inside Rhodes

“Ahhhh.”

My roommate just mumbled, “It’s officially Friday.” Somewhere underneath the layers of sheets, comforters, blankets, and tissues, huddles my ailing roomie, suffering from what I have diagnosed as Ebola. I guess Africa has just been on my mind lately. I’m procrastinating furiously, but somehow this Econ assignment geared toward finding data on the Lesser Developed Country of my choice has been nearing completion. YAY!

I gotta be honest, though. This week has been tough, and I’m looking forward to this weekend as much as any other harried, over-extended college kid would be. The whimsical temperature dance and the constantly encroaching storm clouds really haven’t helped my fight against SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), BUT last night we did get a little snow! [I use the term "snow" loosely to refer to drops of hardened condensation that may or may not be small pieces of hail.] Nonetheless, this really warm, fuzzy feeling enveloped me when one of my friends called me at 12:37am to extend an invitation to a snow party. I opted to stay in bed; it was warmer and fuzzier there.

On the topic of the climate, earlier this week, I was stoked about this live, interactive webcast, The 2% Solution, that was presented by the Rhodes Environmental Residents to raise awareness about global warming. Apparently, there were supposed to have been thousands of college students watching this video across the US, and a goal of 10,000 viewers was set by Focus the Nation, the organization sponsoring the webcast. Well, the good news is that Focus was pretty satisfied, as more than 10,000 hits caused the website’s bandwidth to explode into many, many bright, nonfunctional cyber-parts (I’m sure there are about 2390489584 things wrong with that technological description). Bad news? The 40-ish people gathered in FJB had only cookies, cheese/meat platters, and a couple liters of coke to satisfy their hunger for environmental information.

So if you’re looking to get a little more educated about the global climate, check out the now-functional link. All in all, the turnout was pretty impressive for smaller function. I have high hopes for what the ERs can do this semester.

It’s past midnight, and I still haven’t finished this horribly difficult-to-locate, fill-in-the-blank Excel spreadsheet that’s due for my Economics class tomorrow. What peeves me is not that finding the “Total Debt Service (% of exports)” is difficult; it’s flat out impossible if you’re trying to locate that information for Liberia. Stupid me, I thought that representing Liberia a couple of times in high school Model UN would not be enough to get me through a class focusing on its economic development. Hubris.

Back to work, yo.