Perfect '10 - Cristine

Alright so, I’m not even going to lie. I thought my Fish Camp counselors and friends who applied for co-chair were crazy people. I mean, I liked all my organizations and Fish Camp was fun, but seriously, how could anyone possibly be that obsessed? Yeah, so that was me up until March when I found out I made Fish Camp and was now a part of Camp Capps, where I met my 26 new best friends. To put it simply, Camp Capps is now my life. I sleep (dreaming of) Camp Capps, I eat (with) Camp Capps and I think Camp Capps. The reason for all the obsession is obviously that I was lucky enough to be a part of the most amazing camp ever. My co-chairs are the definition of crazy-fun, my Discussion Group partner is an official linebacker by association, and our namesake — the one and only Cathy Capps — is ultimately awesome. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still think my co-chairs are crazy, but crazy in an extremely awesome way. Between stalking people on campus at 2 a.m. during an intense game of “Mafia” and being together every night of the week, I think it’s safe to say the line of obsession has been crossed. And I am more than OK with that. I absolutely love every moment I spend with my camp, and my brain has gotten so used to aqua-colored things that no matter where I am, if I see something aqua, I immediately walk to it and check the price tag. Underwear, oven mitts, baseball bats, WHO CARES — it’s aqua! And with that said, so begins the Fish Camp obsession.

Perfect '10-Stephanie

It is truly amazing how much I can distract myself when I should be studying. Whether it’s Facebook, crush parties, coffee, cupcakes or Halo, I can always find something to keep me away from the books.
This has been the week from hell, when it comes to academics. Honestly, I have never felt so overloaded with information in my life. My schedule was literally wake up, study, class, study, lunch, study, class, study, dinner, study, meeting and study. Of course, I never actually followed that schedule. My last test of the week was on Thursday, and I didn’t even start studying until Wednesday night due to the fact that I had been studying for my Tuesday and Wednesday tests the nights before. So, it’s about 8:30 p.m. I’d eaten dinner and taken a shower, two things that I normally use to delay studying for a few hours. I get back to my room and start getting my books and notes together so I can leave for Sweet Eugene’s. I check Facebook because — well, I hadn’t checked it since 3 p.m.. So, I get on, only to find I have four messages and two friend requests, one of which was a girl I hadn’t seen in four years. Wow! I had to write on her wall. I mean come on, it would be rude not to. So I finish that, and about 30 minutes later, I leave for Sweet’s.
I get there only to find that there are no empty seats. Of course there’s a couch here and there with a little space, but how awkward would that be to walk up and be like, “Hey, can I cuddle with you?” That’s basically what would happen, because we’d be so close. So I decide to leave, and I call my friend Carly who is the best studier I’ve ever met. She’d have to know of some good places.
An hour later, I’m in Carly’s room, eating my fourth cookie and dancing to ’NSync. So finally, we leave to go study. We stop by It’s A Grind first, because you can’t study without coffee. Duh. Then we pull up at The Hampton Hotel, and Carly starts getting out. What? She then informs me that studying at hotels was the new cool thing to do because you get free coffee and it’s never crowded. So we go in, and I attempt to study. There’s a really sweet girl in there with the cutest hat, so I start talking to her about where she got it, and then we start having a conversation about how great Target is and how we need to go shopping. No, stop, focus! I try to start studying my notes, but I feel like my brain has already absorbed so much that I just can’t take anymore in. So, my friend Kelsey calls me, and asks if I want to go to the E-2 crush party. Sweet! I almost forgot! So, I tell her to come pick me up — she is a little worried about me because she’s coming to get me from a hotel — and we drive back to our dorm.
Because it’s already 11 p.m., we decide to just skip the crush party and go get the free coffee and cupcakes that our dorm was having for a Relay for Life fundraiser. Of course they weren’t actually free, so we had to go to an ATM to get some money for a donation. We finally get to the dorm’s little café, sit down, and pull out our notes. But, wait! There’s Vanessa! Let’s go talk to her!
The three of us leave the café about 30 minutes later to go play Wii tennis with our friend KC. One game turned into six, not to mention 20 minutes of watching YouTube videos.
I finally get back to my room at 1 a.m., and I know nothing more about history than I did at 8 p.m. Great. Looks like I won’t be getting any sleep tonight.

