Almost four months ago I debated the question of whether or not grad school would prove to be as difficult endeavour as promised. Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you today to say that yes, it is difficult -- and yes, I love it ( Read more... )

At pretty much every stage of the educational process, I can distinctly recall being sat down and told that the next stage was going to be vastly different and many times more difficult. Elementary and middle school paled in comparison to junior high, junior high school didn't have anything on high school, college was a whole different world than ( Read more... )

Life HAS been pretty goddamned good to me lately, and bear in mind that I'm writing this thought out at the unholy hour of 9:10AM -- uncaffeinated, still slighty sweaty from the ride to work, and in desperate need of my morning banana and yogurt. Our humanity is truly stripped bare and presented for all to see in a state such as this ( Read more... )

It's been a banner week or two (or three or four...I don't write in here very often anymore, do I?) for Team Steffel. A few weeks back I received an immensely complicated letter from St. Kate's stating that I'd been waitlisted for Fall 2007 but accepted for Winter 2008. This has left me rather confused about whether to tell people that I was ( Read more... )

I know I was, which is why I created a 20-question quiz about myself.


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I admire my dad for a great deal of reasons, but perhaps one of the most specific of them is that he used to take a great deal of pride in debating Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses that appeared at his door.  He spent a great deal of the latter 1970s as an idler intellectual of sorts, so whenever someone would come knocking at his door to evangelize ( Read more... )

1. What are your initials?
NJS

2. Name someone who shares your birthday.
Hugh Hefner.  We should really get together and chat one of these days.

3. Where was your first kiss?
At my place back on 4th Street.

4. For or against same sex marriage?
For.  Let them pay higher taxes and adopt all the children they want!

5. The next place you want to visit.
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One more thing.  I have an intense desire to go see Children of Men, probably early next week at some point.  If you share this interest, be sure to let me know so we can coordinate and make a grand old time of it.

Christmas and New Year's have now come and gone -- I hope everyone else's were as pleasant as mine.  For Christmas Eve I went and hung out with Elise's family aroundabout the Mankato area, a pleasant experience that afforded me an opportunity to see Elise's extended clan in lieu of a twenty-first consecutive Christmas Eve of awkwardly sitting ( Read more... )

While walking through the skyways of our fair city's downtown, you hear a lot of odd tidbits from passing conversations. Yesterday I was privy to perhaps the absolute most misinformed thing I've ever heard fall out of someone's mouth ( Read more... )