Closing out the Semester

A typical bathroom at the University of Central Florida (above) is around 1,500 sq. ft. A typical bathroom user at the University of Central Florida has about 1,500 sq. ft. of empty space in his or her head (below).

Tip of the day: Don't have any caffeine after 2:00 PM. Any soda or coffee consumed after this time will adversely affect your sleep at night.

I woke up and immediately began playing, "Bathroom Champion." It's a fun game at college that people frequently play. It's when everyone tries to battle for the bathroom, and Jesse always loses. There aren't really any other rules than that.

I woke up rather late for a Tuesday. I have a class at 9:30 PM, and I woke up around 9:15 PM. It's a good thing it doesn't take me a long time to get to class (only about an hour or so -- mountains, plateaus, etc.) I find that Wu Jing, my discussion Algebra teacher, gets harder and harder to understand. But, it's almost cute watching him struggle to read off the names of the students as he hands out our math exams. Speaking of math exams, I got a 93% on my last standard exam. The final exam is next Wednesday. I've got to do some major studying before the final.

Final exams aren't going to be too bad for me this semester. I have already completed my Economics test. I have the choice to retake a final exam if I want to score higher, but I'm not sure what my grade on the second test was yet. My psychology average is pretty good. The exam for that is next Tuesday, I believe. I also have an exam in English, but I'm pretty sure I could cut off all my hair and set it on fire and then do a tribal dance around the exam and still get an 'A' in the course. We'll see how it goes.

As most people know, I have a line a CDs that I periodically release to my friends. My major CD releases are the DayDrive series. The DayDrive CDs contain all the most popular songs at the time the CD is released; however, I often mix new artists, cool but unknown songs, and retro songs in there sometimes. Another criterion is that the songs have to fit the mood of driving in the daytime -- mostly Pop/Rock type songs. The track list for my the latest release, DayDrive 7, is:

This is the CD cover for DayDrive. The title of the CD is on the license plate, as well as the back of the car (DD7). DayDrive covers take anywhere from thirty minutes to a few hours, depending on how quickly I can find the images necessary to take the image in my mind and place it in Photoshop.

1. "What You Waiting For," Gwen Stefani
2. "Don't Go (Girls & Boys)," Fefe Dobson
3. "Just Lose It (Stop End Edit)," Eminem
4. "Rumors," Lindsay Lohan
5. "Failure's Not Flattering," New Found Glory
6. "White Houses," Vanessa Carlton
7. "Breakaway," Kelly Clarkson
8. "Will I Ever Make it Home (AM Radio Edit)," Ingram Hill
9. "You're the Only One," Maria Mena
10. "Beautiful Soul," Jesse McCartney
11. "Let's Get it Started," Black Eyed Peas
12. "American Idiot," Green Day
13. "I Like," Katy Rose
14. "Everything to Me," Brooke Hogan
15. "Tangled Up in Me," Skye Sweetnam
16. "Carwash," Christina Aguilera
17. "Where You Are," Marc Broussard
18. "1985," Bowling for Soup
19. "One Night Stand (Stargate Radio Edit)," Misteeq
20. "On the Way Down," Ryan Cabrera
21. "My Prerogative," Britney Spears
22. "These Words," Natasha Bedingfield

What often ends up happening is the unknown songs quickly become known, and I start hearing them on the radio more and more. That's a good thing, because it means that I have a fairly good sense of what music should be popular. I'm pretty non-discriminatory when it comes to listening to music. I like music that doesn't have a lot of screaming and noise together -- pick one, scream or have noise. But, if it's a screamy-noisy, then it's not good. That's pretty much it.

Jamie Lowe is one of the biggest advocates of the Radio Alternative series. "They're my favorite," Jamie says. "I'm more into rock that most other types of music." When talking to Jesse Chapman, he said, "Yeah, I made up the quote that Jamie said." He continued, "But it'd be something similar to what he'd say, if asked."

The DayDrive series was remastered this summer and now is completely available to anyone who wants copies.

