On a Scale of Awkward to Karin...

Karin is my sister, and if there's anyone who's even close to as awkward as I am, it's her. I love her to death and we have a lot of fun together.

That's us last year at her Speech Tournament

Last week, she came to visit me at the U. (She actually came on a field trip for her CIS class, but I like to pretend that she came all this way just for me). I met up with her after I was done with my nutrition class. We got some lunch and ate it out in the mall. 

When Karin was younger, she would always give people what we called a backwards hug. She would stand up straight, turn so her back was facing you, walk slowly backwards and then just stand there while you hugged her. She would never hug back. Well, she never really got over this. When we were done with lunch, I had to head back to St. Paul and she had to head to Coffman to meet up with her group. I asked her if I could give her a hug before she left (because to her, a hug isn't a natural way to say good bye). Her response was "but there are people here!". Well, I ended up giving her a sideways/backwards/Karin hug. She didn't hug me back. 

Sitting in the grass after our lunch

Us being the Eiffel Tower in Paris!

An example of the backwards hug

Next week, I think my friend Ben is going to write a guest post. We have lots of great awkward moments together but he's got an especially awkward moment to share with the world. Until then!

Vas Deferens, yes it's a penis joke.

So today in my Evolution class, we were talking about Eugenics. For those of you who live under a rock and have never heard of the Holocaust, or Hitler or anything like that, Eugenics is a pretty sad thing.

Taken from Wikipedia:
"Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually a human population.^[2][3] The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance, and the theories of August Weismann.^[4]"

So, as you can tell, this isn't really something to laugh about. I've heard a few different figures, but the US used to be a firm believer in forceful sterilizations and evolution through genetics. There were 30 states which had laws that enforced forceful sterilization, California being one of the worst. There even used to be a Eugenics Center at Coffman Union here at the U. (However, once the founder was found to have ties to Hitler, they got rid of it). Anyways, during our discussion, our professor decided to try to lighten the mood. We were looking at clips from a movie depicting the horrors of Eugenics and there was a man getting a vasectomy (forcefully). Our professor than said "That's a lot of doctors for a simple procedure like that. There's a vas deferens between medical technology then and now". Wait, what? Yeah, that's what he said. My professor likes to make awkward jokes like that. It took the class a few seconds to catch on to the joke. But in the end, everyone likes penis jokes.

Hashtag Adventures

Sometimes, actually all the time, I wish I could just be a professional adventurer. I went on a few adventures today. With the Lads. 

The best adventure was to the Stone Arch Bridge. There were so many people taking senior pictures and engagement photos there! We drove down to the Mill City park, or whatever it's called and we decided to walk around for a bit. As we were walking across the bridge, Wyatt looked down and saw some guy fishing on the banks of the Mississippi. We were probably about 75 feet higher than this guy so things got a little weird. This is how their conversation went:

Wyatt : Man, your reel is upside down!

Guy: *spins his fishing pole a few times* Yeah, this is my first time fishing for carp

Wyatt: Don't eat anything from the river, I hear it'll make you grow a few extra arms

Guy: Yeah, I don't plan on doing that.

And then we walked away.

Ben and I

My action shot with Wyatt.

Then later on today, I was hanging out with the Irish Lads. They like to watch the security footage from the front door on their TV. They sent Francis down to wave at the camera and it was the funniest thing I have ever seen. I'll have to figure out how to get the video on here because it was HILARIOUS.

Do you know how much a polar bear weighs?

Enough to break the ice!

Everyone's seen the Zombie Kid "I like turtles" video, right? It starts off with a news woman who is trying to interview a kid about his experience at some park or carnival or something like that. She says something along the lines of "That's an awesome zombie facepaint, what do you think?" and he replies "I like turtles". The news woman obviously doesn't know how to react to that so she says something awkward and moves on with her story. 

