FINAL WEEKS!!!!!!!!!!!

Tests, projects, papers, assignments, and this final blog are all running through my mind during these final weeks before break. I have a lot to work on and time management has been a crucial part to get through the week. With all this stuff to get finished and the tests to study for I find myself in the library for countless hours. Sometimes I go to the W to try and get away from all of the stress, but I only come back under more stress and now less time left. I have always heard older students talk about finals like they are some demon from Hell, but it is until now that I fully understand what they mean. Compared to the rest of college which wasn't easy to begin with, finals week is excruciatingly busy and stressful.I am really hoping to get through this week and on to studying for all those tests next week. Once all of this is completed I will be so grateful and it will then be time for Lance to relax and enjoy the holidays.

Bullying

I have recently gotten the chance to watch a video that is circulating around Facebook that deals with bullying. The video is put on Youtube by an eighth grader who hates himself only because of the things that his classmates tell him and act toward him. This video truly changed my life. I will never look at the outsider the same way after watching this video. I hate seeing this kid that way and hope I have never put anyone in the situation that he is in. His courage and strength has given me the confidence to stand up for what is right and not just do what others want me to. I suggest that everyone watch this video, and I know that it will change the way they act toward the "geeks", "nerds, and just the people that they think less of.

please watch this video even show it in class if you wish:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdkNn3Ei-Lg

College Basketball

Now that it is my favorite season of them all........ BASKETBALL season, I am staying up late and watching all the games I can while trying to do homework. I lover everything about how the players play the game. They are not worried about the money they are making but only the results they produce. The players are playing for their school town and state.  A lot of these players are not going to the NBA so they give 100% all the time instead of the NBA which rarely tries at full capacity. The best part about college basketball or any sport in the world for that matter is MARCH MADNESS. This is the best time of the year where 64 teams come from all over the country to crown the champion of college basketball. I believe that Ohio State and Jared Sullinger  will bring home the championship this year!!!

Multiple Sclerosis

Today I'm going to write about one of the more serious topics in my life. My mom was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis since before I was born and it is only getting worse. Over the years I have seen the disease progress through her body. Multiple Sclerosis is a disease that attacks the nerves throughout the body and covers them up making them unable to receive messages from the brain. There is no cure for this disease and will eventually leave my mom unable to use her legs. She is slowly getting worse and worse every time I come home and it's getting harder and harder to deal with. With the older I get and the more I understand the disease I am starting to cherish every moment I have with her. This disease is not terminal, but it is nice to be able to take her places on her own and that will soon be a thing of the past. I pray every night that someone somewhere around the world would just find a cure for this terrible disease so I won't have to see my mom like this EVER AGAIN.

Laura Hempen

I met Laura through her brother Scott who is in my accounting class. She is from Clarksville, Iowa and is a sophomore here at Wartburg Since then we instantly became friends and she started to hang out with us all the time. She is six feet tall with long brown hair and is an amazing basketball player. She was playing basketball for Wartburg until she quit earlier this year because she didn't like the coach. Now she plays basketball with us all the time and is way fun to hang out with. She always has something to talk about and is always smiling and happy.  She is a Biology and wants to become a nurse so we are always studying on the third floor of the library. All of our friends spend a lot of time with her and she has made our group a lot more fun and enjoyable.

The end of intramurals

 Tonight marked the end of our intramural basketball season. We were in the play-offs and thought we had a shot at winning and moving onto the next round, but we were sadly mistaken. We had already beaten the team that we were playing, but they came ready to play and we didn't. I ended up scoring most of the points for our team and that was not enough. Our team has trouble playing defense and we let up a tremendous amount of points every game making it hard to win. This whole intramural basketball season has been very frustrating, considering I came from a school that went 22-3 my senior year and losing to the eventual state champions. I hope this season turns out to be a learning experience for seasons to come on who to choose to be on my team.

Colt Feltes

 We have played a couple games of intramural basketball and were are starting to see just how our team is shaping up. WE have a record of 2-1 after three games, but we have not played very well in any of those games. One of our players has been a huge letdown  He boasted all the time about how good he was before we started to play, and we soon found out the truth about Colt. Colt does not play any sort of defense and always expects someone else to guard his guy for him. He really likes to play offense and shoot the ball all the time!!! He doesn't even make a lot of the shots he takes.We try to play the game as a team, but it becomes very hard to do so when one players shoots all the time. Colt is also not a very good rebounder and fails to box out most of the time. With a 6' 4"in  250lbs frame you would think that this and playing in the post would be his specialty, but they are by far his weaknesses along with defense. Hopefully, the rest of the season goes better then these three games have gone.

