Ok, I know my TealArt break was only supposed to last a week, but to be honest with you folks, I’m kind of surprised that it didn’t last a whole month. I’ve started college, for real. It’s everything that I expected, basically. I like the classes I’m taking; I like the classes that I’m planning to take next year. I like how my high school experience has prepared me for this shift, I also like how so many of the classes I took in high school are going to be transferring here. Once St. Louis University gets it’s act together, and I figure out how to request AP transcripts, I’ll have 7.75 units, or 31 hours of credit. The whole notion of getting done in three years is very much a reality, and I love it.
Thus far my experience with my classes as also been generally positive, and as I expected it; this is to say that, I enjoy the subjects I expected myself to enjoy, and am a bit ambivalent about the classes I expected myself to be ambivalent about. I like the fact that things are working out. There certainly is the possibility for change in the future, but for the moment things are peacefully staying as they are.
I’m not really happy about my room assignment and the smoking status of the dorm I’m in. The smokers aren’t happy because they can’t smoke in the lounges, and the asmatics/allergic/non-smokers aren’t happy because the building reeks and people can smoke in their rooms. So it’s about. The consensus is that res life is using people with a non-smoking preference to change the culture in this dorm (which reaches far beyond the smoking of tobacco products). Frankly, it isn’t fair to either group. In anycase, I have a draft of a very polite and friendly email to the dean of students and the director of residential life that I’ll probably send out pretty soon depending on how I feel. In the mean time, I’m looking for a roommate so I can move into a special interest house next semester. I’ll probably post more on this in the future.
In other news, for one of my classes, we have to do a feminist activism project, and I’m kind of at a loss of what to do. The prof, said “take something you’re angry about, and something your good with, combine them, send a number of hours on that and you’ll be fine.” I’m not worried about the anger, and I’m good at computer stuff, knitting, writing, and traditional Anglo-Celtic ethnomusicology. I could knit some sort of avant garde, binary coded message into some sort of lace shawl. But that wouldn’t reach enough people, and the truth is I don’t want to do that, it was just a funny idea. Computer stuff and writing are easily combined, and I might end up doing something with a TealArt sub site, which I’ve wanted to do for a while, but that would require perfecting that code, which I’m stuck on. In any case, I’ll be writing more about this soon.
I’ll shift back to the total college experience for a moment. I have an awesome schedule. I’m only taking four classes, which no matter how hard the classes are it’s not that bad. The thing is that I’ve got this huge block of time in the middle of the day that I can use to nap if I need to and I can do my work. Without particularly trying to be an over achiever, I’ve been really good about getting my homework done at least 12 hours before it’s due. Getting up hasn’t been a problem either, though I suspect that this will change a little bit as it starts getting light later.
I must complain about the Internet situation though. Apparently the network is riddled with viruses because of people bringing their computers back from the summer. This means the wireless network is inoperable, which is more annoying than anything mostly because it makes it more difficult to avoid being in my room, which I’m trying to do as much as possible. On that note, I’ll leave you all for now, stay tuned for more updates and developments.