Sick...AGAIN

So, ok we've all heard that you get sick a lot as a freshman. But this is just ridiculous. I have a sore throat like every two weeks that lasts for about a week. And it's not just me, my friends are on the same sick cycle. It's really not fun. I'm trying to take my vitamins and eat lots of oranges and stuff, but nothing really works. I think a big contributor is the dining hall. I mean I don't want to be gross but, I feel like a lot of people touch or at least get close to what I eat from the dining hall and I'm sure a lot of them are sick soooo that doesn't help things. Hate to be a whiner, but I'm really just not used to feeling like I have no immune system. I guess one good thing is that it's not just me, so I can commiserate with other people on my floor and in my building in general. Hey, on the bright side its almost a conversation starter..."Ugh, I'm sick" "Hey ME TOO!!!" and so on

Who knew...

Something I never thought of was the change in how I'd be doing homework. Pretty much everyone has the same amount of homework in high school, due at the same times and about the same stuff. Here, the logistics of the thing are completely different. My friends are taking very different classes than mine, and they don't have papers due at the same time and their tests are on different days. So it makes it interesting when they have absolutely nothing due for the next week while I have a research paper impending....and they are BEGGING me to go out with them because they have NOTHING to do! Or vice versa of course, when they have a huge test and you want to watch a movie or something because you've finished all your homework. It seems like that never really happened in high school because everyone was pretty much working on the same stuff at the same time...

WHO KNEW?

The Three Options

So I remember people telling me about the three options you have when you get to college. Either you can have a social life, get sleep, or actually do assigned homework. People said that out of those three its only really possible to do two. In some ways that's so true. Either you skimp on homework and get sleep or you hang out with friends. The tipping point on that scale is really the fact that there is so much to be done extracurricularly in college, aside from homework and friends and sleep. Like, being a member of a club that meets for two hours on Tuesday nights or having weekends taken up by community service adds a whole other dimension to the "two out of three" model. I mean you do have to prioritize because you can't do everything and live to tell the tale.

But there is so much to do! It's even more of a juggling act than high school, honestly. I didn't think this would be the case at all. You don't realize how much you're juggling though because everyone around you is doing just as much. In high school, there were the slackers that did near nothing other than the bare minimum, and often not even that. In college, it seems like most people are over-achievers when it comes to being involved on campus because its FUN! It's a new world here...but in a good way.

Roomie Love

My roommate and I get along really well, but we hang out with completely different groups - meaning I don't hang out with her much outside of the room. I want this to change. I like the girl, but we just have different friends who don't all hang out together. What's more, her friends live in different buildings, while mine live on our floor.

So lately we've been making an effort to actually hang out together. Today we have a gym date after class and we've been going to breakfast on Thursdays when our class schedule coincides. I feel like we are courteous when we're together, and we have progressed to the joke making stage in our relationship, but we're not quite tight. I want to change that. Because, I mean, I like her well enough although she isn't my favorite person ever, I feel like we could be better friends than we are if I just got to know her better. Plus it would be good to forge some bonds with the person I'm going to be living with for the rest of the year and next. It'd be nice to live with someone you trust deep down and feel like you can open up to. So here begins stage one of operation roomie-love!

Fall Break=Birthday Break

Lucky for me my birthday fell on a Friday. Even luckier, it fell during Fall Break. First thing I did was get up early, 'round 9, and started vacuuming. Vacuuming? Yes, vacuuming. Our floor is (was) so dirty that it was absolutely disgusting to walk barefoot on it. So first thing in the morning, I was feeling productive and I started on my logic homework, corrected my French paper, vacuumed my floor and last but not least, did my laundry which had been sitting in an ominous heap in my closet for weeks. Yay. Productive morning I'd say.

As the day went on it became more fun and less productive, but productivity is what Sunday is for, right? Right. So then we biked down to browse around on a local street that has lots of cool shops on it, which was a treat for me because my friends don't always want to bike down there, but since it was my birthday they HAD to. Then we went out to eat pizza and see a band at a local hangout. Basically my birthday was awesome. Just groovy.

Today's going to be a long day of wrapping some loose ends on readings that I should've done WEEKS ago for some classes, and preparing myself to start on a history paper due in November. The term paper is scaring me. I think I might head over to the educational resource center and have them give me some pointers on where to go with it. What's the point of having places like that on campus if you don't use them? Yeah, I'm going to the tutoring center...what of it! Haha. We'll see how much they help me out. Till next time!

Back on Campus

The weekend with the family was successful but I'm glad to be back on campus. I mean, it was a little bit stressful to be honest. I had to skip a class on Friday to get home in time to get my license redone at the courthouse because I lost it when I was out one night. BUT my mom got a flat on the way so my dad had to drop everything and start driving to get me so we could make it in time. That pretty much sums up the hectic whirlwind pace of the rest of the weekend. Shopping for some more fall clothes (closet is looking pretty skimpy when it comes to cool weather attire: thanks a lot high school uniforms) and snacks to take back to campus. Not to mention birthday celebrations we had to fit into one day. And of course there was the homework, gotta love it.

