 21 hours in a van, long, but great. We talked to the seniors, heard stories from previous years, I slept a lot and naturally was messsed with as a result. People found out that I snore. "Like a freight train" is the most common description that I heard. We stopped in the shadiest gas stations, ran a redlight on accident, I had an experiment in driving that nearly ended in disaster, it was a lot. We arrived and played our first tournament in Statesboro, Georgia. I can't really remember how the A-zerks did, but B-zerks had our best results of the season, some people weren't used to the heat, people got hurt, overall it was a good tournament. The guys as a whole did a lot of watching. We watched the girls make a deep run and I want to say they finished 11th overall out of a field of like 50? or something. They did really well and it was great to watch. So finally, we were going to the hyped spring break house that was about 2 hours away. The van that I was in got lost, got stuck in a ditch, but we finally found it and boy did it meet the expectations. Even from just driving up the drive way our jaws dropped. The girls and the guys teams stayed in this mansion on a private lake and proceeded to have week long party. The house was intended to hold 12-20 people, we housed about 50. We had a lot of fun, played lawn games, had an Olympic style competition between the classes, stayed up late, danced, swam at night, had some incredible dinners, it was a grand time. We still had practice during the week, but as a B-teamer it was more of a formality than anything else. Finally, when our stay was over we cleaned the house, dispersed a small mountain of garbage between the vans and proceeded to leave the beautiful state of Georgia. For some reason, dumping the garbage was the hardest part. We stopped at 3 or 4 locations until finally deciding to go to the dump. We left and drove to Chicago for another tournament. This was the windiest and coldest tournament I've ever played. We stayed at Kurt's house and come morning we had a hard time finding the field so we showed up late. We did not do as well as we did in Statesboro but after the first day, many people got sick. I slept most of the entire first day after our first game. And when it was over, we were all just glad to get the hell out of there and get back to school.
After that, the year continues, the academic year comes to a close, alumni weekend we have an auction of the freshman, say goodbye to seniors, and reflect on our year. Summer comes and I go to New York, but if you followed my blog over the summer, you know how that story goes. Coming back from New York was also a good time. Doug and I left early one morning, after Hurricane Irene delayed us two days and drove furiously for about 14 hours to Chicago. Doug was a mad man and drove 13 hours. When we got there, we met up with Donny, Kurt, and Abi and had a laid back time. We packed up the truck, traveled around Chicago and saw the sites, but this was just a warm up to the true adventure that awaited Doug, Donny, Kurt, and I. We went to Racine and had a pleasant chat with Pastor Bill. On the way we had to stop since the tailgate of Doug's truck had opened and the tarp we had used to cover our things was going crazy. We laughed at our good fortune of not losing anything. When we got to Lauren's we had the standard greeting, went to the taste of Wisconsin, which was excellent. At the taste of Wisconsin we ran into Donny's friend Thatcher who is actually rush chair at a frat at the University and he invited us to join him that night. Naturally, we accepted and went up to the U. Met some of Thatcher's friends and went on an adventure. A stop at Ian's pizza made us miss The Lion's Pause, we never knew we had it so good. The next morning we woke up at Lauren's, her mom made her breakfast and we left without evening meeting her dad, but only after being assured that he wouldn't take exception to it. We raced the rest of the way back to campus and moved in, excited for what the year had in store.
The academic year began with an abundance of Ultimate. There was pickup everyday for a while at the beginning of the year, then it transitioned to practices multiple times a week and then this turned into everyday Ultimate with intramurals. Doug, Kurt, and I made A-zerks, for us it was a huge relief. Donny already was an A-zerk last year so he wasn't really surprised when he made it again. Classes weren't too much to handle and I was having fun. The Ultimate community has become a close knit group of friends, maybe because a lot of us are sophomores, but we are all just cool people and we all love each other. Ultimate's been great this year. I've played well, had big games, the tournaments have gone well (we actually won a Halloween tournament), there have been laugh's along the way, a "wedding", and it's been a blast. The Ultimate achievement that I'm most proud of though is winning intramurals this fall. Our team was called "Sorry Doug" after we ditched Doug, but that's a long story. The team was mostly comprised of the same people from the infamous interim team that was winless, however we traded Doug for Mark and Tanya seceded and we got Laurel instead. Initially I was pretty upset Tanya wasn't playing with us, but it all worked out. While we had a lot of people listed on the roster, we only had 7 show up regularly: Lauren, Laurel, Emilia, Kurt, Thomas, and myself. The strange thing is we went from losing every game to winning every game (that we played). We had to forfeit games when not enough of us could make it to games, but when we played we killed bitches. Even teams I thought were vastly more skilled, we ended up blowing through with relative ease. Doug even had a nice playoff run himself, which was impressive since he was the only A-zerk on his team. The final was against Hodge Podge Pish Posh who was comprised of seniors, again vastly superior in my eyes. The first half was competitive and they took half 4-3 due to time. But then after half we exploded and ended up winning like 9-4 I think. Either way we were pumped and in disbelief. We celebrated our victory over the course of multiple weekends, pretty ridiculous. The "wedding" is actually a really funny story. At the beginning of the year, the zerks captains ordered a box of misprint discs and in the box there was an abundance of discs that had the print "Thomas & Rhiannon November 11, 2011" and listed a location in Mexico that I can't remember. Anyway for about a month we joked about celebrating their marriage with them because obviously they must be cool people who love Ultimate enough to have wedding discs. Some stalking ensued and we actually found quite a bit of evidence and they did indeed play Ultimate and were actually really good at it. So when that day rolled around the Ultimate community gathered and had a "wedding" followed by a lively reception.
