This last week I had the privilege to go to The Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Memorial Library. This is one of only 6 presidential libraries on a college campus. As a history buff, this was something I could not pass up.

What I find ironic about Mississippi State having the Ulysses S. Grant library is that General and President Grant was a West Point graduate. How did his memorabilia end up in Starkville? Regardless of that, this library is filled with artifacts, interactive games, statues, and auditory exhibits. It is extremely organized, detailing Grant’s life before being the Union’s General and well after his Presidency came to an end. I very much enjoyed the exhibits and the artifacts from his life.

This library also houses Lincoln memorabilia. Although Lincoln only takes up one room and a few exhibits of that room, the presence of things that so great a leader used or touched is incredible to be around.

The museum isn’t tailored to someone who knows nothing about Lincoln or Grant, but to someone who already has an admiration of the two. This is why I especially enjoyed the museum. I took AP US History in high school, and I learned a lot about the two men, so this opportunity lent itself to a very satisfying experience.

If you are ever presented the opportunity, and enjoy history, I could not recommend it enough. It is an impressive collection of relics of even more impressive men.

I realized very recently that I take being able to pick up Chickfila, or Starbucks, or just any entire meal offered at any dining facility on campus for granted. I’m a Junior, so I’m pretty used to being able to get a chicken sandwich or a white chocolate mocha pretty much at the drop of a hat, but this week I was hit with the same excitement and bewilderment that hit me as a Freshman when I went to go pick up Chickfila with my friends before meetings- THIS IS AWESOME!! There is a whole Chickfila, among other restaurants such as Moe’s Southwest, Panda Express, and Subway, right here on campus- a stone’s throw (odds are) away from your next class.

I have gone to Chickfila well over 100 times so far in my career here, and it is just now hitting me again how cool it is that there are so many restaurants right here on campus that accept flex dollars as a part of Mississippi State’s meal plan options.

There isn’t a lot for me to detail the experience on other than I ordered a chicken biscuit with hash-browns and a Hi-C and headed over to the library to work on a lab report with a friend. I believe the shear convenience and “college-ness” of being able to walk out of a class and get restaurant food in 5 minutes is experience enough. This would have made my day in high school, to be able to go get outside food and eat it in school, but I could do it everyday in college if I chose to do so (and had the money.)

It’s easy to forget just how cool a lot of things on your campus are, and this was one of them, but I’m glad to say that I have a new appreciation for the dining options Mississippi State has provided for its students and faculty.

Next time you find yourself unable to decided between Panda and Chickfila, instead of thinking its a dilemma, think how cool it is that you get to make that decision without having to leave campus or walk halfway across it. You’ll remember just how cool it is, and probably get a little bit of appreciation to be a college student back as well.

Hail State!

 

One of the bigger events on Mississippi State’s campus in the fall is Chi Omega’s Limelight. It takes place in Humphrey Coliseum, and it fills halfway up, every seat, every year. I say halfway because half of “The Hump” is blocked off with curtains, so a stage has a front and a back as opposed to multiple (the pictures will make sense of it.) Anyway, although Limelight is a sorority philanthropy event benefiting Make-A-Wish, greek and non-greek students alike flock to this event to see their friends dance in what has honestly become a very competitive and enjoyable contest for those involved, as well as for those in the audience.

I was a part of Limelight this year- and the past two years- for my fraternity, but my favorite part of Limelight is seeing the unity of students, and although they’re there for the dances and to see their friends, they come together and grant a wish for a child who has been given a critical diagnosis. Mississippi State students come together and grant a wish, a life-changing wish, for a child. At the end of the night, after all the dances, the lights, the music, a kid walks away with the ability to live out their wish. That’s what I love and enjoy the most out of this event. Even though the dances are fun and the competition is easy to get wrapped up in granting that kid’s wish is what should be taken away from the experience at the end of the night.

Changing gears: now let’s talk about the actual event and how much fun it is to be there and watch, as well as compete if going greek is your thing.

 

This is a picture of my fraternity and our “Owl Pals” before we went to perform in front of the packed-out half-of-The-Hump. Every sorority and fraternity has “Owl Pals” for Limelight that serve as an ambassador to help and/or guide dance decisions, essentially making sure that all moves are appropriate.

