I'm going to St. Louis!

Being a student newspaper editor has its perks: all-expenses paid conferences in Minneapolis, free tickets for reviewing the Black Eyed Peas concert, and a trip to the Frozen Four in St. Louis. I'll be leaving next Wednesday afternoon for St. Louis. I'm excited for the 900 mile drive. It's going the the furthest I've been from North Dakota, with the exception of one terribly boring trip to West Virginia that didn't really feel like it actually happened.

The plan is to stop for the night in Omaha, Nebraska on Wednesday, drive the rest of the way on Thursday, and probably go straight to the first game of the day.

Wednesday is also the day Trevor will begin his trek to Atlanta, stopping first in the Twin Cities to drop some things off and visit his parents for a day or two before driving down to Atlanta. He does get a few days off two weeks after he begins training, so with luck, he's going to be able to come visit for a couple days.

In other news, I got my first piece of hatemail today. :)

Another reason not to teach...

I hate authority. I like having sort of a nice equilibrium where my duties are equally assigned by someone else and generated by myself. I don't want to be anyone's boss. I want to just do my job without having to tell other people how to do theirs, but that's exactly what teachers have to do. Teaching will essentially make me The (Wo)Man.

But it's too late to back out of student teaching. Yikes.

At the crossroads of communication and education ...

I have just seven issues left in my tenure as the Dakota Student Opinion Editor. When I first came to UND, I had no idea I'd ever be in this position. Somehow, the Dakota Student staff seemed like this cool, elite crowd that I couldn't touch. I thought there was probably some measure of talent and experience required to be part of the newspaper staff. I didn't dare walk in the office, let alone return with an application, until the middle of my sophomore year. I didn't get a call back.

The following summer, I interned at The Pierce Co. Tribune back home. I did all sorts of work, and I sort of figured things out as I went along. Having been an avid reader since childhood, I instinctually knew how a news story should sound. I found that I enjoyed writing the stories as much as I did doing the interviews. I was hooked.

I applied at The Dakota Student as soon as the first issue came out that fall with an inhouse ad calling for writers. I was pretty much hired on the spot. I loved the stories that I did, and I started to think about being an editor. In the spring, I took the chance and became the Opinion Section editor.

It's amazing how much more you know about what happens on campus when you're part of the newspaper staff. Little tidbits come our way that aren't going to become stories, but they're still interesting. We have had a broad range of people coming through our office, from those who worked on the newspaper in their college careers to The Biggest Loser's Adrienne Kortesmaki.

Being an editor also meant that I had to write the occaisional column. Columns don't run without mug shots, so my picture has appeared in the newspaper a number of times. I've been recognized from my mug shot before, and it's a strange experience for me. There's always this little voice in my head that tells me that the girl in black and white isn't really me, and no one will connect that photo to the real me. I just assume that no one reads my columns or notices my picture. It's just a shock to be recognized.

And yet this fall, I'm going to miss that recognition. As a student teacher in the high school setting, these students won't know anything about me. They won't know that I once wrote a column jokingly asking Student Government to allocate $12,000 for Kevin Federline to come to UND for an appearance. They won't know about the long hours I put in producing the newspaper that many of them will one day be reading ( and that some may even work at). I'm going to go from an editor/student among students to just another crabby old teacher among high school students. It's going to be a shock to my system, I'm sure.

I know this probably sounds a little conceited, but it's not meant to be that way. It's more like The DS has become a way of life for me. I like the fact that something so important to me is visible to the UND community. From here on out, the things I hold near and dear to me won't be so visible to my surrounding community. I'll be passionate about teaching, yes, but few people recognize that teachers have a passion for their work. More often, parents notice the grades their children receive, and that's it. My students won't care about my passion for teaching, either. Most of them will probably wish they could avoid my class altogether.

I'm at this crossroads where I'm trying to decide what I really want to do for a living. Do I want to teach? Do I want to work in the news business? I guess I'll figure it all out in December.

Summer Vacation Plans + Netflix

Well, it looks like my summer getaway plans are set in stone: I'm going to Atlanta.

Trevor got hired by Atlantic Southeast Airlines today, so he'll be moving to Atlanta the first week in April. While I knew he would be leaving in April if he got the job, I wasn't expecting it to be quite so early in April. He has to be in Atlanta on Easter Sunday to start training the following day. Yucky, huh?

I'm glad he's moving to Atlanta, as opposed to any other major city (I'm not glad he's moving, just that he's moving to ATL). My mom's cousin Jill and her family moved there last spring. Last time I talked to Jill, she was absolutely loving everything about the area. She will probably be thrilled when she hears I'm coming to visit this summer, so I'm pretty excited to talk to her again!

Trevor should be landing in Minneapolis in about an hour, and then he's taking the train from there to Fargo so he can pick up his car and drive back to Grand Forks. He should be getting in around 5 or 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. It seems like this standby crap really sucks -- and it's how I'll probably be flying to visit him this summer. :(


I never did buy a DVD player yesterday, so I didn't rent any movies. However, I did sign up for Netflix last night ( 1 DVD at a time, unlimited monthly rentals, for $8.99/month). My first movie, Stranger Than Fiction, should be arriving tomorrow. I figure that as long as I watch three or more movies a month, I'm doing better than going to Blockbuster. Plus, as long as I mail movies on Monday, I should almost always have a new movie by Friday night, which is the universally recognized "crappy TV and no homework night." I think closest distribution center is actually in Fargo, so turnaround time on the DVDs should be about two days.

