college confusion

Okay, so as of late, I'm completely confuzzled as far as college goes. I've narrowed my scope down to 2 colleges: Iowa State University and Drake University. Both institutes carry my program of interest, and are in my home state, so that's not where the controversy lies. The fact is that idk where I'd feel more comfortable.

ISU is a large state campus that pretty much dominates Ames(the city where its located) and has tons of people. Both of my older brothers(1 who dropped out during the semester and the other who left after the semester) went there and there's that feeling that I won't be able to handle it either. Several of my good friends this year are going there after graduation (including Ervin) and acouple of my older friends are freshmen there this(Chad and Cluney). So the familiarity of friends is a big draw to ISU.

Drake, on the other hand, is a medium-sized, private school(private as in not a state school and is almost ivy league), I've only met one or two people who've graduated from there and the only person I know who goes there is Daniel's cousin, Nate. So friends who I already know are pretty much out of the question, but with a smaller school it'd be easier to get to know more people. Also Drake has offered me a $10,000 scholarship to attend their institute, and that's not chump change.

Over all, what I want out of a college is a good program for my major, and not to feel lost in a crowd. I dealt with that for most od high school and I just started feeling like I'm part of something this year, so going back to nothing would suck big time. Mom and I are going to visit both campuses agian and she wants me to spend time with my friends at both universities to see if they can help sway me either way, so we'll see.

(Update 2/12/11: Chad has really pulled me to the ISU side of this puzzle.)

playing with photos

My obsession with photoshop needed to be satisfided, so after some close looking on the internet, I found this great site called Picnik. It works great and though you have to pay for some features, alot of great ones are free. Here's a couple examples:

Arizona

So recently I went on a trip to Arizona, which I must say is a nice change from the cold Iowa winter. My mom and me went to the pool alot, took long walks, wore shorts and ate out. Admittedly some parts of the trip were not as nice as the above, but the thing that made the whole trip worth while was a trip to the botanical garden and a trip to Tortilla Flatts. Both gorgous and full of scenery. Don't believe me? Check out these pics I took:

Still Alive...

I mean 3 things by this title. #1. I'm still out here, I just haven't posted in a while due to a large amount of college/scholarship stuff going on. #2. hehe, Portal reference(and as you know if i'm mentioning Portal, I'm probably going to mention Chad.) #3. I recently bought this song off iTunes!! Which brings me to my point for this blog: Its' time for the first best songs list of 2011!!

Best Songs 2011(part 1)

1. Still Around- 3OH!3(Loved this song, but never would've imagined it was sung by them)
2. You're So Last Summer-Taking Back Sunday
3. You or Your Memory-The Mountain Goats
4. The Only Exception-Paramore(Find me a girl who doesn't like this song and I'll show you a liar)
5. Dear God-Avenged Sevenfold(Once again not expected out of this band)
6. Boston-Augustana
7. All of Ludo's concept album "Broken Bride"(May as well be one song with the way it follows)
8. All About Soul-Billy Joel
9. Faithfully-Journey
10. Blame It on the Tetons-Modest Mouse
11. Modern Chemistry-Motion City Soundtrack
12. Come on Eileen-Dexy's Midnight Runners
13. Firework-Katy Perry
14. I'll Cover You(Reprise)-Cast of Rent(great movie and stage performance, I recommend both)
15. Please-Ludo

And I'm sure you know that I could just keep going but since I need to get back to work I'll leave at this and I promise to start blogging more regularly. Bye-bye for now