Apathy?

Disclaimer: This is purely my opinion generated from my limited experience.
This post is sparked by the April Fool's Edition of The Muhlenberg Weekly.  However, this post is not a joke, I honestly am concerned about the lack of involvement that the younger class years have on campus. I've considered the subject of apathy among the younger classes before, and the more experience I have, the more convinced I become.  The classes directly younger than me are more apathetic than I have seen.  The Weekly is one example.  CASE is another.  APO even has this problem, even with the relatively large number of brothers.  There is just very few people outside of the senior class that are heavily invested in some organizations that I am more familiar with on campus.  For CASE, we have nobody, outside of the 6 house residents, who regularly comes to meetings; and 4 of the residents are graduating in May.  The future of the club is looking grim: not enough interest in a house for next year and very few attendees other than seniors at the couple events that we have had this semester.  I feel bad for the couple of people who remain interested in keeping CASE going, because this lack of interest has placed additional stress on them and makes the responsibility of it too much to handle.  We don't even have a treasurer for CASE, meaning the president has to take care of it.
Note that not everyone in the younger classes falls under the "doesn't care about anything" category.  I know many younger students who remain involve and are passionate about the organizations on campus.  As whole however, it seems like the younger students are not as involved as the classes that have recently graduated have been.
If this applied only to CASE, I would understand that it could be just an isolated lack of interest in a substance-free organization.  But the problem appears to be widespread, which leads me to think otherwise.  Which is unfortunate, because organizations like CASE, APO and The Weekly cannot operate and be successful without students who are willing to take on some responsibility.

Sick of It

So this week has been interesting, but I've officially decided that I'm tired of being a student.  After 16+ years of education, I have had enough of everything involved with classes and school.  I realize that I have a little under two months left until graduation, and I don't mean to imply that I will be entirely happy to graduate from college, but I will be more than happy to be done with classes after finals week.  After 4 years of trying to figure out exactly how much effort I should put into assignments and how I should try to overcome procrastination, I've decided that the quality of my work doesn't depend on the amount of effort I put into it.
This feeling mostly stems from a specific class that I have this semester, but in general, I think I'm more than ready to move on into the next stage of my life.  Beginning my career will be difficult, as I've found with trying to find a job for post-graduation that is both interesting and truly entry-level.  It is amazing how many job postings claim to be entry-level and then require anywhere from 1 to 6 years of experience.  For the field I want to go into, I have maximum of 3 months experience, in addition to the bachelors degree that I will get in May.  I know that there are jobs that I could do, the trick is finding the companies looking for recent graduates or other people with little to no job experience.  And I'd really love to have a job that I enjoy, but that may have to wait until the job market improves... who knows?

Wake-Up Call

I have experienced senioritis.  The general feeling of not really caring about classes, lacking motivation to do anything ahead of time.  At this time last night, I realized that my apathy came dangerously close to actually affecting my schoolwork.  With an hour before class, I realized that I had not written a (short) paper and had not revised my other essay.  Cue mini-panic attack.  Instant change in dinner plans and a crazy 40 minutes of making up something to write about and throwing it into a word document.  I got two pages, which is close to what I have gotten in normal circumstances.  A very disorganized essay though, definitely not the best, but it could've been worse.  At least I'll find out in a week or so.
Following class, I decided to actually sit down and redo syllabus week - meaning take my class syllabi and copy assignments into my agenda-book so that will not happen again.  Getting more organized  - check. Now I just have to make sure to keep up with my agenda.
On another note, I decided that giving up Facebook for Lent would be the best challenge to reasonably attempt.  Considered chocolate, but the conversation in class definitely made me want to try facebook.  And I have plenty of other internet things to keep me distracted from my work.  And I can continue my pleasure-reading.  So we'll see how that goes starting tomorrow.

4/1/12 Update: That paper was better than I expected - 88%.  And no Facebook for Lent is going well also!

Contemplation

In returning to my blog from my pre-college years today, I'm trying to decide whether it is worth it to keep the existing posts and add on starting around now to capture important thoughts and moments of my final semester of college, or if I should simply delete older posts and start a brand-new blog.  As of now, I'll probably leave past posts alone; they are intriguing to go back and consider where I was at the time.  However, in the new series of posts, the focus will be very different in that I will address topics that are on my mind instead of merely recounting daily activities.  I'll probably try not to sugar-coat things as much as I did, since in looking back, I see a few hints of hating high school, but not nearly the amount that I actually did.  Over the past 3.5 years, I've definitely grown a lot and went through the transition to a college student.  However, the next 6 months to a year will be the greatest transition that I will face in moving on and finding a career and comfortable life.  For the first time, I won't be in a purely educational setting and will have to adjust to many changes, which frankly terrify me now as I think of them.

I hope in following posts that I can capture my journey through this transition and avoid to some extent simply rambling on about my daily activities.  I will definitely still ramble though, as I find that my writing style leans toward random when applied to unstructured pieces.  I'll also be writing mostly as a reflection for myself, but will welcome any insight that other readers may want to give, whether in feedback, comments, or questions.

Note: The posts following this are from high school and reflect mostly on daily activities.  Proceed at your own risk.

Hey!!!

Well...Here I am once again. Except only older and wiser...ok maybe not that last one... but I have graduated now after a very exciting senior year. and now I need a job.. see Dad has really been pushing this job thing and I haven't had much luck, and now it July 7th. soo... yeah Anyways...
We just got back last night from new york. went to the Indy race up there and of course visited, but now we probably won't see everyone up there for awhile... especially me. in 2 weeks we'll see the gardners at new york city. But otherwise, we are very busy and won't get up there again until well after I leave for muhlenberg... which is where I'm going to college. it's unfortunate that I didn't write about the college choosing process on here. but anyhow. dad's going to ca in 3 weeks, and then we are going to mexico at the beginning of August. and then I have a week to pack and then I leave for college. so the month of july for me is empty but who wants to hire someone for only a month. so yep fun fun fun.