College

Creative title, right? If you've read my "about me" section you would know that I am a college student, and attend Creighton University. Creighton is a Jesuit Catholic school with the academics to match their Jesuit Catholic mission, "to develop the whole person. Mind, body, and soul". I've found this "message" to be rather common though, as most schools want you to feel like you are getting more than an academic education. And for the most part you are, but sometimes I think colleges try to sell the whole "best 4 years of your life thing".

Side note: If college is the best four years of my life, than what do I look forward to after college? Mediocrity? No thank you.

Anyway I feel like I've not only learned a lot in my time at college, but have also encountered some strange situations, which I will now share.

1. You will be friends with the same types of people you were friends with in high school. Let's get real, there are only about three months between the time people graduate high school to the time they start college, no one changes that quickly. The popular girls with be friends with the popular girls, the athletes will hang out with the athletes, and as always, the thespians will always hang out with other thespians. It's simple human nature; we go with what we know. Herd instinct. It's where we are most comfortable. Not that I feel like this has limited my friend-making possibilities at all, but for all those people who tell you "college is different than high school", on many levels, they are wrong. At the same time though, I know I will be friends with a lot of the people I've met here for a really long time, so I don't really care what the popular girls, athletes, and thespians are doing. It's frankly none of my business.

2. You will get locked out of your room at least once. It's like the cosmos reminding you to bring your keys with you everywhere. Just pray that when this happens to you, you are fully clothed. I did not have this luxury. I had just returned from the shower, and naturally, was only clad in a towel. When I realized my door was locked, I had to go down to the front desk to ask for the spare key, then proceed to ride up the elevator with four guys. Yeah. That was a tad awkward. The irony of this was that when I left my room to take a shower my door was unlocked and my roommate was in the room. Turns out she left and locked the door, not realizing that I was in the shower and did not have my keys. Which leads me to my next point...

3. You are going to have roommate issues. I don't care if you're best friends and you decided to room together. Also, do not live with your best friend, living together will most likely cause you to not be best friends when the semester/school year is over. Trust me on this. Do yourselves a favor and do random roommates. Now, random roommates also come with their pitfalls. My roommate is rather unobservant, as evidenced by her locking me out while I was in the shower. She once locked me out while I was in the kitchen right across the hall. I've stopped trying to understand her reasoning, because honestly I don't know if there is any. Roommate issues are an integral part of college, and I think they do a lot to teach you about yourself. You may learn you have an annoying habit or below average hygiene practices, and if you learn these things from your roommate, then I think he/she has done you a favor. If you end up being best friends with your roommate, then please realize how lucky you are, and don't take it for granted.

4. Boys are no different in college than they are in high school. Again, there is only about a three month span of time between high school graduation and the start of college. Boys are not going to morph into mature men in that time span, sorry to crush any of your dreams. They are still just primitive creatures who really only want food, sleep, and beer. And sure, there's a lot of girl chasing involved for college boys, but they don't really seem to care about what they say or do comes across to another person. I once walked out into the neutral zone of an all boys floor and a guy made steady eye contact with me and said "I called dibs on you." And by "dibs" he meant that he had told all the other guys that they could not flirt with me. Seriously. How do I know this? Because "dibs" is a part of the sixth floor rules. If a guy calls dibs on a girl, she's his until further notice. No stealing of another guy's girl. By the way, I've spent very little time on that floor since. Sure, some college guys have girlfriends, but that segment of the population is slim. The population that are actually nice to their girlfriends is, unfortunately, even smaller. Someone once told me that "college boys are sssooo much better than high school boys!". I've learned that this is a flat out lie. I don't know what kind of guys she was meeting, but it appears as those she is a student at one of those colleges in a movie, you know where all the guys are super good looking and are always playing various sports sans a shirt. And of course, they are all very courteous and charming and want to be doctors or whatever. I'm sorry to crush your dreams for a second time in one post, but these colleges do not exist. Boys are boys. Simple as that. And if you're lucky enough to meet a guy who treats you right and does not call dibs on you, be sure to keep him around.

There's much more that I've learned in college, but I figure I will all this earth -shattering information sink in a little before I dole out anymore of my college knowledge.

Did you notice the rhyme there?

Leah

Well...Now What?

