Category: General

And here we are again!

Hello, and welcome back to another semester of Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron.

What else I have to write about if not my break? So let’s go.

It all started with my flight to Chicago being cancelled due to the snowy weather. As an alternative I got a flight to Dallas, and from Dallas I would fly back to São Paulo, Brazil. When I reached Dallas I thought that life on Iowa made me very used to calm, relaxing and kind of country places. Because the airport there was enormously big and it had stores everywhere, I felt lost and confused on the “big city” it was a very strange experience. On the other hand, now I know how a blind fells in the middle of a gunfight. But when I got home everything came back to normal, even though I was still on a “big city”. Maybe I felt very comfortable as I was passing through the familiar buildings.

On Brazil I did all that I wanted. I started by eating all the food I missed, like “feijoada” a rice and beans plate with some meat, I saw all my family and girlfriend, (I even spent the 25th of December and the 1st of January with her), And I went to the places I used to go. I felt very good to be back home and since we are having summer there, I enjoyed a warm and sunny weather. I thought that it was hard leaving home to come to college, but returning and then leaving again it’s even worse. I felt like I didn’t had time to do everything I wanted too, well but what can I do right? At least this time my siblings came with me and my parents to Iowa too. And we made a little stop on the way to Iowa.

I went to Costa Rica with my family, and we really had a great time there. I would say that Costa Rica is kind of like Brazil, but they speak Spanish and their vegetation looks more like some pictures I have seen from Australia. I guess they were on summer time too, because they had a lot of sunny and warm weather. This is why we mostly just stayed on the beach and the hotel pool. We also had a chance to go tubing in a river, which was very funny.

Finally I came back to Iowa, it was good to see the university again, But I’m feeling very nervous because this semester I have more classes and I’m also working more. I hope that’s not too much for me. Worst case scenario I will have to start to use some time of my “sacred weekend” to do college stuff too. The only thing I needed to do before the beginning of classes was to buy my books and stuff for my classes. Speaking of classes, this semester I’m taking Math, Chemistry, Fiction writing, Rhetoric and a class about the Beatles.

I’m not exactly sure about what to expect from this last tree classes. The only thing I expect from the Beatles class is to find people that play instruments so we can start a band. Oh I almost forgot, I did great with my grades last semester! I really hope to keep on with the good work. I even got invited to be part of the University Honors program, and I accepted it. Of course I did, it’s a honor to be part of the honors program, even though I still have no Idea what this means and what I gain with this. I hope I get a scholarship.

I guess that was all. I look forward for the beginning of classes and for this semester. See you next week.

ΣΝΖΟ’s Thanksgiving special edition (part 2)

Hello and welcome back to ΣΝΖΟ’s (Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron) thanksgiving special edition, (part 2). I hope you all had an amazing break. Here it is how mine was:

My thanksgiving break was awesome. Things that I wasn’t expecting happened and all my expectations of things I was planning to do were met, if not surpassed. But let’s organize things. It’s better to go on chronological order, beginning with the weekend. On Saturday night I went to subway to have dinner.

Sorry, I will have to make a confession here-on average, I went at least once a day to subway during this break. Before you judge me, I will let you know that I could not use my university meal plan because all UI food places were closed and subway is the cheapest option of meal I found around campus- That was it, let’s get back. On subway I found one of my friends working there, what was amazing, because she left the university when we were near the middle of the semester, and felt happy I had the chance to see how she is doing.Moving on to Sunday morning, after I go to church I face time my family on the mall. It turns out that while I was talking with my family there was a Brazilian girl on a table close to mine and she noticed I was speaking Portuguese. So after I was done she came to me and introduced herself, and that’s great! She’s the first Brazilian I met since I first came here and now I have someone to speak Portuguese in person.