Radio Alternative is the other major series that I release. Opposed to DayDrive's massive seven disc set, I've only completed one Radio Alternative disc. The second disc in being created right now, and will hopefully be released by Christmas. The idea behind Radio Alternative is to give people some songs to listen to that they don't hear on the radio constantly -- an alternative to the radio. Again, the songs on the Radio Alternative series often end up being overplayed on the radio at some point. One song one Radio Alternative was "Cold," by Crossfade. At the time the CD was created, the song was unknown, but since then it's been extremely popularized.

Speaking of popular, it's apparently popular to not care when your friends commit suicide nowadays. During lunch today, Kim Blythe, a friend who went to my high school, and I saw a random girl sitting on the edge of the wooded boardwalk. Suddenly, she jumped off and her friend looked over the edge to check on her. The "friend" then pretended not to be involved whatsoever, and sat down. Kim and I eventually threw away our Wendy's lunches and walked over to check out if the girl was okay. Apparently, she risked her life for an earring. Kids these days.

Dr. Negy, my psychology teacher, spoke of homosexuality in class today. He says that homosexuality is completely normal and natural, and that there is really no such thing as "homosexuality," and "heterosexuality," but rather they are extremes on a continuum.

What this means is that no one is solely heterosexual or homosexual. Everyone lies somewhere in the gray area -- whether it's right next to the black or rainbow circles, somewhere in the middle (commonly called bisexuality) or in an infinite number of spots on the line. That's probably why some claim to have "turned gay," or "realized that they're really straight." Truth is, there really aren't such things in nature. Sexual orientation is a construct created by society. He talked about this, and about how religion influences many people beliefs, and how they will lie to themselves and others because of religious beliefs at the cost their own self. I really love his class.

A minor in psychology.

I'm thinking of taking on some additional psychology classes and obtaining a minor in psychology. Kim and I went to see Dr. Negy in his office, and he suggested to both of us that we obtain double majors -- one being psychology. For me, that'd mean that I would have to take a bunch of film classes as well as a slew of psychology courses. I'm totally up for the challenge, but that may mean that I have to stay at school longer for four years. We'll see how it goes. Things aren't as easy as they were in high school.

While we're on the topic high school, I think I'll mention an ongoing project of mine -- the casting of all my high school friends. I'm having various Hollywood celebrities play each character. The thought was to make the actors close resemble the real life characters. After extensive searching, we almost gave up hope on casting Bianca Webb and myself. However, let us all welcome the two newest members to the cast of "Good Morning, FPC!" Using extensive makeup and computer graphic technology, we've created almost identical movie counterparts.

Bill Cosby as Jesse Chapman

Sue Johanson as Bianca Webb

Rachel Kindergan (above) is my girlfriend. She is also going to be in the "Good Morning FPC!" feature film. She was a student of Flagler-Palm Coast High School for a few months during the end of her freshmen year (played by Dan Aykroyd).

Casting the movie hasn't been easy, but we're doing our best to fill the necessary spots. That's probably why I haven't had much opportunity to update my journal lately. Schoolwork has been mounting up, and I haven't had much chance to do anything. I have to work on my film portfolio, which is a whole different story.

I'm writing my final essay in English right now. Here's the introductory paragraph:

The University of Central Florida (UCF) currently has a population of 42,568 students 4,200 of which live on campus. Out of the 2,400 students who live on campus with roommates, around 1 in 24 room reassignments are requested each semester due to reported roommate conflicts. To facilitate the compatibility of roommate assignments, I propose that a comprehensive personality test replace the standard ten-question preference survey. This will promote a more harmonious on-campus living experience as well as alleviate some unnecessary burden UCF’s Housing and Residence Life has to undertake.

I think it's a realistic topic. A wonderfully talented young man in my English class, Drew Agan, did a peer review of my paper and raised some interesting questions. "What about opposing views? Don't roommates need to be different to teach students different values." It's all covered in COLLEGE MATCHMAKING: RELOADED -- my second draft. I'll be posting the final essay online, as usual, when I'm done. I'll revise it again after a peer review on Wednesday, and then I'll be turning it in on Friday.

I worked on some other homework tonight as well. As I said, my math final is next Wednesday, so I worked on some practice problems for that. I read and highlighted a chapter for psychology. I'm on the road to college success (AKA, dropping out).