Here's the video

I felt like something similar to that would happen yesterday in my Animal Diversity lab. Our TA (who's younger than I am) wanted us to play an ice breaker game. She called it a game, I call it "go around the room and say your name, major, hometown and favorite animal". These types of things always make me nervous and I have no idea why. I did speech in high school so you'd think that telling a class of 17 kids my name and major wouldn't be a big deal. We went around the room and almost everyone was a bio major and the most popular favorite animal was a dog. We finally got to me and I introduced myself, "Hi, my name is Kiersten, I'm from Apple Valley, MN, I'm a bio major and I like giraffes". And then I found $10. Boom. I survived the class and I didn't embarrass myself! 

Okay, so I didn't actually find $10, I just wanted to make my story more interesting.

Turtles. 

The 214

This post is dedicated to the Lads who live in 214.

Awkward thought of the day. My friend Ben, brought this up the other night. He said it's always been a dream of his to buy a bunch of lotion and find a Komodo dragon (like the one above) and just see how much lotion it's body could absorb because they look like their skin is really dry. Like, who thinks of that?

I love hanging out in the 214 because when I'm there, I'm just like one of the guys. I always go down there with the intention of doing homework, but watching fart videos on youtube is just so much more entertaining!

Do The Monkey With Me

Did any of you watch Johnny Bravo when you were younger? Remember how Johnny would always yell out "Do the monkey with me!" and then he would break into this awkward dance where he would bob up and down and move his hands like he was milking a cow? Yeah, well this dance isn't really anything like that, but it's still pretty funny.

On Labor day, my roommates and I took our Irish friends to Minnehaha so we could show them the falls. We walked around on the trails by the bottom of the falls for awhile and then decided to head back up to get some ice cream. To our surprise there was a bluegrass festival going on! When we got back to the pavilion area where the bands were playing we were struck with dancing fever. This video (if I can ever figure out how to post it) is of my friend Francis and I attempting to swing dance. You'll see in the background that my roommate Jess was asked to dance by a cute little old man. I think they were more successful than Francis and I. 

Here's a link to the youtube video

I was able to put the video on youtube! But I still couldn't get it to post here on the page.

I just work here, NBD.

So here's a quick little blurb before I head off to work for the day.

My fiance likes to make fun of me because I say "hello" to everyone that I know whenever I see them, even if I have to go EXTREMELY out of the way to do it. In my opinion, that's less awkward than both of us knowing that the other person is there and not doing anything about it.

Well, yesterday, I was at work at the Mall of America and I had just gotten my Chipotle for lunch. I was headed back to the break-room when I saw one of my friends that works at a nearby restaurant. Of course, I turn and look at her and walk sideways until she notices me, give her a big wave and shout "How's it going?". Almost every single person walking near me turned around and thought I was talking to them because I was so loud. Awkward. Anyways, we have a quick conversation while I'm walking sideways to work. That conversation comes to a halt when I run smack-dab into another person. Now, this guy was walking in a forwards direction, so you'd think he would see me and get out of my sideways way, but I guess life doesn't work like that. At this point, I had almost rounded the corner to a point where I couldn't see my friend anymore, so I'm hoping that she and the other servers didn't see what happened, but with my luck, they probably got it on video.

That was my awkward moment for the day yesterday. It was pretty awesome. Now I'm off to work to have more awkward interactions with customers. I can't wait until I have a big girl job.

Awkward Introductions

As the new semester starts gaining steam, the awkward moments become ever more present. We're just four days into the new year and I've already had two awkward introductions.

The first one was probably the worst. I was sitting in Evolution Lab, and our TA suggested that we introduce ourselves to the people around us. My four years of speech taught me that handshakes are ALWAYS essential for new introductions, so I turned to the girl sitting across the table from me, reached out my hand, and said "Hi, my name is Kiersten!". I was reaching and reaching and reaching, but I couldn't stretch my arm enough to reach hers!! She was doing the same and we managed to touch the tips of our fingers together, but that was it. To make matters worse, I thought it was super funny so I was doing that laugh thing that I do where my face contorts and it's impossible to tell if I'm in pain or crying or something like that. My friend Liz and I kept cracking up through out the rest of the lab. We couldn't look at each other. It was horrible. Haha. Totes awk.

