Why Bob Jones University Is Bascially a Zoo

So I've posted a couple of times about my alma mater, Bob Jones University. The name may trigger your brain because they recently made headlines for kicking out a Christopher Peterman because he watched Glee. I think the real reason he was kicked out is worse, because it just shows the pettiness that the University dips into. But this is not about the school's weird policies itself.

I'm here to just totally pick on the student body.

Mostly those above the Mason-Dixon line.

So to all of my dear Yankee friends, do bear with me. All's fair in war and humor.

I've been out of school for two years now, but experiences at BJU are so burned into my brain that I can't help but use them. On top of the gross cafeteria food, really really bad roommate situations, and my skillful dodging of rules*, I took in a lot of observations about people in general and noticed this one thing that stood out glaringly.

BJU students, especially if of the Northern persuasion, tend to act as if they're in a zoo. 

Note I said tend. Not all do.

For example, I once used "orange" in a sentence when talking to someone I knew from Michigan. Before I was finished uttering my sentence, she set about repeating (several times, I might add) the way I pronounce the word. I can't really replicate it here, because I'm no linguist, but it is Southern, like myself. See, I chalked it up to being sheltered in a teensy Christian school (like many of my fellow students there), but an odd thing occurred.

It kept happening.

And not just to me.

"I don't understand why it's so hot..." Sweetie, it's August. Summer's hot in South Carolina.

"Your accent is so funny." Gee, thanks, yours too. Coen brothers heard of you lately?

"Why do you drive so slow?" Honey, that's a cop car, it's the end of the month, and the state needs some fast cash. You do the math.

"Haha, he's so gee-yetto." Oh dear. Who snatched you out of Minnesota?

And most interestingly, all of this was said with a tone of wonder, like children watching a lion sit around and do nothing all day.

I blame the BJU textbooks. The grammar one I used at my Christian school actually said that pronouncing "fire tower" as "far tar" (which I have never once heard, ever) was bad grammar. Uhm. No. That's not grammar.

Also, the textbooks made the battle of Gettysburg look sorta glorious. I'm no expert, but I know enough to know that Gettysburg sorta sucked for both sides.

Hmm...maybe it is the books after all.

Edward Cullen, Man-Child

Upon a mental analysis of the Twilight novels, it has become apparent to me that Edward Cullen, one of the male leads, is an 80 year old man-child.*

I have a few facts to back up this observation.

1. Edward has no job, only hobbies. He spends most of his time playing piano and hunting. Now, true, his adopted father is a doctor, which in any family is a well-paying occupation that sometimes does allow one's offspring to live a life of comparable leisure. But, uh, Ed? You still don't have a job 'cause your dad's rich. That's just as bad.

2. If the book and the movie are to be believed, at the time of his marriage to Bella, Edward has lived an honorable life and kept his virtue intact. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make him the 80 year old virgin. Steve Carell will be playing him in the sequel to Breaking Dawn, which I understand has a working title of The Cullens Take Manhattan.

3. Edward stares. And I don't mean that he stares at Bella while's she's sleeping. (The horse is dead. Put the whip down, step away, and go on with your life.) I mean he stares at people in general. Now, he is a vampire, but you sorta get the feeling that he did this as a human. Since he was 17 at the time of his transformation, this plants Edward firmly in the realm of awkward guy. If he had lived to head over to Europe with the rest of the dough-boys (because his "death" was during the first World War, and from Spanish flu), he probably would have been "that guy."

4. He demands to be taken seriously, at all times. No joking. It's mean. Stop it now. (Sorta like how little kids react when you laugh at their indignation.)

One consolation is that, given his love of hunting things that involve blood, he'd probably be fun to play Halo with. Or maybe Left 4 Dead.**




*This is not a Twi-hate post, and if you don't get in touch with the real world and realize that the Twilight series is not going to result in severe damage to the world as we know it, then I'll have to accuse you of being a secret fan.

**Hurr hurr. Get it?

So This Whole Hurricane Thing...

All last week, I watched as the news networks and the Weather Channel all about had a collective fit because a hurricane was "headed straight towards New York." They warned the people of the Northeastern United States and feared the absolute worst for poor little old NYC.

Forget the fact that Hurricane Irene was gonna smack directly into a small, nearly unimportant area known as Eastern North Carolina.

And smack it did. I think the New Bern area took the worst of it, but Atlantic Beach, Nags Head, Wrightsville Beach, and a few other places definitely felt Irene.

And still, the entire day on Saturday, they still kept talking about New York. Even as the storm weakened and lost its status as an actual hurricane.

Even though North Carolina absorbed the brunt of it.

But you know, all this took be back a couple of years. Y'all know I went to Bob Jones University if you've read a couple of other posts. Inevitably, at some point during four-and-a-half years of college, it will snow/ice/freeze. Greenville is a close neighbor to Western North Carolina. Asheville North Carolina is an hour up the road. Greenville, however, is not in the mountains. It doesn't snow a whole lot, unless the winter is particularly freakish.

