To My Friends,
Pete and Christina: I am sorry that you have run into a few bumps in the paths you have taken. I know this will sound corny coming from me, Drew the Cornball who is a thousand miles away from you and your problems, but you both have been my good friends and I will say it anyway. These bumps are only bumps, and nothing more. These things cannot stop you unless you let them. The frustration you feel will in time pass if you stay the course. I know of your potential Pete, you will build and develope great tracks of land one day I think. Christina, the life of a teacher is filled with moments where you will think yourself to be nothing more but a jailer, at least that's what my Mom has told me. However, sometimes, just sometimes, the light bulb that goes off over a kid's head will be totally thanks to your efforts and everyone including you will see that. Given your sunny disposition and passion for knowledge, it is forgone conclusion that you will enlight many kids if teaching is what you pursue. I believe in you Pete. I believe in you Christina. I belive all of us who shared the P-House will do great things in our lives, it is a matter of fate. We will look back one day, hopefully together while attending a reunion, and say to ourselves, "My God, what a long way I've come and so have you my friends."
Enough corniness, now I will tell you about my recent exploits. I am loving it here at WVU. The people are friendly, the land itself is beautiful, and I seem to have a natural ability to fathom the subjects I am being taught. I still feel immense pressure building up on me, as I work and work toward semester final exams which are essentially my only opportunity to prove that I belong here. Seriously, the veteran students tell me that your first semester grades are the most important. They get you the good summer jobs and the scores also set the tone for the rest of your tenure here. Needless to say, I know that no matter how much I know or don't know, the only option I have is to bust my ass all week and twice on Sunday so I can have Saturdays totally free. Still, I had a chance to pretend I was a lawyer for a few glorious moments in class this week. I volunteered to give arguments on behalf of Volks-Wagen in a jurisdiction case. I got up in front of everyone and pleaded the case of a major company of New York which asked that it not be sued in Oklahoma for an accident involving one of its vehicles there. It felt really good to get a gasp of awe from the crowd when I made an analogy about how the stream of our interstate commerce is like a river on which company products are carefully guided ships, not pieces of driftwood (that one was for you Emily). The professor said wow and then stopped me in the hall and told me what a good job I did. I guess I'm telling you all this to say thank you to everyone who put up with my arguing on and off the show. It really prepared me for what I want to do, and I hereby restate my offer of repayment. If I manage to prove myself worthy to stay here, graduate, and become a great lawyer I will make it a point to come to anyone's aide if they every get into a legal scrape. I swear I'll be there and knock the teeth out of the opposition. Okay, enough from Cornball Drew. Take care, my friends, and feel free to write or visit me sometime it would be good to see familar faces.

So pete are you sure you want us to come visit? well I guess you can't really get rid of us that easily. I'm sorry you feel so bad. I thought you said it would get better next week? what happened to that? Well I'll talk to you later today anyhow.

I am sitting around waiting until I go to the Physics club meeting at 4:15. then i am going home, probably cooking or helping to cook and then eating and then driving to champaign. I feel like i am going to be driving to champaign a lot more than I thought I was going to. I have to take my physics GRE there and my Pilot test GRE. plus visiting. it's cool. it gives me a change of pace.

YEsterday i decided that I hated high school. I just felt so stupid. I think that subs should be abolished unless there is something for them to do. I mean I felt like a jailer more than a usefull human being. I think they could have benefeited from just going outside and getting some sunshine. I know how pete feels with the pre-written computer things. I had to administer one of those for physics. what a waste of time. they didn't learn a damn thing. When I asked a chem class if anybody actually liked chem one person raised thier hand. I wanted to leave right then. people are just taking it because their parents or teachers want them to. nobody cares about learning at all. plus most all of them are huge asses. I wanted to smack a couple of them around several times. I just gave up on the seccond day when they really had NOTHING to do.

