Party in the USA (is that copyrighted?)

The countdown I started on my whiteboard in my dorm room finally reached "Home!" today. The time had come for me to leave behind communal living, mind-numbing lectures, and shitty cafeteria food for five days and go home to friends, family, and the largest face stuffing festival in the United States: Thanksgiving. Thank you, pilgrims!! Not only are you helping increase the obesity levels in this country on a single day and initiating the killing millions of innocent turkeys (I should point out that I have been a vegetarian since the womb), you are also bringing me joy in the most abundant amounts.

For the first time in three months, I am home, and it feels oh so wonderful to be here. Pulling up into the driveway of my house produced rather strange feelings. No doubt I am thrilled to be home for a week, but it also seems rather foreign. My family continues to live here, but I am not there to witness it. It is strange to think that life happens here everyday, but I know nothing of it. Technically I don't even live here anymore, yet I still can't call Mertz (my dorm) my home. Nevertheless, I walked into the undeniable comfort of my house, making a beeline to greet my kitties who had congregated in the kitchen anxiously waiting for my arrival. And, well, I was so relieved to have arrived.

Within ten minutes of me being home, I get a text informing me of the plans for the night. And here is where coming back to Ohio gets even better...even better than seeing my cats! Shocking, right?! After three months, or one fourth of an entire year, I am on my way to hang out with my friends. My Ohio friends. The closest friends I have. The people I have not seen in far too long because the distance between each of us is incredible.

If you look at where my closest friends chose to attend school, your eyes would have to dance back and forth across the map of the United States because we're partying all across the USA. We range from all the way out west in Seattle to all the way down south in Georgia and all the way back up north in New York. No two of us go to the same school. Needless to say, it's kind of difficult to hop in a car and drive down to Georgia from Illinois on any given weekend.

Seeing everyone tonight had a similar sensation as when I came home. Although we all try to keep in touch as much as possible, I have no clue what is really going on in my friends' everyday lives. What do they do in their spare time? Who are they hanging out with? Where do they go on the weekends? Everybody has their own almost secret lives that I will never truly be able to understand simply because I am not seeing them everyday anymore. We can talk and share stories, but there are empty faces and places that I can only attempt to imagine. If we are all shaped by our experiences, then we have all become completely different people. Nobody's "college lives" are the same, whereas in high school we were all stuck in the same place doing pretty much the same thing.

Even though we're all across the country, we all are nodding our heads like yeah and moving our hips like yeah. Not to mention this unfortunately captivating song is played at every single party across the country. For this week, though, we will have congregated our party to in the UA in our hometown suburban setting, and I couldn't be more thankful.

Thank You, AP World Literature

I am forever indebted to my eleventh grade AP World Literature class. Walking into that class for the first day held no inclination that two years later I would count my lucky stars for allowing me to take that course. Being my first AP class, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. We had had an astronomical amount of summer reading and journals to complete in preparation for the class, and before even stepping foot through that doorway, I had decided that class sucked.

We were given another assignment on the first day of class, another reason to question my decision to be a proactive student and try to earn college credit. We were to write what was called an "Occasional Paper", or OP, once every quarter. This OP had to be at least 500 words and could be written on any topic we desired, as long as it had a point and was not simply a narrative. We could write them at any point during the quarter. Once we had written them, we were required to read it in front of the class. Wonderful. On top of the endless list of books to read for this class and others, I had to come up with some topic out of thin air to write a paper on. Oh, and it was worth 50 points. Why oh why didn't I choose to be a slacker?!

Well, the first quarter went by, and I managed to crank out a less than interesting OP about my recent student trip to Africa. I did not give the paper much thought, as I was simply trying to conjure up a semi-well written paper to obtain my fifty points. The second quarter rolled around, and Winter Break was slowly approaching, aka OP deadline. One Saturday afternoon, inspiration struck while I was watching the news with my dad. There had been a debate on whether to call a tree in some governmental building a Christmas tree or a Holiday tree. After discussing it for a bit with my dad, I sat down to write the paper that more or less changed the course of my life.

I came into class the next Monday with my second quarter OP. I nervously got up in front of the class to present this paper that discussed the meaningless of political correctness and the cultural implications of the holiday season. Throughout my delivery, there were laughs, snorts, and other appreciated responses from my classmates. Once I finished, I received the customary applause from my peers and handed my paper in to the teacher. She held out her hand with a smile and encouragingly nodded her head, telling me that this OP would make a wonderful college essay.

Although I had been freaking out about the whole college process, I never fully thought about having to actually apply. Until now. I sat down in my desk thinking to myself, "What made this OP college essay-worthy?" I couldn't answer that question until my third quarter OP.

When I wrote my third quarter OP, I realized how much I truly enjoyed writing these. If nothing else, they are simply an instrument for me to express my most random thoughts in the way in which I express myself best, through my writing. My personality and voice through the written word are able to carry through to fully and comprehensibly convey what it is that I am thinking. I had found my niche.

Before I knew it, I was entering my senior year of high school. I was signed up for AP World Literature Year 2, and was hoping and praying that we would have to write more OPs. I had heard horror stories from other AP Lit classes whose teachers did not require them. Every day when I walked into my AP Lit class, I hoped and prayed that our teacher would introduce them to us again. My prayers were answered when our teacher told us that one a quarter, we were to stand up in front of the class to read a 500 word paper about whatever topic we choose. Hallelujah!

Those eight OPs I wrote during my last two years of high school gave me such joy. I never thought I would enjoy a school assignment as much as I did. When college application season finally approached, I listened to the advice of my junior year AP Lit teacher and used my second quarter OP as my college essay, and, well, I was pleased with the results. This essay gained me acceptance to the university which I currently attend where I am further pursuing a career in, essentially, writing OPs for the rest of my life. But until I am out in the real world as a real journalist, I thought I would try to write some more OPs. I mean, eight simply was not enough. So, here we are. I hope you enjoy reading these posts as much as I love writing them. Let me know what you think!