Every fraternity and sorority also has a theme that they’re given for their dance, as well as the banner that they create for the event. As you can see in this picture (and the one before) our theme was “construction.” The reflective tape on the vests made for this really cool photo.

The night essentially falls into watching the dances, waiting for the 15-minute intermission to go pee, watching the rest of the dances and then waiting for the judges- two of whom were Blair Schaffer and Cole Gordon- to release their results. The winners are then announced and the night then turns into taking pictures and celebrating a successful and fun few weeks and night with your friends. The winners (1st, 2nd, and 3rd place for fraternities and sororities) receive up to $500 for their respective philanthropies. All-in-all, it’s a very fun event, that benefits not only a Make-A-Wish kid, but also goes to help six other philanthropies of fraternities and sororities.

In the end, everyone goes crazy for the dances they like the best, and the winners are crowned- all until it’s time to grant another wish and do it all over again the next year.

Bragging rights aren’t bad either.

This week I had some friends from my hometown, Tuscaloosa, come to the Mississippi State- Auburn game. Logan- poor guy- grew up in Tuscaloosa as an Auburn fan, and Taylor, the neutral fan, was just along for the ride.

 

Trent and I have maintained a lot of our friendships from back home, and we were more than happy to have our friends come in for the weekend.

As far as the game was concerned, Trent and I were pretty open about believing Auburn would kind of just win in a pretty boring game, but once we sat down, we looked at each other and he said, “Yeah, enough of that. We’re about to kick their butts.” I didn’t know if I believed it at the time, but I wanted him to be right. As it would turn out, he was. State won rather convincingly, which made Logan’s visit so much sweeter considering he came our freshman year and Auburn beat us like a drum. He really can’t catch a break; he had to deal with us as Alabama fans, and now as State fans- still handing Auburn L’s.

Taylor had a great time as well. She went to cosmetology school and is now a professional hairdresser, although she is the same age as the rest of us. She takes trips to see all of her high school friends, regardless of how far away they go to school. She enjoyed Mississippi State, and even said she liked the gameday atmosphere here more than in Tuscaloosa- which is saying something for someone who was born and raised saying, “Roll Tide!”

At one point, I had Taylor walk up to a random group of people and ask for a sticker that said, “Beat Auburn,” since we got to the stadium after they had passed them all out and I wanted one to put on my cowbell. She told the group that it was her first time in Starkville and that she wanted a sticker to commemorate it.

 

It was nice to bring friends to the place that I have come to love so dearly, and it will make for great stories to look back on in the future. This weekend seemed to speak to me kind of how tours do, but more so than just a tour, reminding me very clearly on that Saturday night leaving Davis Wade, that I love this place more than I can fit into the next two years.

So I knew that our soccer team had been playing well this season, but it kind of came as a shock to me when I opened my email on Thursday morning and it read, “Come see your NO. 2 RANKED BULLDOGS…” I didn’t know that we were that good.

Naturally, I texted my roommate, Jonathan, and told him that we had plans for 7 o’clock that night. Jonathan, typically when I make impulsive plans, responded, “Bet.”

We parked next to the Hunter Henry Center and found a nice and cozy spot on the grass because the stands, and most of the grass, was packed.

Jonathan and I actually both played soccer at different points in our lives, so we spoke on the game as you would expect out of David Beckham and Landon Donovan. We yelled at bad calls, quoting FIFA rules as if they applied to a US college soccer game. We screamed “Have a shot!!” We spoke softly to ourselves about whether the girl or team could hear the mom in the stands who said over-and-over, “Let’s get it together. Let’s go, Bulldogs.” so softly that had Jonathan and I not been so close to her we wouldn’t have heard either. At one point, we noticed how aggressively one of our forwards was playing and I recognized her as the sweet, soft-spoken, curly-haired blonde girl from my Thermodynamics class last Spring, as well as the girl who sits behind me in DE. I knew she was on the team, but I did not know she started, or could be that mean. Yikes.

