My pledge brothers and I have spent nearly every night of the last two weeks outside in our courtyard practicing for this odd competition Wabash has called Chapel Sing.  It’s a simple idea, really: most of the freshmen staying in fraternities, and even some Independents, line up outside the chapel and repeat, for 45 minutes, our school fight song, Old Wabash.  If a person happens to mess something up in the presence of a Sphinx Club member, he has to go inside the chapel and sing the song flawlessly.  Should he fail to do so, he gets a red “w” painted on his chest.  The fraternity with the highest percentage of clean shirts wins the competition.  Easy, right? 

Actually, it really wasn’t.  While we were singing, the Sphinx Club members walked around and tried to mess us up.  They yelled at us, read to us, sang the song at a pace different from ours, blew smoke in our faces, banged on cooking pots, and did whatever they could to break our concentration.  The worst part, in my opinion, was when they painted on our chest with white paint.  One of the guys stood in front of me, telling me he was going to wait until I screwed up.  After about a minute he pulled out a can of paint and started spraying.  That really threw me off—I thought I had failed.  I was relieved when I looked down about ten minutes later and realized it wasn’t red paint he had used. 

Unfortunately, Kappa Sigma didn’t make it into the final part of the competition.  Somehow five other fraternities made it through the 45 minutes without getting a single painted shirt.  Still, we only got one, and it sounds like the one we got was for a silly reason.  Oh, well.  I still think we did an amazing job with the whole thing.  Win or lose, I still had a good time.  It was amusing. 

Posted by Michael Richmond at 01:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So I'm sitting here at a computer in the library trying to come up with something interesting to write about, but nothing is coming to mind.  Why is this?  If you could answer that question, maybe send me an e-mail with a solution to my problem, I'd be really grateful.   

I suppose I could write about Homecoming week, but I don't really find it to be all that fascinating.  That's a horrible thing for me to say, and I feel really bad about it—especially since my pledge-brothers are working so hard on the float and everything—but it’s honest, and I’d really hate to lie to you. 

My pledge-brothers are working diligently, though.  Some of them spent the better part of last night outside, building and doing the whole paper-mache thing.  I think a couple of them only got a few hours sleep.  As far as I can tell, the float is coming along nicely, and I think it will be magnificent when completed. 

I guess one cool thing I can write about is last night’s chapel sing practice.  We had probably been singing for about a half an hour when one of the other fraternities, TKE, walked over and started screaming Old Wabash at us.  We responded by walking right up in front of them and screaming the song back.  It was a bit fatiguing, but it got us all excited and it was actually kind of fun.  When we were done with our little singing duel we decided to sing the song through once together.  It was moving.

No pictures this time, either.  Sorry.

Posted by Michael Richmond at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I know I haven’t been the best of bloggers lately, but I’m going to make an honest effort from here on out to do my job.  There have been a lot of interesting things I could have written about in the last couple of weeks that I just decided to put off, and now it’s too late to go back and write an in-depth entry about them.  I could have written about Eva Kor’s moving lecture about her experience in a concentration camp and her subsequent forgiving of the Nazis and Dr. Mengele, or any of the engaging chapel talks I’ve sat in on, or the IM football game my fraternity played the other day.  I could have written about…well, I guess I’ve forgotten about some of the things that have been going on, but don’t worry, I’m going to make sure I write a little something for every little something I do. 

 I’m also going to make sure I get better grades.  I had a sobering experience the other day when my Calculus quiz was returned to me with a very low score scrawled next to my name.  Of course I wasn’t surprised I failed—I’ll admit I didn’t study for it at all—but there’s a difference between expecting a failing grade and actually seeing one written down.  But seriously, I’m going to make a good student out of myself.  I’m going to drop my high school habits, study hard, and work earnestly on all of my assignments.  Believe me, I hate to get bad grades, I’m just horrible at taking the necessary steps in preventing those grades.  I’ll do something about it, though. 

By the way, I’m going to start posting more pictures, too.  I probably already said that before, but I mean it this time…I think.  Oh, well.