Nuclear Warfare

Twenty five kills stand between me and absolute perfection. The thrills and disappointments, the calls and the no- doubters, making the game one of its own. The game is Call of Duty which is played on Xbox. I was using the Scar with a grenade launcher attachment and quickly stacked up seven kills. When you get seven kills in a row without dying you get harriers. My harriers were quickly shot down and they only got my two kills, which got me to nine. I decided to sit back and be very tactical with my life since I was only two kills away from a chopper gunner. I threw my C4 outside the building, therefore getting me the two more kills. I received my chopper at eleven kills without dying which means I was only fourteen kills away from the tactical nuke. After my chopper gunner was finished, I was only at eighteen kills. I got a couple of more kills outside of the chopper gunner when I was shortly shot by a sniper, and that put and end to my quest for glory.

intramural basketball

 Thursday was the first day that we had intramural basketball games. I was somewhat nervous knowing that I hadn't played a really competitive game of basketball in almost a year. My team consisted of some friends I had from high school along with some new friends I have recently made at college. I was a first team All-State player my senior year so I wasn't nervous about how I was going to play, but rather how our team was going to play like a true team and not just a bunch of individuals. During our first game we got matched up with a team that had some talented players, but other than the couple players they were not very good. They fouled all the time and since there were no refs there were no fouls called throughout the entire game. This benefited them tremendously. They ended up winning the game by about 20 points, but I know if fouls were called they would not have stood a chance. Our team had a lot more talent then theirs and knew how to play the game the right way.

Andrew Luck

 Andrew Luck is the starting quarterback at the University of Stanford and is anticipated to be the number one overall draft pick in the NFL. My favorite team in the NFL is the Miami Dolphins who did not have a win yet in this season, well that is until this week when they played the Kansas City Cheifs. I was hoping that the Miami Dolphins would not win a game the entire season so they would be awarded the first pick in the draft and with it select Andrew Luck. Luck is the type of player that could change the entire outlook of a franchise. This week when the Dolphins were scheduled to play the Cheifs I had no confidence that the Dolphins would actually pull the upset, but they did. Because they won today the Indianapolis are now the only winless team in the NFL and are the front runners to get the number one overall pick. If the Dolphins do not find a way to get the number one overall pick, this season will be an absolute failure.

pumpkin carving

In my family every year we have many family traditions that we come together to do, but my favorite tradition of all is pumpkin carving on Halloween. We start out our day by going to the pumpkin patch to pick out the perfect pumpkin deserving of our marvelous designs. We get to the pumpkin patch and we have to take a tractor ride out to the patch where the pumpkins are grown. The air on the ride our was dusty and smelled of hay and gasoline. When arriving at the patch we got out and started our journey through the weeds and pumpkin plants on route to finding just the right pumpkin.  Once we find the pumpkin and bring it home, that is when the real fun begins. The whole family has already picked out designs and starts attacking there pumpkins with knives and utensils from our pumpkin carving kit. You stick your hand inside the pumpkin to clean it only to feel the sliminess of the seeds and innards. After countless hours of carving, shaving, and just the pure frustration of what pumpkin carving has to offer, you get the greatest sense of accomplishment  and pride when you see the finished creation.

Peaceful Pond

Whenever I am having a rough day or even just need to find a place to relax and find inspiration, I go out to Koop’s Pond with Daniel Schmitz to do a little fishing. We get all the poles ready and drive down the gravel roads with the dust blowing up behind up on our way to the pond. We tear through the bumpy corn field on our way to our secret pond on their land. We get there and my eyes light up when I see the pond glistening and the boats rocking in the water ready to be taken out for a relaxing  day with just my friend, my thoughts, and the pond. We get out on the boat and get to our perfect destination for fishing where the trees are casting the perfect shadow and our feet are in the water. After the boat is anchored we cast out our first line of the day…splash the bobber hits the water and the day of relaxation and restoration has begun.

college life

Now that I am getting into the grove of the college lifestyle there are some things that I didn't understand before coming to college. I grew up in a little town where everyone knew everyone else in the entire community. In this surrounding I felt safe and secure like nothing could possibly ever go wrong and if something did I would have numerous people at my side to help me through any of my problems. At college I have had to learn that you cannot trust everyone you see. You can always believe that everyone at college are good people even at a college like Wartburg. Since arriving at college I have heard stories of violent fights at the bar and smoking pot to having a friends laptop stolen from my room. They still do not know who took the laptop and the criminal will probably never be found. I have soon realized that you cannot always trust everyone and some people are just looking for bad things to get involved in.

