PENN-sieve

In the movie Clerks, there is a good amount of time dedicated to making fun of the women who come and pull all of the milk out of the cooler so they can get the milk with the farthest away expiration date. Because most of my customers at the store are college students, this has never happened - until today.

This older man who barely spoke English asked me where the milk was. He then proceeded to take all the milk out of the cooler. I had to try hard not to laugh. After I checked him out, I went to see if Jay and Silent Bob were outside!

Today in the GYST book, I wrote this note for my RAs:

"Happy Friday the 13th. Watch out for Jason!"

How come they all asked me who Jason was?

Feeling old and that is sad :(

Tonight, I found a dollar on my way to my building to give an RA some keys. It made it a little worthwhile to have to walk in the drizzle at 10pm.

You may be getting tired of all my posts that rave and rave on and on about how Penn State is the best at this or that. Well, if that is the case, you probably do not want to continue reading because this is yet another one of those posts.

The on-campus post office has the friendliest mailmen in the world! When you go in to mail a package, they tease and joke with the people in line and try to make post office business fun. When you give them a credit card to pay for your stamps, they act like they are the Harlem Globetrotters. They are really nice guys and a lot of students and staff members bring them cookies so they can be on the "Wall of Fame" for the best cookie of the month contest. Unlike other post offices, the mailmen have decorated the walls with fun stuff like a sign that has the top ten things to do at Penn State before you graduate. Of course, number 2 is bring the mailmen cookies and number 6 is have you parents send the mailmen cookies. It's just a lot of fun to be in line at the post office. Today I took in a package for my niece's birthday and one for my goddaughter, Amanda. The mailman decorated the packages with ink stamped birthday candles and well wishes. On Serenity's present he put a stamp that said "I mailed this two weeks ago (because her birthday is in two days!).

I am currently taking one Higher Education class to increase my competency and also to see if I really want to purse a doctoral degree in Higher Education. My class is on State Policy in Higher Education and I often do not feel I have anything of substance to share with the class. Part of the reason is that we do compare other states to what happens in Pennsylvania and I am not familiar with Pennsylvania policy like the other three people in my class who are all from this state, worked here for many years, and/or have a degree from Penn State. This does wonders for my confidence level about my intelligence (already a shaky area and always really has been).

It does not help that I am intimidated by my professor who is Harvard educated and highly respected in Higher Education research. My professor is such a big shot that he was actively recruited to leave the University of Michigan to teach and research for Penn State! Whatever I say can't be BS because he knows ALL the answers. In fact, all of the professors in this department are like this - big shots that are quoted in all sorts of research; big shots who testify in congress; big shots that can serve as consultants for other universities in their area of expertise!

I worry that I won't be smart enough to get into this program. One of my coworkers was just denied this Spring! And then to help me feel even more confident, US News and World Report released it's rankings of top Higher Education programs and PSU, well, we are...#1!


HIGHER EDUCATION ADMINISTRATION
1. Pennsylvania State University–University Park
2. University of Michigan– Ann Arbor
3. University of California– Los Angeles
4. Michigan State University
5. University of Southern California (Rossier)

From www.usnews.com

This morning, I hit the snooze button 6 times before I actually climbed out of bed. It wasn't that I was super tired but rather that I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or my alarm was going off. I dreamt that I was a part of a scientific study that aimed to prove that the snooze alarm had a different tone for each succession of alarms that sounded. The catch in this experiment was that only the super smart would be able to differentiate the slight difference in tone from the first snooze alarm to the second and so on. I woke up exclaiming aloud, "This is the fourth alarm". I was so disoriented that I had to lay in bed for twenty more minutes before I could face the day where I wasn't super smart and I didn't have perfect pitch.

Last Sunday, I decided that I really needed to do some serious studying and knew that would not happen in my apartment so I headed off to the Pattee and Paterno library (yes, our library is named after our football coach). Whenever I try to study in my apartment, the TV calls to me..."turn me on", "watch me", "over here, over here". It is very distracting and I struggle to finish reading the 100 or so pages I need to read every week in a timely manner. It's not always the TV that distracts me, sometimes it is the dust on the bookshelf, the dishes in the sink, the pillow on my bed...as you can see, my apartment conspires in a multitude of ways to keep me from my necessary tasks!

I headed to the library with the hopes of finding a good reading space in the Grad Student section. Hey, I get my reading done and get to check out the older grad students and law school men; you can't fault me for multi-tasking! Our library is a maze. There are a million corridors that end in weird places (okay, maybe not a million but definitely at least 9,999!) and finding a study room was not an easy thing to do. Up a flight of stairs, through the creepy stacks, down three floors in an elevator...finally I found a reading room. After a half hour of searching for a room (no, I did not ask for directions), I was happy with this room and settled in for some serious reading.

Despite the difficulty to find a space, my trip was very productive and I plan to head to the library more often.

This weekend I did some shoe shopping or rather, I tried to do some shoe shopping. The shoe fashions for this Spring are almost amazing - cute wedge heels, lots of cork platforms, and espadrilles - shoes I would love to buy if I didn't have my feet or legs.

The in-thing this season is open toed shoes which I had hoped I had seen the last of when I was in 8th grade but this is not the case. Every adorable pair of wedge heels has a peek through for your toes. Now you may think that this is a cute feature but my second toe is longer than the big toe and it's just not pretty. Add to this, my lovely birthmark and you can see why I am a most disappointed shoe lover.

Over the years, I have become comfortable with my birthmark and am used to the endless questions about what happened to my foot. The problem with open toed shoes is that people think my toes have turned red because my shoes don't fit correctly. It's just too much of a headache to explain that I do not wear shoes that do not fit, I am just defective :)

When I was able to find a pair of closed toe shoes, the remaining cute shoes have ankle straps - the kind that wrap and tie up your leg. These are not sexy on people with big calves! I guess what is in fashion for this Spring is me not wearing new shoes - how depressing!