Perfect '10-Cristine

I have to say that campaign week was the worst, best experience of my life. Between never being able to go to class and constantly having to beg people to hold banners, I felt like I had never been in such an annoyingly pushy position before in my life. I learned who I could count on, and who — well, not so much. But that was the worst part. I would never go back and change anything about the past two weeks, because it was an experience I will never forget. If you’re running a campaign, you’re basically on the same schedule as everyone else running a campaign. With that said, let’s just say I’ve had some fun times with every candidate of almost every position. I’ve probably heard everyone’s speech about five times each, but that’s OK. Probably one of the best moments of the week was Wednesday night. We were all rushing to speak at the million meetings that night, and somehow all got stuck on the second floor of Rudder. I’m talking three yell leader campaigns, probably two SBP campaigns and some random people thrown in, too. Well, someone got the great idea to go up those itty-bitty stairs outside Rudder. So all 30 of us pile into those stairs and work our way to the top. Imagine 30 people dressed in business attire trekking up back stairwells, only to find out every door was locked. We laughed and went down. The other great memory was a bittersweet one. After some other meeting last Thursday, I ran into a good friend running for SBP, another friend running for yell and five great guys also running for yell. We sat outside at Rudder Fountain to take a breath, then headed inside Rumours to watch a very upsetting Aggie basketball game. But despite the sad loss, what was amazing was the genuinely sincere and kind attitude the opposing candidates had for each other. Everyone seemed to be watching out for each other, but more importantly cheered on their Aggies together. So there we sat — five different campaigns, all together, all joined by one driving force.

Perfect '10- Cristine

So going home is usually one of those things I look forward to — a nice time to relax, no stress and hanging out with my family. I thought going home for spring break would be great. I figured I’d be so happy to see my high school friends, so busy with catching up on reading and shopping, that I wouldn’t even think about College Station. Yeah, that lasted for all of the first two hours I went home. Then I realized how much I missed my best friends, my dewy-smelling dorm room and being woken up by the Corps yelling outside my window at ridiculous hours of the night. But mostly I missed my friends. The way I see it, being in college is like being on vacation with all of your friends, for an extended period of time. Your dorm/apartment/house is like your hotel. You go out to eat together, you try not to be in your room very much and you walk everywhere. And of course you have those friends that you hang out with all the time on your vacation. For me, it’s the first friend I made in my communication class, who ended up being in my Freshmen Leadership Organization and is now in my Fish Camp. Needless to say, we are best friends now. But like I said, you see these people all the time, so going from seeing your friend three times a day to none for a week? That’s rough. So that part of spring break I didn’t like so much, but the relaxing and doing nothing? That was great. I was still anxious to get back, though. That was until yesterday at 4:30 p.m., approximately one hour after I pulled into Lot 55, when I remembered why I had wanted a break so bad one week prior. Oh well, only like, what…three weeks until Easter?

