The End....

Well, here it is. My 13th and final blog. I never thought that I would see the end. I will admit, in the beginning, I thought this was a dumb idea. I have never been one to express my feelings or daily activities or personal views on the internet for all to see. It's just not my thing. I'm still not a big fan of it, but throughout this semester it has kinda grown on me. It's a good place to kinda vent and let loose. I still haven't decided if I'm going to keep up with this blog yet or not. I'll take a break from it and see if I miss it, then I'll determine whether or not to return to the blogging world.

For my last blog, I decided to write about how my views of locality have changed over the course of the semester. Back in January, I really never thought about how local stores, restaurants, views, and attractions shaped a town. I started the blog, brainstormed about local topics in Tuscaloosa and in my hometown. I read the assigned chapters in the books for class dealing with local issues and living locally. And I even took part in local events and experienced local cuisine and visited local attractions. However, I was just going through the motions. I wasn't the biggest fan of the class topic, but I dealt with it and acted like I did. But something changed in the last 3-4 weeks. I actually got into a couple of the books we had to read. I started to like the blog and reading about everyone else's local adventures. But most of all, I realized how much I had taken for granted the local things in my life. I think the change took place when all of my friends from back home started telling me when they were coming home for summer break. I started thinking about all the things I hadn't seen since August of '07 back home. The corn fields, the coal mines, the hole in the wall restaurants where the owner knows what you want as soon as you sit down. All of things I had gotten used to and tired of during childhood and high school were now the sites I wanted to visit first when I headed back home. These places that were local to my hometown had never been thought of as local. They were just there. After I thought about that, I started thinking about Tuscaloosa and all of the things I have grown to know and love here during my 1st year at the Capstone. Locality really does play a huge role in your life, whether you acknowledge it or not. So I guess I took a lot from this class and did a 180 about my views on locality. Robin, you did your job, and I am now a locavore(to steal your term). So whether I keep up with this blog or not, I know for a fact that I will continue to explore things local to me and appreciate them more now that my views have changed and I no longer take them for granted. To close, I'll take a page out of a great band, Boston, and their song "It's Been Such A Long Time," with a quote that closes up the semester and how my local views have changed. "Well I'm takin' my time, I'm just movin' along, You'll forget about me after I've been gone. And I take what I find, I don't want no more, It's just outside of your front door."

Finals

As finals week looms in the immediate future, the many libraries on campus are filled with students from the University trying to cram as much as possible before they take their respective finals. Gorgas library, UA's biggest library, is open 24 hours a day for those who need to do some serious studying throughout the late night hours. Most students have been worrying about their finals for a couple weeks now. Trying to raise their overall grades in the class just in case the final doesn't turn out as planned. I only have 3 finals this week. However, I need to get A's on all 3 in order to get A's in the class. This pressure to try and keep my GPA around 4.0 is killing me, especially since I'm trying to keep it as high as possible to help my chances of getting into law school.

There are two things about finals I can't figure out. The first is Dead Week. This week is anything but dead. I have been in college for 2 semesters now, and the 2 dead weeks have been the 2 busiest weeks of the year for me. The University needs to re-evaluate Dead Week in my opinion. They either need to eliminate it all together and just use it as a regular week, or make it a true Dead Week and actually enforce the no tests/assignments due for the week. The second thing I can't figure out about finals is why some people(namely many of my friends) slack of so hard during the semester and watch their grades plummet, then try and cram as much information into their brains right before their final. They think that some how they can learn the information for the 1st time since they didn't learn it when it was being taught, and pull out some high grade on their final. It would be so much easier to just do what you are supposed to througout the semester and then make finals a lot easier on yourself. I guess some people haven't figured that out yet.

