Place of the Past Plants

All around campus in the past weeks, the tree leaves have changed from there deep green colors to a collage of red, yellow, and orange shades.  The most notable place where these leaves fell was around the Old Botany building.  This small building may seem out of place, surrounded by the seemingly endless buildings full of classrooms, but this building gives us a glimpse into the past.

The Old Botany building is a small building between the HUB and the Library.  The outside of it is made up of stone at the bottom, with red brick on top of it.  Surrounding it are several large trees, that have lots of leaves, except on in the fall when they have lots of leaves under them. Old Botany, because of its age, is very simple, but still has lots of symbolism in its walls, especially the exterior ones.

The most notable thing about the Old Botany building its exterior.  The outside of it looks like a three layer cake, or maybe it's just me, since I skipped dinner tonight.  This layering gives the building a feeling of age.  This is because these layers in the building are like the layers of soil.  The farther down you go into the soil, the older the dirt is, and the more likely you are to find dinosaur fossils.  This makes the Old Botany building a way to look into the past and remember where we came from.

Leaves lie strewn all around Old Botany building at this time of the year.   These leaves covered the ground so much, that they were a solid blanket at one point.  I regret not being able to get pictures of Old Botany building then, so I guess I will use that idea in this post.  The leaves, since their life is fleeting before they fall off the tree onto the ground, show why you must seize opportunities before they are gone.  The trees use their leaves to the fullest while they have them, to get as much energy as they can before they use them.  These trees, live their tree lives to the fullest, which is what we, as humans, should strive to do.  We must try our best to take advantage of each opportunity before it goes away, so we don't lose our leaves before we get to use them.  Although trees live their lives to the fullest, some need support sometimes.

There is also one tree outside the Old Botany building that is supported with old support beams.  I don't know why this tree is being supported, except that it probably can't completely stand on its own, but they make the tree very cool looking.  These support beams, being at Old Botany building, the window into the past at Penn State, show how our past supports us in the present.  None of us would be where we are today, without what we did in our past.  We may not have made all of the right, or wrong, decisions up to this point, but no matter what our decisions were, they support us.  Without everything we have been through, we would not be able to function.

The Old Botany building even though it is pretty old, does not mean it is any less important than the rest of campus.  This building is the one of the backbones of campus and serves as support from the past, which propels all of us into the future.

Steps to Achievement

Everyone has a goal in life, and or some achievement to strive for.  This can range from working in your dream career, to running a marathon, or even climbing to the stop of a set of stairs.  The possible things that people can achieve are limitless, and can even be symbolic of the idea of achievement themselves.  This is the case for the stairs, specifically the stairs at the front of Atherton.

The Atherton steps are truly just a bunch of steps, I didn't count how many, that lead up to the doors of Atherton Hall from College Avenue.  Along the way there are many different lights, and foliage, and more than one different paths that you can take to climb the steps.  There are also a bunch of benches, and I'm sure it would be a really nice place to study if you wanted to.  Just like any staircase, the stairs start with a single step at the bottom.

To really get started toward your achievement, you have to take on the first step.  This first step is very simple, but extremely hard to take on.  The first step, is taking a first step.  By this I mean, that to truly start toward the achievement, you must first take action to try and achieve it.  Even though this is such a challenging step, it is still truly easy.  A wise man once said, (after he almost tripped up the stairs) "It's not that I can't, it's just that I have to get my foot on the step."  This quote shows exactly what taking that first step is like, anyone can do it, yet it is one of the hardest things for them to do.

As you walk up the steps, it can get tiring, but that should never stop you from trying to reach the top.  As you keep climbing up the steps, your achievement continues to grow as you go higher and higher.  Eventually, you will come to a landing.  This landing is the lull in the work toward your achievement.  You've worked hard, and you've made it far, but now you've leveled out.  The easy thing to do at this point would be to take the path that leads back down, and abandon your goal.  This may be the easy thing to do, but it is not always the thing that you should do. Most the time the best thing to do, is to keep on trekking up.

When you finally reach the top of the stairs you have finally achieved your goal of making it to the top or whatever else your goal was.  At this point it is important that the triumph of reaching the goal does not overshadow the journey.  It is importantly to look back and see where you have been and what you had to do to get where you are.

 In a speech, that I gave in High School, before I had every thought about creating this blog, I spoke about this idea of the stairs being an obstacle on our journey through life.  In this speech, I noted how almost everyone had fallen up the steps at some point in their life.  I spoke that, "We may have tripped on our way to the top [of the stairs] a couple of times, but by the time we reached the top, we were able to catch ourselves and stand on our own."  That is why I believe in the importance of stairs to the idea of achievement and why the stairs in Atherton are so important to this idea.

