accomplishments

Yesterday:

• completed the viewing of 9 episodes of the office, starting off from when the semester began and finishing the entire season. so good.
• successfully facebooked five people at once, chatting with two people with the same first name without getting them confused.
• planned so many epic hangs for this week alone.
• numerated and prioritized all of my goals for the summer, color-coordinating them and setting deadlines to encourage my timely completion of them.
• did my laundry, again. I swear it is like every time I turn around there is more laundry to be done.
• didn't forget to take my vitamins.

Today:

• became champion of disney villain monopoly with only six properties to my name.
• filled my tank with exactly $60.00 worth of gas.
• made my own tea.
• avoided all fruits and vegetables (minus some pineapples on my pizza).
• found the BEST BLOG EVER.
• realized that a song I like was about the economy, score!
• remembered my tumblr lolol.

rockbridge

Rockbridge is this awesome camp that my intervarsity chapter, as well as chapters from other schools in the virginia/carolina area, gets to go to right after finals for a week. I was somewhat required to go last year for training as a new small group leader and I enjoyed it so much that there was very little doubt in my mind that I would go back this year. I wasn't sure exactly which track I should sign up for, since part of me felt like I should learn what the evangelism track had to say, but when I saw that there was a new track called identity transformed, I knew that was the one for me.

To give you some further insight than what you need to know, I am almost always conscious of my "identity" or the way that I usually think of it, my personality. I think about it a lot in terms of character development and the way that I interact with others, since that's the main way that as an author you can convey what's going on inside a person. It's something I have pontificated in poems dating back to ninth grade and which has shaped my views of literature and entertainment for as long as I can remember having analytic thoughts of such things. I don't think that this makes me particularly unique, but I will say that from what I've gathered from others I probably think about this more regularly than normal people. I am constantly searching for characters with real depth who care about the core of their identity - what makes them tick, if you will. I mean, I like those people in real life too, but characters are easier to deal with without getting onto the messy subject of me and I can self-analyze without someone else probing my life.

So I signed up for this track and then I finished my semester and moved back home for three days then went to Rockbridge. First of all, I had a fantastic time and I love my community and I missed those who weren't there. All that aside, I learned a lot of things that I had been hiding from myself. I won't get into all the details because I think I could articulate it better in a conversation, and I don't really want random people knowing all sorts of weird things about me, but there are a few takeaways that I'd like to share and which I didn't think would be succinct enough for chapter sharing time.

We did a lot of cool studies using Colossians, Genesis, and other books to look at the original plan for humanity and then the idea of putting off our old selves and becoming hidden in Christ, or putting on a new identity in him. So at the end of the week we wrote false identities on post-it notes and tore them up and wrote our true identities on another post-it to keep with us. The false identity I chose - one which I sort of believe about myself but which isn't what I'm supposed to really identify with - is that I'm abnormal. I think that this is a pretty loaded word so I'm going to explain what I mean. I've always felt a little like the odd one out, and though that's a fairly common sentiment it goes back pretty far for me. I mean, I'm the middle child, the only blonde in my family, the one who just wanted to go in a corner and read upside down and eat salads and just in general be kind of weird. I wanted to wear toe socks with flip flops just to be controversial and I like Justin Bieber because it is so cool to call him a little kid and hate him but it is so much more fun to be difficult and like him. Like I've said before some of this is a conscious effort to be different. But being different and being abnormal are not quite the same, so it's a sort of negative thing to be abnormal...as if I wasn't made to overly think through things and sort people by the colors of their personalities or alphabetize my cd's. As if these neuroses were unhealthy and as if there was some clear definition of normal which I just didn't measure up to. It plays into my feelings of being awkward transitioning from homeschooling to public high school and the twang of pride but also isolation when people say good for me for being an econ major. It's not like any of these experiences are completely and utterly unique to me, but combined they make me feel a bit abnormal.

The second thing is that sometimes I feel unhuman. I sure hope other people feel like this too. But sometimes I feel unemotional, and sometimes I feel like I know more than everyone else (though then I step back and realize it's all in my head and I need a reality check), and sometimes the abnormality just dehumanizes me. I can become less human or more than human in my head. This is obviously bad. If I am less than human then I do not deserve grace. If I am more than human, then I am elevating myself and my ego is way overblown. When I think this way, I deny the basic needs of humanity and essentially I deny my need for Christ. But this week God showed me that I absolutely have the same emotional needs as everyone else, and I saw this in a variety of ways. Just as personality theory taught me, I have a need for achievement, a need for affiliation and a need for power (though I think this one is not a super big deal for me). (See David McClelland's need theory.)

