Olivia’s Blog

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I Survived Day One!

Yay me, I just had my first full day of college classes! My geography class is my earliest one (9 AM, oh joy), and looks like it’s going to be the most challenging to keep up with; that’s not a freshmen-level course per se, so the teacher really sort of jumped right into things (as in, we’ve got a 3-page paper due in two weeks). My other teachers are going much slower, being as we’re freshman. There was also a somewhat awkward moment in that class in which the teacher said offhandedly “hey, there’s an assignment for next week, find out what ‘desiccated’ means”. Me being me, I jumped in with “dehydrated blah blah” while he attempted to shush me. Oh, guess he meant that as an actual assignment, oops. It didn’t seem as serious next to the 3-page paper.

My second class (Communication) is taught by a really lovely professor from Dominica, who seems like she’s going to be a lot of fun. Her assignments are really varied and look like they’ll be interesting and fun as well, so I’m looking forward to that course.

My third is my Critical Reading Seminar with my advisor, who is very cool, and it seems like the coursework and whatnot is going to be very reasonable, so that should go fine.

Tomorrow I’ve got english and math (gah), and then I’ve got a 4-day weekend (with which to try and get started on all of these assignments and reading materials of course).

In mostly unrelated news, somehow all of the food people already know my name, and as soon as I show up they start pointing out which dishes are vegetarian; score one for small schools!

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Summer Schedule Change

Apparently all of the school calendars got changed since the last time I really looked at them: I’ll be home for the summer starting May 2, not June 2. Which I’m happy about … I never thought I’d miss home the way I’m starting to. I’m of course hoping to be happy down here, but I’m starting to develop a new appreciation for where I grew up, so being at home for 4 months is fully welcome.

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I’m Officially Orientated

This week was interesting. We’ve had orientation all day, every day this week; that’s talks, meetings, field trips, practice classes, more meetings, and workshops, 8:30 AM to 4 PM or later, Monday to Thursday. We’re all pretty tired, we learned a lot and met a lot of people though.

I went on two field trips, both of which were very cool—one to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and one to Capitol Hill, both with some of the awesome TU faculty. Photos are below, more are on Flickr (link in the sidebar)!

Convocation was today, which went fine. Classes start Wednesday, so I’ve got 4 days to freak myself out over college-level work and obsessively pore over my textbooks in an attempt to not be utterly lost when I get to class. And I’ve got a call in to my sensei at home to talk about the dojo down here and what I’m going to do about my training … I really hope that can get at least somewhat resolved, I’m not prepared to not be training in some way, to lose that much of myself. If you are in NH and got the email with my cell number in it, that means that I like you, like talking to you, and would therefor like you to call me if/when you feel like it!

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Here’s A First

I went to karate at the dojo here last night. And it wasn’t good. They do almost everything differently from the way we do things at my dojo, but I maybe could have adjusted to that. But teachers make or break a school, and suffice it to say that I don’t think I can stand to work with one of their teachers. Karate is so central to my life, so essential for me to be happy and do well. I do not want to adjust to a new dojo, lose all of my techniques from my old dojo, and have to work with teachers I can’t deal with. I do not want to not do karate. I do not want to be without my senseis. I do not want to adjust to life here, to try and find other things to fill this massive space. I want to go home.

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Booo :(

Just went to my first floor meeting. Apparently because we’re freshmen, we don’t get visitation until the beginning of October. So, I can leave campus and see people who are in town, but I can’t have people in my room til October. And I’m kinda lonely and I know nobody here, so that sucks.

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I’m Here!

So, we got to TU all right. Long drive, but it did end, and campus looks really pretty! I haven’t really been out yet (just unpacking and hanging with my roommate), so I’m just posting photos, more verbiage later. There’s more photos up on my Flickr (link in the sidebar). Love you all, call/email/randomly visit/send me mail!

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And So It Goes …

I just had my last training session at my dojo with two of my senseis. My dojo has just been the best possible place for me to grow up in, and my karate family is made up of the most awesome people you could find … I am so, so lucky to have had that, and I can only hope that the other places my life takes me will have people as amazing as the ones who are currently down the street from me, but who in a few days will become unbearably far away.

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Yay For The Internets

Trinity just posted all of the info regarding which ridiculously overpriced textbooks everybody has to buy for our various courses. Buying all of my textbooks new, from the TU bookstore: $333.44. Renting most of my textbooks online, and buying only two (that can’t be had anywhere else) directly from TU: $227.53 Woo!

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On Being Perpetually Transient

I’ve had a decent number of people ask me what it’s like to go back and forth between my parents’ houses, and whether I like that arrangement or not. But it’s one of those things that are hard to form an opinion on, because I’ve never done anything but that. I’ve had two houses since before I had a clear concept of what a house was. I’ve lived partly out of backpacks since I acquired stuff to put in them, I’ve had a split schedule to contend with for every sport, class, party, job and hang-out invitation. What’s it like to go back and forth? It’s like breathing, you just do it, you don’t think about it, you don’t remember when it became a part of you.

It strikes me, as I pack for college, that the experience of moving out of the house and going to live far away is probably pure upheaval for a lot of people. It’s partly that for me (I have, at least, lived in the same state for my whole life, with my same parents, so that’ll be a difference), but partly not; this will be the first time that I will actually live in one place for more than a week. It also occurs to me that all that transient-ness has probably left me better prepared than a lot of people with more typically-static lives—I’ve very good at packing up my stuff and going someplace else. But I’m also definitely looking forward to having a slightly less transitory existence, at least for a while. Maybe then I’ll actually be able to form an opinion on the back-and-forth thing.

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Courses!

My course info for my first semester came in the mail this week (yay!). My class schedule (to commence on August 27, after a week of orientation-y things):

Monday/Wednesday
9:00 - 10:15 INAF 252 - Geography Of Africa And Asia
10:30 - 11:45 COM 110 - Communication For Academic Success
1:30 - 2:45 CRS 101 - Critical Reading Seminar

Tuesday/Thursday
10:30 - 11:45 ENGL 105 - Intro To College Writing
12:00 - 1:15 MATH 109 - Foundations Of Math

I’m pretty happy with the schedule. I could do without a 9 AM class, especially being as I’ll probably be getting home late from karate on Tuesday nights. But that is the class that I’m most excited about taking, so at least I’ll be getting myself up for something really interesting. On the upside, my last class of the week ending at 1:15 on Thursday is awesomely convenient, for the sake of visits home and such.

Thoughts on the relative awesomeness of courses:

Geography Of Africa And Asia - Very cool, very interesting stuff. Also get to see what the International Affairs department is like.

Communication For Academic Success - I’m not actually sure what we’re doing in this class, the description is very vague (to wit, “Students will learn to participate in varied communication contexts that involve both formal and more interactive formats”). Will probably involve a lot of talking, which I’m pretty fond of, so no problems there.

Critical Reading Seminar - The one subject I have perfect test scores in, is the one thing every TU freshman has to take. Woo.

Intro To College Writing - Useful, happy to take it.

Foundations Of Math - I have gotten extremely good at not studying math over the last 3 or 4 years, so this should be … interesting.