Study!

College. Where you are expected to simultaneously be rebellious, get good grades, hang out with people, take tons of tests, hang out at dance clubs, hang out in the library and also be meeting new people. And since I am at BYU, I could add that we are also supposed to be looking for our future spouses. It is just crazy. How am I supposed to do it all? Not to mention all of the school activities: football games, tailgate parties, church activities. I don't know how anyone graduates alive from this place. As I write this post at 12:45 in the morning. These expectations are going to kill me. I guess I will see how I do as I take my first big test on Tuesday. I will let you all know, but only, of course, if I get a good grade. If not, any mention of a test will be suspiciously absent from this blog.

Don't get me wrong, college is fun. It just seems like a never-ending stream of homework and fun events. How is one lone teenager supposed to do it all? I am just trying to stay afloat. My dad put a little guilt trip on me the other day when he told me that I was worrying my mother. I guess that's what I get, right? I am happy to announce to her that I have been studying my tail off. If I get a bad grade, it is because I don't know anything and I should quit college and become a plumber or something. And just to not be stereotypical, I am sure that plumbing takes skills, it just won't take any astronomy skills (the subject that I have a test in).

So, I thought that I would just give myself that little plug so my parents will know to STOP WORRYING! I read an interesting book on Saturday...at least part of it. I skipped the middle because I got a little bored. It was called 'Hunger Games'. It was an interesting book. It was about a society that takes one boy and one girl from each 'territory' every year and makes them fight to the death on national television. One might wonder why they do this. It is because the government wants the people to know who is in charge. One might think that the concept is kind of gruesome but it was nothing compared what we are reading in English. It is a short story called 'the Lottery'. This story is a lot shorter but somehow more shocking and disturbing, with all of its implications on human nature, society and such. I would recommend the book 'Hunger Games'. It is a fast read and is pretty entertaining. It is just hard to enjoy when I start analyzing the Hegemony and ideology of the government. My English class has taken all of the joy out of a good fantasy/scifi teen novel. How will I ever recover!

The Game

Yesterday was not the high point of my life, or of any other BYU fan's. As we all sat in the stands of the Lavell Edwards Stadium, jaws wide open, as Florida State thoroughly kicked our trash. It wasn't so much a battle but a slaughter. It was all I could do not to run onto the field and shake Max Hall by the shoulders. I don't think I have ever seen a larger crowd of people whose moods matched exactly the color they all had on. It is amazing how all of those dreams of one college can go down the drain in an amount of hours.

Although there was this university-wide depression, my friends and I still managed to find joy. In a movie called Nacho Libre. If you haven't ever seen it...you aren't missing out on much, believe me. Unless you find enjoyment in a movie that is full of this...



for a solid hour and a half. It's great stuff.

I am teaching a lesson today in relief society for the first time and, to say it lightly, I am scared out of my mind. I have been agonizing over every little sentence and am sure that I am going to freeze up as soon as I get up there in front of all of those people. Cross your fingers for me!

Hegemony

Sometimes I feel so out of my league at college. I am again at the bottom of the heap, especially intellectually. Some days I just can't balance out all of the chaos. I have realized that I can't stay up till two and then expect to be able to wake up at five thirty so that I can go to the temple before classes start at eight. It just can't be done. It does make me laugh, though, that only a byu student would write such a sentence. It is interesting to go to a religious college.

The topic of a religious college brings me to another point. I am going to be getting all intellectual for a little bit. In my English class, we are talking about Hegemony (which I had to look up in the dictionary, BTW). My teacher showed us an equation of Hegemony. So, breaking down that sentence, it means that Hegemony is not just this ideology and theory but something that actually is applied in our life.

Hegemony= Belief + Action + Reciprocal Confirmation

This probably makes no sense to anybody. It didn't really to me the first time I saw it. It means that the things that are common sense and basic beliefs for us happen because of that equation. It basically means that if you truly believe something, you act in a way that makes it seem to be true, which is the reciprocal confirmation part. My teacher related it to religion. He said that because we believe in the religion and we act in a way that supports the belief, then we will always get the confirmation that it is true.

This gave all of us in the classroom pause. I mean, is it a good or bad thing that you can sum up the whole belief system of our church in one equation in a college English Literature class?

