Blog Post #5- Free Topic- My dorm

I believe that everyone has a certain place that is their center, their place to get away, their place to relax. As we move to college, many students lose their beloved serenity spot. They are moved into an unfamiliar place with many unfamiliar people. Where do they go to get away in a place they don’t even know? Last year, during my first year of college, I struggled with that very same problem. I never knew where to go to be purely in Zen. Every place I went was strange and not mine. So, one day I got fed up and decided that if I couldn’t find a place to be my own, I’d make one. From that point on, I worked on covering all the walls with memories of things that made me happy. I used pictures, old letters that I had kept, a giant pirate flag that I commandeered from a friend and many different band posters. From that point on I felt the year went by much more smoothly. My room here at Wesleyan is no different. I have taken all the creativity I have in my to create a room that makes me smile every time that I walk in it. Even though I was supposed to be living in an apartment on campus and got moved into Burt Hall which is notorious for their extremely tiny rooms, I still enjoy every inch of my dorm. On the North wall you’ll find that you can’t even see the color of the paint on the walls because they are covered from ceiling to floor in my favorite pictures and favorite memories. The East wall, which houses the only window to my cell, has a large Beatles poster and other random letters or notes that I cherish. The South wall is completely covered in band posters including Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, the Ramones, and Pink Floyd. The west wall, where our closets are found, is far from bare as well. Underneath my loft you can find a groovy Buddhist tapestry that my roommate brought. Underneath her loft is the pirate flag that I so cherish. If you look on the ceiling, you’ll find an abstract version of the sun and moon made out of construction paper. Everyone always tells me how my room looks like they just stepped into the 60/70s. My room is definitely my comfort place. All I can say is that I’m glad my roommate has the same hippy style as me!

Blog Post #4- Free topic--PAIN

Everyone knows that there is no real definition of pain. Some think that pain comes from a paper cut; others say that you have to go as far as any serious injury requiring surgery and even others say that that isn’t even true pain. It’s all based on one’s pain tolerance. Recently, I’ve learned that my pain tolerance is not very high. But then again, this comes as no surprise to me. I’m not going to pretend that I’m comparable to Rambo because, let’s face it, I’m not. Recently, I’ve been required to wear a brace because of the, what I consider to be, severe pain. It’s not broken, it’s not sprained, in fact, I have no clue what’s wrong with it. Last Wednesday, I was forced to go to the doctor, who happens to be my own dad, so that they can run every test under the sun to find out what in the hell is wrong with me. Their leading guess is that I am suffering from a pretty bad case of carpal tunnel so they started me off with that test. If you don’t know, the carpel tunnel screening is a test that hooks you up to a series of wires that connects you to a machine. The purpose of this machine is to shock you over and over and over again to determine how your nerves react to decide if you do have the symptoms. Each test consists of ten shocks to the hand. They start by connecting the wires to the wrist and up to you middle finger. After ten shocks to feel very similar to grabbing on to an electric fence multiple times, they continue by shocking the opposite hand to compare. For some reason, the tests to my left hand weren’t being read by the machine so we have to retry it three different times. Now my hands have gone through 40 shocks. After this test the nurse returns to my right hand and connects the wires to my pinky finger. Ten more shocks. After sitting in the minor surgery room for 15 minutes, waiting for the results, the nurse comes back with a guilty look on her face and informs me that the results from the very first test didn’t come out either. So we proceed to torture my hand for two more tests. After the nurse had successfully shocked me 70 times she comes back to tell me that the results came back negative. Great! All of that for nothing! Even though the tests were negative, my dad didn’t want to take any risks so he informs me that they are going to inject a steroid into my wrist to help with the pain. To make this story complete, I think that you need to realize that I might be the worst patient to give shots to. For some unknown reason I have gained a huge phobia to needles. Believe it or not, the pain in my wrist was so horrid that I was willing to go through anything just for the hope that it may be better soon. As they injected the steroid into my nerves I could feel the pain shoot up all to the way to my elbow but the doctors promise me that that was a promising sign. I really didn’t understand how more pain was promising but I wasn’t in any shape to argue. So how does one define pain? Can it be described as any physical discomfort to the human body or is everyone’s definition of pain just what they can or can’t take? If each of our definitions are different, mine would be short and simple. For me, pain is everything in my right hand.