I also started working at the Pause this semester and it has been bomb. Making pizza is an art and it's a lot easier to mess up a pizza than one would think. It's easy to make a pizza that tastes good, but it's hard to make it look like the best thing you'll ever taste. I love working at the Pause and I'd actually be okay with working there for the rest of my life if it came down to it. I get to work with people who like to have a good time, which means it's a good time and I get to sing and dance. However, the only time the Pause does not rock is when less than stellar workers are working. It's not like they are less fun, they are just not very good at the job. They make pizzas that look terrible and taste worse, food is stored incorrectly and at times it's baffling what their thought process is. Otherwise the Pause is great, but when people getting food are unhappy because of poor service or bad food, it is less fun.
I had a lot of fun this year, and maybe Karma got me back. I took this Environmental Policy and Regulation class and it was not awesome. We had to write a paper about the environmental state of our hometown and it was miserable. 20-40 pages and portions were submitted over the course of the semester. It was difficult because the prof didn't provide a lot of guidance and there was so much information to sift through. My friends and I joked that it would drive us to an alcoholic oblivion or we'd drop out of college. While most people find comfort in the fact that when something like this is over you feel accomplishment, none was achieved. There wasn't a lot of relief either. It just ended. I can't find words to describe the emotional toll of this assignment.
That brings me to about now. Over Christmas break I had resolved to write something substantial and I have failed miserably. I started writing an autobiography of sorts, but I keep changing how I'm writing it, the subjects I am talking about, and overall how I am presenting it. It's not really frustrating though, it'll just take time for me to actually come up with something worth reading. I've read a couple books and written some pieces, but nothing that I can put into my "autobiography". Something I said while having dinner with a good friend,
"I enjoy writing because I like the idea of being able to use words to give someone a particular feeling or emotion."
And I think this is why my writing comes up short. While I can see and feel what I'm trying to express I only paint half the picture. It's like I paint the foreground, but leave the background white. It's still a good painting, but the picture is incomplete. I find myself writing things, erasing, rewriting, editing, scrapping, and again writing. Is it because I feel like my writings no good? Maybe a little, I know it's good, but I feel like it's too serious, too emotional, or too depressing that it comes across as silly. (I've also taken about six hours to write this entry). After all, who am I to discuss such large ideas like life, love, happiness, and morals? Who am I to tell you how it is? I know I'm allowed to put it out there and it's your choice to decide whether or not you read it, but it still makes me uneasy. I think I'm just looking for validation. I was talking to my eldest sister about what I'm doing with my life and my mom started telling me what I should do and for some reason I was getting really frustrated with her. I suppose I wasn't really asking what I should do with my life, and was looking more for someone to say, "Yes Vinh, the way you're seeing the world is valid. You believe in things that are good and you are trying your best to live well and you're doing alright. Just keep doing what you're doing. And yes you are right, it is a shame that people do not see eye to eye with you. And that is not because most people are taller than you." That's a joke; everything I've ever heard is telling me that I'm headed towards a dead end and I try to do "what I'm supposed to" but my heart's not in it.
For those that are curious, this is the piece I wrote:
Maybe it’s different for everyone, but for me, she is attractive but not jaw-dropping, she’s got wit, she’s cautious, but she likes to have fun; but the difference between her and another girl? She brings a calm. There is ease, there is an aura of tranquility and she has all of these things from the moment I see her. I don’t even know her. But she has these qualities. There are plenty of girls who are beautiful, intelligent, and outgoing, but when it’s someone different or worthwhile, you simply know. Some girls are outrageously beautiful, funny, eccentric, energetic, but not this one. She is not excessive in any sense, but she satisfies in every sense. There’s an intrigue, a mystery. Here is a stranger whom you’ve simply just met, but you find yourself with a smile. It’s not a grin of ecstasy; it is a small smile as if she is exactly what you had in mind. The thought of her brings a particular serenity. When you are together, it is peace, contentment, happiness; and for once it feels like the universe is on your side. Sometimes, it’s not meant to be. Maybe one of you has reservations, maybe they made a mistake, or maybe life got in the way. Either way, looking at this person no longer brings the familiar serenity; rather it evokes the bitterest of bittersweet emotions. There is frustration, hope, reluctance, acceptance, and everything in-between. However, you cannot let this one person define you; you cannot hold on by a thread and hope that one day she will come back to you. If the thread is strong enough, like how it is portrayed in the movies, then she will come back to you on her own. But until then, there will be another, she will bring another calm, and she will bring another storm.
The parts in red are exactly what I wanted to say or I like how it sounds. The parts that I highlighted are parts that I am unsatisfied with. Feel free to leave thoughts, criticism, or any kind of feedback. In the meantime, I wish everyone a happy New Year.
Best wishes,
Vinh