Now we can move to the week. Monday was just ok, I went to Hy-Vee, but mostly I just chilled. Tuesday I went to some exhibitions here at the university, they were about clay, politics and how the university contributed to space programs in the past. All of them were very good and I could really entertain/inform myself there. Wednesday I went to the career center intending to participate on a job fair, just to find out that the fair is going to be this Wednesday. But hey, since I was at the Pomerantz building, I went to the admissions center because they have free bubblegum there, and they are very good. I got at least five.  On Thursday I went to my friend’s grandparents’ house for dinner. I confess that I had never eaten that much before in my life, there was tons of foods, everybody ate other tons and incredibly, there was tons of left overs. So I took some back with me to my room, (after they insisted a lot, because I felt like I don’t have the right to take leftovers with me). Her family is very nice and we all had a great time there. Now, on Friday, the black Friday, the ISSS department organized a trip to an outlet on a city next to here, it was very nice of them. And I went on it with a friend. The Brazilian girl was there too. I wasn’t planning to buy anything, my intention was only to see how a real black Friday looks like. But, I was weak and so I made purchases on two stores. The first was necessary. We are going to have a baby in the family, so I brought things for baby to give as a present to the parents. The other was a book, because it is from a author I already read in the past and it was only four dollars. Don’t mind the other three books that I already have and haven’t started reading.

This reminded me of something and I will have to run away from the topic. My mother’s rules. You see, for some things in life my mother gave me and my sister rules for us to decide something. For example, now that I spoke of the book, I remembered that when I was a child my mother had a rule about books: “You won’t buy any books if you still have books to read” so I always knew when was the right time to buy books. As time went by and I grew and was able to make my own decisions I abandoned some of this rules. Now, I only have two of them, which are: “always have salads with your meals” and “sodas only on weekends”. Coincidently, both are related to food/nutrition, and I think I kept them because I never had any problems on these fields. The only problem related to nutrition that I had is that I wasn’t used to drinking much water.

Now I wonder if I will have this kind of self-controlling rules for my children or even if I will create more for myself. If I was to make one new rule for me before I came to the university that would be “always do everything you can”. I will have to explain this one. I’m the kind of person that always does what I’m required to do, but I do not always do everything I can, that is, everything I’m offered. For example, for my chemistry class, our homework have grades, so the grade you get is based on the amount of questions you get right. But you are only required to do some exercises and you complete the assignment. They do have extra-credit questions for you to get the maximum grade available. Can you guess what I was doing? Exactly, I only did the required ones, so I never got the maximum score. Now I noticed that those points could really be helping me, they are the difference from why I currently have a B+ when I could easily have an A-. So yes, everything matters. Another thing that happened was on my arts class. We have this sketchbook where we can make 50 drawings and turn them in for extra-credit by our final time. But since it was extra-credit I didn’t cared about it. But I realized that I’m the only one on my class that is not doing it and that can affect very badly my class performance grade. So I was expecting to get on date with my drawings this thanksgiving but I was lazy and only did Three. OH S#!% I forgot we were talking about thanksgiving. Sorry about this interruption.

Well… I think I’m done with thanksgiving anyway. That was it then. Thanks for joining me on my conclusion of my break. I hope you all had and keep having a good week. See you next week!

concerns

Hey! It’s good to see you again. Welcome back again to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. This week nothing very interesting happened. But it brought me some concerns. I really hope I can handle them well.

It all started with a e-mail I received regarding Thanksgiving. The coordinator of my residence hall wanted to know who will be here during the holiday, and that made me start to question what I will do. My original plan was to go to Chicago. But I realized that it won’t be that easy. And I also don’t have anyone to go with me, since all my friends already have plans. So the new plan is to stay here with a couple of friends and discover how to survive during this time. We also plan to participate on the Black Friday, because we never had the chance to see how they really are. Therefore, all I can do is wait to see the outcome of this decision. I’m hoping for the best.

I think e-mails are the devil’s invention on how to bring concerns on a fast and convenient way to you, since my second concern also came with an e-mail. Do you remember when I said I finished my math course earlier? Well it turns out that nothing comes for free. I will have to take my third midterm and the final exam for this course. But both will be on the same day, tomorrow. So now I will have to deal with a 3-hour math exam in the middle of the day. Isn’t that fantastic? I hope I do well, because I am very worried about this exam. Well, it will be what it will be.

My third and last concern is about my courses for the next semester. On Saturday my friend started to make his schedule for the spring classes. I realized that it was a great idea to come up with a plan and show up to my meeting with my advisor with it to see what he thinks about it. Hence, on Sunday night, it was my turn to make plans for my next classes. I was aiming for keeping my classes all in the morning, because this semester the majority of my classes are in the morning and that is working very well for me. But, none of the classes I need have a 7:30-8:20 a.m. class. The earliest one starts at 8:30 a.m. So my evenings were invaded a little bit. Another problem I had was with my photography classes. I wanted to take a photography course, but the only one available for my level is a 6:30-9:00p.m class, and that is too late for me. They have other beginner classes, but they require the completion of other classes. So I will take “basic drawing” in order to move to introduction to digital photography. The good part is that now I have more time to save money for my camera.