ALS

On Saturday, May 3rd, Phi Delta Theta will be hosting the 2nd annual Walk to D'Feet ALS. ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, is a progessive, fatal neuromuscular disease that attacks the nerve cells repsonsible for controlling voluntary muscles, and eventually kills these cells. ALS is better know as Lou Gehrig's Disease, named after the famous Yankee played who eventually died of the disease. The ALS Association, or ALSA, is an organization aimed at providing help and aid to those currently suffering with the disease and is also interested in helping to find a cure for this diminishing illness. The Walk to D'Feet ALS helps to raise money for patients in Alabama and for helping to find a cure. This is a very worthy cause, and I hope you can come out and help support the walk. There are currently around 350 patients in the state of Alabama diagnosed with ALS, with approximately 90 new patients a year diagnosed. I hope you all can make it to help the ALS Association at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 3rd on the University of Alabama Quad.

The Crimson White

By now, I'm sure that all of you know of my voiced displeasure with the Crimson White, the University's newspaper. However, if you have not read or peer reviewed my last 2 papers, then you don't know exactly what my problem is. This is something I really thinks needs to improve to better serve the students of UA. The Crimson White is a student run newspaper that aims to provide information to the students on the University of Alabama campus. It has been providing students with news since 1894. This year, there are seventeen editors on the staff, most of whom are assigned a specific section of the newspaper. There is also one chief editor who is in charge of the newspaper as a whole, making sure everything runs smoothly and each article is written correctly and appropriately. A majority of the articles are written by staff writers and contributing writers, all UA students.

One of the most obvious problems with The Crimson White is its lack of editorial guidance before it goes to print. There are always numerous spelling and grammatical errors in every edition. This problem should never happen because all word processors come equipped with spell check. The lack of effort that is put forth leads me to believe that the staff doesn’t care if what I am reading is accurately typed or not. The simplicity of making sure all words are correctly spelled should be one of the first things checked before printing off the paper and distributing it around campus. Another big problem that is inhibiting The Crimson White from becoming as good as it could be is its lack of stories dealing with pressing issues or relevant topics. All too often, I will pick up a newspaper and be done reading it in less than five minutes because of a lack of stories that interest me. I consider myself to be a normal college student who shares the same interests as my fellow students. Because of this, I’m sure there are a lot of papers being wasted and not getting read. They will get picked up and skimmed over before being thrown into the nearest trashcan. This waste of paper, ink, and money used to produce the paper each day could easily be spent for far better and more productive things. The informative side of The Crimson White is almost nonexistent. Exploring new topics and unveiling information students on this campus don’t already know about is something that almost never happens. While the two previous issues dealing with the University newspaper are a problem and need to be addressed, they lack in comparison to the most compelling issue with The Crimson White. My biggest concern with The Crimson White is how the staff uses too much energy and page space complaining about matters that have little relevance at all. Every time I pick up the The Crimson White it is filled with complaints about one thing or another. It is supposed to be a student newspaper, but it is turning into a forum for complaining and bad journalism for the editors and staff. More and more articles are written with a hidden message that is very easy to detect. I get tired of reading how one staff member doesn’t like this or an editor doesn’t like that. A good newspaper is written with a non-biased account of the situation. If written like this, it will be able to appeal to a larger audience and be a more successful newspaper.

I hope that the Crimson White greatly improves over the summer in order to better serve the student body at the University of Alabama. It has the capabilities of being a great resource if used properly, and I hope it turns into that resource very soon so that it is more benefitial to the students on campus.

The Quad

Everyday I have to walk through the Quad to get to at least one of my classes. I never realized how much of an epicenter it really is. I have been to other college campuses where the Quad really is the center of the campus, with classrooms sitting directly on it and it actually being a quad shape. So when I came here, I was a little dissapointed, but didn't really think that much about it. Now that the weather is nice, more and more people are heading out to the Quad and using it in many different ways. Pick-up games of ultimate frisbee and football frequent the Quad. On some days it looks like the Westminster Dog Show out there, with numerous breeds of dogs walking and playing with their owners on the Quad. Next year when I move into my apartment, I plan on getting a dog, so I'm sure I will join the dog show. There are also many people studying, reading, and just relaxing on the grass. It really is a nice place to escape to and bask in the great Alabama springtime weather. However, with every pass I make through the quad, I can't help but think how many of my tuition dollars are spent to keep that grass the greenest it can be. It is a perfect lawn in the middle of the campus. I guess no matter how much money the University spends on keeping it looking perfect, it really is a selling point of the University and is a great place to spend some time in great weather.

