Not the Best years of my life

I guess this is for all those older alumni. I had a good time at Duke, don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed what Duke provided for me academically and I met some pretty cool people along the way. For some reason though, at graduation I wasn't overwhelmed with sadness, I wasn't counting down the days until I had to actually have responsibility, it was almost like any other day. People kept asking "so how does it feel to have graduated?" well it feels the same for now. I guess once I start work I'll wish I could have the same schedule of waking up at 11. I'm scared that I didn't take advantage of "the best years of my life". Does it really go downhill from here? Everyone talks about making life long friends in college, if that didn't happen should I expect to just have acquaintances for the rest of my life? I guess I just need some reassurance from someone who is in their mid twenties or thirties and still having or just started "the best years". I suppose life is what you make it and I thought I made college a pretty valuable learning experience and socially it was good (especially the first two years) but overall it wasn't anything spectacular. Is it me?

Recipe of the Week

For all of you who want to cook up a great meal for some friends in your dorm, on Central or at home, here's a recipe for African Shrimp(or chicken) Curry. It's got lots of flavor and a dash of spiciness but nothing too hot!

Ingredients
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 small onion (chopped)
1 pepper (any color, chopped)
3 cloves of garlic (chopped)
1 can of diced tomatoes (or 5 small tomatoes chopped)
3 tsp of curry powder
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 lb of shrimp (could replace with cut up chicken breast)
1/2 can of coconut milk
a couple squirts of lemon juice
a pinch of sugar
and one bay leaf (don't break the leaf, leave it in to cook and then take out before serving)

Directions
1. In a large sauce pan or wok, saute onions, garlic and bay leaf for a few minutes in olive oil then add peppers and onion until brown

2. Add tomatoes, curry powder, chili powder and salt. Cook 5 minutes

3. Add shrimp or chicken and cook til done (Shrimp takes about 8 minutes, basically when it's not pink anymore and the chicken will take longer around 15 minutes)

4. Add coconut milk slowly and finally lemon juice

5. Serve with rice (let me know if anyone needs directions on how to cook rice!)

ENJOY!

Easy QS?

I really dislike math, I'm definitely more of a paper writer than a test taker. Does anyone know a class aside from Stat 10 or 101 that I could take for a not as harsh math experience? I'd prefer something without a lab but at this point anything will do.

How to get a job

I'm only a Sophomore, but I'm starting to feel the pressure of needing to decide what major I'll choose by the end of the year in order to get a good job. Some of my older friends say it doesn't matter what I choose while others think it's very important (as well as my parents!) Are there any alumni or seniors who could help relieve this stress or let me know what their experiences have been with majors and jobs?

Divisions at Duke?

I've heard that the Duke campus is really divided, is this true? How are the divisions made? Do a lot of girls end up losing friends if they don't join a sorority? I know statistically how many people are in Greek life, but honestly do girls feel left out if they're not in one?

Desert Flower by Waris Dirie

For those of you who need some inspiration. Easy read, great story

From a Time article in 2002:
"Her story is the stuff of fiction: the daughter of Somali desert nomads, Waris ("desert flower" in Somali) Dirie fled her family when she was about 13 to escape marriage to a man old enough to be her grandfather. She landed in London as a servant to wealthy relatives and worked as a cleaner at McDonald's before becoming a supermodel, a James Bond girl, a U.N. special ambassador and a best-selling writer.

Hard to believe? Only until you meet Dirie. A warm but somehow elusive woman in her mid-30s — she doesn't know her age, nomads having little use for calendars and clocks — she radiates a luminous beauty with a whiff of the wild and free. Dirie is strikingly attractive, but her dramatic rags-to-riches journey was fueled not just by looks, but also by resilience. She calls it the power of the spirit. "I felt the power," she says when relating how she overcame some crisis or other in her life. "Believe in yourself, and nothing can stop you." That strength sustained her when she nearly died after being circumcised at the age of about five with a dirty razor blade. It saw her through her desert escape and the vagaries of a frenetic life on the international modeling circuit.

