Ours is the Fury

In the weeks since my last update, my college life has changed a lot. Not in all aspects, thankfully, and not for the worse in all ways, either. I'm still having a blast, but I'm discovering that I should have studied a lot more for some of my tests--less time socializing, more time studying. Now, my grades in Biology and Calculus are merely 'average' as opposed to the 'fantastic' that they could otherwise be, and it's a poor reflection on me. I know that I can do better than what I've done so far, but I have to convince my professors of that, or risk being stuck with an 'average student' label. If I do the best I can, and as a Christian that's exactly what I should strive for, I could get A's in all of my classes, or even A+'s. My GPA could be fantastic, but instead, I'm on the border of getting booted from East Meets West. This is very, very definitely a poor reflection on me--it shows that at the beginning, I wasn't holding myself to perform at my very best. I was content to not take my classes seriously, when I owe it to my professors to respect their classes by doing my best to learn what they teach. This has changed, and now I'm paying attention in class and taking more notes and studying and practicing more. Unfortunately, it might not be enough to salvage East Meets West for me.

I talked to Dr. Meilander this morning about what my chances of not being booted are after my last Calc test, and he said that they actually weren't dependent so much on my test grades as my overall performance, so that was very, very reassuring. As long as I can bring my grades up on my next few tests in my classes, I should have a reasonable chance of remaining in the program.

The additional time I'm spending on studying means that I'm devoting less time to reading and games, but I still do play some games and read from time to time, so I feel like mentioning them. I'm on A Clash of Thrones, which is the second book of A Song of Ice and Fire. It'd be a quick read for me if I actually had time to sit for a while and develop momentum, but without the time, it's somewhat slow going. It's a really, really well-written book, and I love the characters, but I am somewhat disturbed by all of the vulgarity in it. Martin has very graphic characters without many inhibitions in what they say. I try to ignore that and focus on the story, but it's a distraction from the flow of it.

I definitely like some aspects of the series quite a bit, though; the Stark family are very cool, reminiscent of Borderlanders in general. Their motto, "Winter is coming" reminds me a lot of the sobriety of Borderlander sayings such as "Death is lighter than a feather; duty, heavier than a mountain." I approve much. Oddly enough, though, the Baratheon family motto is somewhat cooler. "Ours is the fury." I'm not sure why, but I like it more.

I've also been alternating games recently. I got The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king expansion pack, and it's a lot of fun. Angmar is a really, really fun faction to play as, and since all of the pre-existing factions got new units, they're also more enjoyable. The Elves were a little imbalanced, but I downloaded FinalBig, which lets me edit the unit files, and now they're better. Their mini hero horde, the Noldor Warriors, are absolutely awesome. They're trample resistant, they can reach level ten, they are created with Silverthorn arrows, Forged Blades, and Heavy Armor already, and at level seven they get a special ability called 'Weapon Song', which gives them +150% damage and armor temporarily. The other new unit that the Elves have, the Lindon Horse Archers, are somewhat useful, but I'd rather spend the command points on more Mirkwood Archers than on cavalry archers. Mirkwood Archers are far and away the best archers in the game now, with a huge range and damage.

In addition to RotWK, I've been playing Heroes of Might and Magic 5: The Hammers of Fate expansion pack, which adds an additional faction called 'Fortress'. They are insanely awesome, as their Tier 1 units are really hard to kill, deal nice damage in high numbers, and you get a lot of them every week. Their Tier 2 are amazing, though--they have a crippling strike that halves the speed of the opposing unit that they hit, during which they can continue to use their ranged attacks to deal massive damage. Tier 6 is the next best, because they have a teleportation ability that is really, really helpful. They can go anywhere on the map, and since they're Tier 6, they deal very impressive damage. I like them.

I've played Fable: The Lost Chapters a few times, recently, but that can easily become too time consuming, so I've only played it a few times.

In some further, very exciting news, Avatar is coming out on the 18th, and it looks to be awesome. The Na'vi are really, really cool looking, and I am absolutely in love with the visuals. The islands floating in midair are something that I've always considered to be awesome in fantasy stories.

I've also discovered that a film adaption of Eagle of the Ninth is being made, set to come out next year. Unfortunately, Channing Tatum is in it, so its potential quality is severely reduced. Hopefully, though, it will be a worthwhile movie.

In just sixteen days, Christmas break starts, and there will be three Koreans and an old family friend staying at the Nugget, in addition to my family. So, that's thirteen people for Christmas, which is very exciting. There's the potential for another two, but that's still unknown. The more the merrier, though. I can't wait. ^_^

I only have two Bio tests before the final, and then only my Psych and Calc finals left in those two classes, and a Chemistry exam on Friday before the final, so I'm closing up my grades for the year, which is both intimidating and exciting. We'll see how I do.

Sqwar!

So, today was a good day--I finally completed my accumulation of Anberlin albums, I got some Owl City, and I also got A Hundred Million Suns by Snow Patrol, which I've been wanting for a while. To make things even better, I found out this evening that Anberlin is coming to Rochester. I missed my chance to get a ticket last time they came around, so this time I'm going to more or less stalk the site and buy my ticket as soon as it is possible to do so--missing TWO Anberlin concerts would be an incredible tragedy, since I have ample funds for them. I am now looking forward to November 14th.

I really need to start cracking down on my Biology paper, which is due a week from tomorrow (rough drafted). I have most of what I need for it, but not everything, yet. I also need to work on my Psychology paper, the rough draft of which is due at the end of the month--my sources are just finally arriving through inter-library loan.

All of my classes are interesting, which is good. Calculus is the only one that comes close to being boring (the lectures truly are)...it's math. I have a blast in my bio class, though. Psychology is very confusing (but very interesting), while Chemistry is just a breeze.

The social atmosphere here is a lot of fun, though. Houghton has students from quite a few countries, and is almost like a little international bubble within the USA. I'm in one of the Honors Programs--East Meets West, and we'll be studying the Balkans intensely, because it is there that Western culture clashes most strongly with Eastern culture. Roman Catholicism meets Eastern Orthodoxy meets Islam. The cultural mix is amazing. Anyway, after we spend all of our spring semester studying the Balkans, we're going to go there. And after we spend three weeks in the Balkans, they leave us in Venice to tour Europe for as long as we can afford before school starts again. I'm trying to arrange things with my two best friends so that we can have one final, awesome trip of epically amazing proportions before they're off to college too and we're all gone from Europe. So, I'm quite willing to find some way to skip the entire school year and just go straight to May-term and the summer.

Anyway, that was my intro post. Next time I'll probably comment on a song(s) or movie or something more normal. ^_^