I seem to always have physics to do so at least I'm not bored. Between physics, teaching, and trying to keep our bunny, gatsby, from eating EVERYTHING, I am staying kinda busy. I am also helping adam do his postbac work in the music library. my work... well I haven't really got any right now.
Rachel. The only reaction I had to your post was AWWWWW. i couldn't think of anything but the kittens when I read it. ( :

Random stuff I have been doing.
Random website of stuff
adam And I have started running in the morning. we've gone twice so far. I hope we can actually keep it up.
so I am going to head over to do the physics club meeting. talk to you all later.
peace
Christina

i will now make it official: i hate it here. All activities besides those needed for sustenence and those needed to pass my classes have been expunged from my life. An average of three hours per night has been cut from my usual sleep schedule. I'm tired and grumpy all the time, and i still don't get all my work done. I stayed up until 4AM to finish this one assignment due thursday and did not even come close to finishing it even though i had been working on it 5 days earlier. The work i do finish turns out shoddy due to lack of sleep and lack of time. I'm not learning anything. Two of my classes are as pointless and boring as styrofoam, the other two are potentially awesome, but poorly taught. I spend hours upon hours formatting tables in Excel, making unnecessary calculations on site plans, and other such pointless, mindless busy work. Teaching is no longer interesting because now, i just proctor prewritten computer tutorials... so i stand around and answer the same questions over and over. I miss all of you. I miss Emily immesureably. I miss the community identity of Knox College and the P-House.

I'm sorry for being so negative and bitchy. I just have no one to complain to in my real life except Michael who, (don't get me wrong, i love the man, but...) sometimes seems more like a cartoon character than a human being.

I have finally attended at least one session of all of my classes. My analysis is that my archaeology seminar, which I expected to be boring and useless, is probably going to be interesting and useless. In contrast, my social anthropology seminar, which I expected to be engaging and relevant, is probably going to be horribly excruciating and relevant. These analyses are based on the quality of the seminar structure. My social prof is brand new (just got his PhD a year ago) and insists on using a ridiculously structured seminar ... it's all too formal for me to feel like contributing creative and interesting discussion. Ick. On the other hand, my archaeo prof is incredibly dynamic. I also have the advantage of having mostly insightful peers in my cohort, hooray! I'm getting paid to go to my third class. :D I'm grading for this undergrad class, so I get paid to go to the lecture. It's with my advisor, and instead of taking the midterm and final (which I will be grading) I'll be writing a paper about Catalan language policy. Yay!

In other words, things are looking good. None of the people in my cohort seem to be assholes, although the age/experience difference is making it a bit difficult to connect with them. Things on the "friends" front are looking a bit dreary right now. It makes me miss you all and get nostalgic and such. But I am dancing (woo!) once a week at a place nearby, so perhaps I'll meet some snazzy people there. Otherwise I'm just steeped in reading, which I assume will take up every free minute of my time from now until forever.

But it's also okay, because I have kitties! I don't think I've said that yet. They are both fabulous little creatures who bring me all kinds of joy and occasional frustration. And they're a great excuse to not do any work. (They demand all kinds of love and attention.) I love it.

Okay let's see from last post.... My throat doesn't feel too bad (still can't sing all that much though). WE HAVE A BUNNY! His name is Gatsby and he eats his poop. A LOT. The Hoot Hoots have begun recording. So far we have two songs pretty much done and they sound pretty good. Lately we've been monkeying around with better ways to mike the drums. Indeed I am quite busy this term, although I think this week is going to be a bit calmer. I now have 6 people interested in taking guitar lessons from me, so that's good. My brother Chris got a job at Cornucopia which is AWESOME. We use his discount for all it is worth. Despite the problems with my throat, I've had more choir practices than ever before with the Knox College Choir, plus I'm in Chamber Singers this year and I'm singing Bach's St. John Passion with Nova Singers. My life pretty much revolves around music in one way or the other, except when I'm doing German (which I'm taking for music related purposes so there you go) My hand was cut off in a horrible mining expedition on Saturday. It was quite a mess. But luckily I sprouted a new one with seven figures, which I promptly named after each of the Seven Dwarves from Snow White. And I am receiving Larry "The Log Man's" mail. The end.