I've been slaving over my thesis and other coursework for the past few weeks, finally getting somewhere but not fast enough. On Friday though, I handed in 35 pages of sheer effort and put papers and projects behind me for the weekend. A couple of my friends had organized a ski trip to Wentworth, and although it was almost 15 degrees out, some of us were determined to still make the trip.
If you're from the Maritimes, you'll probably remember this past weekend fondly - it was warm, sunny, and truly felt like spring. These are the hardest weekends to get any work done - thankfully, I wasn't even going to try.
I hopped on a bus with about 50 friends, acquaintances, and strangers - which is always a fun feeling. One great thing about university is the ability to truly make your own decisions. You know how much work you have to do, you know how much time you have left, and if you want to jeopardize any of that, you can. Before I came to Mt. A, a friend of mine who'd only missed two classes in three years gave me the surprising advice that "if you have to choose between something fun and work, do the fun thing. Your work will always get done." Well, the night before I'd chosen school first, missing probably the best show ever with Jon-Rae and the Constantines. Once my work was actually handed in, I regretted not going to the show. So I planned to make up for that on Friday.
The skiing part of my day was pretty funny - I've done cross-country since I could walk but my downhill experience is definitely lacking. More than it should be to attempt a descent on a day as warm as this one. I spent a lot of time face planting and snow plowing, and eventually made it to the bottom without breaking any bones or equipment. However, with the easy runs closed, I decided that once was enough and I would use this extra time to hop on the beer train a little early.
Fortunately for me, skiing wasn't the only point of this excursion. There was also a competition (which I would clearly be watching and not entering!) and a concert. The competition was really fun to watch, and a Mt. A alum and friend of mine won the skiing portion of it! And the concert, well... definitely in my top 10 of show experiences at Mt. A.
The band was Two Hours Traffic, one of my local-ish faves. The great thing was, there were a few people from Halifax, about 50 of us from Mt. A, and then some older people who were there for wing night more than anything. An invested audience of about 60, in any case. At first there were less than 10 of us up front, but by the end of the show, most of the Mt. A contingent was on its feet and singing along to songs they'd never heard before. THT gained quite a few fans on Friday night, responding kindly to our drunken shoutings of "Sackville!!" and "Two Hours Traffic!" in case they'd forgotten who they were. They also promised to come to Sackville soon, haha.
Around 1 am we clambered back onto the bus, and had a simply awful singalong all the way home. I have videos of most of this stuff, but when I watched the return trip stuff (which I taped because of its hilarity), it was even worse than I remembered. You do not want to hear 19- and 20-year olds singing Wonderwall and Backstreet's Back a capella.
For a while now I've been wanting to give you guys a glimpse of the university social life, but since I've been spending all my time with my books lately, it seemed like torture to write about anything fun.
Anyway, the great thing about university, and I imagine this applies anywhere, is that the opportunities are there. If you want to organize a bus trip to a ski hill, you can. If you want to organize a bus tour (aka, drink for 10 hours and then bar hop until 3am Quebec time and then sleep for 10 hours on the way home) to Quebec City, you can. If you want to book an auditorium and show The Wizard of OZ synced with Dark Side of the Moon, you can. These things happen every year, and it's up to you to either start the initiatives you want to see, or participate in the things you enjoy and find worthwhile. While you might feel like you're the only person in your high school who watches Veronica Mars or Cowboy Bebop, guaranteed when you get to university you'll find more people who love what you do.
I've taken the month off from bartending and a few of my other jobs, since I seriously needed some dedicated thesis time. Anyway, I'll be back to work soon and once that happens, I'll happily share the regular in-Sackville party scene with you all. It's spring time. And as the quote of the day in Bridge Street Cafe said this weekend - "Spring is nature's way of saying 'let's party!'"