Big shock to y'all up in the Far Reaches, but we don't have a lot of snowplows down here. My town has maybe one or two. They're just not needed very much.Because ice is a smooth surface that greatly reduces friction and is a dangerous (sometimes deadly) surface to drive on, roads aren't exactly navigable. When it ices or snows, school closes for like a day, the town quiets, and people relax. (This rule generally applies throughout the entire Southern region.) Citizens play in the snow, or stay inside and read. They enjoy life. In a few hours, the ice/snow melts and life goes back to normal.

So all that time at college, I heard a lot of something that might have been good-natured ribbing, but sounded a lot like sour-faced griping. "Nobody knows how to drive down here." "I can't believe no one can drive on ice here." "We keep going to school in the snow, I can't believe it here." That's right folks, people actually complained about cancelled classes. (I can only imagine what their parents taught them about Santa Claus....) So, pretty much, for all of college (there's a whole lot of people from Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that wind up at Bob Jones University, just saying...)* statements that should be considered merely factual observations often degrade into personal insults. Insinuations that only Neanderthals and similar primitive people not yet exposed to modern technology are unable to somehow overcome the laws of physics and drive with magical friction force-fields upon their tires abound. "Well, where I live, we know how to drive on ice." Good for you, buddy. Dream big.

See, this all came back to me when I observed that the Northeast was being all but coddled because *sniff* a hurricane's coming. I believe the words "disastrous" and "catastrophic" were thrown around some. Now, as I know hurricanes, catastrophic as a description doesn't usually apply unless you aren't prepared.

So let's put this into a fair perspective. If it never ices/snows in an area, there is little chance that one could learn to drive in those conditions. Southern winters are fairly mild, and unless it's a really cold year, we average about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Occasionally it will get down into the 20s.** I can remember one year when it was 9 degrees F the week before Christmas. Even with temperatures that drop below 32 F, you have to have perfect conditions and an already cold ground in order to keep the white stuff sticking around. We're not prepared because we really never have to be, and one snow day for schools won't kill our economy.

I'm not a geography expert, but I do have a good idea of what the East Coast looks like. The most obvious feature?


Hang on, 'cause I'ma blow y'alls minds...


It's coastal.


Yeah, all those panicky areas stick out in the ocean. Yeah, I'm talking to you, Maryland, Jersey, New York, Boston, and Bangor. Hurricanes should not be a surprise. Yeah, they're rare, but y'all have a heck of a higher chance of getting a hurricane than we do a whole winter's worth of snow.



I think yeah, y'all deserve a little bit of ridicule. Good times.





*And I cannot begin to describe to you how much I don't really care about the Ohio vs. Michigan thing. I pull for the University of North Carolina. Your mention of the rivalry is likely to earn you a blank face.

**Yep, and that was the time the theater's heater was broken. It was like 20 degrees F outside with a very lovely wind that just made it so fun and bone-chilling. I wore a coat for the whole movie (New Moon, by the way) and huddled together with my boyfriend for warmth. I was also wearing knee socks under my jeans. It was disappointing mostly because I had on a really cute outfit that my otherwise wonderful pea coat hid.

Cultural Studies: The Beverage Debate (or stuff yall were wrong about...)*

So here's some insight into me. I went to college at Bob Jones University. Despite being located in Greenville, South Carolina, it is a) far from being a Southern college, b) a fascinating cultural study, and c) a help in affirming that I seriously love Eastern North Carolina.

So this topic came up a lot in college, and it comes up a lot elsewhere. I recently watched an episode of How the States Got Their Shapes, and I happened to watch an episode that focused on accents and regional vocabulary. We're all different. No surprise there, as the United States was settled by a very wide range of cultures. Obviously, we're all going to have a different name for carbonated beverages. However, they missed an important detail.

I'll back up. Starting in my teenage years, I first heard of the Great Debate, i.e. soda vs. pop. My youth pastor (who was from Indiana, went to college in Wisconsin, and had an accent straight out of Fargo), insisted that Coca-cola, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and the like were to be called "pop." For the purposes of fun debate, I (and probably others) insisted that the correct name was "soda," and I proceeded to call it this for quite some time. Naturally, when I got to college, I encountered this friendly conflict among peers. Then a third contender entered the ring. Apparently, across much of the southern United States, all carbonated beverages are referred to as "Coke." Apparently a conversation will go as follows:

"What do you want to drink?"
"I want a Coke."
"Okay, what kinda Coke do you want?"

Or something like that.

Now, an explanation, as I found from the earlier mentioned show, could be that Coca-cola was birthed in Atlanta. Fair enough, but this is just too complex, at least to me. However, it continued to be spread around as a "Southern thing" all the time, and I'm sure that it is true for many people.

I'll throw in some accuracy for you, just to set all of yall straight.

The correct term is "drink."

If you are my cousin's two-and-a-half year old son, it is "dink."

I believe that this term originated with the term "soft drink." Naturally, it was shortened. For my entire life, until high school, I referred to carbonated beverages as merely drink. I have returned home to my original dialect. Life is good.

So, naw, I'm not gonna have any drink, I already brushed my teeth tonight. But cheers everybody.



*This post is meant in humor. If you take it personally, then I am truly sorry for you.