The second one wasn't quite as awkward and it wasn't quite an introduction, but had a few things gone differently, it would have won the prize for most awkward introduction EVER. So I'm taking physics 1302 this semester and that class is full of people who are more awkward than I am (doesn't seem possible right? But it is!) The class is horrible, the professor doesn't speak English very well and the subject matter is impossible to understand, so what do I do? I spend class time on twitter! The third day of class I was perusing the twittersphere, and I came across a tweet that said something like "my physics professor *smart physics talk* since when?". See how great I am at physics? I don't personally know the person who tweeted that tweet, but that smart physics talk sounded an awful lot like what my physics professor said, so naturally, I had to respond.
"Are you taking 1302 right now?"
*favorite*
"Yes!"
And the awkward conversation continued from there, including everything from me asking if we could be "study budys" (I suck at typing on my phone), to him admitting that he'd taken the class before and failed. By this time, class is over and I'm on my way to physics lab. There are a few people gathered outside the class room waiting to go inside, so I take a seat on the floor and wait. A few minutes later this guy shows up, looks at me and then proceeds to sit down on the floor and pull out his phone. Almost immediately I receive another tweet about physics. Hmmmm. Correlation? This guy who's sitting on the floor decided it would be a fine idea to ask everyone in the hallway if they wanted some cantaloupe or honey dew melon. I looked at him and laughed. Then I looked at him again and realized that he looked really familiar. Sure enough, it was the guy I had been tweeting with all morning. I'm pretty sure he recognized me as well. To make a long story short, we both pretended not to know each other to avoid that "Oh so YOU'RE that one guy who I met on twitter" moment and went on to take a really really hard physics pre-test. Afterwards, I tweeted back asking him about the cantaloupe thing and he pretended to realize that I was in his lab. So on and so forth.

On another note, my roommate's fish doesn't like when I eat crackers in front of it. That's also slightly awkward.

Hi, my name is *blurrhhgghhghaslhaf*

#ThatAwkwardMomentWhen My whole life is awkward.

Hi guys, my name is Kiersten and I'm currently struggling through my senior of college at the University of Minnesota. I say "struggling" because I'm one of those socially awkward, smart people. When it comes to explaining positive and negative feedback mechanisms in order to maintain homeostasis, I've got it in the bag. But stick me in a social situation and everything goes to hell.

For example, my freshman year of college, we were required to take a class called Nature of Life. Half of the class was done throughout the semester, and half was done up at Lake Itasca. It was late July when we all met at the U to take a bus up to the research station. We were divided into teams with crazy biology names and we had to come up with a good definition for what these words meant. I couldn't tell you what our word was, but we decided that it was the name of a big fluffy cloud that produced fish offspring. Scientific, right? Well, anyways, the drive up to Itasca is a pretty long one. I think it took us around five hours, but I slept for most of the way. When I woke up, we had about half an hour to go and I was feeling kind of sick. I remember telling myself "we're almost there!!!" "you can do this". My body seemed to think otherwise. A few moments later, the poor kid I was sitting next to was covered in vomit. That's totes-awk. I felt so embarrassed. "Oh, hi. Welcome to college. These are the people you'll be spending the next four years with!" *puke* I just couldn't hold it in! The worst part was, I had only brought one pair of pants, so I had to freeze my butt off for the rest of the week in shorts.  When we all came back to the U for the beginning of the semester, I met quite a few people who had been in different sessions for NOL. They had all heard about "some girl who threw up on the bus" and had been told that if anyone started to feel sick, they should let someone know! I couldn't believe that people were STILL talking about it.

Well, a little over two years have gone by since it happened and the buzz has pretty much gone away. I still get embarrassed if someone happens to bring it up though. I see the kid that I threw up on walking around campus a lot. I wonder if he still thinks about it... I'm sorry Peter!!!!!

Haha, yeah. Well, I'm off to have more awkward encounters. It is the first week of the semester and all. Lots of awkward introductions to be made. Until next time.

This is our whole NOL group. Session 2 I think?

This was before we left and before I embarrassed the crap out of myself!!

Studying for our big exam! I'm at the head of the table there.