Hello again future Miners! I hope this last stretch of time in high school is going well for you! I know I’ve met a few of you touring the campus. Personally for me, this time has been tremendously busy with project due dates and final exams coming up, club business, as well as being taken down for about three days because of the flu. It isn’t too bad considering there’s the whooping cough going around here. There’s also registration, which is going pretty poorly for me.

I am looking right now at a research paper due (yes, you still have to write papers here) for my Nature and Human Values course over the Keystone XL pipeline. It isn’t too bad of an assignment, but like EPICS courses it tends to eat time away at the worst possible time (midterms and finals). Still, you have to take it, but personally, I wish I hadn’t and instead took them both over the summer (something I, unfortunately cannot do this year). Still, I feel very optimistic about my finals and am glad I have an extremely lax job as a writer for The Oredigger, the school’s newspaper.

It’s a very relaxed job since I can take assignments (or not) at my own will as well as get a fairly good wage for doing so. I highly recommend this to anyone with a stressful schedule but still wanting some disposable income. It also provides me ways to unwind I may not think of otherwise, like seeing the school play, going to the dance team’s recital, or attending a lecture for my major. 

A Post-Show Picture of the Mines Dance Team

I’ve also gotten my hands even fuller by helping start a club chapter on campus. I’ve recently started a chapter of the Student Secular Alliance with some other nontheistic friends. There wasn’t any group representing us on campus, nor a way of forming community for us so we felt it was important to do so and recently had our first meeting. It went very well and is very satisfying to be able to give back to the Mines community by providing a safe place for non-religious students to talk about things important to us, and we have plans to eventually have speakers.

I wish I had more to say, but most of my recent time has been devoted to study, as it’s needed here.  Anyway, I have to go study for several hours, and taking breaks by studying for other things and taking breaks by working on assignments. Good luck and enjoy high school while you are still able to complain about eight hours a week.

A Bad Omen From A Study Snack