Shakin it up

As your view of local changes depending on where you are, I have mainly been writing this blog about locality in Tuscaloosa. But I thought today I would blog about my hometown, Harrisburg, IL. There was an earthquake(get the blog title, Shakin it up??) there Friday and it made me think of how I haven't explored the local side of back home yet. When I left in August to come to Tuscaloosa, I couldn't have been happier to get away. I had been stuck in the middle of corn fields for 18 years, and I needed a change of view. Harrisburg is a small farm town of about 10,000 people stuck in the Southeastern corner of Illinois. Farming and coal mines are a way of life. A majority of people stay close to home after high school and go to the local junior college in town or head down the road 45 minutes to SIU, the closest university. It's one of those towns that you say you will never live in again after you get done with college, but most people always end up right back where they started. Until I moved away to go to college, I never realized how little to do there is in Harrisburg. I really don't know how I made it so long without dying of boredom. But one thing Harrisburg does have is a multitude of family owned and operated restaurants. Once I came to Tuscaloosa, I realized that I always took these places for granted. But now that I haven't been home in awhile, these are the places I want to go to 1st when I get back home for summer break. And I'm sure that after a month or so of living back in Harrisburg this summer I will want to get out of there again. But it really is home. It's where all my family lives, all my friends live, and I have made some great memories. As much as I hate it for being so small and boring sometimes, it really is home sweet home.

Springtime Bama

As the clock's spring forward an hour, the grass starts to green, and the weather increasingly gets warmer, Springtime is officially here. People break out the shorts from their closets and begin to work on that tan. Springtime also marks the start of the running of the high school seniors. They leave their hometowns and begin to hit up college campuses around the country to try and find the college that best fits them. And for the University of Alabama, they have one of the best recruiting tools going for them in the Spring. Alabama Springtime is hard to top. The sun is almost always shining, the weather is warmer than most other parts of the country, and the flowers and trees bloom earlier here. As high school seniors parade around campus for their campus tours, its hard to top the beauty of the campus during the Spring. This has to have some effect on enrollment numbers. It is really hard to say no to a campus that looks like this when you're walking in 75 degree weather. I know that it definitely had an effect on where I decided to attend college. After I received all of my acceptance letters from the colleges I applied to, I went back and visited them all again. I narrowed my choices down to the University of Alabama and the University of Illinois. I visited U of I first, on a Saturday at the end of March. It was a dreary, cloudy day, with temperatures hovering around 20 degrees, with the wind chill sitting about 9 degrees. I nearly froze walking around campus on my "official tour." The next weekend, the first in April, I headed down to Bama. The day of my tour, it was 75 degrees, sunny, and a nice breeze. This definitely played a role in where I choose to go to school(ROLL TIDE). Everyday when I walk through the quad to class, I can't help but think how much of an advantage UA has on other schools when it comes to Spring recruiting. It is really hard to top Bama Springtime, and I'm glad I will get to experience it for many years to come.

Fore!

