Cabin Fever

I was going to save my blogging for later in the week, but since the first week has failed so utterly (and I’m trapped out of New York City for a third straight day), I figure I shouldn’t count on anything. And I’m starting to get a little bored.

Starting on Sunday, I was supposed to be volunteering for the Pinstripe Bowl. I need experience with these kinds of things to put on my resume if I want to do anything with my life, and it’s the first bowl game in NYC in 50 years. So I signed up to volunteer the entire week; the Syracuse welcome rally on Sunday, street teams on Monday through Wednesday, and Good Morning America on Thursday.

But then it snowed. A lot.

The blizzard started on Sunday, and I’d have to come home during the worst of the storm, so that wasn’t going to happen. The LIRR was shut down all day on Monday, which ended up being okay, because all street team stuff was cancelled anyway. But it’s happening today, and I’m not there because the LIRR’s service is STILL limited. I watched the news and have checked the website, and can’t make heads or tails of train times. I don’t even think the Baldwin station has been plowed yet, if I’ve heard correctly.



Fail.



FAIL.

Come on. This is NEW YORK. It’s not like it’s never snowed here before! This much of a fail would be expected in, say, Miami. But we’ve gotten worse storms in fairly recent memory. So why can I still not get into NYC a full 24 hours after the storm stopped?

So maybe I’ll get to fulfill my commitments starting tomorrow. MAYBE. I feel terrible for emailing the guy in charge every day saying “uh, sorry, can’t make it” … but what else can I do?

>.<

And this is now the third day in a row where I’ve had nothing to do because my plans have been made impossible. I mean, I like doing nothing as much as the next college student, don’t get me wrong. But I was supposed to have things to do! Grrr.


*Deep breath*

That being said, I’ve had a pretty nice few days being stuck inside. I’ve watched a lot of Castle (new episodes start again on January 3rd! YAY!), and found some new obsessions. First, Bath and Body Works’ winter candy apple scent. Every now and then I sniff my hand because it’s just so delicious. Equally as delicious is Trader Joe’s peppermint hot chocolate (or any peppermint hot chocolate, really). The regular stuff just isn’t as satisfying anymore! And finally, Street Corner Symphony. Has anyone else watched The Sing Off on NBC? It’s an acapella group competition show, and it’s only on for five episodes once a year, sadly. But I’m in love with it! Street Corner Symphony was one of the groups on the latest season, and they’re AMAZING! They’re basically all I’ve listened to for the last week or so. I sat here for literally 10 minutes trying to figure out which performance of theirs to link in this post, because they’re all so epic.



But I haven’t just been sitting around. Well, yeah, I have, but some of the stuff I’ve been doing while sitting hasn’t been a total waste of time. I started searching for summer internships today! And I’m scared out of my mind! :P So far, on my list is: the USOC, MLB, SNY, NBC, and ESPN (even though their presentation at Miami a few months ago scared the hell out of me and destroyed my self confidence about being good enough to work there). I’m thinking about applying to Time Inc. (for Sports Illustrated) as well, but that application is due on January 14th, so I wouldn’t even be able to get help from Toppel (the on-campus career center). Would it even be worth it? And I cannot, for the life of me, find ANYTHING about internships with either the Mets or the Yankees. So if they exist, and you know about them, please tell me!

Oooh, actually, I’ll ask the volunteer coordinator for the Pinstripe Bowl about Yankees internships. BAM said the lady!

But Mets? Anyone? Bueller?

Oh, and I fell in love last night. With the Danish Institute for Study Abroad. I spent about an hour on its website, completely not paying attention to the rerun of Castle that was on… and for those of you that know me, that’s a big deal! Haha. I’ve wanted to go to Denmark since my group did a project on it in PAG in fourth grade :). I still want to go to Oxford, but I checked their website and didn’t see any journalism classes (or “tutorials”). If I go through this program, I’d be able to take journalism classes, and have at least one trip built in! God only knows if I can afford it, but that goes for pretty much any study abroad program. Now all I have to do is figure out if I want to go in the fall or the spring, go to the study abroad office to see if everything transfers okay, and… do many, many more things. But having a destination that’s actually feasible is a good first step! :D



I WANNA GO RIGHT NOW!