Perfect '10- Stephanie

The first thing that comes to any college student’s mind when he hears the phrase ‘spring break’ is a three-day to week-long party complete with bikinis and endless amounts of alcohol. Whether it’s Mexico, Padre or some kid’s garage, there’s bound to be a party somewhere. For me, not so much. A few days before leaving my family to come back to College Station after Christmas break, my parents surprised me and my 12-year-old brother with a seven-day trip to the Cayman Islands for spring break. I’m not a huge partier; I love my family, and I needed to get tan — so this sounded amazing. Also being a freshman, I wasn’t really aware of the college spring break stereotypes. I thought everyone would be with their families, but I was so wrong.
Starting in February, I kept getting invites from my friends to go to Galveston or Padre and stay in some condo and basically go crazy for a few days. I’d turn the offers down with an apologetic, “Aw, I’m sorry. I’m going to the Caymans.” Their responses were basically that of “Your loss,” which surprised me because well, who wouldn’t want to go to the Caymans? Then I started realizing that I was the only person going somewhere with my family. I wasn’t too worried until we actually got to the resort.
I go out to the beach the first day, and I’m expecting to see hundreds of people my age, specifically guys. Then I realize that I’m the only person over 14 who’s not on a honeymoon or 25th wedding anniversary trip. Oh well, I thought, this is a perfect opportunity to be alone and get so tan that everyone back in College Station would be jealous. So I, being the overly confident white girl that I am, decided to lay out for four hours without any sun block. Come on, I needed to get black, and I never burn, so what could go wrong? Well, I did burn, and I didn’t just burn, I got completely fried to the point where just wearing a T-shirt caused excruciating pain. Cool. Because I couldn’t lay out anymore, I decided to study for the four tests I have coming up this week. But don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all academics and applying sunburn soothing gel. My family and I would center our day around the meals, which were wonderful. If we were really feeling crazy, we’d get ice cream after eating the restaurant’s massive dessert, and once we stayed up until 11:30 p.m. watching the fourth Harry Potter movie. What could be better?
So I may have missed out on a crazy time, but at least when I get back and everyone else is complaining about regretting having made some pretty dumb decisions while swept up in the college spring break craziness, I’ll have no regrets — well, except that I didn’t wear sunscreen and now my face is peeling and it looks like I have some rare skin disease. But hey, that will be gone within a few days. At least I didn’t get a giant gothic cross tattoo across my whole back.

Perfect '10- Stephanie

I love how it takes me three quarters of the year to discover things on campus that I could have been enjoying all year. It seems everyday I find something new, fall in love with it and then get depressed thinking about how pathetic my life was before I found it. For example, I never really liked the smoothies sold around campus, but a few weeks ago I tried the Simply Strawberry, and I became obsessed. Then, only yesterday I found out that I can add blueberries to the already amazing smoothie I had been getting. It was like discovering that heaven is sold in plastic cups for $4.10.
Another amazing discovery was the Student Computing Center. I never knew that student fees included a couple hundred pages of printing. Ever since I found that out, I’ve been living at the SCC. I can print the endless amount of pages required for my five classes, check Facebook and study all at the same time. I guess I could do that in my dorm room too, but space would be limited, and come on, that would just be anti-social.
The last discovery has to be my favorite: the 12th Man Cafeteria. Wow. That’s all I can say. Living off-campus, I don’t get to eat on campus that often unless I want to dish out over $7 anytime I eat. About two weeks ago, my friend Alli took me to the 12th Man, and at first, I was less than impressed. It seemed a little sketchy big, rolling chairs, dim lighting and Corps boys. However, after I got my chicken fingers, mashed potatoes and Aggie roll, everything changed. It was just like Luby’s, and I guess that might turn a lot of people off, but I love Luby’s. Maybe I should be embarrassed to admit that because it’s known as an ‘old person cafeteria,’ but what can I say, I love it. I then realized how deprived I had been: a whole semester and a half without those massive, wheely chairs and Luby’s-style cuisine. I know it’s cliché, but my life had been dark and gray, and now I have found the light.

Perfect '10- Cristine

I always envisioned college as staying out until the wee hours of the night every night, watching concerts in the grass in the middle of campus, taking road trips every weekend and, of course, still doing well in school. Well, for a while there, none of this was going on. Last semester I studied during the week, was in bed by one, and took one trip to Austin (hiss) for the night. In the past week, I think I’ve finally felt like I was in college. It started with the giant anti-abortion petition. Students speaking out sounds like college to me. Second was the concert. I walked to the Memorial Student Center and was astonished to hear screaming coming from Rudder Fountain. Now, I dated a “screamer” once, so I’ve been to my fair share of screamo concerts. But for some reason, I never quite expected to hear it at A&M. Nonetheless, it made my day. What also made it great was the transition from screaming, to classical piano coming from inside the Flag Room. Perfect combination. And then I went on my first road trip. You see, I don’t think my parents really believed that I had friends at school. So, to prove to them that I was not in fact a social outcast, I decided to load up six of my best friends and take a road trip home. Never before has home-cooked food tasted so good and staying up playing “Mafia” been so fun. I’d say I want to take road trips all the time now, but the thing is, I’m kind of starting to grow attached to College Station. I know, I never thought it would happen.