I have all of these human constraints and it makes me feel like I'm doing an econ problem, but I have to maximize my utility of life function subject to my humanity. Obviously hiding myself in Christ puts me on a higher utility curve because he's not human. When you take whatever you want to strive for and you try to get to it through your own means, you will do it very badly. I may make a lot of money or surround myself with decently nice people, but I still need achievement and I still need affiliation and I still need meaning and I still need direction, I still need love. God provides me with all of these things in a way that no one else can, especially myself. But to let him do this I need to recognize my humanity and allow others to fulfill my need for affiliation because he never meant for us to go through life on our own.

(See larger image, created by yours truly, but only really interesting/understandable if you know about consumer choice.)

So my new identity, the one I'm choosing to adopt, along with clothing myself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Colossians 3:12), is that I am the unique but very human creation of the God of the universe, not a mistake, not misplaced. Although I am unique I am not abnormal. Although I am human, that is precisely the way that God created me and it is not my fault but I am not complete without him either. I need God just as much as I need other people, and I can't live without either in just the same way that I can't live without food. One of the ways that I see God's love is through his children, through the love that we demonstrate to one another, and though it is not perfect it is way better than human attempts at love which we see in movies as showing up at an airport or remembering a trinket. It is the kind of love that sacrifices, and Christ was the ultimate sacrifice, giving his life for me though I am so far from perfect or even "good" that it goes beyond my comprehension that he would do such a thing. Our sacrifices are much smaller but the Christian community, and specifically the intervarsity chapter at w&m, is one of sacrificial love, something which I have not seen matched in other settings. And finally, I am precisely where God wants me to be - in the family he created, with the friends he put in my life, on the campus he wants me to be at right down to the room I'll be living in next year. I am so excited to see the fruit to be born in the fall - though this summer is not a mistake or a time to be thrown away, either.

So that's a bit of what Rockbridge was about. Also, grades and jobs and relationships and everything else that is broken in my life don't define me. And God mends these things and creates new and better things.

moving home

There are a lot of changes when you move home from school, no matter how long the length of your different stays. There are lots of benefits and lots of annoyances, ie, there are pros and cons! Which as you should know are one of my favorite kinds of lists to make.

• Pro: yesterday I had old oreos for breakfast...today I had pecan bread french toast and hot tea, and it was already cut up for me!
• Con: my roommate called me this morning and was cleaning our bathroom, and I was sad.
• Pro: I had fried rice for dinner and there are lots of brownies and chocolates at my disposal.
• Con: there are so many chocolatey temptations and no outlets for exercise.
• Same: I got to sleep in.

• Pro: last night I got to start watching Friday Night Lights with my sister, a so far entertaining diversion of my time.
• Con: I didn't get to be interrupted while watching tv by my roommate laughing at a video she was watching.
• Pro: I kind of have a car again!
• Con: I have to share said car.
  

• Pro: free laundry!
• Con: there is no elevator for the transportation of said laundry.
• Pro: my mom did half my laundry.
• Con: I didn't get to run into any Landrum friends while doing laundry.
  
• Pro: I don't have to worry about my laundry getting stolen or dirty overnight.
• Same: I do my laundry at all hours of the night.
  

• Pro: I got to go to the Cheese Shop with my dad yesterday...
• Con: this was only after moving approximately 16 containers either to the car or to the attic.
• Pro: I got to hang out with my dad all day.
• Con: this was still after moving all of those boxes...so I was very tired.
• Pro: I got to organize my belongings into appropriate containers.
• Con: I had to say bye to my Christmas tree for three months.

• Pro: there is no mildew in my shower.
• Con: there are lots of my sister's empty shampoo bottles.
• Pro: no one was waiting for me to get out of the shower.
• Con: there is no room in the medicine cabinet for any of my things.
  
• Same: I had to get toilet paper because the roll was empty.

spring 2011

is over. As in, I am moving out tomorrow and am mostly packed up and ready to leave this whole semester behind! But not without first blogging.

