But I guess today was fairly productive. I met with my civ group this morning. We're doing a project on "The Gingerbread Method" for creating peace. Basically, we've assigned different attributes or conditions necessary for peace to parts of a gingerbread house, and we're going to assemble a gingerbread house in class, explaining the components as we go. This morning we filmed infomercial-like testimonials about how "The Gingerbread Method" had changed our lives. I was "Misterstrata" and had experienced the effects of the Gingerbread Method as my wife and her friend found courage and the drive for unity which stopped the war I was participating in. .. kindof a spinoff of Aristophanes' Lysistrata.
And then I did a shift at the hospital. Two events stuck out to me.. actually three:
- A young couple in their twenties came in. Evidently the wife had been throwing up a couple days earlier, then she started having a tingling sensation in her fingertips, and then it started to spread. The symptoms aren't important, but it was very cool to see the interaction between the couple. You could tell that he loved her, even though she looked down in the dumps and was holding a pink bucket thing in case she needed to puke. I thought that was really cool. Even though they aren't wrinkled and gray, they still love each other.
- I was asked to escort a lady out of the hospital. The assisting nurse prepped me: "She is a little emotional and might cry, but we've done everything we can do for her and she needs to go home." When I got to her room, I found her sitting on her bed, crying. I rolled the wheelchair into the room, and asked her how she was doing, and if she was ready to go home. She started crying more, and began complaining about the service. She said she had been brought in a hospital, but was now being forced to leave. I helped her into the wheelchair, and rolled her out to a cab that was waiting for her. It became clear to me that this poor woman needed some attention and had probably called 911... well, I don't know why, but she did. I guess it made me realize the value of relationships. I guess I just wanted to go home with this lady and talk to her and mow her lawn (except that it snowed today) and help her feel happy... I guess I could see her as somebody's mom. And a child of God.
- And then after my shift I stopped by the cafeteria for a shake and some fries. There, I saw a young couple.. mid 20's. It appeared as if she was going to have a baby. I didn't talk to them, and tried not to stare, but it appeared as if the mother-to-be's mom was there, for moral support. The father-to-be kept texting people, probably letting their friends know that they were still waiting for the baby... I couldn't get over the look in the mother-to-be's eyes. It was a combination of dread, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. I could see she was trying to tell herself that eerything would be all right, and that a lot of women go through birth and make it alive. The father-to-be was trying to convince himself that he would be able to make it through finals week, even though he had spent both reading days with his nervous wife and mother-in-law in the hospital. It made me smile. Someday, hopefully I'll be there too.
And then I came home and practiced with a girl for a musical number tomorrow, worked on some grad school apps, met with Adam from NC, and pulled the Wii out for the first time since summer. I still kicked everyone's butts at boxing. Even with my back to the screen. And then a my brother and roommate and girlfriend were watching the last Lord of the Rings.. so I went around and hung out with a bunch of people, inviting them to watch it with us. One of Adam's friends looked vaguely familiar. She asked if I had dated one of her friends recently. That was a little awkward for me because I have conjectured that after dating some girl's girlfriend, I cannot exit the relationship at any stage without my reputation remaining entirely unscathed. I believe that this is mostly due to the fact that I am too nice to girls to whom I should probably not go out with or be nice to in the first place. And then they complain to their friends that I don't get hints that they like me, and that I'm a flake and don't return their calls. When in actuality, I am very disinterested, and am ignoring their 'hints' as a courteous alternative to shooting them down point blank. Anyway, enough about me. So this girl was like "I know you through one of my friends. Have you dated anyone on the girls rugby team?" Phew. No. I didn't even know the team existed, and probably avoid such girls due to evolutionarily-evolved instincts of self-preservation. It turned out that we had both spent the summer in Berlin. Tiergarten. But we had only come in contact briefly. It took us about 5 minutes to discover how our paths had crossed. It was a very pleasurable intellectual exercise. We invited them over to see Lord of the Rings also. By the end of the evening, we had quite the crowd in our humble little apartment. Which was incidentally spotlessly clean due to cleaning checks... oh yeah, I did that this morning too..
