My own March madness

I was doing so many fun things (and homework things) the first two weeks of March that I didn’t have time to write about them here as they were happening! Here’s a recap of what I was up to prior to spring break:

• SNOW DAYS! We had three snow days the first week of March, so I kept busy doing homework and keeping up with my editorial obligations for Contrast, McDaniel’s literary magazine. But on Friday of that week, on our third snow day, I went to Papa Joe’s Mexican restaurant with a group of friends and then went sledding. It was the first time that I had ever been sledding on McDaniel’s legendary golf course sledding hill, and I was glad to have finally given myself the chance to go. I figured it would be my last opportunity to go sledding before I graduate in May, and I knew I would regret it if I didn’t go. No regrets now!
• My Contrast co-editor Jimmy and I led our editorial board through selecting which submissions from our contest in February will be published in this year. We had some great discussions and chose some great pieces of writing and art. We also enjoyed a lot of pizza along the way!
  

  I had this scrumptious coconut french toast for brunch at Rocket to Venus in Baltimore.

• Some of my Writing Center coworkers and I went to The Book Thing the Saturday before spring break. The Book Thing is a warehouse in Baltimore open on Saturdays and Sundays that gives away free books. That’s right — free books. Every year, my boss at the Writing Center organizes a trip for Writing Center tutors to go here to pick up books for our free book shelf and for ourselves. I picked a lot of cool memoirs and works of creative nonfiction for myself and even found a couple books that I had been hoping to find there. Afterwards, we went to brunch a restaurant called Rocket to Venus.

• I got to see my friend Jennifer perform in McDaniel’s production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. It was a fun and funny musical and I was very impressed with how well-cast it was. I’m definitely glad I got to go!

• I attended the annual Bothe Poetry Reading. The Bothe is one of my favorite annual events at McDaniel; it’s always a treat to hear authors read their own poetry and to see all of the McDaniel English faculty in one place. This year, I got to enjoy the added bonus of being invited to President Roger Casey’s house for dinner prior to the lecture. It was a fun opportunity to chat with my classmates, professors, and this year’s guest poet Carol Frost.

Clearly, March has kept me quite busy. McDaniel is on spring break right now, which is giving me a bit of a much-needed break from things, but I know that once I get back to campus, I’ll be going at full throttle again!