Independence Day

Well, it certainly has been awhile- my apologies for my extended absence. The last few months have been a real roller-coaster ride. Since my first voting poll, I have:

- Been the sound engineer for a musical

- Attended senior prom (without dancing)

- Embarked on a week-long trip with my graduating class

- Gone white-water rafting

- Graduated high school

- Survived a summer job with two happily sarcastic superiors

- Climbed onto the roof of an elementary school

- Taken up singing

- Fought a blog-hacker

- Received the worst sunburn of my life

- Hidden in a clump of bushes for 45 minutes

- Moved to college

Wow. It's pretty wild to see it all laid out like that. I have doubtlessly been very busy. Obviously, the point in that list you have all been waiting so patiently to hear about is the elev-... er, last one. Yes, I type this to you all from my dorm room at Indiana Wesleyan University. This is my fourth full day on campus, having moved in on Sunday. It was a sunny day...

         After attending the early service at church, we Hokes undertook the complex job of packing every item required to sustain human life in our Volvo. Many grimaces were sighted. The sheer amount of stuff was rather daunting, considering that if it had all been placed on the end of a teeter-totter, it would have lifted up Fat Albert on the other end. Fortunately, my mother used some foresight and borrowed a large tub to place on top of the car, providing more space. One sighted grimace came the first time I laid eyes on this tub. (I use the word "tub" because I don't know what in the world is more similar to it.) Don't get me wrong- it was definitely helpful, and otherwise, we probably wouldn't have fit everything in the car. However, it is also necessary to understand that our Volvo has aerodynamic properties equal to those of a brick. So, imagine trying to make this brick more aerodynamic by placing a large, oblong stone on top of the brick. Not helpful. But, in the end, the tub worked out. We even managed to fit everything I had hoped in/on the car, despite the helpful advice of our beloved neighbor. ("You know you're never gonna get all that to fit!") 

         Two and a half hours later, we arrived in Marion, IN. As I look around me, we did a pretty darn good job, and it went really well! I have school supplies, snacks, electronics, a four-man suite with only one sweet man (me), great surroundings, and the resources of an entire university at my disposal. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know that I'm liking what is happening. With a little luck and a lot of prayer, I'm hoping I'll survive some of the best experiences of my life here. Hopefully the family will also survive, despite my extended absence.

More details to follow...

The First of Many

Well, as you can see from the picture, I have officially experienced my first voting polls. *Thunderous applause echoes throughout the room.* Yes, I have made my first foray into the black hole of the federal government, from which there is no turning back. So, having reached so important a stage of my life, I thought I would share my experience with anyone who cares to know...

The first thing my thought landed upon was the setting for the polls: a church. In this certain precinct of Beavercreek, Ohio, voters step into a church (which may be a rare occasion) and decide who they want to run their country... I don't know, it provoked my thought. Anyway, the second thing I noticed, was the disproportionate amount of tables to queues of people. Four precincts meet at this particular place, evidently one of which had any turnout. Four precincts. One line. Guess which one had the line? That's right. So not only is it my first time voting- it is also my first experience thinking about rain, polling stations, Calculus, play practice, voter ID, lines, and grumpy old women behind tables all at the same time while being helpless to speed up said time.

Fast-forward a half hour (because nothing interesting ever happens while standing still). I arrive at The Table, which is a proper noun due to the high degree of power saturating the air surrounding it. Three volunteers look at me simultaneously. The first, a stocky man with a crew cut, asks me my name. I respond with a simple "Andrew Hoke", not realizing the consequences of these two words. I immediately realized why I had stood in line for so long. Crew Cut hefts a 52-inch binder in front of him, and begins paging through it, at most two pages at a time. This notebook contained the name of every homo sapien born since Noah's Flood, and Mr. Cut can't seem to summon the necessary energy to widen the gap between his fingers to grasp more pages at once. Fortunately, all good things must come to an end, and the Crew finally got to the page with my name. After studying it for a few minutes, just to rub it in, he indicated a rectangular box. "Sign here," he said in a voice containing less emotion than that in a stuffed animal. I quickly obeyed and moved on to the remaining volunteers.

Due to space and time constraints, The Adventures With Grandma Moses and College Graduate Wanna-Be will not be duscussed here. Know only that I experienced my most pleasant moments with Mr. Cut.

All humor aside, the overall experience wasn't so bad. Apart from a long wait, a cranky card-slider thingy, and forgetting to retrieve my driver's license, I actually enjoyed the chance to have a say in what my country does. To those in totalitarian or dictatorial societies, the United States must indeed be the beacon of hope and freedom that it is renowned to be. I would hope that anyone with this freedom would not take it for granted, and would fulfill the duties of an American citizen.

Details As Follows

So what is up with college? Where am I going? What will I be doing? Well, here it is in a nutshell... I will be attending Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) in the fall of 2008. IWU is located in Marion, IN which is about 2 and a half hours NW of Dayton and a little over an hour NE of Indianapolis. It's a fairly small Christian school, with about 3500 undergraduate students on campus. It has very modern and up-to-date facilities, including a brand new gazillion sqare foot communications building that opened this past fall (actual number unknown). It's a really nice campus and I really like the environment. For more detailed details, go here.

One of the biggest reasons I chose IWU is for policy of trust. At IWU, you don't start at the bottom of the "Good Kid" totem pole and have to work your way up. They start you at the top, and it's up to you whether or not you want to go down. They fully realize that all the students are adults, and expect them to act accordingly. Flowing from this is the extremely joyous lack of stupid rules. If you want to be stupid, there is no "rule" preventing you from being stupid- you will just suffer the consequences. This is very nice for all the kids (of which I count myself one) who don't want to be stupid. The rules that other institutions create that are intended for the stupid kids that end up affecting everyone don't exist! I couldn't have done it any better. I was immediately and warmly embraced by the notion of a school not governed by stupidity being countered with stupidity. Let's see, I got through that with only... 7 stupids. Moving on...

I will (most likely) be majoring in media communication, therefore joining the bevy of Scavo cousins who make their living pushing buttons. The brand spankin' new communications building mentioned above is where I'll be spending most of my Junior and Senior years. I don't know many details about the program itself because I have a few years until I actually start it.

I think that's about it. If you have any other questions that I didn't answer, utilize the privilege to post a comment!

A Long Expected Return

*Inhale* . . . . *Exhale* My, it's good to be back! Welcome, friends and family, to the return of my personal weblog! First of all, I will sustain the lifespan of this blog longer than my last. So don't worry. This blog will (hopefully) still exist four years from now, which brings me to my second point! This blog will serve a single purpose: to keep you all in touch with what is happening with me during my days in college! Weird, isn't it? How can I be on my way to college? Well, obviously I'm not there yet, but I have done the first (actually like the millionth) thing for moving to another state. I went clothes shopping! Celebrate the anticlimactic! This page will record my progress through the next stage of life and keep you in regular contact with me. There will be another post coming in the next few days that will give you further details on where I'm going, what I'll be doing, and how I'll be surviving. So, thanks for reading, and make sure to stop in every once in a while.