Vika's Musings

What is Disney World really like?

From May 15th, 2023, to May 9th, 2024, I had the beautiful experience of attending the Disney College Program in Orlando, Florida. This program is employment for recent graduates at Disney World from five months to one year (called an extension). As with all dreams—in ways, it is—but there is a lot about the DCP they don’t tell you, and you learn what I did the hard way, too.

You work long hours, and finances are strained if you live in the Disney CP housing at Flamingo Crossings. Before attending the CP, I highly recommend starting a budget and sticking with it throughout your program. Also, unless your degree is in the performing arts, in my opinion, Disney is not the best place to make a career. My degree is in English, and it wouldn’t help me at Disney World. But the experience was well worth it. I learned that doing something different is a dream come true.

How My Cat Got His Name

My cat, Tanner, was already named that when my dad and I picked him up from the Greenville Humane Society in 2016. Therefore, how could we change his name if he already responded to Tanner? He’s named that for a reason—his fur is tan. Tanner is an orange tabby, meaning he has light tan fur with light spots.

Tanner has a wild personality. He tends to warm up to women faster than to men, leading me to believe he had a bad experience with a man. Tanner may be light in color, but his personality contains the whole rainbow.

Skiing in Canada

The last time my family and I skied in Canada—Mt. Tremblant—was December 2021. Mt. Tremblant is in Ontario, and my family and I have skied there almost every winter since 2013. We drive for a few days to get there, but it’s worth it. Aside from a whole ski resort, Mt. Tremblant is also a French-based town with shops, light shows, ice skating rinks, etc. Now, as it’s Canada, it’s also cold, but the snow is gorgeous—legit, fluffy, and more than enough to make a snowball or snow angel. The best part is—you don’t have to be a professional skier to enjoy Mt. Tremblant. There is a steady supply of green circles, blue squares, black diamonds, and double black diamonds at the resort. While I’m not a professional skier, I usually ski blue squares, but Mt. Tremblant was the first place I skied a black diamond, which resulted in a sprained wrist. Nonetheless, I was excited to finally try my first black diamond at my childhood ski resort.

New Words I Stumbled Into

While working through Notes from Underground and The Left Hand of Darkness, I stumbled upon words I never knew: enormous words that had simple meanings. That made me curious as to why these two authors had such a fluent vocabulary. One of my guesses is that they read a lot. The largest word I found is tintinnabulation, which means the “ringing or sound of bells.” In The Left Hand of Darkness, I didn’t even know what coitus meant, which is somewhat embarrassing, but now I do, and I can add it to my growing vocabulary. In Notes from Underground, a few of the new words I stumbled upon included treble (consisting of three parts), mirth (laughter), spite (an important word in the book that means the desire to harm someone), and more. While I continue reading outside my known genre, I know my vocabulary will improve. I may never be as fluent as Ursula K. Le Guin, but as a growing writer, my challenge is to expand my vocabulary.

My Favorite Book

My favorite book is Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger. I was introduced to her in middle school and kept up with her books throughout high school and college. The story is a science fantasy about a young girl, Sophie Foster, a Telepath in the Lost Cities, a hidden world. What helps her stand out is that, unlike other telepaths, she has blonde hair and brown eyes. This is because she was created in a lab, almost like a clone, but not exactly, and now she must save the Lost Cities from an evil organization.

I love these books because the author’s writing style is similar to my own: simple and screenplay-like. Because of this, it’s easy to read through her long books and feel like they are not as long. I hope to see Keeper of the Lost Cities on the big screen as a Disney movie one day. Messenger has potential, and I look forward to being in her shoes one day, too.

What is Geologic Time?

We’ve all heard about geologic time—how geology helps us define the Earth’s past. It’s one of the most fascinating subjects ever; I have learned and written so much about it since 8th grade. My acronym for geologic time is “PPMC.” Now, what does this mean? Well, the geologic time scale is divided into four eras: the Precambrian (P), Paleozoic (P), Mesozoic (M), and Cenozoic (C) eras. Humans live in the Cenozoic Era, the “Age of Mammals.”

Aside from the four eras of Earth’s history, it’s also broken into epochs and periods, such as the Cambrian (invertebrates, trilobites), the Ordovician (early fish and animals, but there was a great extinction during it), Silurian (land plants and insects), Devonian (cone plants and fish with legs), Carboniferous (rainforests, amphibians, and the first reptile known as Hylonomus), Permian (the end of the Paleozoic Era due to a massive volcanic eruption known as the Siberian Eruptions), Triassic (crocodiles and palm trees, first dinosaurs), Jurassic (first birds on the Earth known as Archaeopteryx, most enormous dinosaurs roaming, and mammals), Cretaceous (flowering plants and the K-T Mass Extinction). Finally, for the Cenozoic Era, we’ve had the Tertiary Period (primates) and currently live in the Quaternary Period (the “Age of Humans”).

I could continue, but in the interest of brevity, a brief overview is all we need, and I will expand on it in future blogs.