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.