Testing Center Burnett Hall

     Walking into Burnett Hall on the City Campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln you see a door that leads into a room that is jam packed full of students and computers. Stacked in rows and rows are Macintosh computers that are all wired into the network so that anyone can come use them. This certain testing center is open for many hours and the schedule allows you to be very flexible when you have to take a test there.
      One thing that I have noticed on my multiple trips to this place is the amount of stress that tends to emulate from this room. When you walk by you can almost feel the static in the air. Students crowd around the door during busy times when all the computers are full. Each one has a notebook or textbook out, doing a little last minute cramming. There are also students that flood the hallway benches that seem to just not be ready to try the test itself and come out there to sprawl out and study with some headphones in, dead to the world.
       On the other hand, there are students that come in and see the line and before even thinking, turn right around and walk right back out the door. I was one of those students today. I didn't want to sit and dread the test I was about to take, so I went and got a snack and a coffee. I figured I shouldn't be hungry and tired during my test anyway. So I head back to that static, a room full of students that stress so much because these tests they are taking are a matter of passing and failing, life and death in some cases. But not all is bad in the testing center, every once in a while someone passes with flying colors and leaves the room with a smile on their face.

Alone In My Treestand

      As I walk into the woods at 5:30 in the morning, I can feel the crisp,cool air filling my lungs. It is early October and I am getting out into the woods for my first hunt of the year. It is pitch black and all I can see is what is lit up by my headlamp. Crossing the creek just about to my tree stand I feel that familiar feeling of anticipation and how anxious I had been to get back into the woods. It has been far too long.
       Once to my tree, the sun just getting ready to rise above the horizon, I begin to climb. My feet are firmly planted on the screw-in pegs that I had put in when I put the stand in. After the invigorating climb twenty five feet up into my tree stand, I begin to pull up my bow and arrow.
       Finally, I am situated into my stand and ready to relax. There is something about sitting in a tree, in below freezing weather, that has a calming effect on me. The tree sways back and forth in the wind and creaks and moans like it is alive underneath you. When I close my eyes, I can really take in my surroundings before the sun fully comes up. Listening to the wind whip through the trees, the wildlife become to come to life. Everything seems to come out with the sun, all at once, like a gift for me and only me to see that morning.
        Set up on a river bank tends to always allow for the most wildlife viewing. Once the sun is up enough that I can make out what everything is, I begin to look around. Nothing knows that I am there, I am secluded up in my tree hidden from the world, with the perfect spot to spy. This is the key place that I could sit for hours upon hours and never get bored.