20 Reasons Why I Love the Irish

I have only been aware of the University of Notre Dame’s existence for about 2 years, but I have completely and entirely fallen in love with ND for many reasons. Some of them are in reference to my future attendance as a graduate student (hopefully) and some are sentimental reasons. Here they are:

01) I love that the football player's don't have their last names on the backs of their jersey's. They do this because it isn't about the individual, it is about the team

02) I love Touchdown Jesus

03) I love that their slogan is "Fighting for (insert reason). What would you fight for." It's absolutely beautiful.

04) I love that students in the graduate MFA program get to go to school for free.

05) I love the community atmosphere emitted from every pore of every square foot, every student, every thing on that campus.

06) I love Jimmy Clausen.

07) I love shouting "We are ND! GO IRISH" when I watch football games with my boyfriend Danny.

08) I love that Danny's grandfather, Rudolph, was on the Championship Football Team in 1942.

09) I love that Rudolph told Danny that the movie Rudy was made about him.

10) I love that when I think about Notre Dame, I get this happy feeling about my future.

11) I love that I have the possibility of attending a school that is just a bigger, better, more famous, highly regarded version of APU, where I received my undergraduate degree.

12) I love that it gets really, really cold in South Bend in the winter.

13) I love that it snows in South Bend.

14) I love that South Bend has seasons.

15) I love wearing green, which will go perfectly with being Irish.

16) I love that students have the opportunity to be selected for Teaching Assistantships.

17) I love that Notre Dame is committed to both God and Academia.

18) I love that there is a GPA requirement for athletes.

19) I love that Notre Dame looks the way it does.

20) I love that Notre Dame has been called "the place where the church does it's thinking."

The Evil, Evil, Evil GRE

So I did the stupidest thing today. I logged onto ETS and decided to take the Graduate Record Examination even though I don't have to in order to get into the schools I am applying to.

Curse my need for perfection. The only reason I am doing this is because I want to have a better shot at getting a Teaching Assistantship. And, of course, to quickly apply to other graduate programs with later application dates when I inevitably fail to get into the ones I am currently applying to.

I really don't want to take the GRE, but at the same time I do. At least I have the knowledge that I don't HAVE to send the test scores if they are horrible.

Bleh, the last thing I want to do is study for this test. I hate tests! I love writing, but I hate tests!

Watch, I am going to do better on the math portion than on the verbal/writing portion. (I'm not joking.)

Graduate School Applications

I made the decision about 6 months ago to go back to school. Sure, my job is boring. I wake up at 7am everyday and don't get back until 7pm, and I spend most of my time on the computer. But it isn't just the monotony of my current job that is pushing me to go back to school.

I miss school. I miss living on/near campus, rolling out of bed to make it to class and bumming around the coffee shop in my sweats. But most importantly, I miss learning. I miss studying and reading and using my brain all the time. It is important to me to be intelligent and well-prepared for anything, and I feel like my mind is beginning to get mushy. That is why I have decided to forge ahead to graduate school to get out of this mushy slump.

I couldn't be more thrilled. I have been working non-stop on my writing sample (25-30 pages of creative non-fiction) and reworking my personal statement/letter of intent/statement of purpose for each school over and over. I have all of my letters of recommendation in place, however one professor who agreed still hasn't gotten back to me about it. Yikes! I hope it turns out ok!

I am also thrilled to report that my boyfriend will be moving with me when I go! Danny is so supportive and it will make picking up and moving across the country so much easier and enjoyable with him there.

I am so excited!!!!

Deserving of Mourning

At 22 years old, he had everything to live for. It sounds cliché, but it’s the truth. He was a few months away from his college graduation and the beginning of the rest of his life. He had a strong, supportive family, a loving girlfriend and a future filled with open doors.

