Semi-great Achievements (Undergrad Edition)

Since we've hit the low points, let's look back to some of the good things that happened during my years at Cedarville. Just to let you know, this will be the last Cedarville post for awhile.

It took till my sophomore year for me to actually just ask a girl out on an official date. I've gone through blind dates, and other awkward setups. But for this date I actually just asked the girl out. Ok, it was a sort of triple date, but I did straight up ask her out. It was just too bad that she didn't enjoy our idea of a progressive dinner. It may have been mean to ask them to dress up a bit, and then take them to McDonalds for the salad. We did progress on to better restaurants for the soup and main course. I guess she just didn't have a sense of fun. Actually, it turned out she was crazy…literally. But the point I'm trying to make is that I asked a girl out.

I actually graduated. I know I don't usually rank these lists, but this was probably the biggest achievement. You see there is a reason it took me five years to graduate. The first two and half years I did all I could to not graduate. I attribute part of it to ego and a part to being lazy. The reality was that I had a cumulative GPA under 2.0 for about three years. I eventually came to my senses and actually started working. After a couple quarters of 4.0's I finally got it over the 2.0 and could graduate. I'm not proud of the GPA, but I'm proud of what I did those last two years to get it over the hump.

I know I make it sound completely awkward, but this was a pretty big moment in my "romantic life."

Feedback! That was the name of the radio show I co-hosted with Amy Cartzendafner. Other than graduating, one of the reasons I worked to get my grades up was to get back on the student radio. My fifth year I finally got a late night show. Luckily, I had Amy as my co-host, and the characters Buffy and Biff came to life. This is also where the writing bug really took hold. I started writing bits for the show, promos, and commercials. They weren't all golden comedy moments, but it gave me some confidence in writing. It should also be mentioned that through my working on the show and in other facets with the radio station I earned the "Purple Heart" award for dedicated service. Not the best name, but I had made up my mind when I saw the plaque that I was going to get my name on there. In the long run it's not really much. It is though one of those nice set a goal and achieve it moments.

My greatest classroom accomplishment was surprisingly enough Oral Interpretation. That's right it happened in a speech class. In all reality it was more of hybrid of a speech and acting class. You took play cuttings, poetry, or literature and then stood up in front of the class and performed them. Still, me and public speaking do not mix well. There were two types of students in the class: the black sheep broadcasters and the snotty theater majors. I know the theater geeks at first held a little grudge because we were obviously taking the class for an easy grade. What we didn't know was that the professor, Dr. Robey, was not going to let this be an easy class. He consistently tore me apart during every one of my run throughs of the performances. This did kick the broadcasters in gear, and we pretty much dominated the class. My highlight could've been my performance of a scene from "No Time for Sergeants." There I had the audience rolling, and pushed the envelope a little by not cutting a questionable joke in the scene. Ok, it was questionable by Cedarville standards. There was also my crowd pleasing performance of "Puss in Boots." The real highlight though was my "Elephant Man" monologue. After the trial run, Dr. Robey really lit into me and I was pretty devastated. I thought I was screwed. The day of the actual performance I was on the verge of puking. Actually, that happened for every one of my performances. I can't exactly remember how, but I pretty much nailed the performance. It was like Jordan hitting "The Shot," or Ali beating Liston, or Comaneci scoring a perfect 10. I was clearly in that zone. The final result was seeing Dr. Robey's score sheet being handed to me with a perfect score. He only passed out two of those that quarter and got one of them. I came close to repeating with "No Time for Sergeants" but I came up on point shy. Yet, I still hate talking to groups of three or more.

This isn't really an achievement, but getting Rich Mullins to come wake up the boring people during GMA week was kind of cool.