Fear of the Unknown

Barns at Davis

I want a spot in a barn at Davis, any barn, so badly I can taste it. I want to be in the middle of everything, near the animals and people who think like me, who are as crazy about critters as I am. Who do not think I am strange or weird for loving animals as much as I do. People who I can talk to about common interests and share stories that they might relate to. Of course, the horse barn would be ideal, but I am sure that one it the most sought after. I would love a spot in the swine barn, the sheep barn, or the cattle barn, I love all of those critters, too! I

Sean agrees with my emotional reasons for wanting to living in the barns, but he also sees the practical side. We love Shorty, but the expense of fixing him up for the drive and making him livable is pretty hefty. Plus, parking him somewhere would mean paying rent, even if at a discounted rate. And I would be required to drive probably, since most of the off campus living where we could park a trailer is four plus miles away. With an old Jeep like Stan, who gets about 12 mpg on a good day, the gas really adds up. Saving on start-up and monthly costs would take a great deal of the burden off of Sean’s shoulders, since he is the only one working right now. Hopefully he could work out a deal, whether he lives with his parents, his brother, or anyone else while I am gone, to do a partial work exchange for his room.

Not knowing what is going to happen tempts me to worry, but I need to remember that my Lord knows what He wants, and all I need to do is my very best, and He will open the doors that He wants me to walk through. 

Graduation

Yesterday was scary; I was talking to Emma in animal science advising at UC Davis via email, asking random questions she might be able to help me with. She mentioned that I needed to turn in a SIR (student intent to register). I have no idea what that is, so I went to talk to my counselor here at COD, Laurie. 

We then starting talking about my wanting to take Calc 1B this summer, as we (the students in my Calc 1A class) are petitioning to have it offered. She said I would need to go to admissions and push my graduation paperwork back from spring 2013 to Summer 2013, with the assurance that I will still be able to walk in the spring graduation. Then, I looked up my old email from last semester, the one sent from the lady who processes the intent to graduate paperwork. She had highlighted the classes I needed to take (pre-calc, bio, chem, speech, art, etc.) and at the bottom, wrote that I needed to fulfill my foreign language requirement. 

The problem: I only took one year of Spanish at Joshua Springs, and to meet the IGETC requirement you need either two years of high school foreign language, or one year of college. I started to get very worried, thinking I would have to forfeit my spot at Davis for a single general ed class. Laurie assured me that Spanish is usually offered in the summer, but if I have to take the summer course here at COD, I will not be able to take the internship at MSU (if they pick me, very unlikely but a girl can hope). However, she looked it up in the old schedules and said it has been offered online in the summers, so even if I get the internship I will still be able to meeting the foreign language requirement and graduate with an IGETC certification.  

My options for summer are now either go on the internship and take the Spanish class online, or, stay here, take Calc 1B and Spanish (online or in class). The hardest part about staying here will be talking the people who regulate classes into letting me take 10 summer units (the cap is 6). 

Evolution

Flashback:

I was five years old, sitting in kindergarten, the only year I ever went to public school. I had finished my written report early, and my teacher Mrs. Gonzales had allowed me to go on the class computer while I waited for everyone else to finish. It was quite the honor.

We had been learning about dinosaurs that week, and on the computer was an interactive program that allowed me to investigate theories about how the dinosaurs had disappeared. I watched the videos and weighed the evidence, then finally decided that dinosaurs had been killed by a giant asteroid that had come through and taken them all out hundreds of millions of years ago.

I was so excited when I came home from school; I could not wait to tell my mom that I had figured out how the dinosaurs had all died! I told her, nearly jumping out of my skin in childish excitement. I could not understand her reaction, why she did not share my glee. Then she sat me down and explained to me about creation and evolution.

In class today, the students behind me were laughing about a conversation one of them had had with a creationist. They thought it was hilarious that his only rebuttal against any claim of evolution was to employ passages of scripture. This meant nothing to the student behind me, as he does not believe the Bible to be true. They went on to talk about how religions have died out as science proved them wrong, citing the Egyptian god, Ra. They were shocked that anyone can believe in anything besides evolution, since “the evidence has proven it to be true.” They said it was a 99.9% proven theory, which made evolution law. Their words, not mine.

What struck me as terrifying, and has always done so since I became aware of evolution as a five-year-old, was that the theory of evolution was and is being taught to students in school as the only theory of how everything came to be. They might stick “theory” in the title, but the way teachers and professors talk about evolution, and the way they back it up with fossils and evidence that “prove” the millions and billions of years everything took to evolve, no child without a firm foundation otherwise would or could believe anything else.

The irony is, today during a lecture about the evolution of plants, my college biology professor used terms like flawlessly created and impeccably designed in the same breath he used to tell us that all of this happened by accident and for no apparent reason. He explained to us that angiosperms are so masterfully fashioned that flower petal cells have traction to allow pollinators to grip while they collect nectar and pollen. Compared to animals and their biological systems, plants might be considered simple, yet even down to the most miniscule detail their every particle was purposed.

I think if people were honest with themselves, they would realize that the intricacies of life cannot be a mistake, that there is no way this universe came from nothing, and that nothing evolved into radioactive sludge that evolved into bacteria that evolved into fish that evolved into everything we see today.

Evolutionists laugh at creationists because they say we do not have evidence. The Bible might be our textbook, but the universe is our evidence. I pray for a day that the scales will be lifted from their eyes, and they will be able to see how incredible God is for creating a world like ours, a world that even riddled with sin is so intricate, so carefully designed that only willful ignorance could disguise His fingerprints.

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth,” and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind, and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day. 

Genesis 1:11-13

Club Rush!

We kicked off our new charter for the biology club with rush last week. Got a bunch of new members to add, now we are closing in on about sixty-five! It is a bigger club than I thought it was going to be, so I am starting to get a little anxious about our first meeting this Thursday. I'm excited, though, because I know it is going to be a blast! (Well, maybe not the meeting itself, but the stuff we have planned for the club will be awesome!)

Me, on the left, and my good friend Dana on the right, who also happens to be the biology club's vice president. :)

Garden Updates

Date Festival

The Last Two Weeks in Photos



Sean's before and after haircut photos.

Valentine's Day with the Morongo Valley Fire Station

Girl's Night Out

Adding strawberries to the garden.

Real fire fighters have mustaches.

Sean's poor burned arm! It looks even worse now.

 Best times

Training with a helicopter.

Sean looking cool in his work clothes.

Snow in Morongo Valley!

My Guide Dogs get up.