Friday night found me in downtown Boise at the city-sponsored Sesqui-shop.  “Sesqui” is short for Sesquicentennial, and I’m thankful to the City of Boise for abbreviating that mouthful of a word. This year marks Boise’s 150th anniversary, and Boise’s Arts and History Department is putting on a year long party, with parts of it held in the Sesqui-shop.

So I have always had mixed feelings about winter term here at The College of Idaho. On one end, we concentrate on one class, which is really, really nice, but on the other, we blaze through the term in four weeks. This gets a bit hectic.

I love Winter Term. Having three-hour classes sounded a little daunting to me, and knocking out credits in just four weeks sounded stressful, but it turns out that it's been everything but stressful. I’m taking two classes: Engineering Analysis and Intro to CAD. They are both on the computer, but that means that I don’t have too much homework outside of class. My first class doesn’t start until the afternoon. But wait, it gets even better: I don’t have any classes at all on Fridays!

What an adventure I have been on. I have gone not only from one side of the world to another, but from one temperature extreme to another. It is almost surreal to find myself back at C of I for my last few semesters. I am originally from Melbourne, Australia which is quite different to anywhere in Idaho. I take the opportunity to go back home whenever I can afford it, but I always love to go home for Christmas. Christmas in Australia is the opposite of the Christmas experience in America for the main reason that it is summer time in the southern hemisphere.

For me, winter break wasn't just a welcome relief from daily 9 AM classes and late nights studying the proper conjugation of French verbs--it was also an opportunity to make some extra money. Outside of writing for this blog and the Coyote, all the other stuff I'm involved in on campus has been strictly on a non-paying, volunteer basis. And as fun as it is taking pictures at Campus Ministries events, I couldn't pay for Christmas gifts with happy feelings and nifty portraits.

I am currently in Phoenix airport waiting for my connecting flight to Los Angeles. Very shortly, I will be boarding a flight all the way to Australia! That’s right, I am going home for Christmas break and I am probably going the furthest away from Caldwell, ID of anyone. I am able to fly home today because I managed to finish all my finals yesterday and get packed just in time to get on a flight out of Boise. Now I begin the long trek home, which includes copious layovers, long flights (around 14 hrs!) and expensive airport food. 

I’ve spent a large part of my day in the library, wondering what I’m going to do with my life, and trying to get all of my last remaining assignments done so that I can focus on studying for my finals for the rest of the week. I’ve been pretty stressed about finals, because I know  that they’ll be here before I’m even close to ready. But I was very productive today and decided to take a little break after dinner, and it has turned out to be one of the most enjoyable Tuesdays in memory. I went to Ballroom for the last twenty minutes or so, long enough to learn how to jive.

With the election just behind us, people are having all kinds of reactions to Obama’s reelection. One of my favorite things that has come out of this election is the circulation of petitions for secession from the Union. Those and the petitions to petition the original petitions. People are just petitioning everything and I personally find it absurd and hilarious.

(http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2012/11/secession_petitions_se...).

Something wonderful happened on Wednesday this week. I walked into the caf for lunch, and noticed that most of the desserts had been relocated. I immediately took a picture and sent it to my friend Kristin. This was a personal victory for us: we’ve been writing poems to the caf on a nearly nightly basis, asking them to hide the desserts from us. It has been a very lighthearted project, but we are at least a little bit serious about it. The problem is that the caf makes really, really good food, particularly dessert.

So I think it is increaingly important in today's world not to burn out. I am a poster child for burn out cases, with a work ethic that is strange to say the least. I normally am of the school of thought that doesn't really care for most things. I am not the best of students, because if something does not stimulate me, then I do not really care much for it. But if something is exciting for me intellectually, then I go all out on it. Case in point being the arts.