As I lay awake at 4:30 in the morning from over-consumption of coffee from earlier when I was studying, I thought what better to do then blog. The fact that I had to consume so much coffee in order to study for my 3 tests coming up is exactly the basis for which I wanted to post a new blog about. As Spring time slowly continues to trickle in, school turns the corner and heads fast for the home stretch and the weather is becoming nicer and warmer. These two things have a lot in common. Basically, I have less time to spend outdoors where it is nice because of all the work I have to accomplish. However, everyonce in awhile, a break is needed to maintain sanity. My favorite means of escape is to hit the links. Golf has been my favorite sport to play for many years now, and it is something that allows me to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. I was on the golf team for 4 years in high school and it was something I greatly enjoyed. Now that I'm in college, I don't have as much time to play golf as I used to, so every chance I get to play is time well spent. It allows me to forget about the tests I need to be studying for and do something I really enjoy. This is important because as much as college is about getting good grades, getting good grades isn't all about living in the library. Taking time to relax once a week really does help. I'm less stressed when I get done and I am able to hit the books with less frustration and more motivation. If you haven't tried doing this, I really recommend it. Maybe golf isn't your style, but I know everybody has something they like to do that relaxes them and that they enjoy. And if you have never played golf, I really recommend trying it. Tuscaloosa and the surrounding area has many nice courses to play without driving too far. I have given lessons to many people back in Illinois during the summer so let me know if your interested and I'd be happy to help get you started.

The Great Flood of 08

When it came time to decide what to do for my first collegiate spring break, I had many options. The beach, skiing in North Carolina, going to Chicago....the options were endless. However, I(and my bank account) decided to just come home for spring break to relax, play some golf, and catch up with the fam. My spring break started off as normal as possible. I got to hangout with my friends who had their spring breaks a week before mine before they headed back to school. On monday the 17th, I hit the links and played some golf, something I wanted to do everday during spring break, and went to the high school baseball game. And that is where my spring break stopped being normal. The events that followed will go down in the annals of history and have left a tremendous effect on the small farm town I live in. Monday night it started raining, and raining, and raining, and even more raining. It didn't stop raining until Wednesday afternoon, 2 days and 1 foor of water later. Now one foot may not seem that much. But you have to remember that that means 1 foot of water every square inch of land. Needless to say my hometown was game over. Everything was underwater. One of our grocery stores had 3 feet of standing water inside of it. Harrisburg, Illinois was underwater and everybody was feeling the affects. My spring break turned into a flooded nightmare. The local schools got out of school for 2 days because of rain...A RAIN DAY!!! So as people try to recover and dry off, the water is slowly making its way to the Ohio-Mississippi River junction where water is close to the highest it has ever been. Needless to say, I can't wait to get out of this town and be able to see land. Now I know what the Pilgrims must have felt like when they came across the pond and saw the United States for the first time.

Help make somebody's wish come true

On Thursday, March 6th, Phi Delta Theta fraternity and Chi Omega sorority of the University of Alabama are hosting the 1st annual Make A Wish cookout. This is an all you can eat cookout in the Phi front yard where all proceeds will go to benefit local Make A Wish patients. I think this is a very good cause and I hope that the turn out is good so we can raise as much money as possible. The Make A Wish foundation raises money around the country and uses it to grant wishes of children with life threatening illnesses and diseases. This organization has been doing this for over 25 years and is still working hard to make sure every kid that has a wish gets it granted. So much negativity is placed on fraternities and sororities on the UA campus, where most people think they are all about partying and getting drunk every night. Philanthropy is a big part of most of the Greek letter organizations on this campus and thousands of dollars have been raised for very worthwhile charities. I hope that if you aren't busy on the 6th of March that you can make it to the Phi Delta Theta front yard from 5-7 p.m. and eat some good food and have a good time while supporting a very worthwhile cause at the same time. Hope to see you there!

