17 January 2008

100 things: 41-50, The College Years

This 365 days of blogging thing is rough. Every day I think, "Gosh, what could I have to say that is remotely interesting to people I have never met (and some friends who are cool enough to want to read)?" Then I start thinking about my day and usually come up with something. I've realized that I really need to keep it about me and not tell other people's stories, so what better way to focus on me than to list 10 more random facts about myself? [Sorry to you readers who lived this. :)]

41. I'm still good friends with my freshman-year roommate.

42. Most, but certainly not all, of my best college friends lived in my hall freshman year.

43. I spent one wonderful semester in Australia: I dove on the Great Barrier Reef; I went abseiling in the Blue Mountains; I saw the Outback.

43. I think for pretty much all of college I had kissed more non-Americans than Americans. Australia bumped those numbers up.

44. Not including this whole online dating thing, the only blind date I have ever been on was in college.

45. I started pronouncing acronyms in college and love to to this day. For example, we called Au Bon Pain "A.B.P." and I say, "Uhbuhpuh."

46. My college friends are the ones who started calling me out on "Jen Stories." I maintain that if you really want to know how a Jen Story is tangentially related to the current conversation or situation, I'm happy to tell you, but it will only make the story longer.

47. I did a senior honors thesis on spiderling behavior. That's right, baby spiders. Boy, those things were adorable!

48. I helped start my university's campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity and still regret how little I managed to be involved.

49. I was an escort in college...As in the kind that drives a van around to bring students between their off campus housing and campus...Not the other kind...

50. I got my first cell phone senior year in college and probably used it a total of 5 times. People still had and used land lines, as well as turned their cell phones off when they entered the library, in those days.

10 comments:

KHC said...

Re Item 44: I take credit for that calamity of a blind date. The take away message was that I never should try to set up my friends again.

Re Item 46: Sometimes, when the Captain tells Jen Stories, I tell him so.

Re Item 48: Eh. I don't volunteer that much any more, either.

Re Item 49: Hey, remember when we were Shuttle Bitch and Shuttle Babe?

Miss Bee said...

Ah, pronounced acronyms... I seem to remember having a particularly hard time figuring out how to say "giikbuh" (GCB). But I could be making that up. There were weird names for a lot of things. I recall "the Joe's" as a prime example. Anyone remember anything else?

Also, I can't imagine how we ever lived without cell phones. Except I guess we did leave random messages all the time about going to the Ratty on ICQ... I didn't get mine until I came back from China in 2002!

Jenski said...

KHC, it wasn't a bad date. It just wasn't spectacular. I'm glad I'm not the only one who tells them. Thank the Captain for me! Was I the Bitch or the Babe?

Molly, the giikbuh = a great place to split a pitcher. :) And you got an old ICQ message when you got back from China???? I'm betting none of us were at the Ratty anymore.

Miss Bee said...

Nooo... I mean that we lived without cell phones by messaging each other about going to the Ratty on ICQ! Didn't ICQ die out by 1999? But I can see how the prior post would be confusing. Or confused. ;o)

Carolyn said...

#41 is a LIE! A lie, I say!!!!!

;)

Darn those M-C closets!

Jenski said...

Molly, OOOooooo...You got your cell phone when you got back from China. I get it.

Carolyn, you stuck by me even when I failed you and pierced my nose. It's true. :p Can I call Mo-Champ "MmKuh" now?

Danielle said...

ahhh... good ol' BCP

Before cell phones, that is. buhkuhpuh doesn't sound very good.
maybe beeceep?

;-)

We were just joking at the lab the other day about people pronouncing chemical acronyms. I was complaining about MPEP. Which all of these people were calling Em-pep. Which sounded so entirely dorky to me. After all, you don't call cAMP - camp do you? You call it cyclic - A - M - P. You don't say SDS as Sidds do you? You say S-D-S.

which reminds me....

"Calling out an S.O.S.
Calling out an S.O.S."

(Police)

Oh, and I was known in my circle for Danie stories. They were also on some tangent, but I always remembered the source of the tangent and could bring the conversation back to it. My friends were always a bit amazed by that.

Miss Bee said...

danielle, your friends were much nicer than Jenski's friends. We always teased her mercilessly for her barely tangentially related stories. ;o)

Jenski said...

Danielle, you understand my type of story telling then! Now I'm trying to sing "Sending out an sauce" as I pronounce the "S.O.S."

Molly, "barely"? Really? You want to get into this on the internet? ;)

Carolyn said...

If you like acronyms...you'll enjoy what the new "Sydney Frank Hall for Life Sciences" sounds/spells out...