Readjusting my view

   On Saturday, I concluded a week of research at Alma College with the ASPIRE program, consisting of 35 other fortunate incoming freshman. The week brought a lot of new knowledge, more than I feel I could gain in a month of high school classes. I learned about bird banding, about how to handle birds, about the exist of plants without chlorophyll,  about raccoon litters, and about the vast research opportunities at Alma. Aside from scholarly learning, I also got a head start in interacting with my future Alma peers.

    To successfully interact with my fellow ASPIRE students, I had to learn lessons. You can call people out for douchery, only if you're humble about it. You can remain on good terms with others, despite brief turbulence. You can make friend groups with more ease, if you start with one person you click with. 

    I was paired with three other students in shadowing Professor Bishop in his early morning ornithology. We did not hit it off immediately. On our first day of research I told two of them that sometimes, they acted like douchebags. This is not a nice thing to do, even if I was pushed by what I perceived to be rude behavior on their part. I tried mending what I had said by underlining the words act and sometimes. Ultimately, I had to give them space for a day, and I was fortunate that they respected me for being up front with them. They could have ignored me or mistreated me for the rest of the week, but instead we all bonded. I am grateful for their forgiveness, and in the future I am going to be gentler with my confrontations. 

   One night I repeated the trend of being upfront with people when they did something I didn't like. Except I jumped the gun and misinterpreted someone's words as being full of malice. I exchanged raised tones with the person I confronted, but quickly left the situation to calm down. To my relief, I was able to get over the squabble and interact kindly with the person for the rest of the week. 

   From these two experiences, I now understand why some people claim that college is way different than high school, and why others claim that things never change. The change comes, only when you make it come. As I looked around at my peers, I could see what stereotypes and social realms they were stuck with in high school. This scared me, but then I remembered that none of us had a past together, and this was a fresh start. None of us were barred form interacting by the histories, feuds, and social classes of high school. I didn't even need to give up on relationships with people who I caused rough interactions with. 

   The first night of camp I wandered around despite my desire to hide in my room in the grasp of being socially overwhelmed. Fortunately, a guy was sitting in the hall right outside of his room. He had no posse to scare me. I thought it odd but great that he was just sitting there, open to interaction. I sat and we talked and soon I was introducing him to the wonders of Flight of the Conchords (he liked New Girl better, which I introduced him to later in the week.) Anthony and I quickly became bros and utilized the safety in numbers we had, to branch out to more friends. I was happy to find that I didn't need to go into the challenge of socializing alone. 

   I had to readjust my view to successfully interact with my peers, and it's still a work in progress, but I feel confident. Alma is great. Ornithology, research in South America, easy friendships, a leader of the RA's I've dubbed Willman, beautiful sycamore trees, tasty lasagna, a DJ professor, a prosperous bike trail, and many more blessings make for a very happy and excited Abi. 

This is a new blog to start fresh

I haven't been writing since graduation, so it's been about a month and a half of drought. This is not wise because I have an upcoming job as a newspaper editor at Alma, because writing helps me process my thoughts, and because I enjoy writing.

I will set a more reasonable goal for this blog, unlike my past goal of Animal of the Day on my Geronimo blog. It was too hard to write a quality post about a new animal each day. Even Anti Fear List Thursday won't be a regular post on this new blog. I will be writing my anti fears in a more personal journal now. The list was largely composed of inside jokes and personal memories, not well suited for a blog post.

My goal is to post once a week. I don't want to structure what I post about, for I don't know what will be driving me most passionately from week to week, and I love many subjects. That is why this blog is called Honey in the Golf Ball at theonlyinterestingthingaboutgolf.blogspot.com (I'm sorry to offend golfers, this is just my personal opinion.)

A few hours ago at dear Hannah Cremin's open house, I got to know the well known Mr. Taylor, teacher at West Ottawa High School. We spoke of a well known former teacher at West Ottawa High School, Mr. Cutter, and Taylor mentioned that he bought Cutter a golf ball at St. Andrews, most ancient of golf courses. In response I asked, "Didn't they used to put honey in the center of golf balls?" Taylor had never heard of such golf ball production, and I failed to have any ethos or additional explanation to my question.

Modern technology came to our aid, however, as Taylor confirmed via his smart phone that golf balls were indeed made with honey at the center in the past (Honey does not spoil and has the proper features for golf ball centers, or something along those lines.) This is a piece of random knowledge I have, and this story reflects my approach to education. I want to know a wide variety of things, but only end up retaining partial detail and information.

I hope this blog will help me mend that flaw, not retaining a firm knowledge of subjects. It is said that writing things down can aid one's memory. I hope that, in writing a mixed jubilee on this blog, I will seed more deeply into my brain, the things that I learn. I want the vision that was planted in my brain, to still remain (shout out to my boyz Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.)

As a side effect, maybe people will read these posts. Maybe these people will learn things. Maybe these people will correct me. Maybe people will teach me even more things to seed in my brain.

Ps: I already regret the URL of this blog, I don't know much about golf and it is likely very interesting.