10 more letters about March Madness

The first time I did this was...wow, really? Into the tournament. I really didn't expect that, I figured that I wrote it before the tournament started. Right after the Final Four was set. Now, I'm writing midway through the second game of the Elite 8 - Wichita State just went up 25-15 on Ohio State. Now that that's out of the way...

1. Dear bracket,
R.I.P. You and I will never get along, and we can't ever do business together. I'll still fill you out, and play in pools, but I officially give up hope that you and I will arise to victory.

2. Dear Davidson and Colorado,
I only had each of you winning one game, but damn, I love picking the upset that no one else does. Especially you, Davidson. You broke my heart, losing with one second like that.

3. Dear Wisconsin and New Mexico,
You too each lost in the first round, but I had you both in the Sweet 16. Elite 8 for Wisconsin. And it's not that you lost, it's how hopeless it felt to watch you lose. Good for Ole Miss and Harvard, but you're better than that.

4. Dear everyone who thought Shaka Smart and Brad Stevens were leaving,
Seriously? Why would they leave VCU and Butler? They've established programs that have seen national success, and they're going to keep building on it. Back off.

5. Dear selection committee,
What happened to Michigan, Syracuse, Oregon that you underseeded them so greatly? What about Gonzaga's #1 seed? Sure, they lost twice...they also played in the WAC.

6. Dear Jim Boeheim,
Congrats on the Final Four. Furthermore, congratulations on the fact that you're known for the same defense every basketball player learns in 5th grade. Have fun in the ACC next year!

7. Dear Clark Kellogg,
I don't know why, but I've just become really annoyed with you. I almost discredit anything you say, because it's usually wrong, anyway. Where is Dickie V?

8. Dear Trey Burke,
Please stay two more years at Michigan. Please. I can promise you that I won't care about you if you're in the NBA. Please stay.

9. Dear Big Ten,
Thank you for giving us a DVD box set's worth of fantastic games in the regular season. I had Ohio State, Indiana, and Michigan State in the Final Four, but the one team with the best chance is Michigan. Go Big Ten.

10. Dear Duke,
You can do it. Doug McDermott scared me, but I believed in you. Michigan State scared me, but I believed in you. Louisville scares me, like a lot, but I still believe in you.

Prove them wrong

One concept that I've internalized (to some extent) with the Democratic Education program is that we should be succeeding as students in spite of the system, and not because of it. This was particularly interesting when the Provost said that it was precisely because of the opportunities that Stonehill has that makes it an attractive place for college-age students. I'm not taking anything away from what Stonehill has. I love this place, but this isn't the time for that discussion. I want to talk about this whole in-spite-of idea further, and extrapolate it to our everyday actions, thoughts, and self-worth in life in and of itself.

You can go anywhere and find quotes that are sources of inspiration for many. The Bible, Google, StumbleUpon. Take your pick. Landscapes of lakes, oceans, clouds, silhouettes are the background to these quotes. We're supposed to see all this, take it all in, and live a better life as a result. But this result is because of these quotes. Take this one from Buddha:

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."

Alright, cool, Buddha. Makes sense, and this makes me want to share happiness with others. But to think that this world is full of sunshine and puppies is only one side of it. Plenty of horrible stuff is happening, and to varying degrees. I think that it's a hell of a lot more motivational to see something that falls into the in-spite-of category. Something to the effect of "I'm going to do something in the face of this."

Now try the Bible. Google. StumbleUpon. I implore you to find quotes about the universe, about the world in which we live, that motivate you to do something in spite of what the quote says. Not because of. I've tried and have come up with literally nothing. It's often said that the most dangerous person is someone with nothing to lose. What it all comes down to, I suppose, is proving the universe wrong. Proving others wrong is more satisfying than proving others right. We have more motivation to do so, and we make it personal when someone says we can't do something. So, here you go, reader. I challenge you to do this. You can't find that motivation to do something in spite of what is in place. Merely because of, and that's not good enough. Prove me wrong.

3 up, 3 down: iPhone apps

One of my favorite parts of ESPN the Magazine is when they talk about teams, players, or events that are on the rise and have been going downhill. I wanna take this cool idea and do it with iPhone apps. Mainly so I can tell everyone about some cool stuff, but also so I can do this idea.

3 Up
1. 94 Seconds
This awesome game gives you a category and a letter, and you have to name something that corresponds. Get as many as you can in 94 seconds. It's simple and very fun. Go download it and play it all the time.

2. Bloons

Bringing back a classic from high school, you shoot darts at balloons and pop them. Again, simple enough, and endlessly fun.

3. March Madness Live
Maybe this is a cop out, since this wouldn't make the list any other time of year, but the fact that it's March means that March Madness apps are the greatest thing ever. Especially when they stream every game live. Absolutely wonderful.