Ahh, I almost forgot. This Saturday (November 5th) was my birthday. The first that I passed away from my family. I Facetimed them, which made it a little bit better, but I still wish they were here. Still, I had a great time with my friends. They filled my door with lots of post-it notes saying happy birthday. Now when I open the door a couple of written compliments fly away. And for the first time ever I gave myself a present. What is funny is that I brought me a jacket. That is funny because I have never bought clothes before. But I guess I need to change to survive the winter. It was so strange that when I told this to my sister she stared at me with a strange face and said: “did you buy it because you need it or because you wanted it?” (in Portuguese: você comprou porque quis ou porque precisava?).

So in short, that was my week, when concerns started to show up. But it is ok. An important philosopher (I forgot whom, but I would bet it was Socrates) once said: “a life without problems is not a life worth to be lived”. That being said, let them all come! I’m ready for them!

See you next week!

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Halloween

Hello and welcome to the 10th post of Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. Do you know what that means? Exactly, nothing except that I managed to get through the semester so far. Ahh and also that I avoided killer clowns, let’s hope that this don’t become a thing here on Iowa(Go Hawks!) too.

This week was pretty straight, nothing different happened. But we had the “halloweekend”,(which the existence I only discovered on Friday). For those like me that are not familiar with the term, halloweekend is a celebration of halloween during the weekend, since Halloween it self decided to dress as Monday,(the worst of all monsters), this year.

My experience with it was very funny, because I got to see how Americans celebrate Halloween. Back in Brazil, Halloween is only a great thing for children. So ,for us, it’s only the day that children go from door to door to ask for candy. For grown ups it is a reason to throw a party, but most parties are just like any other party, and very few are for you to go dressed as something, so it really isn’t a big thing there, probably because it’s not part of our culture. But here I got to see that everybody have the Halloween spirit.

The best part about all of it, is all the free candy that you can get. Still, other very cool thing happen to,. Like haunted houses. The university of Iowa made a haunted house open for the public on the IMU, and it was pretty good, the cool thing was to see the haunted house on the front page of the “Daily Iowan” news paper this morning. Because they reported it as such a big event( I think here is the same, but in Brazil if a news is on the front page of the news paper, it means that it is the best or worse thing that happens this week).

 

Hum…. I don’t think I have more to talk about the university it self.

 

Ahh but I do have something to talk about the weather,(again). Remember when I paraphrased game of thrones saying “winter is coming”? Well, it turns out winter is making fun of me. I think this because the whole last week was very cold,(for me that is, you could still see some snow man walking on shorts), but than we had a moment of happiness and warm weather on Friday and Saturday. Sunday morning was warm too, so I went to the church with no jacket. But when I left church, it was cold again, and I could see Jack Frost, Olaf, Santa ,(or whoever is operating the weather machine) laughing at me. So I can’t really expect nothing about the weather. I have to get up and check the weather to see what I will need to wear for the day.

 

Oh sorry, I lied. I just remembered of something to say about the university, and it concerns my Algebra Classes.

 

My Algebra course is based on a online platform called Aleks. Which means we can teach our selfs the subjects covered by the class. I used most of my free time during week days doing exercises on it and learning more and more stuff. And it turns out I got close the end of my class. On Sunday, I finished everything I could have done, and so I completed the class,(I even got a certificate, which I printed,  because I was very proud of my self at the time). So now I only need to care about my exams on this class, meaning I can concentrate my homework time on my chemistry class. Hence, improving my grade even more.
Now I have nothing to talk at all. See you next week!

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“Winter is coming”

It’s time once again for Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. How was your week? Mine was very cold.

I’m starting to discover the true cold of Iowa, because the past week the weather started to change. Thanks to that I noticed that I left my winter cap and gloves back in Brazil, (of all the things I could forget why those?). So until I had the chance to buy new ones I faced the cold “bare handed”.