Perfect '10- Stephanie

When I applied to be a Fish Camp counselor last month, I had no clue what I was getting myself into. All I knew was that I loved Fish Camp and I wanted a chance to be a part of it. I went to get my letter from Koldus on Monday, nervous that I would open the envelope and once again be disappointed, just like what happened with the Freshman Leadership Organization I applied for. I could see it: opening the envelope, unfolding the paper and seeing a big “NO” written on a blank sheet. Cool. However, I face my fears and open the envelope to find a picture of “Talladega Nights.” If this was a way of getting shot down, these people were sick. But luckily, it had a big “congratulations” at the top, so I wasn’t too worried.
It had two numbers on the paper, but I kind of ignored them, not knowing what they meant. Later I found out that they were my co-chair’s numbers, and I needed to call them. Oops. So I called them, which was pretty interesting. It wasn’t just a little check-in with them asking me if I was excited and making sure I was coming to the revelation Thursday night; they actually had a conversation with me. They asked about my day, what test I was taking, if I liked that class, what I was wearing to Revelation, etc. I couldn’t believe that I had never even seen these people before, yet they were so excited about talking to me and interested in getting to know me.
Later that day at my sorority meeting, my friends who got Fish Camp were all talking about how cool their camp was, and who was in them. I felt a little out of it, because as far as I was concerned, the only person I knew in my camp was me. Then I found out that people had been making Facebook groups all day, trying to find their fellow camp counselors by posting their co-chair’s phone numbers. As soon as I got home and looked through the endless list of phone numbers until I found mine. I joined the group and five minutes later, I had five friend requests. An hour later I had three more, along with two wall posts. It was insane. I had never met these people in my life, and they were messaging me, IMing me, texting me, and asking if I could hang out. I haven’t even seen them yet, but I already felt close to them. When I applied, I never thought I would be making plans to go to dinner with a group of people I had never seen, but I guess that’s what makes Fish Camp so unique.

Perfect '10- Cristine

So I’ll try and be real here. I’ve experienced two very different emotions this past week. The first was that of utter desperation and exhaustion. Never before have I felt I didn’t even have time to breathe. Between campaigning, studying, going to meetings and hosting high school students the night before a huge test, I was in over my head to say the least. All of this lead to the utter bottom of my desperation on Thursday as I pulled an all-nighter, which was followed by taking a test that I still feel was impossible, and which followed to me being grouchy — never a good thing. Then, I hit that second emotion — that of “hey, cool, these past two days are ACTUALLY going okay.” I like this feeling much better. Driving drunken friends home and realizing the beauty of the dollar store are things that can totally turn your day around. But that was only the beginning. You see, Saturday was Theta formal. Now, let me say I was excited but nervous. The reason being: I’m a little on the awkward side when it comes to dancing. I tend to break out the lawn mower or even the robot. I was just worried I would be a total embarrassment to my date. Turns out, he loves the lawn mower just as much if not more. Let’s just say, we owned that dance floor with our sweet moves.

Bless you, Mr. Scorsese

Best Director:

While many would have chosen Clint Eastwood for this award, I was confident that the once seminarian, Martin Scorsese, would finally win “Best Director.” Scorsese crafted a masterpiece in “The Departed” that captured the audience both visually and emotionally. Every shot, angle, and line spoken was filmed with a vision that only the eye of a legend such as Scorsese could create. Finally, the curse has been lifted.

Best Picture:

I was more than fulfilled to watch as Mr. Scorsese’s “The Departed” also won the Oscar for “Best Picture.” Perhaps one of the best films of the decade, “The Departed” has become an American classic. With astonishing cinematography and an outstanding cast, the film was indeed insurmountable by any of the other nominees as it truly met the Academy’s “Gold Standard.” It is because of motion pictures such as “The Departed” that I beg you, Mr. Scorsese, please continue making movies.

