As most college students would tell you, it is usually a bit weird to go home for Christmas break because it is so long! If you don’t take a J-term, you might not see your buddies for 6 weeks, and that can be hard. It can also be hard to be back with your parents and siblings again, to have rules, to have to meet up for dinner and all of that. Last year it was pretty hard for me but this year is much better.

I arrived back on Monday night, December 19, and spent most of the day Tuesday finishing up my International Security paper. It was due on Wednesday and on Wednesday night, my sister Lauren and I and some of our friends saw Sherlock Holmes 2 in theaters. I hardly ever see movies in theaters anymore, mostly because I am a poor college kid without a car, so it was pretty epic. The movie was great, although I still like the first one better; the second one was a lot more complicated. However, I rediscovered the greatness of movie theater popcorn, especially if you get a big container and let it sit overnight because then all the butter soaks in. Delicious, even though my arteries will not thank me later.

Thursday and Friday I hung out with some high school friends and slept in a lot, then Saturday was Christmas Eve already! My older sister, Emily, her husband, Matt, and their two kids, Jack and Avery, came over and we had brunch and then opened presents. I got some awesome Saint Therese books, some new socks, some fancy gloves that you can wear while using touch-screen things, and a world map. Exciting stuff, right? On Christmas morning we opened our Santa presents and I got a sweet orange hiking backpack for next fall when I am hopefully going to Rome for the whole semester! It just made me even more excited to go! Here’s a picture of it! Another win is that this backpack is usually over $200 but we got it on Amazon for much less!

Giant and orange! Doesn't get much better than that!

We went to mass on Christmas Eve at 9 P.M. and it was so joyful! Christmas Day we went to Ames, to my grandparents house, and had Christmas with all of our awesome cousins. I was reminded how blessed I am to have such a great family! We played cards a lot and spent the night at our cousin’s house, then the next day we went to the mall and Target and then came back and played cards more! Our family has always played cards, and our new favorite game (for the kids at least) is called Peanuts. I have also heard it called Nertz, Nutsi and Crunch, but it’s pretty much the same. It’s a fast paced game where you have a Nertz pile that you want to get rid of, and you do this by playing your cards in the middle, starting with Aces and going up to Kings, and you play solitare on your discard pile at the same time. Kind of hard to explain but it’s really fun! My brother Michael is the best and my sister Lauren is the worst. The last time we played, Lauren was still in the negatives while Michael had over 100 points and I had 50 or so.

Today is Tuesday and tomorrow I am going to Des Moines, Iowa to visit some fellow Tommies, then Thursday I head back to Minnesota for a few days because my friend Sarah is getting married on Friday! She is 23, not my age, and she works for Saint Paul’s Outreach. She is awesome and I can’t wait for her wedding!

Take care everybody, and Merry Christmas! Fun fact: the 12 days of Christmas actually start on Christmas Day, so it’s still Christmas for 10 more days!

Whew! This post is coming a good week after classes ended, but the end of my third semester of college was an exciting one. This round of finals was the most intense yet, as I had one test right before finals, three actual finals and that 25-paged paper due on the last day of finals!

My three finals were in Geology, Philosophy and World Politics, so I got to use pretty much every corner of my brain studying for those exams. Geology has been a very awesome class, mostly because our professor, Dr. Jen McGuire, was so excellent. She made plate tectonics and glacier movements seem interesting and was always willing to go over exams with us. I learned that I am much better at essay tests than multiple choice tests, and since the Geology class was a lecture with 100 students, we had all Scantron, multiple-choice tests. I didn’t do so well at first but with the help of my friend Jenny and Dr. McGuire, I ended up doing well in that class. One of the many great things about St. Thomas is the student to faculty ratio, which is 15:1. Even though it was one of the biggest classes sizes offered at St. Thomas, Dr. McGuire had office hours and would always stay after class to answer questions. We have labs with most of our sciences at St. Thomas, and the labs are capped at 16 students, so you can always ask your lab professor questions, too. My lab instructor was Erik Smith and he was also fantastic! His laid back attitude and impressive knowledge of aquifers made my first and last lab pretty great, super fun and always interesting. My friend Leann is an Environmental Science major with an emphasis in Geology so now I kind of know what she’s talking about half the time!

Philosophy! I had an Honors section of Philosophy 115, Philosophy of the Human Person with Dr. Michael Rota. This class was, hands down, my favorite class I’ve taken at St. Thomas so far. If you’re an incoming student, I can’t recommend Dr. Rota enough. I’ve heard it said that St. Thomas is one of the few true liberal arts schools remaining because it requires philosophy and theology, and now I’m even more proud to be a Tommie. I must admit, I had my doubts about philosophy. I thought it was just a bunch of people sitting around all day, wondering about things. And it kind of is. But it actually makes sense! And they write their thoughts down from time to time, and then discuss them and come up with arguments and all that good stuff. After taking this class, I am so much more equipped as a student and my foundation for learning has been strengthened. A final great thing about philosophy at St. Thomas is that it is taught from a Christian perspective, that is, it argues for the existence of God instead of against it. A friend of mine took a philosophy class at a community college and couldn’t stand it because her professor argued against the existence of God the whole time. We learned about arguments for the existence of God, such as Pascal’s Wager, that says if we have everything to gain and relatively little to lose by committing our lives to God, then we should, and that we do have everything to gain and relatively little to lose by committing our lives to God, and so we should. There’s a chart about the pros and cons of committing one’s life to God. Our chart we made in class is more in depth but, to give you an idea, here’s a simplified version of the chart, compliments of good old Google.

Pascal's Wager, very simplified. Basically if you wager that God exists, you have the best outcome.

My other two classes, International Security and World Politics, were pretty similar except that International Security, a 300 level course, was much more in-depth than World Politics, an intro 200 level course. These courses were back to back on MWF: International Security from 12:15-1:20 and World Politics from 1:35-2:40, and were taught by the same instructor: Dr. Renee Buhr. She is also an awesome professor and she used to work at the CIA, so she’s pretty legit if you ask me! The 25-paged paper was for International Security and I ended up having to finish it at home because my ride left on Monday and the paper was due via email on Wednesday. I went to a college library near our house one afternoon and finished it off. I don’t know how I did yet but I’m just pretty happy to have one research paper done, as there will be lots more in the future. I actually like them, though, and I learned so much!

That’s all for now! I hope everyone is having a great break and a Merry Christmas.