Dirie wrote about all this in Desert Flower, her 1998 autobiography, which topped the British, German (1.75 million copies) and Dutch best-seller lists."

Read entire article at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901020715-300618,00.html

Eating Disorder?

I can't stop counting calories. I don't know why, it's not like I don't eat because I do but I'm just constantly calculating it in my head. Instead of being like I'm eating a piece of bread with a yogurt I'm adding up numbers (slice of bread 80 + lowfat yogurt 100). Sometimes when I work out I even subtract the number of calories I've burned from my total calorie intake. Is this the beginning of an eating disorder? I don't think I'll stop eating but it's like I'm obsessed with counting calories.

High School Boyfriend

I'm an incoming freshmen and my boyfriend and I are trying to figure out if we should stay together for college or break up. We've been together for three years and I really love him but we both don't want to limit ourselves or be too hung up on the past. Does anyone have experience with this?

Is there anything you wish you hadn't done?

What I wish I had done better

What I wish I had done better

My four years are actually over. After all of that complaining about tests, papers, and stress I sit here actually dreading the fact that my office won't let me sleep in until 11. I guess now that I'm done I feel like I should make sure others are aware of some of the things that I wish I had done while at Duke.

5. Kept in touch with the friends I made during my freshmen year

Remember freshmen year? It seemed like everyone was friends and it wasn't based (as much) on who you knew or where you belonged in the Duke social strata but more on being at the same place during such a great time in life. A simple phone call or occasional lunch date really isn't much effort but for some reason as the years went on the people in my freshmen dorm turned into one of those really awkward "do I say hi or not" situations

4. Spent more of Duke's money

Yea we pay a shitload for tuition but Duke will actually (pretty easily too) pay for you to do almost anything if you pitch it to the right people. More Duke conversation dinners, more parties on the quad, I should have done another abroad experience in a non-European country (I'm not saying don't go to Europe, it's great but people need to get out of what's comfortable and do something totally new even if it's just 6 weeks). It wasn't until my senior year that I realized Duke will give you thousands of dollars if you do something that could benefit the Duke community or your Duke experience.

3. Focused more on myself than on Duke boys

Seriously, I spent more effort my freshmen and sophomore year trying to get a guys attention then focusing on how I needed to grow, what weaknesses I needed to work on, what I love doing, what I hate doing, just figuring out who the hell I am as a person. Why is it that so many girls (myself included) spend most of our time talking about guys, talking about how to get a guy, what to do so that they'll like us, what we need to change so he'll actually be a boyfriend and not a boy_friend, etc. It's funny how the moment I started to concentrate more on me and building up my own confidence that I actually gained some respect and attention from guys. So here's my tip on how to get a guy: know who you are and be confident (easier said than done, I know).

2. Stopped assuming that I knew what people were "really" like

I really wish I hadn't done this so often. I'm not sure why but the more time I spent at Duke the more I felt like I could categorize people and knew exactly how a person would act, like/dislike, or do before I even met them. I think this really limited me from meeting really amazing people. By the time I figured out how judgmental I was being, senior year was basically over. Find out what makes a person unique and how you can connect with them even if its only on one level. Music, art, passion for history or travel, foreign languages, the list can go on.


1. Actually understood that when a guy says "just friends" he means it

Not sure if it's the way we process things or just the way that women tend to be loving, nurturing beings but when a guy says "yea I mean let's be friends" but still calls you to spend the night, girls interpret it as "he's mine". NO. This was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn at Duke but it was better to learn it in college then when I'm older. Anyone seen that Sex and the City episode where all the girls try to have sex like a man? Yea we can't really do it, I truly believe there's a scientific reason but we get attached in some sort of way (or we lie to ourselves constantly trying to pretend like we don't care). Either way, it needs to stop. Women, stop chasing after guys all the time and let them come to you every once in a while. I constantly see a guy (who's not even that amazing to be honest) messing with multiple girls while I see beautiful and talented women constantly complaining about the lack of a man in her life. What's the deal?