It turned out to be an incredibly exciting game, as Mississippi State came back from the early 1-0 deficit thanks to South Carolina converting on a poorly-called penalty to win 2-1. Jonathan and I made the joke that if we lost the first game he and I went to that, as he said it, “You, me, and a whole lot of other people that are here for the first time this year tonight aren’t allowed back.” Thankfully, he and I can go to more soccer games and hopefully watch the Dawgs climb all the way to the top and stay there.

 

Impulsive adventures might be becoming a habit for me again, but as long as they keep turning out to be fun experiences, I won’t be too concerned considering I love to have things planned out to a “T.”

I was on campus all day two Tuesdays ago, or the first Tuesday of classes, whichever is easier to keep in mind, and as dinner with other friends in The Union came to a close, a GroupMe message popped up on my phone, and as I read it from the lock-screen, a friend at dinner named Parker Guest read it out-loud: “Who wants to come eat pizza and do trivia at Lost Pizza?” The message was from a recent graduate and a friend of ours, Sally Wilson. Before anyone said anything, Parker had already responded, “Coming.”

I’m going to throw in this shameless plug about staying ahead of stuff, because if I had not made the decision to be committed to staying on top of my work, like, days-in-advance ahead, I would not have been able to say, “Hey, count me in on that.”

Within half-an-hour, Parker, Maggie Thomas, and I were sitting across from Sally Wilson and her roommate, Ashley, at Lost Pizza getting ready for Trivia Night.

Truth be told, I had never heard of Trivia Night, but I definitely won’t forget it after that night. As a bit of a trivia-buff, I was looking forward to the opportunity to flex my intellect when it came to knowing a lot about nothing of any importance at all.

I wish I could remember more questions that were asked, especially considering we played both rounds, but I can say the questions came from everywhere: one asked what the acronym “NASCAR” stood for -I didn’t even know it was an acronym- and another asked which President famously got stuck in a bathtub (it was William Howard Taft, by the way, and “NASCAR” stands for National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.) I also wish we could say we won, but there are apparently a lot of people (Lost Pizza was packed, absolutely packed) who are better at trivia than I am.

What I find rather funny is that my roommate Jonathan looked at me after we had finished a movie in our living room last night and said, “I wish there was a place that did trivia like once a week here that we could go to.” I could feel the resulting laughter building up in my chest as I got ready to say, “Okay, so next Tuesday at 7 at Lost Pizza Company? I’m actually writing my blog on that this week.” As the feeling in my chest would have it, I was right. We cracked up, and now have plans to go once a month.

 

 

So I just finished my first week of classes, and it’s my first Friday night back in Starkville after summer break. I came back to my off-campus apartment after catching up with some friends I hadn’t seen in a while earlier that afternoon to discover that, naturally, none of my roommates and I had made any plans for our first Friday back in town. As afternoon turned to evening, and as evening drew on, one of my roommates, Jonathan, who shares my affinity for movies, came down stairs itching to go somewhere. With my other roommates tired from their first week and wanting to stay in, he and I reverted to a game we made up the past Spring semester. We have this small basketball goal in our living room that hangs off the guest bathroom door.

The game goes like this: when neither of us wants to do something that would either be fun or is something we probably should do, one of us will pick up the ball, walk to the edge of the living room, as far away from the goal as we can get, and say, “Alright, if I make this, you have to…” So I picked up the ball, and said, “Alright, if I make this, we both go change and see ‘The Meg’ tonight.”

“Bet.”

I missed, but thanks to one of our many delusional rule stipulations, he was able to shoot for the same cause.

As adventure would have it, he made it, and without eye-contact or any communication, he and I went to our rooms to change and met back in the living room minutes later to go to the 9:30 showing.

As we drove down Highway 12 with the windows down on a nearly-crisp August night, we laughed at how we ended up headed there because we usually don’t make the shot for one of those bets.

The movie theater is one of our favorite places to go because, well, one: movies, but two: it’s the perfect size; it makes you feel casual about going there. It’s colorful and bright, and well-decorated. It has a “Hollywood” theme, as its name would indicate (Hollywood Cinemas).

Jonathan and I had been wanting to see ‘The Meg’ for a while, since it starred Rainn Wilson, one of our favorite actors, and our impulsive game led us to see a great movie and provided a nice adventure for our first Friday night back in town.

10/10. Would recommend. (Jonathan was not ready for this picture.)

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton