I am now officially a college graduate.

Just thought I’d let everyone know.

On May 11, 1970 an F5 tornado hit downtown Lubbock killing twenty-six people. Following the tornado, Dr. Ted Fujita traveled to Lubbock and used the catastrophe to learn more about tornadoes and eventually develop the Fujita scale.

Tomorrow I take the my last final of my undergraduate career. At 10:30am I will sit down, pick up a pen, and complete possibly the last test of my life. Exciting? No. A little anti-climatic if you ask me.

After the test, all of the seniors must fill out a graduation survey and enjoy refreshments. If the refreshments are pizza and other junk food, I’ll stick around, otherwise I’m outta there. (4 years and a whole lot of money and we can’t even get pizza?!)

If you cannot tell, I am in a weird mood. I have a lot to do tomorrow, a lot of stressful things, I guess this is how I am choosing to deal with it.

I am two finals away from being done with college forever, or at least until I go into grad school. The only two left are Strategic Management and Managerial Economics.

Economics slightly worries me because it is a cumulative exam, but I really do not think the professor is trying to keep anyone from graduating. I take that one tomorrow at 4:30pm and my Strategic Management at 10:30am on Monday.

Getting down to the wire and I’m still not nervous like everyone thinks I should be. Weird.

In other news, it’s my mother’s birthday. Happy Birthday Mom!

During a conversation with a friend the subject of me not watching VH1, MTV, or channels like that came up. I replied, stating that I enjoy the History Channel, Discovery channel, and TLC more and think they have more value. To my surprise, my friend told me that they had a theory as to why I liked those channels.

“You like to know more than people. You want them to know that you know more than they do”. At first, I just kind of sat there, dumbfounded by being so abruptly told that basically, I’m a know-it-all. Then I thought about it for a second and decided I would explain why I watch those stations more and why I continually will.

I have always been a reader. I’ll read anything you hand to me. When I was young I read everything I could. I would go to the library and check out stacks upon stacks of books and read all of them. My intention was not to make people feel lowly or dumb, it was to learn. As I got older I moved from fictional books to non-fiction and was particularly interested in history, especially WWII history. I read all that I could find on the subject (I still do).

We did not have cable until I was around 14 or 15 and when we had it installed I was glued to the History Channel. I was amazed that there was so much that I didn’t know and the detail that presented about certain subjects. Now, I do not have cable anymore but I still read like a mad man. It’s my personality. I will take book suggestions from anyone, even if it’s on a subject that I am not necessarily interested in and read them.

What is wrong with this? I told another friend about this conversation and they said that they could explain what the person was saying, to a point. They informed me that I am a fairly blunt person and sometimes I come off harsh and demeaning. When someone brings up a subject that they know little about, especially current events or history, I unknowingly rip them apart. It is not intentional, it just happens. I have to make myself aware of it so that I do not scare people away.

Back to the main topic here. Is there something wrong with knowledge? Don’t we have a social responsibility to learn as much as possible so that we are aware of what is going on around us. Oil prices are a great example. Most Americans do not understand why prices are high outside of the reasons stated in newspapers, which just lightly touch on the subject. Do we not have an obligation to understand something before we anger over it or protest it? The more we know, the more we see and understand the world around us.

After explaining this, my friend told me that it isn’t just knowledge that makes us strong, it’s experience. I disagree. I think it’s both knowledge and experience that make us stronger people. And to experience something you must be knowledgeable about it to take an interest in it.

I am still a little offended by the comment for the simple reason that this person knows very little of my past and my life and yet makes wide and vast assumptions about why I do things. Reading and learning is who I am, it’s who I have always been, and it’s probably who I always be. Sorry.

My truck bit the dust yesterday. Coming out of class and getting into my truck, I turned the key and just got continuous revving, no turnover. I try again, nothing. I go to the back of my truck and pull out my trusty hammer.

Laying underneath the truck and give the starter a few whacks, hoping that just maybe, it was caught. I try starting it again, nothing. So, I do some more narrowing down of what the problem could be and then call a friend to come pick me up.

Around 8pm I leave my group meeting and walk back to the parking lot to have the truck towed. The tow truck arrives and because of the closeness of the parking lot we have to push the truck out. A student who had been working out at the rec sees what we are doing and runs over to help. We talk for a while and he says, “Are you going to need a ride?”. I was a little shocked and told him that yes, I needed a ride to the place where they were taking my truck.

On the way to the car care place I tell him that he needs to give me his number so that I can pay him back for his gas (or something to say thanks). He tells me no and doesn’t let me insist, instead he says to me, “Where I’m from we have no problem dropping what we’re doing to help others”.

There are still some good folks in the world.

To save up some money for my move to Dallas I have taken a temporary job at a local college bookstore. It is interesting to see the way that things work from the inside and how chaotic the book sorting process is.

A lot of work goes into keeping books that will be used in the summer or next semester and processing those that will not be used again until next spring. It is a somewhat convoluted process with, in my opinion, a few too many steps.

On top of the process, the prices at which we buy books back from the students is outrageous and insulting. A girl came in yesterday with an organic chemistry book that was priced in our computers as selling for $250. The computer’s buy back price? $40. Not only is that wrong, it’s highway robbery. I understand that the bookstore is trying to make a profit but a $210 one? Seems excessive to me.

It seems like it isn’t just happening to me.

Over the last few days I have received close to 1,000 unique hits from the phrase “305-503-8068” across different search engines. If you are looking for an answer as to what that phone number is, it is an illegal, unsolicited number. You can ignore the calls or contact the provider using Telcodata.us

I have had a prescription for the past few years that my body requires. Multiple doctors have prescribed the medication to me on different occasions. My dad recently changed jobs and I needed a refill on my prescription. I went to the doctor and did the routine checkup, and he filled out another prescription form.

When I dropped the prescription off to Walgreens they told me that they would have to contact my doctor to get authorization for the prescription. I called my doctor’s office and they said they would need to fax some things to the insurance company. A few days passed and I called the doctor’s office back. I was informed that they had faxed the information and were waiting on a response from insurance. Today I called back again and they told me that insurance needed me to call and verify some things.

Not being in the mood to deal with the insurance company (and since it isn’t my insurance company) I let my mom call. She tells them that I have taken this medicine for the better part of three years now and that there is no reason they shouldn’t cover it. They respond by saying that the medicine is “technically” for short term use and that they can’t cover that.

My old insurance company had no problem covering me and paying for this medication over a long period of time, so I don’t understand the problem here. I think it comes down to simple greed. The insurance companies are starting to get stingy when it comes to paying for prescriptions that they think are unnecessary. Who are they to say that a prescription is not needed? This is one reason a national healthcare system should be put in place, so people don’t have to pay an arm and a leg to receive a prescription that they need.

An interesting conversation took place tonight. It was a conversation about faith, beliefs, Christianity, evolution, and creationism.

I am a Christian. I believe in Creationism as the cornerstone as to how the Earth was formed and how we as humans came to exist. My thoughts on evolution are that yes, evolution occurs, but not on the scale to form new species. I believe that we see evolution in the level of melatonin in people’s skin depending on where they live or the height of a population depending on their diet.

In the conversation this evening, I was asked if I believed in life elsewhere than on Earth. That’s a question that I cannot answer and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Space is huge and so is God, so who knows, but quite honestly, who cares? Does it really matter? What would occur if life was found elsewhere?

For years scientists have been touting that they have found ice particles on different planets and that these may be the keys to the foundation of life. Yet, everytime, that’s all we hear about it. We are told that conditions on different planets or moons are perfect for life to form, but that’s all we get, never a follow-up with “Yes! We’ve found life!”. This strikes me as odd, and as possible proof that we might be the only ones out here.

I may not be able to back up everything that I say with fact or scripture, but I still will stand up for what I believe in. Most of the time in conversations that I have with people, they use convoluted logic or “facts” that they received from Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. The produce no real argument, yet criticize my thoughts because I stand for them so firmly.

I am not saying all people are like this. Not at all. There are just a certain few that do it. The same goes for Christians as well. If we push and push, we end up just pushing people away. I have learned that if I listen to people and their thoughts and reasoning behind it, I can better relate, and the more willing they become to listen to me. I am not here to shove Christianity down people’s throats, I am merely here to share it when the time is right.