JANUARY:

we had that pizza party like the first day everyone was back and I spent like $42 in flex (I still have $16 left...pizza tonight? or see what kinds of gum are leftover?). it was legit. then I went to my first classes and discovered walex wasn't in my class and was really sad. and then we had the iv leadership day and amanda and katie and I all wore blue plaid! then everything started back up and I actually made it out to late night prayer and it was exciting. taylor and I had pokemonz time. summer reunion dinner started. e-team met and we decided it would be feasible to have saturday brunches together.

FEBRUARY:

I went to like one family dinner. fasa culture night was super legit and diana didn't break anything. I went to the bcm house for the first time for the superbowl; I tried candied bacon and fell in love, but I didn't stay for the second half of the game. ashley and I actually went to the rec center. taylor and I made pokevalentines. we had multiple game nights and I was such a good great dalmuti. I had a night of mayhem followed by packaging food for stop hunger now and then asian potter which turned into watching a very potter musical with jamie and natalie (we still need to watch the sequel!). I joined the historian committee! there were several iv girls events around valentine's day and I developed an intense love for justin bieber which culminated in the watching of never say never in an empty movie theater (except for me, jb's bffl, my twin and jb's future wife). I finally went to the musc with helen. marigene and I got lots of coffee. we watched the first young indiana jones! I was agatha for campus golf lol nbd. I stayed at escort forever just to see chrisdao. I studied at swem once. I made failcakes for marigene's surprise party and then we club swemmed. I finally saw tangled and we had the first LEGIT meeting where everyone decided this was a good name.

MARCH:

I asked for s'more s'mores and I got them. I went to camden and learned to do the opposite of what kelliann wants and that not everyone is like thornton and that helen is very inappropriate and that julia can eat anything with peanut butter and that ryan purposely raises expectations to disappoint them and that lucille can fit way more goldfish in her mouth than I can. and of course that God can use anyone and that good can come from bad places (nazareth...). my small group got to make dinner for worship team at sarah's house and then I followed my casserole to the lock-in. I learned about ecumenism. I faced my fear of throwing things at iv unplugged. I had a very dramatic hair cut but I actually got to donate my hair. I got brunch with hannah and we watched scrubs, kind of. I learned that cheese>chocolate at dani's house and about what makes me angry at speed dating. I learned about slaves in historic williamsburg. I had the best registration ever with megan and katelyn. I left camden reunion dinner early to go see BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY and I got to see abby tie a bow tie several times.

APRIL:

I got to bring kennis to apo formal and sing disney songs with catherine and katie and then ate so much pizza with my suite. I became friends with julie at sectionals and learned that weeing is sometimes not appropriate. I went home and got to see the cherry blossoms and watch I shouldn't be alive with melanie and jane eyre with chelsea. we had small group outside and then thought of secrets at postsecret and then were those kids and had our composites taken. I got to go to arthi's radio show debut and then chapter retreat where medina and I bonded like chemicals. I revisited childhood by watching the court jester with lj. then DRESS WEEK/big appreciation week started, only one of which was seen to completion. I got to go dress shopping with natalie and grab coffee with haset and got qdoba twice in one week. I had the best king and queen's date ever and got to chat up a bunch of admitted students. I experienced my first im game (from the sideline of course) and discovered the best muffins ever. I learned to skip readings for the first time and how to make use of the sara center. brandon and I spent ten hours looking at google docs. megan and jamie and I sent our hopes and dreams into the sky a la tangled-inspired lanterns. I got a horseshoe crab shell playing bigger and/or better. medina and I had our first work day experience, and it was quite a bit of work. I slept through the first half of screen on the green but finally saw true grit. we had an awesome twin appreciation week and celebrated the end of it with abby. benton, ashley and I had an impromptu harry potter party. I made cookies, a cake, cupcakes and then 6 more cakes in one week. I got sick right before pancake house. but then experienced the awesomeness of pancake house! we finally had an iv sophomore class bonding event over amazing delicious fantastic ice cream.

MAY:

I got to be photographed by dani and maggie. I studied lots but lots less than I should have. megan and jamie and I started an awesome tavern tradition. we had a mayhem family photoshoot and a lunch bunch reunion dinner. I finally tried sweet frog with abby and then made an apple pie for walex's half birthday, which he didn't even remember. then I got to see carbon leaf with awesome people. I had two overlapping beach days and took over 100 photos...intense. then I got to have plaza azteca with jamie, taylor and ellen! jamie and I unintentionally matched for three days in a row. I got to help out at the iv senior banquet and I was not ok with people leaving. then I made bacon and cookie monster cupcakes which were adorable. finally I got to see emily and started blogging again and got nawab with sarah! and then a successful ice cream adventure later, langton still left his tie in my room.

the end. summer!!!

two mottos

I was going to have a straightforward and succinct post on an important topic for once, but then I started typing and found that "mottos" isn't an accepted word according to Google Chrome. So then I was curious and found that "motto" is actually an Italian word but it's of course from Latin. The "correct" plural form is "mottoes" but both are acceptable and I think the latter looks like a weird kind of tomato-y word.

Anyway, there are all kinds of interesting things to say about motto...s, but I think that the important thing to remember is to both take them literally and not to take them too seriously. If we don't take them literally, then there is no point except for image-enhancement, which is to say that we can protect our egos by saying that we are "ever serving" or we like to turn on lights. But some of the ones told to us by the popular media just don't make sense...I would consider them to be slogans more than mottos, but wikipedia tells me otherwise and no matter how much people tell me not to trust that website, I can't help myself. I go there for all of my questions to be answered (how many episodes of How I Met Your Mother did I miss? What is a Seleucid? When was Stacie Orrico famous and why did I not know that one of her videos includes a Glee cast member? Speaking of which, how old is Darren Criss?). I use it to study, sure. I have only seen one case of blatant falseness on wikipedia and that was, if I recall correctly, when Deathly Hallows (the book) was released and obviously there were rumors and fake facts all over that page.

Anyway. Mottos. Take them literally. Take them to heart. But don't get too wrapped up in them at the expense of other good things. Now, to get to my real point, there were two mottos that I grew up with. I'm sure there were others, but there were two that were repeated countless times by my parents and which I've since come to realize helped shape who I am today.

1. Obey, be kind and make the other person happy. We were constantly told this. Whenever my sister and I fought because we were wearing the same dress and we hated to be matching, my mom would step in and say this (or we may have recalled it and told it to each other...). And then we would both end up changing. Whenever we did anything that caused drama or hurt someone else we would be reminded of this and then we would feel bad so we would apologize. This is still something that I try to live by, though I guess I probably forgot about it for ten years. But it really makes everything go better. There is nothing nicer than making the other person happy, and it makes you feel like a stellar person, so it's a win-win!
2. Why be normal? This one comes from my dad (huge surprise). It's also the name of a Canadian sketch comedy show which aired from 1998 to 1999 (thanks, wikipedia!). But I think that may be a coincidence. Anyway, if obedience (and submission, gentleness, kindness, goodness, gifts of the spirit, etc.) characterizes one aspect of my personality, and if I had to come up with a way to explain the other aspect of me, it would be by this motto (and I would hypothesize that between the two of these mottos, the R-value would be around .87, though some of it is an interaction so I couldn't accurately divide up the explanatory power). But really. I hate being normal. I hate being mainstream. I love being hipster, but not really hipster, since they're all kind of too similar to me. I just want to be an individual and I just don't see the point in being normal. This is maybe due to my dad saying this a lot.

So there you have it. Marisa explained in 13 words (obey, be kind and make the other person happy. and why be normal?), because I like things that come in sets of 13. Why? Because other people find it to be unlucky, and of course it being my birthday doesn't hurt. But mostly because other people don't like it. I'm kind of scared that people who read this will now be able to accurately predict everything I do, or at the very least understand everything, but don't worry: I am constantly fluctuating between nice and weird and there is very little discernible reason for why I act in either way in any given situation (which is to say, I don't even understand it). It's probably due to conditioning.

I do not sleep

EVER. That's actually false. But after eating so many cookies and so much bacon tonight, I don't much feel like sleeping. I would like an adventure which requires very little mental strain and even less physical velocity, so essentially a trippy but easy to follow movie would be nice. Unfortunately everyone went to sleep for exams or because they are normal and I can't think of a suitable movie to watch.

Today I was very domestic and made oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies, Cookie Monster cupcakes, food for a banquet and bacon. It was nice and all but it meant that I spent about six hours in kitchens so I am very tired of black and white tiled floors now.