But for now I guess I’ll just go stalk the LIRR website some more and hope that I’ll have some fun volunteering stories to tell on Friday.

Musings in KIN212

Sport psychology.

You’d think it would be an interesting class, right? Oh, how I wish it was! Every Tuesday and Thursday, I waste an hour and fifteen minutes sitting in a half empty classroom and not paying attention. I know, I know; that’s SO not me! But when the professor (who shall remain nameless) makes it clear that he hates teaching the class, it’s really hard to care about it. I mean, if he doesn’t have the decency to care even a little bit, then why should I? And going to class is COMPLETELY pointless. Question banks for the tests get passed down from semester to semester; study the questions and you’re good to go. The answers are all in the textbook, which, by the way, is completely different from the PowerPoints he uses to teach the class. If you want them (for some bizarre reason), all the PowerPoints are on Blackboard, so there’s no reason to take notes during class. And, to top it off, he doesn’t take attendance, except on the days where so few people show up that being there gives you extra credit. Yes, I’m serious.

So basically, you don’t need to go to class to do well. But, me being me, I go to class. I sit there and don’t really pay attention, but I go. And I’ve gotten extra credit for it at least three times. ;)

But something shocking happened during one class: we learned something that I found to be extremely interesting.

*Pauses while you gasp.*

Believe me, I was shocked. I think I sat there for a solid minute wondering if I really just got something out of sport psych.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you: the Pygmalion effect, AKA the self-fulfilling prophecy.

No, not like Harry Potter’s prophecy, guys. That one was fulfilled because Voldemort is an idiot.

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pygmalion was a sculptor who, after seeing sisters deny Venus’s divinity and be “reduced” to prostituting themselves, decided he “was not interested in women.” He carved a woman out of ivory, and found it to be so realistic and beautiful that he fell in love with it. He desperately wanted it to become real, and Venus took pity on him and granted his wish.

Hence, the self-fulfilling prophecy: he wanted it so badly that it happened. In another respect, people with low expectations perform poorly, and people with high expectations succeed accordingly.

Now, I’m not the type of person to believe in stuff like this. I don’t believe in love at first sight, nor god, miracles, heaven, or Santa Claus (though the jury’s still out on the Chanukah Armadillo.) But honestly, I think the Pygmalion effect might be my one exception. It sounds completely ridiculous, like one of those things that we’d all love to happen but don’t really expect it to (like love at first sight).

But it’s already happened to me. I wished and wanted myself onto Endurance, didn’t I?



I can think of no other explanation for how I ended up being picked. I mean, my audition tapes were good, but were they better than 10,000 others? Really? I highly doubt that. But I did have one thing over everybody else: nobody – NOBODY – wanted it more than I did.

And then it happened.

Sure, I didn’t win. But in the grand scheme of things, I came closer to winning than 10,000 other kids my age. Making it onto the show was a huge victory in itself, as was making it through the right to stay (in some respect – much love to the girls! <3), and getting onto a team. Things, uh, sort of went to hell from there, but nobody else that has ever been on the show can say they had the same experience as me. Four and a half years removed, I’m glad everything happened the way it did. It gave me an experience entirely my own, and made me a stronger person.

Ahem. Tangent over.

But back to what I was saying, I wanted to get on Endurance with a burning passion. It’s kind of the same as my USOC passion, just in a much more concentrated version; the Olympics stretch out for years and years, but my Endurance obsession was crammed into just about two. It was a very short, very wild ride.



Haha! Couldn’t resist! :D (Please, someone tell me you get it...)

Wow, could I be any more scatterbrained right now?

ANYWAY.

For Endurance, I wasn’t the strongest. I probably wasn’t the smartest. I wasn’t the tallest (or the shortest, so shut up! :P), or the prettiest, or the most outgoing… but I was the biggest fan. The producers and casting directors saw that in me, and picked me because of it.

For the USOC internship, I might not be the most qualified. I won’t be the oldest, nor the most experienced. But I can tell you right now, and with complete certainty, I want it more than anyone. Hopefully there’s the USOC equivalent of 3Ball Productions’ Mark Levine that’ll do the same as he did!

But I’m not content to sit around and let Venus or an equivalent higher power turn my proverbial statue into a woman. I’m going to work AND wish. That should cover all my bases, right? ;)