History....the natural way

When I heard we were going to the Alabama natural history museum for class this past Thursday I was pretty pumped. One because we didn't have to sit in the sauna known as our classroom and because I had never been before. We made the treck across campus, took a cliche class photo on the steps of the museum, and proceded inside. The lady at the front gave her spiel about how great the place was and what we needed to see to get the most out of the museum. So we headed out, browsing the museum for some natural history. However, I soon noticed that most of the artifacts and "stuff" inside the walls had little to do with Alabama at all. There was the Alabama state fossil and the only meteorite to ever hit a person. Besides that, there wasn't much more to look at that was from or had to do with the state of Alabama. While I wasn't expecting something extravagant or mind-blowing in the museum, I was at least expecting to see Alabama natural history, and not the natural history of other random places. I think that whoever runs the museum should look into getting more original artifacts from the state of Alabama and less from other parts of the country. This would make the museum more interesting to visit because it would be more local stuff that actually had something to do with me, which would make it a better all around visit.

The Bear

Whether you're an Alabama football fan or not, it's hard not to know who Bear Bryant is. He is considered by many to be the greatest college football coach ever. He coached at Alabama from 1958-1982, which is a century in coaching terms. Rarely do coaches stay at one school for that long, especially now a days. His first season he coached at Bama was the first winning season the University had seen in 5 years. His second season he took Alabama to a bowl game, and did so for the next 25 years, which is a record that still stands. In his third season, he led Alabama to an undefeated national championship. The turn around in three years from a losing team to an undefeated national championship is almost unheard of. Over his coaching career at the Capstone, he won 6 national championships and 13 SEC championships. He also only lost 2 home games during his tenure at Bryant-Denny Stadium. The Bear retired after the 1982 season, and died shortly after in January, 1983. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom posthumously after his death, which is the highest honor to be bestowed upon a civilian.

Paul "Bear" Bryant is still thought very higly of throughout the country as being a great coach and a great person, making sure his team always played with the highest amount of class and sportsmanship. His legacy at the Capstone still lives on to this day. His football accomplishments will never be forgotten. He donated lots of money to the University throughout his time here and there several buildings on campus named after him. However, behind all the money and football championships, he created a tradition at the University of Alabama that still stands today. He wanted to make sure that class was always something his teams had, and that philosophy still stands today. Alabama football is rivaled by few in the country and the fans make sure the tradition lives on year in and year out. The tradition isn't something you can see, it's something you can feel. It flows through the quad on gameday and follows the band into the stadium where 92,000+ fans are awaiting the kickoff. The atmosphere is amazing and the tradition flows throughtout the crowd. If this is something you have never experienced, then I highly recommend buying a ticket to a game next fall and see for yourself just how great of a tradition Bear left us all.

From the corn belt to the corn casserole....

Coming to the University of Alabama from Southern Illinois, I had no idea what to expect. I had only been to the campus 2 times before the start of the semester on Aug, 2007. Coming from a small rural farm town in the heart of the corn belt, a town like Tuscaloosa seemed like a major metropolitan area to me. There was an immediate change of surroundings and it seemed weird at first. No longer did I have to drive 45 minutes to go to a mall to get clothes or travel to the one grocery store to pick up food. My recources now seemed endless.

The most obvious change was the seperation from my parents. This is a very obvious difference. However, this change helped me to realize more what was around me then before. I have always been an independent person, trying to rely as little on my parents as possible in order to best prepare for what is to come. Because I was even more on my own then normal, I had to be more aware of what commodities existed in order to make best my four years at the Capstone. I have always believed in the power of the family owned greasy spoon restaurant. The hole in the wall restaurants always have the best food at the best prices. Immediately, I searched for the best local restaurant I could be called a regular at. The diner on 15th street had been rumored to be what I needed, but I had to check it out for myself. After one meal I was hooked. This southern meal was just what I had been looking for and what I anticipated upon arrival to the heart of dixie. It has all I need in more in a local restaurant and is definitely one of my favorite restaurants in T-Town. The moral of the story(even though it wasnt really a story, therefore doesn't need a moral and a moral doesn't make much sense but it sounded good so go with it) is that McDonald's can monopolize all it wants and turn us all into robot consumers, wanting all the same machine made food, but its the Mom and Pop restaurants that make us feel like we're back home again, and thats just what I needed after my 6 hour drive to UA.