The HUB of Activity

New York may be the city that never sleeps, but here at Penn State, the HUB is the building that never rests.  The HUB is open twenty-four hours a day and every day of the week.  This means that it is a hub of activity no matter what time of the day that it is.  This also reflects the nature of the HUB, an activity center.

The HUB is simply a giant building around the middle of campus.  Inside of the HUB is countless restaurants, an auditorium, art gallery, meeting hall, book store, and even steps like the ones from High School Musical.  Another feature of the HUB is that there is always someone there, no matter what time of the day, or night that it is.  The HUB can also change depending on what is going on.

The HUB, as a hub of activity, almost always has something going on inside.  Over the summer, the HUB was fitted to welcome new students to their NSOs.  There have also been many one day events, like the Freshman night when the HUB was full of fun things to do, or the Club fair on the HUB lawn.  One day I even walked through and they had live music playing.  The HUB is truly ever changing and this is a reflection of Penn State.

The HUB, as the most popular place on campus, is always is able to reflect the students.  This can be seen by the diverse number of places to eat, like the diverse student body, as well as by the spirited student book store, like the spirited student body.  Everything at the HUB is there for the students, which is why it reflects them so well.  Even though every single student would never be able to all fit in the HUB at the same, the HUB would still be able to reflect all of the students.  Along with being a reflection, the HUB is also a light.

The lights coming from the HUB are extremely bright in the night.  It is the brightest thing anywhere on campus during the night.  These lights serve as a beacon to all of the restless students to come and work in at night.  This light itself shows the amount of excitement that exists in the HUB, even at night.  This is not the only piece of the HUB that's symbolizes the HUB's activity.

At the front of the HUB is a fountain.  It looks like a long flat cliff, with a waterfall cascading down it.  When you stand beside it, the waterfall is fairly loud, much like a real waterfall.  This sounds is constant, just like the constant activity that is at the HUB.  The fountain is never quiet, just like how there is always sound in the HUB.  Even when I was there after midnight, there was still some noise, although not as much as during the day.

The HUB is truly a hub of activity during the day as well as during the night.  All of the excitement during the night is mostly centered in this small area, inside this giant building.  Next time you are out at night, follow the beacon of light to the HUB of activity at Penn State.

Crossroads of Penn State Life

Last Wednesday was a very important day at Schreyer, it was the first day that we were able to schedule our classes for the next semester.  If you are like me, and set up all of your classes before midnight, so you could enroll in the first minute, then "Congratulations!"  If you had holds on your account so you can't schedule yet, then I feel sorry for you, but you'll probably still easily get into all the classes you want to.  This day, was important, even though I may be over inflating some of its importance, because it was a crossroads.

The physical representation of this crossroad is this circular path beside the Mueller Lab.  This is the area that I think of as the middle of campus, although I'm sure I am way off.  It just seems right that it would be, because it is a big, fancy circle, but its exact location isn't that important.  From the center of this circle, snakes off six different paths, each that curves off in a different way, with no ends in sight.

These pathways represent a choice in life.  Choosing the right path way seem like the most important thing that you can do in your life.  Which path will lead you forward?  Which path will take you back to where you were? Which path will take you to where you want to be?  These are all question that one can ask at a crossroad.  These questions can become so over powering that it can leave you just standing in the middle of the crossroads, not going back, but not going forward.  This leaves you stalled and just stuck, staring at the ground.

Now, all of that could be avoided by making a choice.  One choice is always the high road.  This road may appear to be the path that takes the most effort to take on.  In this case, the high road, is a set of stairs, that goes into a path that continues uphill.  This path may look like it is the most difficult, especially on the way to an 8 AM, but that doesn't mean it is the path that shouldn't be taken.  Many times the most difficult paths in life can be the most rewarding to traverse.

Another that can be taken is the straight line.  This path looks as though it's a simple, well-lit path, where you can see exactly where you're going.  This path would be the equivalent of taking the easy way in life, not doing more than is expected, just enough to get by and live, but not prosper.  However, along this path there are many branches off.  The branching parts are the small choices in life, that don't effect the direction a person is heading in life, but allows for them to do more.  These choice can be good or can be bad.  No matter what type they are, these paths can still lead back to the original one.

All of these choices in life are what leads us to where we want to be.  These choices could be something as simple as choosing our future classes, or something even simpler, such as coming to a crossroad in a path.  These choices in life may be important at times, but the most important thing to do is to make a decision, so you are not left by your own indecision.