Ryan Armstrong was murdered on Friday, December 26th outside of a sports bar in Temecula, CA. The story my family was told on the morning of the 27th has seemed to change a lot since we heard the news. Originally he was in a fight with someone and he was stabbed and both of their bodies were lying in the hospital with the other person barely surviving. Then it turned out that other person lying in the hospital was a friend, and Ryan had gotten into a fight with a stranger who was being rude to his girlfriend. The story changed slightly a few more times before we heard that Ryan had stepped outside of the bar and been jumped by the other man and his friends and repeatedly stabbed before those other men hopped in their car and drove off. But no matter what really happened, the death of a young life is always a tragedy.

Ron and Debbie Armstrong have been the pastor and pastor’s wife of Cornerstone Community Church in Wildomar since I can remember. I grew up in that church. Our family lived a mile away from the Armstrong’s. I went over to their house and played basketball with their sons and ate dinner with them once as a child. I always felt so cool being at their house. They and my parents rotated who would drive Ryan and his brother Ross and I to school in junior high. Ron and Debbie love people. They always have. Not only have they given their entire lives to God, but they have given their lives to their church as well. I have always loved that church, and when I left for college, I always wondered how I would find a place that felt like Cornerstone did. So to see someone who has been so close to my family go through such a loss… it’s heartbreaking.

Here I am, sitting at my desk at work, trying to keep my tears back so the computer screen isn’t so blurry, crying because Ryan was too young to go… because a family close to ours lost a son… because life is too damn short… and because Ryan lived a life that is deserving of mourning.

Rest In Peace, Ryan Armstrong

By MICHAEL PERRAULT and JOHN ASBURY
The Press-Enterprise

WILDOMAR - Emotional parishioners who gathered Sunday morning at Cornerstone Community Church struggled to make sense of the Friday night stabbing death of 22-year-old Ryan Joshua Armstrong, son of the church's founding and senior pastor the Rev. Ron Armstrong.

"There are times when I say, 'God, I don't get it,' " the Rev. Ron Baum, executive pastor, told a standing-room-only crowd gathered among Christmas trees and wreaths at the Wildomar church.

Instead of a joyous post-Christmas celebration that had been planned, churchgoers wept, prayed and sang, vowing to rally around their pastor, his wife Debbie and their other son, Ross.

"I told (Ron) what he has been telling all of us for the last 17 years: It's going to be OK," said Mike Brisson, associate pastor.

Ryan Armstrong was stabbed to death Friday night during a fight outside the ET Sports Lounge on Jefferson Avenue in Temecula.

Riverside County sheriff's detectives identified and were searching for several people at the bar Friday night, but no arrests have been made.

"We've identified several people involved in the stabbing. It's just a matter of locating and questioning them," said Central Homicide Sgt. Dean Spivacke.

Armstrong and his friends had been in the bar for about 45 minutes when the argument started with another group of people around 10 p.m.

As the arguments began to diffuse, Armstrong had reportedly gone to resolve things with the other group when the fight grew physical and spilled out a back door into an alley where Armstrong was stabbed, Spivacke said.

Neither of the groups previously knew each other and there were no gang affiliations, Spivacke said.

Deputies have not said what caused the argument.

"The fight had died down when the victim tried to make peace," Spivacke said, according to witnesses. "That's when they attacked Ryan."

Also stabbed during the altercation was Joel Ross, son of Hugh Ross, a minister at Sierra Madre Congressional Church and president of the Pasadena-based nonprofit international science-faith think tank, Reasons to Believe.

Ross was listed in critical condition but was expected to survive.

Armstrong was a Chapman University student, majoring in public relations and advertising, who was in Murrieta visiting friends and family for the holidays, Baum said.

Brisson was neighbors to the Armstrongs for five years in the mid-1990s, as well as youth pastor. He remembers Ryan Armstrong as a typical rough-and-tumble boy who loved sports, played roller hockey, enjoyed martial arts and wrestled with his brother.

"The thing that always impressed me about Ryan was how he cared about people," Brisson said. "He (grew to be) a very intelligent young man. I guess what is such a shame to me is I really just saw great things for him. He wasn't just a guy going through life. Ryan would have made his mark in the world."