College freshmen

…are less mature than high school seniors. At least it feels that way sometimes.

The environment does that–bottom of the chain all over again, all that stuff. Being faced with the reality that you’re still not grown, and therefore the implicit assumption that you don’t have to be responsible yet. Being in the continual presence of older people around you, who know their way around a lot better. Getting to mess around with your choices and decisions for a little while, as you get “settled in” and “explore”. Compare that to your average high school senior. The polar opposite, right?

I definitely feel less mature than I did a year ago, and I think I’ll enjoy it while I can.

Bouncing Back

I see a lot of people start blogs. I also see those blogs more or less abandoned within a few posts. (I can only guess–maybe it’s just a long hiatus.) And I don’t blame any of them, really. I think keeping one of these updated is pretty challenging. You’d think that things that happen in everyday life serve as good posting topics, if nothing else, but I’m finding that things become part of a routine faster than you can type sketch them in words.

Which still doesn’t really excuse a two-posts-a-month schedule when the author is pretending to keep a semblance of a living blog. All of my writing time’s been going into essays and that little project I mentioned a while back, but I miss writing doodly posts like the ones I had over summer. If you want it badly enough, you’ll get it. Or so they say. Or maybe I have the quote wrong. But my point is that I’m really wanting to write normal posts, so I’ll be somehow creating time to do that in the coming days.

If you’re curious about my exciting college life, it’s been a less-than-stellar week for me: filled with ugly weather, a brutal midterm, a ticket for a red light that I’m pretty positive that I didn’t run two weeks ago,  and a 41-0 blowout on the football game against Stanford. I live pretty positively, but I can’t defend this week from its failure to be awesome. I don’t mind too much, though, because cool things do happen during bad weeks. Which is why I got to meet some of my favorite people in the world yesterday, and this dropped today, among other things.

I promise the next post will be more substantial than this. I do believe that I’ve run the course of how long I can take this one without rambling more. On Halloween night, for goodness’ sake.

Dorm Move-In 101

Moving into a college dorm is an easy process. Just follow a few simple steps and you’ll be all set!

1. Totally neglect to do anything about the process until a week before move-in.
2. Frantically try to buy all the stuff you’re going to need during that week. Multiple visits to the same store are to be expected.
3. Pack your newly acquired stuff along with your old stuff. Grossly underestimate how much stuff all this actually is.
4. Pack some more.
5. Realize that you’re never going to get this done in time, and end up making your parents do most of it.
6. Keep thinking up of crucial things that you forgot somehow. For example, a razor. Or a calculator. Scramble to find these things.
7. On the night before move-in, pick out what you’re going to wear the day after so that it won’t be buried in a pile of luggage with the other clothes.
8. On the day of move-in, wake up and see that it’s pouring rain.
9. There will be stuff that you haven’t loaded on the car at this point. This is always true. Go ahead and load all that. In the pouring rain.
10. Realize that the clothes you picked out from the pile last night are not prepared for this kind of flood.
11. Go back to the car and search for more suitable clothing. Destroy all semblance of order and organization with the loaded luggage in the process.
12. Find your hoodies, which happen to be at the very bottom of the pile. Taking everything out is not an option, so wrestle with pulling one out without ripping the sleeves to shreds for upwards of several minutes.
13. Win the struggle with the reluctant hoodie. Feel triumphant as you put it on.
14. Step outside the car, where it is now raining about twice as hard as before.
15. Resigning yourself to the fact that there will inevitably be something that you forgot, leave for school.
16. Get on the freeway, which at this point it would be very possible for people to waterski on top of. And if they really were you wouldn’t know, because you can’t see anything on the road.
17. As three freaking trailers swerve to get in front of you and spray half a ton of water on the windshield, watch as the limit of visibility as x goes to I-5 approaches zero.
18. Come up with a nerdy way to say that.
19. After getting off the freeway, stop by a Safeway because you need to buy milk for breakfasts as a poor college student and the local places were somehow sold out that morning. Pay twice as much as you would at home.
20. And after a long time, arrive at school.
21. Learn that every car coming into the parking lot must be guided, directed, and zigzagged by an army of helpful volunteers. Find that you can’t really be angry at the volunteers, but still feel like you’re wasting a royal amount of time.
22. Remember that you’re here, like, an hour early and don’t really have a say.
23. Slowly advance to residence halls.
24. After about five minutes, reach the main university entrance.
25. Realize that you missed the path to your hall a while back.
26. Backtrack.
27. Arrive at your hall. Be directed to a temporary unloading spot in the fire lane.
28. Get your keys and a mandatory, charged emergency pack from the desk.
29. Learn that while you thought “first floor” meant, like, first floor, in reality the ground floor is the third floor.
30. Take your stuff to your dorm room with parents and a volunteer.
31. Attempt to open the door with your mailbox key.
32. Unpack and get settled.
33. Realize that you forgot to bring a desk lamp. This is the beginning of several such revelations.
34. Open that emergency pack from earlier and be momentarily amused by the contents.
35. Attempt to go back up, and find out that the stairs are the only way up and down while people are still using elevators to unload.
36. Later, be frustrated at the stubbornness of the heater to blast at full strength even though it’s really hot in the room with the window open.
37. Be more frustrated that there are no controls.
38. Seriously consider going Greek.
39. Remind self to at least blog about this or something so that the experience won’t be lost.
40. Remember to write the blog post two days after moving in.

(The dorms themselves are fine, if you’re wondering. And I have it better than, say, people who need to go upstairs just to go to the bathroom. But that’s not the point of this post.)