I have a feeling that I always get the worse temperature of the day, since I leave my dorm at 7 a.m for my classes and the sun does not show his happy face to Iowa until 7:45-8:15a.m. Usually I face 1°C(33.8°F) in the morning. For some it may not appear a big deal. But for me, someone who is not used to anything below 10°C (50°F) this is like jumping on a frozen lake. The first days my hands became purple and my cheeks were very red. Luckily people told me that we are going to have even worse (I mean, colder) temperatures. In the mean time, we are having temperatures like 35°C (95°F) in Brazil. Now I have one more thing to add on the list of things I miss from home. Right now my list is: 1-Brazilian food. 2-warm weather.

To solve this problem I bought a cap on Amazon and went to the mall to find gloves. Now it will take more time before I freeze to death.(Fun Fact-Here I can really enjoy Amazon, because in Brazil, due to certain laws that want to protect the intern market, we can only buy books from Amazon). Thank god I did not forget my snow clothes and jackets. I wasn’t prepared for this cold weather, but I will be for snow.

Some friends of mine think I’m overreacting because for them this is “chilling temperature” one of them even offered her high school sweater for me, because it was warmer than the ones I have. On the other hand, when it’s hot they are all complaining and I’m like: that’s a ok weather, It’s neither hot nor cold.

The good thing about this weather is that I made me start to make plans on how I will manage my life during snow time. I don’t think I will use my bicycle during snow days, neither I will stay out as much as I would. The only problem I will have because of that is to get from my math class to my arts class in 10 minutes on Thursdays. But I will find a way, I still have time before I have to deal with snow (at least I hope I have).

 

This weekend I explored More of Iowa city, went with a friend to a store named: “the record collector”. We both like records and she have her record player with her, so we often get around with other friends to listen to records while doing homework or anything else. This store was so cool because it was full of old records and stuff. I guess people here really care about saving things from the past, what for me is very important. And the prices there were very cheap.

 

I think that’s all I had for today. Ah wait! There is more. I started to take a pictures of things I see during my day, because the photography presentation that I mentioned on my last post really inspired me. So from now on I will always post one of my photos on the posts. (as you may notice, they are changed with effects).

Ok, now we can go back to what we were doing. See you next week!

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Home Coming

Hello! And welcome back once again to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. This weekend I experienced something that I have never heard before and that, apparently is very common here. The “Home Coming.” First of all, I don’t know why this is celebrated, I mean, why we have home comings. But that’s OK because I don’t know the origin of a few other American’s holidays, like Halloween, And that doesn’t mean they are not good. I really enjoyed my time in it. I just loved the parade, it was great to see all kinds of people we have in the Hawkeyes community. But mostly, I had a great time thanks to the marching bands, I just adore them. We don’t have those bands in Brazil. In fact we do have them, but it’s just for a short time during a festival we call “Carnival”, but they are not a marching band from a high school or a university. Anyway, that was just my Friday.

On Saturday my roommate invited some people on our floor to go to a barbecue in his house. We really had a great time there even though my expectations were broken, but that is one of the most funny things in life, when you expect something and another thing happens. What surprised me was that the barbecue here is a way to say: hamburger and hot dogs. In my country we have all kinds of meat on barbecues. There are so many that I don’t think I will be able to list all of them. But the food was very good, and we had a lot of snacks too. I felt very welcome on his home. At night we made some s’mores (The burned marshmallow with chocolate between two crackers, I don’t know how to write it right, sorry). It was very funny. On Sunday we just chilled out and took the day to do homework.

Since we are talking about new experiences, I have another one to share. Today was the first time I had breakfast in a dinning hall. I knew they had breakfast there and also I work during breakfast in Hillcrest’s dinning hall on Saturdays, but I’ve been eating my breakfast in my room since I arrived. Today was only an exception because I woke up noticing that my alarm went didn’t go off. When I looked at the clock, I saw that I had only 20 minutes to get to my first class. Small detail: I live 15 minutes from this class. So I moved like a tornado, got everything I could, and rushed to my class. I made it exactly in the nick of time! So, After my first class I have a gap of 50 minutes until my next one. Since I was hungry, I didn’t eat breakfast in my room, I went to the dinning hall. The food there was very good. I can’t eat too much in the morning, but the omelet, cereal and the banana I had were good. Now I know that I can count on this resource if I ever wake up late again. But I hope I don’t need to. I think that’s all I have for today. Thank you, and see you next week.

