September Thoughts (written 9/25 morning)

My Microsoft Silverlight program isn’t working; maybe because I don’t have internet here on the road. We are on our way to Galesburg, to play Knox. I’m exhausted; I went to sleep early, but some girls on my floor decided to have a party that night. I fell asleep before it started, but woke up to the sound of them shrieking in the hallway around 12:30am. They didn’t quiet down, so I got up after not being able to go back to sleep for 45min, and asked them to quiet down. They did, and soon I was back asleep. But more about what the past few months have been like.

On Family:
So many things have been happening with my family, I would have never imagined. Being away from Karen for this long has really made me realize how much I miss her and how I need to keep an eye on her. And I am so sick of hearing about extremely important things that have happened with her, 3 days late. I mean, when she was in the god damn hospital, I didn’t find out until a few days later. What the hell?! I’ve been really worried about her, and it’s been taking a toll on me in ways it never has before. When crazy stuff started happening, it took a toll on me in soccer practice. The smallest things like scolding in practice made me break down several times because I was scared for her. Anyway, enough about this, its putting me in a sad state which is not a good idea before a game.

On My School:
It’s great. I love all of my teachers. Professor Marzluff who teaches Inorganic Chemistry is really excited about chemistry and is always in a good mood. She is always willing to help and loves talking to students. Professor Mileti is really funny. He is also really excited about what he teaches, and uses epic phrases in calculus that make it interesting. “Everyone knows that when the denominator is 0, the universe explodes.” And to him, variables and numbers don’t cancel each other out—they kill each other off. It’s great. My tutorial “Animals and Imagination”, is taught by Professor Reynolds. It’s an interesting tutorial; we’ve read some pretty cool things, and are currently reading Alex and Me, a really cool book about an African Grey Parrot. We are also watching a movie about birds (Awesome!) and I saw glimpses of Birds of Paradise in it. I had Intermediate Spanish, but had to drop after a few weeks. I was getting the homework done for the most part at like 2 in the morning the day it was due, but was doing a really poor job. I didn’t have time to study for the tests the way I should have either; being in that class was just a major fail. So I dropped it to take it next semester instead when I would have more time because soccer would be over. It was just too much having 3, 200-level classes and tutorial, doing soccer and Phonathon, and was causing me to not do well in my other classes.

On Work:
Phonathon is going pretty well. On my first call, I got $200! It was awesome. I got great feedback from the managers as well, and my credit card conversion rate is around 70 percent. And just this week, I got a guy who hated Grinnell and only stayed for 4 semesters to donate $50. It was a successful day. He knew CJ because he was on the football team, so we chatted about him for a while and I guess that helped him remember things that he actually liked and was thankful for.

On Friends:
I think my closest friend here is probably my roommate. We are so much alike, and seem to really trust each other with a lot of things. I’ve told her about pretty much all of the family things have come up, and she’s trusted me with a lot of information about her family and sister, more specifically. We like really similar music (Colbie Callait, Mika, Natasha Bedingfield, MUSICALS, Mika, etc) and both hate coffee, for example. I have also been entrusting Jordan with my family information, as she understands me from a soccer viewpoint and how things affect my state of mind and competitiveness. I’m not sure if that sentence really made sense, but I am so not going back to figure it out.

On Soccer:
This whole soccer journey has been so incredibly hard. Preseason was successful, but difficult. We had two a days for while, morning practice around 6:30 am, and night practice at 4:30 pm. The fitness tests didn’t go the way I had hoped for the most part, but my results weren’t as horrible as they would have been had I not been training with CJ. Everyday though, I am amazed at how good athletes have it, here. I have an actually field WITH GRASS to play on, full training laundry service, and equipment/gear galore. I’ve never had to so much free stuff thrown at me and on top of that, I throw it back after I’m done and they wash it for me?! Seriously. It’s so cool. But being here has made me realize how much I need to improve on my technical abilities. When defenders here get the ball in the back, they don’t just clear it and hope it goes to one of our players. We actually play the ball and pass IN THE BACK. That was like, forbidden in high school soccer. You were never supposed to kick it through the middle or pass in the back at all. Its cray-cray (favorite phrase). And now to the nagging part about this whole experience; not playing really, really sucks. Especially the moment you realize that you are the single person on the entire team that hasn’t gotten any playing. What does that say about your abilities? It has unfortunately, really made me feel disconnected from the team. It feels like no one cares and I feel really alone because no one else is in this position and few few have been in the past. The team tries to tell me I’ll be in soon and that it sucks, but they have no idea how much it sucks. Because they are all playing. I’m trying to remain positive here, but it is really difficult when you feel like you aren’t getting a chance to be great. I mean, I’ll hang in there, but I hope I play soon. And I feel like so many people like my teammates from Jones are looking up to me because I’m a college player, but that I’m letting them down. Nance was talking about coming to the Carroll game, and I feel like maybe I should tell her to not even bother coming because I probably won’t play. And then there is the matter of Family Weekend next weekend. My family is coming up and really want to see me play, and I don’t want to let them down by them having to watch me sit on the bench the entire time. Until I finally play though, I just have to be hopeful and work my hardest to prove to Coach that I deserve to be on the field, just as much as everyone else. I’m hoping to get the chance to prove that today. Yesterday at practice, Coach gave us journals to write in. I wrote in it last night, and I think I need to re read it now to get me mentally ready for this game again:

Tomorrow, If I play (and I must/WILL be ready to if I do), I will be aggressive. No one will be able to turn on me, beat me, or nudge me off the ball. I will be solid; I will be speedy, and I deny the other team’s opportunities.
I can be a leader in aggression and drive on defense, as well as a leader in staying positive from the bench.
My word: NOTHING. Nothing will get by me without an all-out fight.