I've been grappling with how to continue with this blog all day. I've gone back and forth between different topics, and I think that each topic will be, and needs to be discussed at some point. But as of right now, I'm stumped. The kind of stumped you get when an authority figure asks you for some kind of simple fact about yourself, such as your birthday, and your mind goes completely blank. Of course you know your birthday, but when forced to recite it to someone, you suddenly question yourself. It has occurred to me that writing a blog must have been much easier if I had started when I was younger, therefore the chronology of things would have been easier to deal with. I have not lived a long life by any means, but I feel like I've lived a decently full life so far, and I just don't know where to start frankly. Do you really want to hear about my childhood? My awkward middle school years? God knows I don't want to relive those years. In my mind, grades 6-9 are like a blur of bad outfits, the emergence of acne, and the realization that the same girl I was friends with in elementary school was now only interested in boys. Boys. They ruin everything don't they? Middle school was when liking boys officially became a thing. Far more important than anything else was who like who and all the drama and nonsense that comes with it. I can remember being approached by an Abercrombie & Fitch clad girl who had just applied a fresh coat of lip smackers lip gloss and the conversation went something like this:

Popular girl: "So-and-so said that so-and-so thinks you're cute?"

Me:"uuuhhhhh, what...?"

Popular girl: "Do you like him?"

Me:"I guess so, he's nice"

Popular girl: "No, I mean do you like him like him??"

Me:"......."

I soon discerned that the emphasis on the word "like" equated to whether or not I wanted to be corralled into the same general area as said boy and be forced to talk to him while the people who orchestrated the whole thing looked on and giggled manically. The two people at the center of attention would barely be able to speak to each though, on account of sheer embarrassment. Come to think of it, that experience reads something like a gladiator scene from ancient Rome, two opponents thrown into the ring, while only the crowd gets enjoyment out of it. At least those gladiators had training and what not, awkward middle school kids with hormone levels higher than the Empire State Building have no defense against the perils of beginning to notice the opposite gender.

Did I go too far in comparing bloody gladiator fights to middle school girl-boy interactions? Oh well, one thing you will learn about me(if you keep reading this blog), is that I often make comparisons, and say things, that are really out there.

Are you intrigued yet? I think a far better question though, is are you not entertained??

And admit it, you totally envied those expensive Abercrombie & Fitch clothes all the other girls had in middle school. Aren't you glad we are past that stage in our lives?

Well I guess it wasn't that hard to find something to write about after all...

Leah

Wait...what?

I'm sure the very small amount of people that have read the title of this blog have wondered, "What the hell is a Leanderthal?". Well wonder no more, as I am here to tell you. It's a creative little name my lovely sister came up with. At first I was a little offended, but I thought about it and decided I really like it. As a "young adult"(I hate that term, it sounds like an awful clothing department in JCPenny) in college, I often find myself grappling with questions of how to proceed into the future. Thoughts such as "should I take business law or intro to business analytics next semester?", "which macroeconomics professor is the best/easiest?", "if I go to the people-currently-saving-the-world meeting, discover there's no food and leave right away, does that make me an awful person?", "What am I going to major in????", and my personal favorite "DEAR GOD WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE??!". But I've found that only time will reveal the answer to the questions constantly careening through my mind. So, like the Neanderthal, I will eventually learn to use tools, walk more upright, maybe become less hairy, and maybe, just maybe, I'll become a highly functioning member of society. I mean, isn't that why I'm going to college?

But seriously, I never cease to be amazed to look back at where or what I thought I would be a year or two ago and see just how far off I was. Hell, last week I thought I would be a different person than the one I am today. My point is, the Neanderthal didn't know he was evolving until he saw a monkey who looked remarkably similar to him, and too often I don't realize how much my perspectives and goals change until I'm reminded of what they used to be.

So here's to evolving, nature moving us forcefully forward while we wallow in our own thoughts.

Now go and discover fire,

Leah

P.S- as much as some people hate the idea of changing and not being able to do anything about it, can we all agree that evolution did us all a favor by getting rid of human tails?

Just Beginning

I started this blog because a good friend of mine suggested it. I've always been a fan of putting pen to paper, as I think people spend far too much time in front of computers and on their phones in the first place, but hey, if I can make the internet a better place, and a place worth spending more time on your computer, then why not?

Mostly I feel like this blog will be a place where I can stay connected to people, to tell stories of my daily life that I find interesting or amusing. Who knows, there may even be a comment or two about current social events. Never fear though, this will not turn into one of those crazy political blogs that goes way over the top. I know this will not happen, because I have a particular distaste of those types of blogs, and for those types of people. Or maybe if I'm bored in class and want to look like I'm doing something, I will write a blog post. What a good student I am. Anyway, I hope anyone that happens upon this blog will enjoy it, I do not expect to be famous, but if I end up getting millions of followers and they turn my blog into a movie(I'd be fine an HBO miniseries or Lifetime TV movie), then I wouldn't object to that.

Until later,

Leah