Posted by Michael Richmond at 05:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A football game, a pledge assignment, a big party: these are some of the things I experienced for the first time here at Wabash. Well, I guess I have been to a Wabash football game in the past, but I didn’t get to run up and down the track screaming, chanting, and singing Old Wabash; that was definitely unlike anything I’ve ever done before.  I’ve been to a few parties as well, but they were nothing compared to the one I attended Saturday night.  Lambda Chi’s Watermelon Bust—or was it Watermelon Smash?—was superior to any party I’ve ever encountered in my life: The music was loud, the people multitudinous, the atmosphere stimulating.  I’m not much of a partier, however, spending the better part of my twenty minutes there meandering aimlessly through the jumbled mass of bodies, contemplating more than interacting—whatever. 

Now on to the pledge assignment, something that’s details I’m not really supposed to be revealing to you.  Oh, well, what the hell.  I’m going to break some rules and indulge you in the sacred ritual that is pledgeship and initiation.  Don’t tell on me, please. 

Ok, we were ordered to report to the basement of our house at 7:00 p.m.  There, we were briefed on our mission.  The goal of the operation was to unveil and cease suspected conspiratorial actions of Wabash College by capturing, interrogating, and eliminating those responsible for our suspicion.  Who were we after?  The squirrels.  If you’ve been on the campus you know what I’m talking about.  Those things are all over the place, and they’re uncharacteristically confident.  It’s kind of creepy.  Anyway, my pledge brothers and I went out and bagged a few, taking them back to the house for questioning.  Turns out we mistook amiability for guile.  Our pursuit of truth and justice ran us into a dead end, just like this entry ran me into one.  Sorry.

Posted by Michael Richmond at 12:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Time is all messed up here.  Even though it feels like everything's moving in slow motion, time seems to pass rather quickly.  I know that doesn’t make any sense, but I’m tired, and that’s the only way I can think of to put it.  It’s kind of like traveling via airplane.  When I’m on a plane it seems like the thing’s crawling through the sky at the slowest possible speed, but before I know it I’ve reached my destination.  It’s like my whole perception of time is off.  Mentally, everything is moving along as it should be, but physically it feels like I’m submerged in a vat of molasses.  It makes it really difficult to get homework done.

Maybe it’s because I’m so tired all of the time.  Last week we were assigned our “late night” jobs.  Basically, we’re responsible for cleaning the kitchen every night.  It customarily starts after study tables--at about eleven in the evening--and lasts for approximately an hour.  After that I usually go on a run, and then I have to deal with whatever homework I have left.  And since we don’t have to be in the cold dorm until one o’clock, we rarely are.  We find things to do: go to the gas station, play pool, eat, etc.  Sure, there’s time during the day to do these things, but it’s hot outside and I don’t want to do anything but lie around.  So…I guess what I’m trying to say is this: I’m lazy and bad at managing my time.  That wasn’t supposed to be the point of this entry, but I’ve come too far to change things now—I’m too tired to.

Posted by Michael Richmond at 04:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

There's nothing better than a high school cross country meet, especially when you get a day as beautiful as yesterday. Even though I was only a spectator this time, I still enjoyed being there more than anything else I've done in the last couple of months. I don't know what it is about them. Perhaps it's the nice weather. Maybe it's the energy, enthusiasm, determination, and love of the sport displayed by the race's participants; or it could be the satisfaction seen on the faces of runners who achieve their goals, or the support by teammates, coaches, and friends given to those who didn't do as well as they had hoped. Whatever it is, I think high school cross meets are awesome, and I'm absolutely heartbroken about not being able to go to as many as I got to when I was back in high school. I really miss being on the team.

The meet was in Terre Haute--about an hour and fifteen minutes away--at nine yesterday. I didn't get much sleep the night before, but I wasn't about to sleep in and miss my friends' biggest race of the season thus far. I went to the meet with a friend of mine who goes to Wabash, went to Franklin Community, and also used to run cross country. We were excited to see the team in action, but also eager to simply hang out with them and see what they'd been up to. It was a good time.

Unfortunately, there was a Wabash cross meet at home at around the same time yesterday. Not only was a pledge brother running, but so was another friend from high school who's running for DePauw's women's team this year. I wish I could have been in two places at once, but I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet--I'll work on it, though.

All this talk about running makes me ashamed of myself: I haven't been exercising as much as I should be. I really need to start running consistently again, because if I don't I'll probably end up falling into a lazy routine, eventually leading to excessive weight gain and, ultimately, death. Well, I probably won't die, but a sedentary lifestyle coupled with the food we eat here definitely wouldn't be conducive to good health. Whatever. I'll start tomorrow.

Posted by Michael Richmond at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)