We also learned about why certain organizations are so effective. I will relate it to the LDS church because that is what I have the most knowledge of. There are three kinds of Hegemony, Dominant, emergent and residual, and each of these are needed for an belief organization to succeed. The LDS church is so effective because it uses all three of the different kinds of Hegemony. We believe in the truth and power of ancient texts, which is the residual part. We believe in receiving current words from current prophets, which is the current hegemony. Lastly, we believe that god still has more that he will reveal later, which is emergent hegemony.

These things make me really think about religion and belief a lot. I mean, it seems like the LDS church just took all of these reasons for belief and incorporated them into church doctrine. Which, as I have said before, I don't know if that is a good thing or not.

My teacher did point out that you do get a confirmation after you believe and act on the gospel of the church which is the Reciprocal Confirmation. But also, something that is true would have to give the same kind of confirmation. You just have to know when to separate the societal confirmation from the truth. Because people one hundred years ago received reciprocal confirmation that women and blacks were inferior, which is obviously not true.

Just some food for thought.

Sorry that that was kind of a dreary post. It is just something very interesting that I learned today. I just had to write those thoughts down.

On a lighter subject, I bought the cutest poster at the poster sale today at the BYU bookstore! It had five girls and said 'girls just want to have fun'. It made me think of my sisters and I. This is what it was. Observe my technical genius as I am able to load this graphic on to my blog!

Procrastination

I have discovered that there is at least one thing that I have become an expert at over the past few weeks at college. It is not, as my mother would hope, studying or time management, but Procrastination. The dreaded P-word. I have become an expert at making a 'quick check' on facebook last several hours and I have learned how to make just a 'quick snack' last until bedtime.

Speaking of bedtime...the average hours that I sleep has gone steadily downward. I used to be so good at getting at least seven hours. But not anymore. I am lucky if I get five in between my homework and necessary procrastination. I can see trouble a mile away because of all of the TV shows that are starting up. Add in at least a dozen television shows to watch to everything else that I am doing and you get one sleep-deprived, sugar-high college student.

In one of my times of procrastination, I was watching random movie trailers on Yahoo and I saw the new New Moon trailer. You have to see it to understand what I am talking about but it is amazing how much I can hate something yet still love it at the same time. How this happens, I do not know. I was wondering this as I stared at the computer screen, my forgotten Astronomy homework splayed out in front of me. The simple joy of seeing Taylor Lautner shirtless will bring me joy for quite a long time. You gotta love it...

Krispies!

Today I realized something very important about myself. I am a stress eater. Somehow, between two of my classes, I managed to find the biggest rice krispie treat ever and proceeded to eat it all. The cause is currently unknown. I decided to blame it on stress because I hate to think of myself as someone with little self-control. Gotta love self-denial, right?

I had the funniest experience that just made me realize how stereotypical life can be sometimes. I was sitting in the Science building, minding my own buisness and studying. All of a sudden, I realize that I am the only girl in the whole room, which had at least twenty people studying in it. I just had to chuckle, especially because if I had had my choice, I would not have been in the science building either. Interesting.

My First Post

I am told that everyone who is anyone has a blog now, so how could I resist? This is also a very handy way of procrastinating homework that I have no desire to do. Facebook only works for so long.
So, I have been slaving over reading about three pages of this criticism of Karl Marx. It should not take me more than an hour to read it, yet I have been sitting at this computer for at least three hours. And this is not the first day that I have tried to read it. So here is an example of a sentence from the text, just so you can see the monstrosity that is my English homework:

" In the later twentieth century there is the notion of 'homologous structure', where there may be no direct or easily apparent similarity and certainly nothing like reflection or reproduction, between the superstructural process and the reality of the base, but in which there is an essential homology or correspondence of structures, which can be discovered by analysis."

Now if you only had to read that once, you are a genious. I certainly spent a good twenty minutes on that particular paragraph.

So I made Peanut Butter cups today. My blog is called Cookie Dough Carols for a good reason, as you will soon find out. I probably have eaten more sugar and ice cream in these two weeks that I have been at college than in the whole past year. I can just feel the freshman 15 looming over my head. Peanut butter cups were some of the desserts that I have made in the last two weeks that were all gone by the end of the night. There is no saving things for later...at least, not in my apartment. I love the recipe, though, for my peanut butter cups. Only three simple ingredients are needed: Peanut butter, chocolate chips and powdered sugar. How can you go wrong, right? Cooking is always a little interesting in college because you never have quite what you need. It leaves room for a lot of improvisation, which is fun, but it sometimes turns out a little wierd. That's ok, though. Just adds character, right?

Well, this has been a lovely first post. Many more to come, hopefully!