Winter Has Come

Like most of you in the Northern and Eastern US, we got hit with snow this weekend, bringing to an end the fall that we thought would last us at least through Thanksgiving. Unlike our usual first snows in Minnesota, this snow (and ice) has stuck, with daytime temperatures hovering in the high 20s at most.

A picture of my walk into St. Paul campus taken from my phone.

Despite this, things are heating up in my Plant Production class and being able to work under the sunlamps a few days out of the week is a godsend. I definitely picked the right major for that reason. My crops are doing well now that I've learned what I need to do in order to fertilize them properly and our lettuce crops are about ready to take home for salad. Now I just need to find a way to get my boyfriend to actually eat salad...
I've also got an eggplant, two cucumbers and some cherry tomatoes that I'll be taking home next week. I'm not a huge cucumber fan so I'll have to find something creative to do with them, or just find a person who likes cukes more than me to take them. If I have the time, I'd love to try frying the eggplant that I have with my roommates deep-fryer.

For my World Food Problems class, my end-of-term paper is looming ever larger on the horizon and I'm still torn about what I want my topic to be. I have to have it finalized by next Tuesday so I'll have to dive into some research this weekend. My original idea is researching the importance seed-saving has in African cultures and how that relates to food security... But if I can't find enough written on that I might have to change to something else. I have a lot of strong feelings about GMOs (although not in the normal hell-bent against them sort of way) that I could write a paper on... Speaking of which, I will probably at least post something here about my opinions on them soon. Regardless, I need a topic that I can research and write about easily because I want to make this paper actually meaningful.

The last few things that have been happening lately have all been reminding me that I'm almost done with school. I met with my academic adviser to finalize my class schedule for next year, I register for those classes tomorrow and, after next week, I'm done with the regular season of marching band for the last time. I don't really know how to handle all of these emotions because there's just a huge, jumbled, confused mess of them. I'm happy and sad and nervous and everything else all at the same time. As many of my friends would say "#SeniorProblems".

And speaking of being done, yesterday was my last home football game as a member of the University of Minnesota Marching Band. Symbolically flipping my uniform overlay to the maroon side of a graduating member at the game was so bittersweet and leaving the field after my last halftime show was one of the hardest things I've had to do. This group has given me so much over the course of my college career and I've made some of the best memories I think I'll ever have of college as a member of it.

Me and my family who came down to see my final show.

I think that's what this winter has mainly brought with it: the realization that I'm going to be done with this stage of my life soon and I have this huge stretch of uncharted territory in front of me. It's not really like the rest of life where I have a set system to work inside of. There's no school where I can just work my way through a more-or-less comfortable set of hoops. Basically I have to be a real person and that's sort of terrifying. Exciting, yes, but definitely terrifying.