People are the key to life, not timing

Take a breath and clear your mind. Now focus clearly on this question, can one day be the difference of your life? Think honestly. If you say yes, is it true also that one moment can affect the rest of your life? Picture this. You are about to cross a busy street at an intersection and you glance at your watch after you see the light is green. Seeing that you are running a couple minutes late you automatically step out from the curb, just as if you were in the car you would have stepped on the pedal to accelerate.

Five fingers grab your left shoulder and yank you backwards. You hit the ground hard. A bus passes filling your lungs with fumes and leaving splatters of dirt and dust on your clothes.

You could have been killed. You did not see the bus. You saw everything else that you thought was important. You failed to recognize the world around you, not revolving around you.

This is realistic story but I do not know if it is true. I happened to hear it by word of mouth. I think life is similar to this event especially after you have had a similar experience. But I do not think the difference of a week, a day, or an event of time affects us as much as the people we meet. A stranger is the hero in the story above, not a moment of time.

Not every unique person is going to affect your life in positive or negative manners, but there are a lot of people that I can remember who helped me start a new phase or level of my life. Not everyday do I meet one of these strangers who guide me away from my ignorance or shock me so greatly_thatI am thrown into another world, but some days I get really lucky.

The day of service was a lucky day for me. I cannot tell you how many times I have written in my career development papers how I wish I had more time to dedicate to service. No matter who I help day to day, it feels like nothing compared to the feeling I get when the help ·is volunteer

Lancaster, the shore, dead chickens

Saturday holds such high expectations. Either you work all week, or you go to school all week, or you are one of the lucky few who gets to do both and you just cannot wait for Saturday to come. Saturday, however, isn't all it's cracked up to be.

It was so much easier when I was 10. I'd wake up, eat three bowls of something covered in MichaelA Kazanjian chocolate with a splash of milk editor in chief and proceed to watch cartoons until my ass hurt. Well those days are gone. Now I wake up, shower, shave and go to work. I'm not even sure if Saturday morning cartoons still exist. My entire Saturday isn't shot though. I get off work at 1 so after that I'm free to frolic.

The major difference between Saturdays when you're a kid and when you're supposed to be an adult is the planning. Nothing just happens anymore, it needs to be planned. This is where I fail miserably. Three Saturdays from this past summer come to mind immediately.

Saturday number one. My significant other and I decid6 to take a ride into Lancaster. I guess the plan was to see how differently people live even though they live no more than two hours away. Well, we really didn't get that far. After an hour or so of driving we hit some major traffic. You really know traffic is bad when horse and buggies blaze by you and your "luxury" automobile. The next hour and a half was spent crawling up the street. We finally got into Lancaster realizing that neither of us were interested in Amish people. The only thing we did was go to the GAP outlet. I drove three hours to go to the GAP. In case you missed that, I DROVE THREE HOURS TO GO THE GAP! I didn't even buy anything.

The next Saturday wasn't much better. After our failed attempt at Amishville we decided to try something more traditional. Off to the Jersey Shore we went. Well, sort of.

Again I dealt with the demon known as "traffic." A ride that normally takes no more than an hour and fifteen minutes lasted for about four glorious hours. Eureka! We hit the beach.

Unfortunately, so did the storm clouds. But we stuck it out. As people fled the beach in horror we stayed. Damn it, it took me four hours to get there and I was going to get stung by a greenhead fly, no matter what force of nature tried to drive me out.

While these last two Saturdays weren't a success, at least they weren't volatile. The final Saturday of the summer was the Saturday to top them all. My mother's friend owns a few apartments on Broad Street in Philadelphia. She told my mom that some tenants had just moved out and they needed the place cleaned before the new tenants moved in. My mom told her that her son and his girlfriend might be interested in doing it for some extra cash. So we agreed.

We walked into that hellhole three days later and regretted it ever since. Dirt was caked to every comer of this place. The more we scrubbed the more dirt seemed to pop up. The kicker, however, was the refrigerator. I pulled that door open and nearly tossed my cookies. The feathers that were stuck in the carpet should have tipped us off to something shady. What I discovered was as horrific sight as you could imagine. Residing on the bottom shelf of the fridge was a dead chicken. We're not talking about Purdue here, we're talking about a chicken that was beheaded in the living room and tossed into the icebox in a pool of blood. I'll allow you a minute to cringe. Okay, are you feeling all right? Well, I wasn't dumb enough to touch it, don't worry, I left that lovely task up to the landlord. Was it worth the sixty bucks we got paid? No way in hell.

So this is what Saturday has become. What a shame. Thank God there's always Sunday.

work.

My group was small and we went to the Mom Mobile, an organization that helps mothers or soon to be mothers. When we arrived we were split in half and I spent my day in the children's nursery for two-year-olds and younger. I love children so this was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. The childcare workers were so sad that we were only there for one. day but we helped them a great deal in the small amount of time. There were many children f?r only a couple pairs of hands. Patience was the new lesson of the day until I got to talk with another group member.

On small breaks our group chatted and learned a little bit about each other. Later one person and I picked up our get to know you conversation and as we began to dip a little deeper I was simply amazed with this person. I probably will not see this person again throughout the year, but the short time we had was unique.

Last week I realized how much I learned in just the difference of a day. I want to thank my new friend for making my life a little more real.

The difference of commuting

doesn't feel right. And if you look at the other commuters they seem to agree.

' We shower and dress and come to class looking almost refreshed. ...

All of this preparing takes up time and I'm not a morning person.

Beth Conahan news editor

Commuting is tough. You probably did not even notice I was gone but, that's right, this year I am off-campus.

I leave my apartment a half an hour before class and drive onto campus only to cruise up and down the parking lot behind Founders and find that the only spots available are at the Dixon Center.

There is something strange that I have noticed about this whole commuter thing. As a resident, I would roll out of bed five minutes before class, look awful and would not care.

As a commuter, that just

Even after I get to school and go to class, my hardships are not over.

When you have an hour between classes, what is a girl to do? She can't go back to her room and tum on a bad episode of Jerry Springer. It's too far to drive home and back. For an hour, I have to find a place to exist, the Wigwam.or outside, or in the library, whereever I am not in the way.

I like living off-campus though. I get to leave Cabrini behind at the end of a day. My roommates are cool and I do not live in fear of RAs or Public saf~ty. I mean, not that I ever did anything I should not have.