School Spirit - Rah!

I have to confess - I do not understand school spirit. Like, not at all.

Have attended Penn State as an undergrad, I am supposed to "bleed blue and white" and reminisce about how happy I was at Happy Valley. After getting my masters at West Chester, I guess there is something I am supposed to feel every time I see a ram. Or the horrible combination of purple and yellow.

I don't know... I just do not feel that way. Never have. Probably never will.

And to be honest, I actually feel a little bit guilty about it, like I *should* feel something when I think about places I have respectively spent 4 years at.

Do not get me wrong - I am exceedingly grateful for the education I got at PSU. I thought it was great and that it really prepared me for becoming a med tech. Although, if you want to get technical, the most learning I did was not at PSU, but rather at Pennsylvania Hospital. THAT was a year of learning in more ways than one.
But when I look back at my time spent on campus, there are really only a few memories that come to mind: rehearsals/gigs with Penns, hanging out with Josh, hanging out with Kathy, and studying in the HUB. With the exception of marathon study sessions, those memories are fantastic. I also have memories of attempting to fit in with Campus Crusade and realizing that how they were run was inherently against what I believe to be the true nature of faith. (I am sure CCC works well for some people, it just did not for me) There are other memories - meals shared, walking to class in the fall, ballroom dance class! But nothing in these memories make me want to paint my face blue and white and respond heartily to the call, "WE ARE!"
So that leaves me to wonder - did I squander my time there because I do not have golden-tinged memories of it? Is something wrong with me because I do not feel this way?

This writing has been prompted by me reading the WCU alumni magazine that came in the mail the other day. It tells of improvements to campus, new programs... alumni news and advertisements for homecoming. Homecoming! Like I would EVER have ANY desire to attend homecoming of WCU or PSU. Coming home was when I left college, not when I went to it.

So I wonder if that is the key right there - I never felt at home at either WCU or PSU. Maybe I just suck at making friends, which is such an important part of "belonging" at college. There is a very small select group of people I keep in touch with on a regular basis. Of those, Josh is top dog, since I get to see him all the time. And it was neat going to the Pennharmonics 15th anniversary reunion a few weeks ago. They are people I consider friends even if I rarely ever speak to them.
Overall though, I just had little desire to make a lot of friends when I went to college. I will never have a reunion of college roomies or anything like that. I never had that first apartment with friends. Would it have been different if I had been on campus that last year? Who knows. But I can say that the 5 girls I went to med tech school with have more or less fallen off the face of the earth. The saddest part was when I went back to PSU to officially graduate - I knew no one in my major with the exception of someone I went to high school with. My buddies from class were all microbiology and bmb majors, so I did not even get to sit with them. Kind of pathetic.

It does not bug me too much, because I am blessed with a lot of friends and acquaintances and people... all over the place. Just not so much from PSU. So when people get all hyped up about college, I do not understand. It was not the best time of my life. A good time, yes, but certainly not my glory days. In fact, I like life a lot better these days... and perhaps that is another clue to this puzzle: Jon is here now. Yet all through college, part of me was an hour away. That makes it hard to fully live in the moment where you are.



Now WCU bewilders me. I honestly am shocked at the fact that I spent 4 years there getting my teaching cert and my masters and did not make friends. Granted - I did not try really. I know the 4 buildings that I had my classes in, and that was it. I know where the Bull center is and where Sykes is. Oh, and the place where you pay parking tickets... I visited there a few times.
There were people in my classes that I saw often, and I would regard them as professional acquaintances. One girl in particular just got a job at my school, which is neat. Graduation was strange too - hanging out with a bunch of people you sort of know from class, but know nothing else about them.
WCU was even less of a home than PSU. That probably has a lot to do with commuter and "adult" status. When you are not exactly going full time, it changes things. When you are not living the campus life... and instead living your own life outside of school... you do not really get invested.
In comparison to WCU, I adore PSU. Honestly, WCU was a means to an end. So was PSU... but WCU was a way to get the cert I needed and to up a pay grade.


I don't know, I feel a bit rotten about it all. If I could go back, maybe I would try harder to make friends and hang out with them. Then maybe I could say that I loved PSU or WCU. Well... probably never WCU, I pretty much disliked the whole place... but PSU, maybe.