As the weeks go by

Hello and welcome to sigma nu zeta omicron!

This week my work finally started to show some results. I spent almost all my free time on the weekdays (Friday after lunch is weekend for me) doing homework or studying. Now that some weeks have passed, I can see that I’m actually a little bit ahead of others. I don’t know if I’m ahead in grades, but on the amount of work I have to do I am. Because I use a lot of my weekly free time, I have a lot of extra-time on weekends. This Saturday, one of my friends even asked me if I ever study because he never saw me studying.

When I came here, a professor told me that there is no “that’s they way I study” and that all students should study/learn the same way. I know he is a professor and that he has much more experience than me, but I do actually have a “comfortable way of studying.” The first thing I need to start is a little bit of a distraction. That is, I need someone near me making some noise, but not too loud. When I’m in absolute silence, I can’t focus/concentrate on my work because I often start thinking of something else and don’t accomplish anything at all. I tried to study with music, but music is only good for me while I’m doing exercises/practicing what I have learned. So to study and do homework I go to the library. Everyone has a different reason to go there, mine is to find concentration. Hence,  I do recommend that you try new things to find a good way for you to study. Believe me, it does make difference.

Speaking of new things, this weekend was the first time I got a bus that is not the cambus to go somewhere. I went with my friend to the Coral Ridge Mall because we needed to go to Target. We have been there before but we always got a ride in a friend’s car. I thought it was going to be complicated but in fact it was very simple. And the bus driver was very kind to us he even showed us a guide with all the times we could get a bus back to the university. One of the best things about the city is that it is very calm and quiet. You don’t see much of the big city rush here. For example, yesterday (Sunday) I got the bus in the wrong direction and made a tour around some places before I reached my destination. If I was on a big city I’m pretty sure I would be very worried and start to think: “Oh my God, where are we going? I will get lost and never will find my way back.” But since this is a small town and everything you pass by is familiar to you, what I really thought was: “oh, we are going the other way around…” So there is nothing here that will really stress you out. I’m not the best person to say that because there isn’t much that stresses me out. Still, I believe most people living here can relate to what I say.

If you come here you will find that people here are very friendly, everyone always notice you and interact with you. Let me give some examples: One day at work, I was trying to memorize some formulas for my chemistry class, and I saw a very strange face while I was concentrating and this guy that works there  came to me and said: “are you okay? Everything will be better, if you need anything let me know.” That day I discovered that my concentration face looks like a sad face. Another time I was in the bus talking with my friends and a old man was listening to us so he joined the conversation.

I think that’s all I have for today. Thank you and see you next week.

My mistakes

Hello! Welcome back to Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron. I hope you all are well

I’m sorry for my delay, but I had a Chemistry exam this Monday so I spent almost all my free time studying. Maybe that’s one of the biggest differences from high school to college for me. When I was in school I used to study only one day before the exam, but I’m very concerned here. What I understood is that, for lecture exams, our grades will be given according to the class average grade. So it does matter the grades that others have. Since I really need a good grade I’m doing all I can to get one of the best grades.

One problem that I have on all exams, in fact in life, is attention. I hardly get an answer wrong because I don’t know how to do it. I often make mistakes because I miss small details like signs or the order of things. I really need to learn to pay attention to everything. I wish they had a class like: “principles of attention: 101”. But for now all I can do is pray that I don’t miss anything.

I’m not stressed about exams only, I’m just concerned about me. Like, I want to show everything I know on the exam, that’s why I get really pissed off when I make an attention mistake. Because I could have proven that I know it. So I’m really trying everything to make sure my body and mind will do well in the exam. For example, I spend my weekend just eating things that I knew wouldn’t give me any problems, I do a lot of exercise and listening to music because if I can get the right answer with an distraction I will certainly get the right answer while being fully concentrated. I also go to bed earlier. Because I am used to sleep 5 to 6 hours a night. But my exam was at 8:30-10:00 p.m, so I needed to be rested for it, otherwise I would fell sleepy in the exam.

