I like…lists. My honors orientation told me that this is because I’m nearly a perfect J on the Myers-Briggs Indicator. Essentially, this means I love schedules, structures, and putting my life into concrete format. So this is Anderson:
1. Cross-training at 8 a.m. is one of my favorite classes because I more or less watch people and run. I made the mistake of running a little too hard on my first day (mile and a half in under 11 minutes, which isn’t terribly fast) because my teacher then recognized me as the distance runner from Concord. Now, he expects me to run when all the other girls walk. There’s a married couple that sometimes fights because he wants to run and she wants to walk, and goodness knows they have to exercise together. It’s a 300 m track, he’ll catch up eventually. The only good thing is that we have an adult student–a man in his mid-40’s–who always says “Atta girl, I know you can do it!” and high-fives me while we run. It’s funny, unlike the time of this class. I woke up at 7:45 this morning and had to literally run to class. Of course, then I’m a little sweaty, which sucks for
2.a. My chemistry class meets at 9 a.m. and it’s very easy to zone out. Luckily, my professor (Dr. Kennedy) is very amusing; he likes to compare chemical properties to human behavior. It’s a lot easier to remember and understand properties that way, and I get a good laugh. Yes, I laugh at science jokes. The sign “Physics makes the world goes round” made me laugh for an embarrassing amount of time.
2.b. My chemistry lab is intense. It’s two and a half hours weekly, and it’s all done in a carbon copy lab notebook, so errors can’t be whited-out. My lab partner is a junior named Brett who is more clueless than me. Luckily, she also has a dry sense of sarcasm, so we get along well.
3. My LART (liberal arts seminar) class is a lovely blow-off class. The bulk of our points are from talking in class. We have a one-page paper due every time we come to class. My roommate averages three hours on each one. I average ten minutes. Thanks, Judson.
4.a. I’m in love with Dr. Ippolito, my biology professor. He makes really trippy statements like, “We can only assume science exists if we assume reality exists” and sends us copies of his PowerPoints if we ask. Then, we can take notes on them in class and not fail watching the screen. It’s excellent.Z
4.b. We have chairs in this lab, which is nice. Nothing exciting has happened yet…but I hear some dissections are coming. Excellent.
5. My honors seminar is mixed–I either love it or I hate it. The history portion of it, taught by Dr. Murphy, is entertaining, fast-paced, and highly interesting. The English portion of it, taught by Dr. Radaker, is slow, repetitive, and irritating. Our discussions in that class always end up spinning out of proportion. When everyone spent a class session praising Fareed Zakaria’s attack on American policy toward Iran, I imploded. Both Dr. Murphy and Dr. Radaker were watching, and they were highly amused. They asked me what my thoughts were, and I spit out that I felt Fareed was exploiting American ignorance. Dr. Radaker pulled me aside after class to compliment me and ask me to talk more. Yes. A teacher asked me to talk more. Believe it or not…I’m kind of quiet in class.
6. Living in a dorm is weird. My roommate couldn’t handle having her classload, so she’s down to minimum credit hours with minimal homework. Luckily, she’s found lots of social opportunities outside of our dorm room, so Kelly and I usually take over it. Kelly is my closest friend here; she’s sweet and a little timid, but very comforting. I was sad last night, and Matt Miller called. I crawled onto my couch and she stroked my hair while I talked to him. I can only think of one relationship I’ve had like that with a girl…and I haven’t seen Heather in a while. Kelly and I spend all of our free time together, more or less. She Facebooks on my couch while I do homework/make coffee/watch Season 3 of Boy Meets World. I feel bad because I drag her around everywhere with me…
7. Except for my social activities. I completely broke down to my mom about a week ago and she told me to get myself as involved as I could handle. After a lot of deliberating, I decided against joining cross country/track, even though I miss it a lot. I am now writing for the Andersonian, although I haven’t exactly done my interviews yet. I’m also on the debate team…something I never thought I’d continue. Yes, Stutz, Terri is hilarious. I’m on a hardcore flag football team called Vicious and Delicious or something like that. My captain, Steph, is a really intense freshman, so our practice tonight may be rough. I’m also in Advocacy and Awareness, which showed an amazing documentary last week on American militarism. They’ve hooked me on alternative news websites and pacifism.
8. Chapel is lame. The speakers aren’t very motivating/moving/touching, so I sit and listen to the same messages over and over. Trees, roots, blossoms. This year’s logo. Come see Jesus. Okay, got it.
9. Here are the things I think–after a few weeks in–I’ll get out of my AU experience this semester:
a. I will watch an insane amount of chick flicks.
b. I will witness a lot of engagements.
c. I will hear the phrase “boys suck” a lot.
d. I will learn to stay up past midnight on a regular basis.
e. I will learn every worship song known to man.
f. I will learn a lot of common phrases in Romanian (my roommate’s Romanian).
Oh, and my science classes are a little tough. I dream about hydrogen bonding.
At least I know how to do laundry now.
