Baseball

I have never gone this long in my life without playing baseball. There is not a baseball team here, however I am still on the roster of a competitive 21 and under team back in the Bay Area. I plan on playing club baseball here at school, and am really excited. I am a little nervous because I am out of "baseball shape". I haven't ran in a while and I haven't worked out as much as I had back when I was in high school. I have not had the motivation to actually get out and work out at all since I have been in college. There are too many distractions, and too many new things that I never experienced at home that are taking away from the physical aspect of my life.
I am hoping that the club team will be competitive and help me get back to my previous baseball shape and talent. My goal is to  get all the rust off and be ready to play on my travel team back home by the time I move back for the summer. I am not ready to completely take baseball out of my life yet.

Halloween

I was really excited for Halloween this year because it was the first year I wouldn't be bother by my parents about what I was doing. I was finally going to be able to go out and party without the thought of having to be home at a certain time or having to be too responsible. It was going to be my first relaxing Halloween. I was wrong. My forestry teacher decided to schedule a test for the Monday after Halloween at 9 oclock in the morning. So while I could have been out having the best Halloween of my life, I was stuck in my dorm studying all night. And when I showed up for my test the next morning, the teacher was not even there. Of all days the teacher chose to miss, she decided to miss the day she scheduled a test for; however, we were expected tp be in class on time ready to take a test. Many of the students in the class themselves were not ready for the test because they decided to go out and party anyway, so the success rate of this test will be very low.
Overall it was just a bad day to schedule a test, and it ruined either peoples Halloweens, or it ruined their grade in the class. It is not smart to schedule a test the day after a major holiday like Halloween, because the majority of your class will either not like you very much afterward, or a lot of your students test scores will be very low. It would have made much more sense to reschedule the test for the next Monday so the students would be happier and the test scores would be higher.

World Series

Of course a Bay Area team would make the playoffs the year I move away to college. I have been waiting for the A's or Raiders to come close to the playoffs for years. I haven't had much hope considering the Raiders haven't been able to win more than 5 games in a season since 2002, and the A's can not spend enough money to keep talent on their team. It is not ideal for me that the Giants make it to the world series seeing as I am an A's fan; however, the Giants are across the bay from my team and I am disappointed I am not home to be in the middle of all the comotion.
Back in 2002 when the Giants last made the World Series, my dad was able to get tickets to one of the home games through his company. And even though I was not a Giants fan back then either, it was still amazing to be a part of a world series game. The crowd gets in to the game more than you could imagine. The noise level of the game is amazing, You become a fan of the team in the moment because the feeling is something to different than any other sports game. People go crazy for every hit and every run. Something that seems so minor, like a sacrifice bunt, could become a turning point in a game. I took these things lightly when I lived in the Bay considering I did not have much to look forward to in any season. But now that one of the Bay Area teams is in the playoffs, I wish I could be experiencing what I had taken for granite 8 years ago when I was at the last World Series a Bay Area team was in.

Managin Time

I never really understood that there would be so much free time in college. I always had this idea that it was kinda like high school but a lot more busy, but as I am getting more and more acclimated to the college lifestyle, I am beginning to realize it is nothing like high school at all. High school was pretty much the same thing every day. You got to the same classes, talk to the same people, talk about the same things blah blah blah. College is the same in the social sense, however your schedule varies from day to day. Some days you have a ton of free time, and some days you have almost none.
I don't know what to do with myself on some of the days that I have a ton of free time. If was at home, I would most likely be outside getting exercise or playing sports. However, in college I have become lazy as ever. The walk to the gym seems amazingly long, and I just tend to spend a lot of time hanging out with my friends in the dorms.  I am not complaining, believe me I haven't had a lot of time to just sit an relax in the past couple of years with all of the sports and extracurricular activities I participated in. But I am also not used to being so inactive.
I need to find a way to motivate myself to go to the gym and get active or I will never be ready for summer baseball, or club baseball for that matter

Pre Cal

Pre-Calculus is the hardest class I have ever taken in my life. I have never been extraordinary at math, I've always been in the middle of the pack getting B's or B+'s. But this course is making it hard for me to pull out a low C on a curve. I do not understand almost everything the teacher says, it seems like he's speaking a different language. I wouldn't be taking the class if it was not a requirement for my major, and the problem with this class being required for my major is that I have to take two more higher level math classes after pre-cal. It is making me question whether or not i should change my major. It is the only class that is an issue, and it starting to become a large issue.

My friend who is in the class with me, helps me study, but it doesn't matter how much i study. I understand the information the night we study, but as soon as a quiz or test comes up, I freeze and forget all of the information i studied. My biggest worry was that my parents would be mad at me for getting such bad grades in the class, but i explained my position and they were very understanding. My dad was not very good at math when he was in college so he really understands and wasn't freaking out too much.

I'm hoping to bring my grade high enough to pass the class by a good margin, but I'lle be happy with any passing grade

College Life

Living in college is more fun than I would have ever expected it to be. I have more freedom than I was ever given at home, I have less stress than I had at home, and I have more fun in college than I had at home. Don't get me wrong, I miss my family and friends, but I love the fact that I am able to start over with new people and be the person I want to be. In high school, you make a label for yourself and you pretty much have to stick to that label or you get judged or made fun of. In college or at least at Humboldt, I feel like nobody is judging me or anyone for that matter.
The dorm life is so fun too. I've never been in an environment like a dorm. Everyone is welcoming and always says hi. People are always walking in and out of everyone's room, its like a giant party all the time. I have become more responsible since I have started living here. In high school i was a lazy student who never turned his work in on time, but now that I am in college, I haven't had one late assignment. I like the fact that I am going to school for myself now, and not doing it to please my parents. It makes me feel like I am accomplishing something for myself, and I'm enjoying it.

Forestry Lab

Today I went to Green Diamond for a Forestry lab. I was not really looking forward to it considering I have been sick since Friday and we would be hiking through the forest, however I realized that if I didn't go to the lab, I wouldn't be able to make it up. My roommate and i have the same lab so we reluctantly walked to where our class was going to meet and signed the waiver sheets and picked up our hard hats. We both didn't really know why we needed hard hats, but we took them anyway, and prepared ourselves for something we thought would be boring and tedious.

The bus ride was about thirty minutes long, and the first section of the lab did not disappoint. It was both boring and tedious. We were sitting listening to a man talk about how his small company allowed people to come and cut down certain trees for a good 20 minutes (in hard hats). After the long lecture about what his company did, we got back in the bus and took a 30 minute drive deep into the forest to try to find spotted owls.

This is where my boring and tedious lab took a turn for the better. We found the spot in the forest where the spotted owls had made a home for themselves, and the man leading us began to lecture us again. At first i braced myself for another long and pointless lecture, however the man told the class that he brought two mice with him so we could feed the owls. He asked if anyone in our class would like to feed the owls, and two of my classmates raised their hands. He gave one of them a large stick and placed the mouse on the stick. Once the mouse started crawling, an owl from a nearby branch swooped down inches above all our heads and grabbed the mouse off of the stick in the blink of an eye. My whole class was standing in the middle of the forest awestruck (in hard hats) because of what we had all witnessed. It instantly changed my view of the lab. Literally in the second that the owl grabbed the mouse, the lab went from boring and tedious to exciting and amazing. I never thought i would ever see an owl take a mouse and eat it right in front of my face.

After we watched the owls a little longer, we hiked back to the bus and began the long ride back to campus.