Friday, April 8, 2011

That Jazz

It's a rather nice day out. Windy as always, but otherwise warm. There are only a few patches of snow left around campus, namely the shrunken remains of an igloo on the Mall.

Jazz Fest has been going on since yesterday evening, so as I sit on my bed and type, I hear snatches of saxophone or trumpet or trombone shriek from the direction of the Student Center. I'll be volunteering at tonight's portion of Jazz Fest, and a bunch of us will be wearing "Thank you Bob and Susan" buttons in honor of U of MN president Bob Bruininks, who is also attending tonight. He's retiring this year after having served the University well for a long time.

I also found out today that I got reelected as a Campus Assembly Representative for UMM's student government.
What's really amazing, though, is that the team who won the presidential/vice presidential race only beat the other team by 4 VOTES. Can you believe it? 804 people voted (out of the 1700 students at UMM, which is actually a really high percentage), and it was that close. It's also funny to think that there's a random person walking around campus right now who didn't vote, but if he would have voted, would have voted for the team that ended up losing. That person is 1/4 of the reason why that team lost. Well, sort of. This is me trying to do statistic stuff. Please don't laugh.

I guess my point is that the next time I hear someone say "What's the point of voting? My vote doesn't make a difference!" I'll get right up in their face and laugh. And then I'll tell them the story I just told you.

In other news, I won the Read-a-Thon this year. I think I've explained it in the past, but basically one of my friends and I record all the books we read in one year, and then get together and see who read the most. We also have sub-categories: number of classics read (we debate this), pages read, average length of books read, books read that haven't been read previously, etc.
Here are my stats for April 1st 2010-April 1st 2011:
88 Books (which was exactly my goal)
27,183 pages
308.8 pages per book average
36 new books (I know-this could be higher. I love rereading my old favorites, though)
16 classics (Dracula, A Passage to India, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Fahrenheit 451, Jane Eyre, This Side of Paradise, Memoirs of a Sleep Walker, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Utopia, Rip Van Winkle, Atonement, King Lear, The Hidden Hand, The House of Seven Gables, Franny and Zooey, The Bell Jar)

What's more is that I do so much reading every day for classes that doesn't get recorded anywhere; I'm constantly reading articles, short stories, poems, passages, essays, etc.

Well I think that's all I have. Sorry if this post has been a little sporadic, but it's been such a busy week that I didn't have the energy to do anything fancy or cohesive.

Tschüss!

1 comment:

Amelia said...

I'm glad to hear that you beat Charlie this time around. Someone's got to do it, and I certainly can't. :)