3 Down
1. Temple Run 2
Temple Run 2 came up quickly, and was great because of the achievements, but after a while, the achievements became too much. I mean things that you need to play forever to obtain. And the game isn't as great to play for its own sake, so it's the first on the bad side of this post.

2. Ruzzle
It's too bad this game is on this list, because it did start out as a huge success, especially in our suite. This is more of a general trend as opposed to my own opinion, but it's here nonetheless.

3. Snapchat
I'm just not a fan of Snapchat. Never really have been. It's cool once in a while, but it just doesn't do it for me. Less of a concrete explanation, but that doesn't invalidate it.

Retr3at

Well, it's real now. Third and final year as a Peer Mentor is fully underway, post-retreat that we had this weekend. Which was a ton of fun. What I remember about one activity, where we write down four strengths and one weakness, is that I wanted to have these readily available for the entire team to see. Everyone's strengths and weaknesses. Because while we talked about it as a group, and the inevitable balancing out that would happen, I think it would be a source of motivation (think "bulletin board material") for what we do. I know that I'm at least going to try to keep those things in mind. Especially my weakness, which was a fear of getting lazy or complacent. I can remember from my first year an activity we did a few days before Orientation itself, where everyone wrote down a fear and taped it to their back. We silently walked around, looking at everyone's fears. If there's anything I've learned in my first two years as a PM, it's to....actually, I think I'm getting a little ahead of myself. This post should just be about the retreat.

Which is hard, because I feel as though the retreat has so much to do with us as a team, even if we don't talk about it in great detail outside of the retreat. We do our bonding, we have our fun, we learn what it is to be Peer Mentors, and then we're out of there. It's a crazy fun time, it was the best five-hour night of sleep I've had in my life, and it made me ready to do this one more time.

So me as a third year...I dunno, I already feel like all of us (as PMs) are on the same level. I'm as much of a PM as anyone else on the team is, even if I've done it a couple times already. There are things that I simply cannot do as a third year, like be able to tell mentees what my First-Year Seminar was like (considering I never had one). And there are things that I can bring (as a third year) that first year PMs can't, like actually having gone through this before. The mix of everything it means to be in the role we have is what creates the team, and every person is necessary to make it what it is. By the time this is all over, we as a team would be very different had one person not been there. Think of Duke and Ryan Kelly. We are all Ryan Kelly, in a way. This team is different from any other Peer Mentor Team ever, and that's the best thing about this. It doesn't matter how many times you do it. New year, new team, and this is going to kick so much ass.

Piece of 3.14159265358979323...

To celebrate Pi Day, I decided to blog. Pretty big celebration, right?

(Just kidding, I would have blogged today anyway. I'm just using a cop out for the title.)

I dunno why it's taken me this long to realize it, but this semester is so much easier than the previous. I mean I kinda knew that it would be a little easier, given the abundance of work and other things happening in the fall, but I didn't think I'd have this much free time. It feels really good to be able to just sit around and do nothing, or to leisurely blog, instead of feeling the urge to do so. It feels good to have everything where it should be, to have schoolwork not be a huge issue, and to know that warmer weather and baseball are arriving soon is always a plus. Not to mention March Madness...maybe I'll do another 10 letters post! That was a lot of fun the first time. What's also fun is the fact that this is kind of a diary post, which I never seem to do anymore. I'm telling you, this free time thing...I could get used to this.

Six Puns None the Richer

I came up with this ingenious pun a few days ago, and decided that my next blog post would be a few links to some pretty funny puns. While I'm glad that this post isn't the least dense post ever, it's certainly not on the same level as some other posts. Regardless, here are four websites that have some pretty comical puns.

Pun of the Day
Ten Best Puns
Ten Best Puns of the Millennium
100 Puns

That time of the month

A while back, I blogged about complexes I felt that I had. One of which being that I always felt that I needed to blog after a while, but never really had any good ideas. Another blog-related complex that I think I have is the end-of-the-month complex. For whatever reason, I feel as though I just end up blogging really close to the end of each month, feel satisfied for a while, and don't end up blogging in the next month for like five or six days. Case in point being this exact post, my first of March. After I blogged twice on the last day of February. What's really cool is the post about complexes was on the last day in October. Seriously cool stuff.

So what I've done, mainly for myself, is to go back in the last 13 full months of blogging, and to see when I am likely to post. Since (and including) February 2012, I've had 14 posts in the last 10% of the month (three days). Of those 13 months, six times I've blogged on the last day of the month. On average, I've waited 3.7 days to blog after such a post. On average I spend 3.3 days in between blog posts. Which isn't a significant difference, but still interesting enough to me. So I guess, statistically, there is no real time of the month when I'm blogging more than others, but it is pretty cool to actually be able to look at it this way.