My Life

So, I'm still alive, and still blogging. This term is driving my a little crazy, but it's halfway over so I think I'll make it. MIACs are also in 9 days, which will also help out a lot as this term concludes.

I'm actually really enjoying my classes this term, which is great because I plan on compsing out of one of them (my Foreign Policy Analysis class). I've learned more in my Politics of Global Economic Relations class than I have in any other class at Carleton, except my beginning Russian courses. I can watch CNBC and have a pretty good idea about what they're talking about, which is pretty cool. It's also made me realize just how fucked the American economy is. My third class, Pushkin, is the class that I complain the most about because its the class that takes up the most time. The first week of class my professor decided that we would write a 2-3 page essay in Russian for every class. That added up to about 30 essays in Russian for the term. After everyone in the class spent 12 hours writing the first essay, we all went to the prof and convinced her to make it one page. The sad thing is that the poetry and novels that we've read have been excellent, but I hate my life so much because of this class that I don't appreciate it at all.

Swimming has been going a lot better in the last few weeks than it did at the beginning of the season. After a few meets that were pretty typical of my midseason (I think I went 2:13 in the 200 fly once...) Andy decided that I could try out the 200 back again, which was my best event in high school. I went within a second of my lifetime best, then swam it the next weekend and went a lifetime best, and then I swam it again this weekend and cut another second. So it looks like I'll get out of doing the 500 this season, which will be excellent. I always feel that I'm a lot slower for the last 2 days of MIACs after swimming the 500, especially after I sprinted the first 300 yards of it last year. The last two years I've thought that doubling the 200 fly and 200 back would be too much for day 3, but Andy had me try it out at the Minnesota Challenge this weekend and it worked out quite well, I even went a lifetime best in the 100 free on the 400 free relay after doing the 2 200s.

MIACs is going to be really exciting this year, we got a very strong freshman class and I'm really excited to see what they pull out. Mamoru and Klontz have been getting all the attention, but make sure you watch Ethan in the 100 and 200 fly, I think he's gonna have a ridiculous taper. We might have the best fly squad in the MIAC, we could easily have 3 guys under 53, and maybe under 52 in the 100. And 2 guys under 2 in the 200 fly. Also, I'm predicting that Sjoberg breaks 5 in the 500, you heard it from me first. Somehow, I think we're a much deeper team than we were last year, especially in the sprint free events. I think our 200 free relay is going to get 2nd or 3rd at MIACs, and we'll have a strong 400 free relay too, we had 5 guys under :50 on relays at the Challenge, which I think is a first for a meet I've swam at Carleton (the B relay went a 3:21, which is a great example of our depth this year). I think we're definitely the dark horse at MIACs this year, but I think we have a good chance at shocking St. Johns. Especially with our new cheer that Andy keeps having us do...