So it was awesome to see the fam, but I didn't really leave myself much time to actually enjoy them, except when they took me back to campus. I did get a nice birthday lunch that we managed to drag out for 2+  hours. It was sad to see them go because I could tell they wished they could spend more time with me, but I was ready to get back to my dorm and be with my friends and settle back in for the week ahead. It's not that I don't miss them, because I do. It's just that this is where I live and have most of my life now. Thanksgiving break will be different, more time to enjoy their company and home cooked meals! But let's not get ahead of ourselves...first comes Fall break and then Halloween!

Parents Weekend

This weekend is Parent's Weekend and Homecoming Weekend. Exciting, right? Definitely. This whole week has been filled with activities day and night. One night we had a movie out on the quad. Another day there was a race and powderpuff game. Tonight there was a concert on the quad. The band was pretty famous and I wasn't really acquainted with their music, but I went to check it out anyway and it was super good (not so much the opener, but still). Definitely on the download list. Tomorrow there's the pep rally then on Saturday is the game. BUT the catch is, I'm going home this weekend. Most people's parents are coming to visit this weekend, but I'm heading back to the old abode. Why would I leave when I'm supposed to stay and show the 'rents around the place? Well sometimes logistically things just work out differently than planned.

Next week we have a break AND it's my birthday so I wanted to stay on campus and hang out with my new friends to celebrate midterms being over and me being a whole year older (yay?). Of course the fam is dying to see me, so somewhere in there I had to work in a trip home, and it just happened to fall this weekend. I'm interested to see how this weekend plays out. I've got school work to do and I haven't seen any of my family or friends since August; I hope they don't all flock to the house hoping to see me. Frankly I just want to chill with my parents and sister and (honestly) just go to sleep at decent hours for once in a while. We'll see.

Monday I'll let you know how the first weekend home went...hopefully it goes off without a hitch. 

Rainy Days

Rain in college is annoying...at my high school it wasn't a big deal at all if it was a rainy day because everything was pretty much in the same huge building. Here I have to go from one side of campus to the other in 10 minutes and it's pouring outside. Being forgetful doesn't help either. It rained already three times this week...the first day I was caught totally off-guard and so I got pretty wet going from one class to the next. And let me just say, sitting through a lecture in a freezing classroom with wet pants is Not a fun experience. The second time in the morning it was menacing rain, but I was in such a rush that I completely forgot an umbrella and/or my rain jacket. So third time it was raining and YES I remembered my jacket. But I was late (again) and so I had to take my bike to get there in time. So being only half covered the lower half of me got pretty wet anyway...and going fast and splashing through those puddles didn't help either. I walked into class huffing and dripping and kind of dirty...but I made it before the lecture started! I think waking up earlier in general would be a good remedy to all this, but who can afford to skimp on the little sleep time there is in college!? Exactly...no one. If only people were waterproof.

Me oh My midterms

Midterms are scary. That's it. They're scary. It's such a far cry from having a test every two weeks like we did in high school. This week I had 3. One was Tuesday. It was a history midterm, so it consisted of 2 essays, the topics of which I had been given prior to the test, but the actual question was a mystery until the day of. It's only test I'll have in that class other than a final, and of course a paper. It puts a lot of pressure on that ONE BIG DAY of the test. But having taken AP history classes in high school, I knew sort of what to expect. Still I didn't finish one of the essays because I didn't realize that time was running out - classic, I know.

Then I had a French one today, just French grammar, so it wasn't terribly difficult. But tomorrow I have Symbolic Logic midterm. It is my math substitute so I don't have to take Calculus or Stat (I love college), but I am a bit worried. No papers here. Just tomorrow and some day in December will decide my grade, apart from maybe a collective homework grade. So I'm stressin'. But honestly having done the homework that the professor assigned every single night I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the material. Performing on the test...totally different can o' worms. We'll see, but I should probably go brush up really quickly on some categorical propositions before tomorrow's test...

Peace

Advising Anyone?

Academic advisers. I had my first face to face meeting with mine this week. We had talked over the phone over the summer to analyze my schedule for first semester, but I'd met her before yesterday. I took everybody's advice and came with questions prepared. Well, question, singular. It was, generally, "Can you help me to get all my core requirements sorted out so I can get busy taking classes I'm interested in?" Her answer? "Yes!" Luckily, I took quite a few APs in highschool so a lot of my core requirements are already fulfilled (I knew all that work had to count for something!).

So, I know what you're thinking, "it's so early to be thinking about classes for next semester". Au contraire, mon frere. If you actually care what classes you take, and I assume most people do, then it's best to get on it really early. She told me that registration starts on November 9 but that I should try to plan out my schedule before then so I can have a good chance of getting in to those classes that I really want, but might fill up quickly with upperclassmen. She also told me to pad my schedule. Basically put like 20 hours on my schedule at first, then feel out the classes and drop the ones I hate. Sounds good to me. The real problem will be narrowing the list down to 9 classes in the first place. Being "undecided" I basically have the whole course list to choose from. Overwhelming? Sure. Awesome? Definitely.