Bye, Bye, Birdie

This weekend I had the privilege of watching the Gilbert High school perform the musical Bye, Bye, Birdie. This was honestly one of the best musicals I have ever seen in my entire life. The cast was fabulous with the exception of Conrad Birdie. The part of Spanish Rose was performed by my girlfriend, Julie Beecher, who was the star of the entire show. All the the actors and actresses in the show did a fantastic job and the singing was awesome. Everyone knew there lines and played their parts to perfection. The musical sold out both nights it was performed and received standing ovations from the crowd.  It was fun watching all the students perform and they all did a great job!!!!

An Inconvenient Truth

I strongly believe with the ideas of Al Gore and many other global warming believers. I do not believe that there is any way the the human civilization can see the facts, graph, ect. in still believe that global warming is not a huge issue that we are going to have to start dealing with soon or else it could mean the end of our society.The pollutants that we are putting into the air are having directs effects on our environment. The warming of the Earth is melting our polar ice caps and could possibly cause extreme flooding throughout the world. I believe that the main problem is the over population of the human race is have dramatic effects on the Earth and it's environment. The Earth has never had the wear and tear of so many people on it at one time. If we do not either lower the number of humans on the Earth or find a way to become a more environmentally friendly race, the existence of the human race will end way before we have assumed.

Today, we were scheduled to play our make-up sand volleyball games, but it had been raining off and on all day and I was totally bummed out. The games were suppose to start at seven o'clock and that is exactly when the rain started to pour. The rest of my team bailed and said that the games were probably going to get cancelled, but I was still optimistic even without a team to play with. I was on facebook around 7:30 and I was talking to Rachael, who is a player form another team, and she told me that she was on her way to the courts and needed an extra player. I got all bundled up and went down to the court in the rain and we started to play. It was kind of miserable for about the first fifteen minutes, but after that we all forgot that it was raining and had a blast playing in the rain. After the game was finished, we went down to the water-way and we got all the sand off of us in the stream. I had a blast playing volleyball in the rain, but I got sick form the cold and rain.

Car troubles

This weekend I went all the way to D lot to get my car so I could spend  the weekend with my family. When I got there I soon realized that I was not going anywhere soon. I called my parents and they said they would be up on Sunday to jump my car for me. Since they wouldn't be here until Sunday I would have to find a way to get my laundry done all in one day. Sunday finally came and my parents got my car started and i gave them my laundry, but to my surprise they took me out to my favorite restaurant in the entire world, Pizza Ranch. Today, Sunday, ended up to be one of the best day I've had in a long time. I got to go to Pizza Ranch with my parents, I had my laundry picked up for me, and I had a relaxing day with no homework. The perfect way to end the week with the perfect Sunday. :)

When is Outfly?

During my first month or so at Wartburg College a lot of fun and crazy things have happened, but the most anticipated day has been Outfly without a doubt. I'm not really quiet sure what it is but everyone here says it's a lot of fun and you have to participate in it. Everyone on campus believes Outfly is going to be soon and everyone is guessing dates and trying to see how it's going to fit into their own personal schedules. I think it is really funny how many people get so excited about Outfly. Outfly is being yelled out by people who are just trying to get people to believe that it's today. Whenever it comes the OrangExceleration members go running through the hallways and then you don't  have to go to class and Wartburg brings fun activities for kids to do throughout the day! I'm really hoping that Outfly is sometime this week so I can just get away from all this school work. I'm anxious and excited to finally see what Outfly is really about!!!

Hannah Capper

Last night I went to the Aplington-Parkersburg vs. Dike-New Hartford football games. Dike-New Hartford where I went to high school at was ranked fifth in the state and the Falcons were ranked fourth. This game was thought to be a good match up of two very good teams, but the game did not turn out that way. The ending score was AP-42 and DNH-0. The really reason I went to this game was because I wanted to see Hannah Capper!! Hannah has been my friend throughout high school and she is absolutely gorgeous. She is so fun to be around and we have a lot of good times together. Last night i found out that I am also third cousins with another person from AP named Amber Mueller. I had so much fun at the game even though our team got killed. Itwas really interesting to find someone new that I was related to.

My roommates!

My roommates are Christopher and Charles Timms. They are form Waterloo East and they are senior wrestlers here at Wartburg College. Last night,  Charles brought a salamander into our room and made him a homemade cage out of a plastic tub that he brought his clothes in when he came to move in. He went outside and got a whole bunch of dirt and made mud for his salamander's habitat. He then went and got sticks and leaves so the salamander would feel more at home. The salamander is bout 9 in long and is black with orange spots. After the home was made we then had to get food for it. Charles went out and got worms from the the sidewalk since it had been raining the night before. After all this hard work and dedication they decided to release the creature back into its natural habitat in the wild.