I don't want to pack everything up because it means that I am going home soon, but it also has become inconvenient because since I packed up a few things on Saturday night (which was just part of a normal weekend of relaxing for me...) I've already had to go into those boxes three different times and that's even more annoying because I have to pack, unpack and repack KNOWING that everything CAN fit into that one box but being unable to achieve this goal again since everything has shifted around and settled into weird crevices. So I would suggest to my future self not to pack until all of my sleepover guests have arrived and all of my cupcakes are made. But I think it is always safe to pack up scarves and sweaters in May, though granted I live in Williamsburg so I wouldn't count on any weather predictions as rules to live by.

Also, it will be rainy in Rockbridge again, which could be the name of a cool song or something, but which also makes me a little bit sad. Blobbing will be occurring. And I will blog about my blobbing. It will be great. Now I am tired of hearing my own fingers type so I will maybe sleep or maybe do some mental math now that most of my exams are done and I need to start obsessing over the state of my final grades.

why I love harry potter

There are many reasons to love Harry Potter: magic, so many gingers, cool accents, funny words, awkwardness, empathy, childhood memories. But none of these explain why it induces AHHHH levels of excitement in me or why I have dressed up for every book/movie release since 2004. The interesting part of this story is that I didn't read the books until I was 14. Most people grew up with these characters or else never really got into the franchise, but I'm the first to admit that I was the last one on this bandwagon. I was pretty anti-HP before that time and it held no appeal to me: books about an orphan who does magic and has to save the world...cool. It sounded pretty terrible and also I hate being mainstream so I was pretty chill not reading any of the books or seeing any of the movies. And then in eighth grade I had to read them for school (for a comparison with Lord of the Rings and, ironically, Eragon, which I thought at the time was a really awesome book). And I was not a fan of this proposition, but I did it. And within about two paragraphs I was a fan. I read the first book in a day and then the second the next day, then I had to go back to the library to get the third (which I started in line at the library). And while I had to wait for the ride to the library (back in the days of pre-driving Marisa), in those perhaps seven hours, I was desperate for more Harry Potter. It was like I had tasted the most expensive drug and needed more to survive.

So I started reading some fanfiction. This turned out to be a very strange decision since I first read a story post-Sirius' death, who was a character I hadn't even been introduced to at the time. So I was very confused but intrigued by this collection of stories online and the people who wrote them: those which speculated past the end of the fifth book, those filling in missing scenes from the series, those in the MWPP era (aka the Marauders aka Harry's parents). And so after I finished reading the fifth book, which I also barely put down for food, I started writing some of my own. I was an aspiring novelist at the time (since then I've written five novels nbd) so I wrote all kinds of lengthy pieces, and then I started writing some random short stories, and before long I was part of the community. I reviewed other people's stories and talked about my troubles with procrastinating writing and so on. I engaged in numerous speculative debates before HBP and then after its release analyzed Snape's motivations to no end. It was glorious. There were House Cup competitions (I switched from Ravenclaw to Hufflepuff.) There were endless threads of conversation about the upcoming books and movies, there were graphics made (my introduction to photoshop), there were smiley face wars, there was constructive criticism, there were countless late night chats, and I did a little bit of everything throughout the rest of middle and high school.

So that's all to say that my love for Harry Potter is about a set of amazing tales which provide ample room for both escapism and community engagement. I can spout off any number of facts about the wizarding world for your entertainment because I legitimately love these books, characters, plots, illustrations, chapter titles, spells, family trees, professors, etc. and it has nothing to do with the magic that they practice and everything to do with the magic of reading and shared experience.

I am going to be slightly devastated when HP7pt2 comes out (July 15) because there will be no more speculation, no more mystery, no more questions from "have they even casted Aberforth?" to "can anyone explain what was going on with Draco's ownership of the Elder Wand?" I realized upon the release of the final book (2007) that the fanfiction world was crumbling, that with Harry's future set for him we had little left to elaborate on. That's not to say there's nothing left to explore, but I found that my time spent reading and writing was coming to a close. And now my love of Harry Potter must come to one of its final chapters: I will soon own all 8 DVDs and have no more releases to wait upon. There won't be a next obsession to the same extent, since I've grown up in the last six and a half years and don't have the time for walks in the forest with Hagrid or midnight adventures with James and Remus or any other made up characters. But I can still read a book in one sitting, both revisiting these favorites and discovering new stories from different authors, and I can still count on the friends I made based on a mutual love of the Boy Who Lived.