More Than Expected

Best Actress:

It certainly came as no surprise as 2006 Best Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman called out the name of the beautiful and elegant, Helen Mirren. Her role in “The Queen” could be surpassed by none, and thus as she walked the stage carrying the Oscar, she truly looked of royalty. Now the only question left for Mirren is that of what the living English monarch herself thought.

Best Actor:

Who would have believed that a young man from south-central Los Angeles, who grew up seeing drive-in movies from the back seat of his family car, would one day win an Oscar for “Best Actor.” Forest Whitaker was the only natural pick for the award. His charisma and drive to fulfill the role of his character, Idi Amin, within “The Last King of Scotland,” has allowed him to become an actor amongst the best in Hollywood. Thus, his winning came as no shock to me.

Best Supporting Actress? They're joking, right?

Best Supporting Actress:

This is an utter travesty. As I said before, the award for this category should not be handed to a former American Idol. While Jennifer Hudson has a voicebox any aspiring-diva would die for, a beautiful voice is in no way deserving of an Oscar, as both Cate Blanchett and Abigail Breslin were both incessantly more deserving. The bar was just lowered for future winners of “Best Supporting Actress” as it simply goes to show, one does not have to be an accomplished actress to meet the Academy’s golden expectations.

Best Cinematography:

Winning also “Best Art Direction” and “Achievement in Make-up,” “Pan’s Labyrinth” was indeed the most deserving film of this award. Cinematographer Guillermo Navarro’s ability to fashion a film from the dreams of director Guillermo del Toro was masterful. Both “The Black Dahlia” and “Children of Men” were worthy contenders, yet Navarro’s filming was certainly a work of art.

Best Supporting Actor

I must say that I am utterly surprised at the result of the winner of this category. Alan Arkin gave an outstanding performance as a grandfather wishing only for his young, uniquely awkward granddaughter’s win of a California beauty pageant. But for the Academy to pass both Mark Wahlberg and Eddie Murphy was absurd. Arkin’s role required no added talent, and while one can not compare the Golden Globe and Screen Actor’s Guild awards, Murphy should have received this award.

Kate Winslett'S mint colored asymmetrical gown is beautifully made with overlapping material at the bust, however, the color seems to remind me of mint sherbert.

Host Ellen DeGeneres, while naturally beautiful, witty, and charming, looks a bit like a loan shark in her maroon velvet with satin trim tailored suit and white boots.

Helen Mirren, nominated for best actress for her role in The Queen embodies elegance and class in her champagne 3/4 sleeve Chiristian LaCroix gown.

Cate Blanchett is wearing a stunning Armani asymmetrical, shimmering gun metal colored gown.

Abigail Breslin steals the show with her adorable pink gown with satin flowers and intricate latice work.

The first wave of fashion

Nominated for best supporting actress for her role in Dreamgirls, Jennifer Hudson's light brown Oscar de la Renta gown, metallic caplett, and matching jeweled Manolo Blahnik sandals are nothing to be too excited about.


Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts can be seen walking arm in arm down the red carpet, Nicole a head taller than Naomi. As best friends and fellow actresses, these two women demonstrate impeccable style. Nicole reels in a form fitting red halter, with a bow at the neck. Naomi looks stunning in a lemon colored strapless gown, with a black tie at the waist.

Best Actress nominee, Penelope Cruz, is as beautiful in her Beige strapless ruffled gown as the art direction is in her latest movie Volver.

The Academy Awards of Fashion

As the most anticipated and prestigous award ceremony in the nation, the Oscar awards are loved not only for the celebrities that they showcase, but also serve as a Who's Who of the Couture world. Let's face it, half the fun of the Oscars is watching to determine the hits and misses of celebrities' fashion sense.

A Beginning to a Year's Pefect Ending

Culminated into a period of hours is a year’s worth of artistic brilliance. The most superb films of every genre are reviewed for their masterful technique and awarded for their ability to instill genuine emotion within their audience. Tears, laughter, shock, and heart-wrenching suspense: the best films of the year have the ability to transfigure our reality to dreams and our dreams to reality. Who will win the “Gold Standard?” Tonight, the Academy will decide.