Anyway, I just wanted to briefly mention another item of interest. For this civ class, we focused on peace and war. I guess our teacher had written a play or a musical about it, and this class was based around the play or something. Anyway, throughout the semester, we were assigned to write four papers. If we scored well on the first two papers, we were given the opportunity to do a project for the third or fourth papers. These projects included writing a song about a topic that we discussed in class that was based in the sources we read, or doing a painting or something. It turns out that one kid brought in a trojan horse made of popsicle sticks.. from the Iliad. I'm not sure how well he scored.
At any rate, for my third paper, I chose to write an essay although I had scored well on my previous two essays. I guess I felt guilty because I knew that I could spend like 10 hours on a paper, or I could spend 2 hours on an artsy project, and both would get the same grade. And because I am not the kind of person who would spend more than 2 hours on an artsy project, I decided to leave the project alternative to those students who would spend 10 hours on an artsy project.
Yeah... I was probably sleep-deprived when I developed this rational.
Anyway, for this fourth project/essay, I was in the thick of doing a ruby on rails project for another class, and was left with 4 hours to complete the project for my civ class. So I decided to ignore my guilt and spend 4 hours on an artsy creative project. I had been thinking about possible projects that would not be time-consuming but yet tickle my the creative fancies of my professor and his granola TA sidekicks.
In another moment of sleep-deprived sub-rationality, I discovered that the word "Peace" sounded like the word "Piece." And then it hit me. I would create a puzzle highlighting different elements of piece, and put them on pieces of a puzzle! Pieces of Peace. It was brilliant. And so, on the last day of classes, I embarked on a creative quest for pieces of peace. Class started at 4:35, so I had to get it done fast. At 3:30, I embarked on an important mission of "point grubbing" to try to get back points on a midterm for a partially correct reduction of Atm to HALTtm with my computational theory teacher. Which was unfortunately unsuccessful. Whatev.
Although I didn't get any points back, the worst part about the failed mission was that I returned to work on my civ project at 4:17. Including walking time, I had only 13 minutes to finish the project. In desperation, I threw together some quotes from throughout the semester (including.. I wonder if I should admit this before grades are out.. several works that I may or may not have completely read) and printed the topic headings out in large type. I cut the topic headings into puzzle-shaped pieces, and stuffed the pieces, as well as a report of the references and discussions of the topics into the only envelope-like thing I had--the plastic mailing cover to an Ensign magazine--and stapled the thing shut. I was a little proud of my clever pun and puzzle-like pieces of peace. I was ready to go.
As I was getting ready to leave, my observant brother remarked that it looked ... hm.. what were the words he used.. well, I can't remember, but it had something to do with "scrappy" or something. Oh well. It was more founded in the class sources than a popsicle-stick trojan horse. So I promptly forgot it on my desk and headed to class, where I realized that I had forgotten it. I went up after class, and noticed that several people were asking to turn it in the next day (the first reading day). I decided I could do it too, and perhaps make it a little less "scrappy" in the meantime.
So my first reading day was spent doing this: http://psoda4.cs.byu.edu/~superman/civ/peace.html. I did everything there... the html, the flash, and the background image.. except for the photo of the dove.. which I stole from someone off of google images (ps. don't search for 'dove' in google images..). I was pretty proud of the project. You can move the little pieces around, and it isn't so scrappy. Yeah. Pretty proud of that. My first flash project.
However, my bubble was bust a little when I came home and showed my roommate, Sterling, who pointed out that the peace symbol-that I had so creatively meshed with the google image picture of a dove-was actually a Mercedes symbol. Whatev. Give me a piece of that too.
Anyway, that's where I'm at. I have a final at 7 on Monday morning, so I better get some rest. So I can avoid my sleep-induced sub-rational state...
Peace/Mercedes.
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