But, as you know, you cannot go back, you can only go forward. So I have to think: what am I supposed to learn from this? And I think it is that I cannot always just hope that people will initiate with me to be my friend. I cannot assume that if people are hanging out that they will think to invite me. I also cannot assume that people know that I do consider them actual friends instead of just people I am thrown together in a situation with or people that are convenient to see sometimes. I have to actually be like hey, lets do stuff or hey, invite me next time you....



Summer is almost over. 6 weeks left, about. It is flying by so quickly and I have not done enough hanging out. So here we go...

House

Well, it looks like we are buying a house.

We found a townhome in Morgantown, right off the turnpike, that seems to suit our needs. Its a 3 bed, 2.5 bath, finished walk out basement, ginormous finished loft that has WAY more room than we actually need. Its going to be rather amusing to move our ONE couch and TWO armchairs and then realize that we still have a bazillion square feet to fill. However, I think we will try to be as minimalistic as possible.

Anyway, we like the house and it seems like a really good place to start. Its cheap, first of all, which is the most fabulous thing. Quite honestly, its only a couple hundred more than we are paying for our rent right now, so we feel its very managable. We have asked about their utility bills, and they seem to be reasonable as well. Our home inspection was last week and that went swimmingly. We asked them to fix a bit of electrical work, some flash collars on the roof (no, I dont know what that means! ha!), and fix a window that was not locking and was letting water in because of it.

We hope Lily likes it.

There are really only two major improvements that need to happen:
1) the deck... its 7 years old and warping like the dickens. It has obviously not been taken care of or stained consistently or anything like that. We forsee us rebuilding the deck within the next year or two if we have the dinero. I also want to put in a spiral staircase if the HOA lets us.
2) the carpet... you basically walk in on the first floor which has a powder room to the left, living room to the right, then closer to the back of the house, the dining room on the left with kitchen on the right. Both the kitchen and the entryway are nice hard wood floors. But the rest.... and up the stairs... is forest green carpet. Now, I love me some forest green carpet. In fact, I chose it for my bedroom at home. But the ENTIRE living room and ENTIRE dining room? EEP! Its just a lot of green. So we are going to rip it out and put down floors. We may even attempt to install it ourselves, depending on what type we go for. Should be a learning experience (gulp) but I think we can swing it. Jon is so anal retentive that I am not worried about the measuring and cutting. And I am good at seeing how things fit together.

Other than that, the house is in phenomenal shape. The carpets are a little funky upstairs with some pulls and whatnot. But the walls are all white. The upstairs and basement carpets are neutral. I guess I will include some pictures here at the end for you, if you are interested.

Overall, I am getting kinda excited about decorating. I already know what I want to do with our master bedroom (light blue accent wall) and the basement (floor to ceiling bookshelves from ikea droooooool) and the smallest bedroom (Jon's giant white desk from when he was in jr high will go there for our office).

I think the nicest thing about it all is that we are going to be able to put down 10% of the house and still have money left over to do these things. Its a good feeling and a pleasure to know that Jon and I have actually done a good job of managing our dinero over the past few years. 'Course it helps when your parents let you live at home forever.

We settle Sept 10th and we have until Sept 30th on our lease here at the apartments, so we will have almost 3 weeks to move in and get the painting and floors done. THAT I feel really good about. School will be starting up and getting into gear, which makes me nervous... but hopefully I can buckle down and put in some time there to get things ready before school begins so that I will have a few weeks of lessons prepared for all of my classes. That is the plan anyway. We will see what actually happens.

So... yay.

Hopefully we can slow down on the major life changes, though I am not sure if that will happen either.... Remember, Sept 14th of last year we got married. Sept 10th of this year we will own a townhome. Sept next year... let's just say we do not have any plans yet. :P

kitchen

living room (dining room to the l, kitchen straight ahead)

giant 3rd floor loft room (aka Project Rehearsal Room)

finished basement (hard to see bc they got a lot of STUFF down there!)
living room (note green carpet and weird pseudo bird cage rack thing)