Week O' Crap

Well really, weeks o' crap. I am currently in the most anxiety filled span of time in my life. Aside from papers, reading, exams, and other school related issues, I have 4 stress-filled events.

1. RA Selection/Housing Lottery:

I am currently a Junior RA at my school, for senior year I applied to be an RA again (the money makes a HUGE difference). Stressful Aspect 1: Am I gonna get hired again? Did I do a good enough job this year? What is going on. Found out I got hired, OK but that leads to Stressful Aspect 2: Where am I going to be placed as an RA on campus? In the Freshman dorms? In the sophomore dorms? Please have me be placed in the senior dorms! Got placed in the senior dorms, which leads to Stressful Aspect 3: What part of senior housing will I be placed in? In the singles? The apartments? Hopefully the townhouses! I got Townhouses. (This is the condensed version, it was a lot more hectic)

2. Keys Elections

For the "honor" society that I'm in, time for elections came up. For Keys elections it has to be a unanimous decision among our 28 members. I wanted to be elected Vice President, but I heard people saying they wanted me as treasurer. When election time came (last night). We elected the President quickly, everyone wanted the same guy in charge. VP was different. It got narrowed down to me and another kid. The other 26 members debated who should be VP for 2 HOURS. It was wicked stressful, I was wicked anxious and nervous. After about 2 hours and 15 minutes of discussion, I was elected VP. Now I just have to prove to them they made the right decision.

OK so two of my stress-filled events have been completed, but I still have two more to go.

3. Spring Break Alternative Leader Interview/Selection

I went to South Dakota with SBA and for next year I applied to be a leader on one of the trips. Sent in my application, and last week I got an email congratulating me for passing phase 1. Phase 2 of the process is the interview. Mine is tomorrow night. Very stressed out and nervous about that, anxious too. I want to get selected, but you never know. Hopefully it all works out.

4. Re-Member intern interview

In South Dakota, we worked at a community center type thing, called Re-Member. When we got back from SBA myself and 2 girls applied to be interns there for 3 weeks in the summer. We sent in our applications about 2 weeks ago. Saturday I got an email asking when I wanted to set up my phone interview. It's set for Friday. So obviously this again, is a stress-filled, anxiety-filled situation. Hopefully that goes well too.

After all those are over, I have a break from school for Easter. Which is gonna be great, because time off is definitely needed at this point. After Easter Break, there are only 4 weeks left in the school year. Everything is flying by so fast .....

Long Walk To Freedom: The Musical Trilogy

So right now I am taking a course on the South African Politics of the 20th Century. For the course, we are reading two very scholarly books, tons of articles, and Nelson Mandela's autobiography: Long Walk To Freedom. 

One day in class, we (about 4 of us) decided we wanted to make the book into a movie. We then decided we wanted it to be a trilogy, and one third of the trilogy would be a musical. Hence, Long Walk To Freedom: The Musical Trilogy was born. So we started casting.

We decided that the young Nelson Mandela should be played by an up-and-coming actor, this movie would be his debut role. 

Young Adult Nelson Mandela - Will Smith

Middle Aged Nelson Mandela - Terrence Howard

Senior Nelson Mandela - Sidney Poitier

What about Morgan Freeman someone might ask. Don't worry, he is the narrator.

Who would then play Mandela's wives?

For some reason, Rihanna was chose to be his first wife. And Halle Berry was casted to be his second wife Winnie.

David Bopape, a strong member of the African National Congress (ANC) would be played by Djimon Hounsou (from Gladiator). Oliver Tambo of the ANC would be played by Don Cheadle. The token white-guy of the ANC would be none other than Tom Hanks. 

The leader of the militant wing of the ANC, the Umkhonto we Sizwe [Translation: Spear of the Nation] (AKA the MK) would be Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje).

Bono would be one of the white South Africans that housed Nelson Mandela while he was a fugitive.

Other notable cast members include:

Since South Africa has a large Indian population, we casted Freida Pinto, Kelly Kapoor and Sir Ben Kingsley (because he was great in Gandhi)

Will Smith's son (Jaden Smith) could play the role of one of Mandela's sons.

Forest Whitaker, Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, and Mekhi Phifer would also be casted in the movie: actual roles will be announced later, we're waiting on contract agreements.

And somebody decided that Beyonce and Shakira should both be in the movie, somehow.

But you may ask, how are planning on funding this movie? We already solved that problem. One word: OPRAH. We would cast Oprah in the movie as Oprah. We would add her into the story of Nelson Mandela's life by saying her and Mandela were pen-pals during his 27 year prison term. We figured by doing this, she'd pay for the whole movie. Plus, we could always throw in her yelling, "Apartheid is baaaaaaaaAAAAAAaaad!" 

It's a work in progress ... awesome progress

 

In 5 minutes and 1 second, I saved three lives

Gave blood today. But funny story...

So I do all the stupid questions, and the vitals (might I add, I was perfect) and finally got to give blood. I got to the station and the lady marked out where my vein was, three times, and after all the prep work, inserted the needle into my arm. Suddenly, NOTHING CAME OUT. She started yelling for her supervisor, "Laura! Laura! Laura!" who came over, took control of the situation, found my vein and inserted the needle properly.

Finished giving blood in 5:01, not a personal best but OK (4:21 is my best, giving blood is ALWAYS a race). So really today, I gave blood, and got stabbed by a Red Cross Nurse.

Here's a picture to explain:

(note: the yellow stuff is the iodine, I'm not diseased)

Additionally, when I said the supervisor came over and inserted the needle properly, she never in fact took the needle out of my arm. The whole time she was fishing around under my skin with a pointy metal stick. 

SoDak (abridged version with pictures)

On The Rez

(Bottger's B&B, I didn't actually use it, but girls on my trip said it was great. The door fell off, so you just sit there staring out into nature)

(Bob Bear Killer's House, up on the hill there's a trailer with 18 people living in it)

The Badlands

(It felt like we were in "The Land Before Time" or "The Ling King" or something, not South Dakota)

(this girl didn't know I took her picture, but it's OK because I showed it to her later and she thought it was cool)

Just a small glimpse of what the Rez was like.