Extra Credit Blog: 2 Lessons I Learned This Spring Break

I studied in Florence last spring, and the friends that I made during my time there are actually still in Florence, and are getting their degrees from a university there, so this year for spring break, I decided to go back to Europe and visit them.  My nine days in Italy were very eventful and action packed, and even though I had been to Florence before, I still learned a lot of new things about the country, and even a couple of life lessons too.

1) If you want to go out to dinner with a group, make a reservation: This one is pretty much true no matter where you are, but I found that it is especially relevant when you are in Florence on a weekend with a group of ten people.  This past Friday, a group of my friends and I decided that we wanted to go out to dinner, but unfortunately, we made this decision at around 8pm (Italians eat late, but by this time restaurants are pretty much booked for advance reservations).  Even though we knew that we were a large group, we decided to try to find a place to eat anyway, thinking that there had to be somewhere that we could all fit together, but sadly… we were wrong.  We wandered around, searching for a restaurant that would take us for two hours (TWO HOURS) before finally giving up and splitting up at 10pm.  S0, if you want to actually eat dinner with your friends instead of walking from restaurant to restaurant trying to find somewhere that can accommodate you, plan ahead and make a reservation.

2) Do not, under any circumstances, try to use scissors after drinking wine: Thankfully, this lesson is something that I was not actually directly involved in (I was not the one drinking the wine with scissors), but I did get to witness the consequences.  While I was in Florence, one of the friends of the girls I was staying with came to the apartment to assist with a midterm project (all the girls are interior design majors, so a lot of crafting/model building happens), and as I was sitting in the adjacent room, minding my own business, I hear him say: “Katherine.  I need to go to the hospital.”  At first I though he was joking, because he said it in such a nonchalant way, but when I walked into the room and saw the blood everywhere, I realized that he was being serious.  After drinking a few glasses of wine, he had accidentally cut off the knuckle on one of his fingers with scissors, and did in fact need to go to the hospital.  He got stitches and will be fine in a few days/weeks (if you look closely in the featured image of this post you can see the bandage on one of his fingers, he’s in the middle), but the moral of the story here is: don’t mix wine and scissors.

Even though this break did have some exciting challenges thrown in, it was still an awesome experience, and just to show how good it was, here are some of the pictures I took from my adventures this past week.

Video Scavenger Hunt – Louis and Amy

College So Far: an Interview with Lauren Powell

Even though it is only 9:45 on a Tuesday morning, Lauren Powell, a Marist College Junior, has already been to class, and is on her laptop doing school work.  Although she seems very put-together and ready to take on the day, one of her biggest everyday challenges is trying to organize her time, especially managing to leave on time for classes.  However, Powell makes it all work.   She was taught by her parents to try her hardest and never give up, even when success seems out of reach at first, and she uses that lesson to stay focused on what inspires her to work hard: finding a job after graduating from Marist.  Though she is focused on what she will do after college, Powell loves Marist (with the exception of the usually inedible dining hall food, which is the only thing she would change about the school), and even though she is closer with her friends from high school, who taught her to “always be yourself, and never let anyone bring you down,” Powell loves her friends here, who have also had some good lessons to share.  They taught her that having a thicker skin is a necessity in the “real world,” which is true both in college, and out in the job market.  Even with all the pressure and assignments that come with earning a degree, Powell believes that college is absolutely worth the stress.

When she is not hanging out with her friends, Powell is also very involved on campus.  She is a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority here at Marist, and spends most of her free time doing activities related to the group.  However, her favorite part of her college experience so far has not been KKG related, in fact, it took place completely off campus.  Powell’s favorite part of college, and the one thing she would do over if she could, was her semester abroad in Florence.  When she speaks about her time in Italy, her whole face lights up as she reflects on the memories she made there, and expresses her desire to return to Florence as soon as possible.  Even though she can’t return to Florence just yet, Powell plans to continue enjoying her time here at Marist College for the remainder of her college career, and will work hard and stay focused even through 8 am classes, just like her parents taught her to do.

Political Infographic

The Tigger Movie

Ever since I was a little kid, I have loved Winnie the Pooh.  He has been my favorite Disney character since day one, so when Disney announced that they were releasing a new film about the Winnie the Pooh characters, the first full-length movie that was not a collection of previously released shorts, 5 year-old me was ecstatic. Although I do not remember much about the first time I saw this movie, I recently had the pleasure of re-watching it when I was babysitting my younger cousins over winter break, and I can honestly say, that it is one of the most depressing Disney movies I have ever seen.

The movie is all about Tigger, the loveable, silly and ridiculously energetic bouncing tiger that lives in the Hundred-Acre Wood.  One of Tigger’s classic catchphrases is “I’m the only one”, meaning that he is the only “Tigger” in the world and is unique, and the Tigger Movie plays off this idea, showing Tigger as vulnerable and lonely as he tries to find someone like him.

In the beginning of the film, Tigger is up to his usual mischief in the woods and angers some of the other characters by bouncing too much and delaying preparations for the upcoming winter.  When nobody will bounce and play with him, Tigger becomes very sad, and wishes that he could find someone like him.  When Roo, one of Tigger’s friends in the forest, asks why he can’t just get his family to bounce with him, Tigger is fascinated and decides to try his family, which becomes the main focus of the story.

Throughout the rest of the movie, Tigger and his friends search for clues and write letters to try to contact Tigger’s family, but nothing they do works, and the letters remain unanswered.  This point in the movie is where everything goes downhill: we find out that he has no real family because he is the only one of his kind.  Even though Tigger’s friends disguise themselves as other Tiggers and try to convince him that they are his family, Tigger sees through their disguises and heads off into a snowstorm to try to find his real family (that doesn’t exist).  Even as a 20 year old, this movie makes me more sad than the Notebook.  That image of Tigger shivering and heading off into a blizzard “TTFE, Ta-ta forever!!” is so depressing.

However, the movie does manage to turn itself around in the end, when Tigger realizes that it is okay to be unique and sees that his friends are his “real family”.  But, overall, even though I love Winnie the Pooh, this movie was just too sad for me.  I like my Disney movies to be more upbeat, even though this one had a good lesson in the end.