One thing that my work helped me with was on the part of memorizing. You see, some things I read and don’t need to read it again so the information stays with me. Is like someone coming to you and saying that the Independence Day is on the Fourth of July, you don’t need to review the information again and again to memorize it. But, when it comes to formulas and things like that, I really need to keep repeating it in my head. For example, I have to memorize Polyatomic atoms formulas, their charges and their names. So I just wrote a card with all of them and put it on the back of my phone, since my cover is transparent. Whenever I had the chance I looked at them until I could say all of them without having to look at the card.

Now, changing subjects completely, one of the things I miss in my daily routine, is to go out on Sunday’s just to hang out. Back in Brazil I used to go out with my girlfriend every Saturday to the movies or shopping. Now it’s harder to do it because everything here is near if you have a car, but it is kind of distant if you have to walk. So I really depend on buses or rides from one of my friends to go out to places like those. I think I can solve this if I explore more of the Iowa city downtown. Still, this doesn’t mean we never go out, we usually do. Next week we intend to go ice skating in Coralville.

Well, I think that’s all I had to say. See you next week!

My new routine

Hello and welcome back to ΣΝΖΟ (Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron). I hope you are all having a good time.

I’m starting to get used to my routine. I don’t even have to look for my schedule on ICON every 30 minutes to know where to go. In fact, I think I’m already too much into it, because I always sit in the same place at my lectures. You see, I’m too conservative with little details. For example, I always eat the same plates at restaurants after I go twice or more. Now I’m doing the same thing here. It’s funny how fast I got used to my life here. I thought it would take more time, but I got comfortable with my new life really fast.

This Saturday I went to the Farmer’s Market with my friend, and got to know more about Iowa City. I thought it was amazing to see people selling what they grew in their homes/farms, like this Producer-buyer relationship.  I got inspired to go to more places on the city. I didn’t know that a lot of things happened here, I hope to go more places and then I will write about them to you.

See you next week.

At least the smoke detector work

Hello again everybody. Hope you are all having a good time at UI.

I just realized that my blog don’t have a name. I don’t know if I should have one, but since it is my blog I will give one. The name will be ΣΝΖΟ (Sigma Nu Zeta Omicron). The reason is very simple. Every time I’m going from my residence hall to the university or vice-versa I pass in front of this fraternity house that has the letters ΣΝ (Sigma Nu). Since it looks exactly like the first two letters of my name,(Enzo),  Me and my friends always joke about getting some paint and completing my name on their wall. So “ΣΝΖΟ” is a name that represents me, a little bit of my friends and an example of what I think when I see something at the university.

Now that I’m talking about my friends I would like to say that this week I just realized how important the LLCs (Living Learning Communities) are. So, when I decided my LLC, while I was applying for housing, I didn’t give that much importance to it, since I thought they were just to put people in groups. But now that I realized that everyone in my floor has the same LLC as me I see how lucky I am, because my roommates and floor neighbors have more things in common with me than just the LLC. That was good, because we got along easily with one another. We all leave the doors open so we can always do homework or anything together and we usually hang out in the hall to play board games. I wonder what would have happened to me if I had chosen another LLC. I would be on another floor or even on another residence hall, and maybe would never get the chance to know these friends. Also, I’m uncertain if I would get along with people from other LLCs the same way that I got along with these ones. I hope that you all chose the right LLC too and if you haven’t yet decided, it I will give you this advice: Take extra time to find the right LLC for you, because it will be easier for  you to build friendships.

Nothing different happened this week. But over the weekend it was the 18th birthday of one of my friends, so we went out on a picnic on the park in front of Mayflower Hall and had a great time.

Of course not everything is always good, and this morning I had a little problem. I woke up to make some pancakes with my roommate, I don’t know what went wrong, probably we used too much butter and buttermilk, and it made a lot of smoke. We already had our windows open, but it wasn’t enough, so our smoke detector went on and started to make a annoying and loud sound. The first thing I thought was: s#/@, I’m going to wake up everybody and it was very early and labor day, so everybody was still in bed. After I thought: s#/@, If we don’t do anything the other detectors will activate and we will get a free bath from the sprinklers. So my roommate stayed in the room trying to get the smoke out with his books and I went to get help and explain the situation to everyone that was getting out of their rooms. An RA showed up and after seeing the situation he said he was going to shut the alarm off. So I don’t think we are going to make pancakes again too soon. But as “Monty Python” once said in their movie “Life of Brian”: “Always look to the bright side of life” and the good news is that now I know that my smoke detectors work.