You're probably wondering why a 20-something girl doesn't have a DVD player, right? Well, let's just say I had one...and it mysteriously broke while I was living in the old apartment with the girl who had no respect other people's things. The DVD player's mysterious breaking was discovered shortly after the shelves it had been on disappeared into the awful roommate's bedroom. My best guess is that she didn't realize the DVD player was on the shelves, and she dropped it - hard - when she was moving the shelves. Rather than say anything, she rather unconvincingly played dumb when I mentioned the DVD player didn't work any longer.

Yeah...That's why she's referred to as Awful Roommate. She's just an awful person in general.

Shopping Mission

Today's itinerary:

1. Barnes and Noble -- 3 sets of coin books for the presidential dollar coins
2. Bath and Body Works -- Redeem a "free item with a $10 purchase" coupon.
3. Party America -- Lids for souffle cups
4. Wal-Mart or Target -- reasonably priced DVD player
5. Blockbuster -- get some DVDs to watch
6. Hugos -- ice cream

A New Beginning

I've had a handful of other blogs before. For some reason, it seems like the right time to start a new blog. This is the first time I've stayed with the same program to start the new blog, though. (My old blog is here).

Everything is just kind of new in my life right now. It's spring, and I've got a new apartment and a new boyfriend. I just had an interview for a new job for the summer, and I might be picking up a new minor soon. "New" seems to be the key word in my life right now, but it took awhile to get to all these things.

I moved into an apartment in May, and almost immediately hated one of my two roommates. About two months later, her boyfriend moved in with us, and our other roommate moved out. Six weeks later, a new roommate moved in. The original roommate was really mean to her, and never really talked to her. However, the original roommate moved out in December, and we were all very happy...until we realized we weren't going to find a new roommate very easily.

So, on January 13, 2007, I was assigned to a UND one bedroom apartment. I moved in a little less than a month later. It's been great. It's probably one of the best decisions I've ever made. It was hard, though. I've never really lived alone before. My roommates were gone for awhile over the summer, so I'd had a taste of living alone. I've found that living alone is great. Things don't get messy as fast if there's only one person there, and it's not a big deal to wash a dish so I can use it to cook. The bathroom hasn't really gotten "dirty" enough to clean yet, and I've stayed really organized. I still have a little unpacking to do, but I hope to take care of most of it this week -- Spring Break.

The day I got my apartment assignment letter was also the day that I went out on my first date with Trevor. We had met in November through our mutual friends, Rachel and Nate. I instantly fell for him, and he instantly fell for me.

There was just one problem: Nate and Rachel said Trevor had a girlfriend.

When we saw each other, we talked a lot. I fell for him a little more each time, and I hated myself for it. I started wondering about Trevor's girlfriend. Why wasn't she ever with him when we went out? I asked someone about it, and they said, "Oh, I think she works a lot of nights. She's a nurse or something, I guess."

We ran into each other a few times during finals week, and I started to dread going home for the break because I knew it meant I wouldn't see Trevor. That was when it started to hit me that something had to happen. He had to leave the girlfriend or something. I would go insane otherwise.

We exchanged some messages on Facebook over the break, and I nearly invited him to come visit me on the farm. When I came back in January, I kept hoping I'd run into Trevor somewhere. It took an entire week for me to run into him at Rachel's Fiesta Bowl party. We talked for a long time that night, and we talked again the next night at Buffalo Wild Wings (a Tuesday tradition with our circle of friends). I didn't hear from him again for three days. On the third night, he called me, and we talked for several hours on the phone. At the end, he asked me out for coffee, and that's how it all began.

I soon had all the questions answered about the girlfriend: She didn't exist. Someone had made her up in an effort to keep us apart. A lot of the made up details were pretty close to his last girlfriend, who had broken up with him a couple years earlier, but the girlfriend just didn't exist. I was elated.

Yesterday was our two month anniversary. Trevor flew out of Fargo around 7 a.m. to go to an interview in Atlanta with Atlantic Southeast Airlines. His interview begins at 1 p.m. EDT today, and if he makes it through today, he begins again at 7 a.m. EDT tomorrow morning. If he gets the job, he will probably be moving to Atlanta next month. With luck, he will have enough seniority to transfer to the Twin Cities area in about a year.

His call for the interview came about eight days after we started dating, so we've had almost two months to talk about this. We've decided to do the long distance thing. We just get along so well, and it's ridiculous to throw that away just because he's moving across the country. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. It would really stink, but that's just how it goes. If it does work out, though, then the potential Communications minor would really come in handy because I could then easily get a position teaching English in the Minnesota schools. So, we'll see how the next few months go. I may even find myself living in Atlanta in a year. Who knows?

As far as my new job....it's a summer position with Enrollment Services at UND. I'll likely be giving language placement tests during freshman registration and orientation. I actually worked in the language lab doing the same thing for two years already, so I'm fairly confident I will be hired to do it this summer. I should hear back about the job next week some time. I'd love to get it -- I couldn't handle working at Target for another summer. I want my nights and weekends back. Last summer, I usually worked 4-11 p.m. every day. That meant no weekends at home, no free evenings, and no morning plans because I'd be up so late the night before. I'd much rather work 8 a.m.-5 p.m. and go to bed early than be up all night and sleep in late.

Speaking of being up all night and sleeping in late, I'd better go to bed soon or else I'll lose the day to sleep....