Andy’s Blog

First of all I’m just getting over a cold it wasn’t really too bad just a little thing but I ended up leaving school yesterday after I took my exam which I got a 26/30 on which I was pretty happy about.  Yesterday I went to bed feeling pretty crappy but this morning I woke up feeling a lot better, but that soon changed.  I started to feel crappy as the day went on and since I don’t have class until 1:30 I didn’t go to dance today either which is the first time I’ve missed that class.  Apparently we learned a few new things in Salsa today which makes me sad.  But in general I’m starting to feel better now so hopefully it’ll carry out for tomorrow.  The one thing that sucked about being sick at the time I was is I missed a good friend’s 21st birthday last night and surprise party today.  Oh well shit happens I guess.

The next main thing on my mind is money.  I think this is on everyone’s mind especially with the economy in the situation that it’s in right now.  I have a job that I enjoy doing and the people I work with, but the biggest problem is that I work from home and don’t have scheduled hours or anything like that so it gets hard to coordinate with them especially since they’re in Chicago and I’m in Arizona.  At least it’s not as bad as it was now that there is only a 1 hour time difference versus the 2 that was in effect before.  But I am looking for something more steady not that I would quit the job I’m at now, but this is proving to be a nightmare with the state the economy is in.  Sure I could probably easily get myself into a McDonalds or Burger King, but no offense to people who work there but I think I could definitely get something better than that.  I’ve been looking on Monster and CraigsList, but this isn’t really working since everyone wants full time people or people that only work during the day.  I think I’m going to have to expand my horizons to restaurants and see what I can.  The biggest road block I’ve noticed with restaurants is 99% of them really want somebody that has some kind of experience.  Yeah I worked at a pizza place for a few months and worked catering with Joe a few times, but it’s not much.  

I guess the last thing on my mind is school.  I’d have to say this semester is a little rough, and I’m not doing as good as I thought I would be and I’m not really sure why that is.  Maybe it’s because I just turned 21?  Who knows, but I have found better study habits.  Instead of studying the night or even two nights before an exam I found it much much much more useful to go over the material for the week on the weekends even if it’s glancing over my notes which is why I think I did a lot better on the exam that I mentioned above.  Anyways I think that’s all I have on my mind for now. 

I’ll keep everyone updated and let me know your thoughts as well!
Andy

So I’m looking to become an “official” resident of Arizona in ASU’s eyes, but apparently that’s not going to happen.  I must be completly self sustaining which I am, but according to ASU being independent means making enough money to pay tuition (the out of state tuition by the way) AND enough money to reasonably live.  This means I must make $18,000 PLUS an additional $8,000.  Add those together and I must make $26,000 a year and the real kicker is that the $18,000 for tuition CAN’T come from student loans.  Working a full time job for 52 weeks a year @ 40 hours I must make $12.50 to come up with $26,000 a year.  Factor in the fact that I’m taking 18 credit hours it’s virtually impossible to work 40 hours a week.  Alright so lets do some more math for funsies.  Assuming I work 40 hours a week for the summer and winter so about 5 months and 20 hours a week for the school year working a same job I must make $17.50 an hour which now as I’m writing this doesn’t seem too unreasonable, but still that’s assuming I can work 20 hours per week and balance 18 credit hours.  The thing that frustrates me the most is that I can’t use student loans to pay for tuition.  That shouldn’t matter how I’m paying my tuition because even residents use student loans to pay for their tuition if they have to.

So we are moving.  Not sure who I’ve really told this to but I hate the house I live in…Not my roommates probably the only reason I’ve stayed in this house but it’s falling apart and its uncomfortable during the day since we have to keep the A/C at 85 and realistically in my room that’s closer to 90-93^o which in AZ is not fun.  But we checked out this 5 bedroom house yesterday and it’s VERY close to ASU only 2 miles away so we aren’t going to have a problem finding 2 other roommates at $450 with utilities included at all.  The best part about this new house is that it has a pool!  And the rent is only $1850 for 5 bedroom/4 bathroom and did I mention a pool?  Joe is filling out the paperwork today and talking to the guy and hopefully we’ll be moving in the middle of August before school starts so I’m really excited for that!  So wish us luck and I’ll keep you posted on what happens

So I’m not really sure why I forgot to mention this in my last post…but apparently I’m a baby saver and no one cares.  I went over to Joe’s niece’s birthday part on Saturday…she turned one.  Anyways everyone was hanging out by the pool…well not everyone but I was and we had some babies with us at the steps so they were tall enough to stand.  So one of the babies decided to take one step too far and ended up going under and natural instinct kicked in and I went in and grabbed him…yes with all my clothes on.  Here’s the real kicker cell phone = in pocket = bad.  Grant it I probably had enough time to take my cell phone out of my pocket before getting in but I didn’t think about anything else except to go in.  And if you think breaking my cell phone was bad here’s the worst part of it at all.  I bring the kid back up and the parents told me I didn’t have to do that and he would have been fine.  WHAT?!  He was probably at oldest one…2 feet tall at the most in a 3 ft pool completly underwater.  Yes I got him in probably less than 3 seconds, but I don’t know of too many babies who go under water without some kind of panic setting in meaning his heart rate increased (and if you know about the heart rate of babies compared to adults it’s already much higher)…the higher heart rate and adrenaline rush means you need more oxygen meaning you need to breath…and what happens when you breathe underwater?  You drown…no bueno.  So basically I lost a cellphone with no gratitude at least from the parents.  Anyways after that incident the party was pretty fun ended up going in the pool myself with the older (by older I mean like 8 year olds) and did the whole big brother like thing with Joe doing monkey fights and races and all that fun stuff.  Kinda made me realize that I need to start swimming again because just from that stuff it was a huge workout.  Okay enough about the weekend two exams today whew!  Neither one of them were bad at all though pretty easy.