In which our hero goes to college...
I was without internet connection until Sunday morning (I finally got it working after about 2 hours at technical help and turning off my firewall... so I'll be back at tech again soon), I'm securely wired to an ethernet cable in my dorm which promises to pose a serious threat to my health in the middle of the night. But at least I'll be able to update!
Hofstra runs a program called "Welcome Week" for its freshman, which is a real doozy. We spent 2 hours being told about how, if our building catches fire, we're all pretty much guaranteed to die. Fortunately it makes a running joke that the entire freshman class is in on, so maybe it's just a clever class bonding activity. The Hofstra-operated things I've done this week have been... speeches. Lots of speeches. Horrible, long, boring speeches that I wouldn't learn anything from even if I were paying attention, which I don't do. I'm steadfastly refusing to go to any more.
On a brighter note, I've gotten back to being close with my friends from Orientation earlier this summer, which is terrific because I never have to eat alone in the cafeteria. And I've even made some new friends! Can you believe that people actually like me? The longest times I've been alone is when I'm walking from one building to another to meet someone. That means my room is already a mess, but what can I do? I'm a busy girl. My roommates and I don't talk much but we seem to be functioning pretty well, maybe because I'm hardly ever here except to sleep, which usually happens between 1 and 10 AM, when they're sleeping anyway.
Speaking of sleep, I haven't been doing much of it, so when one comes across my friends and I around 9PM we're all delirious-- not from all the rowdy college partying, but because we stayed up until 3 playing Apples to Apples in the lounge. Drama is already erupting in the Honors Dorms (Liberty/Republic), which as some of you know I don't actually live in. Sometimes I'm very thankful that I don't necessarily have to be there. However, living in Vander Poel (now known as Vander Fail) is still less-than-ideal, but I'm making the best of it. I'm allowed to go into Lib/Rep whenever I want without having someone sign me in, so when I'm bored I usually go over to their lounges and see who's around, which usually means I find someone. Oh, and we have located a room in Lib/Rep with ROCK BAND which is inhabited by two very nice boys who allowed us to crash there for about 4 hours the other night.
I took a trip into the city yesterday for a tour called the "Museum Mile." We spent about 5 hours in the city, with an hourish each way of travel time (and that's going from Hofstra, to the Hempstead train station, to Penn station, to the Upper East Side on a broken subway), which means yes, I am THAT close to New York. Anyway, my guides were the Dean of the Honors College, Warren Frisina, who will be lecturing me on such unfamiliar topics as Genesis, as well as one of my discussion professors, Dr. Slitt. It never hurts to get in good with your dean and professor, right? We started on Central Park West and went to the Museum of Natural History (location of the movie A Night in the Museum) and saw the dinosaurs and Asiatic peoples, just because we wanted to. Then we walked through Central Park, which is exactly the oasis everyone says it is-- you hardly know that it's in the middle of a city. It's quiet and practically a forest, there are so many trees. We ate lunch on the lawn behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art and decided to feed half of our food to the birds because they were so entertaining. Our group split in half-- some people went to the Met, which I've already been to at least twice, while another group including myself went to the Gugenheim, which had a pretty weird showcase of an artist named Louise Bourgois. I was enthralled by the architecture and a collection of great Manet, Rothco, and Picasso works.
I'm thinking of meeting with my advisor soon in order to discuss the addition of a new major-- Radio Broadcast. Which may fall under Communications. Anyway, that's the academic update for now since classes haven't quite started yet.
I haven't hardly talked to anyone from home, half because I've been busy and without internet connection, half because well... I'm here, and they're scattered throughout Delaware and Pennsylvania.
Hofstra runs a program called "Welcome Week" for its freshman, which is a real doozy. We spent 2 hours being told about how, if our building catches fire, we're all pretty much guaranteed to die. Fortunately it makes a running joke that the entire freshman class is in on, so maybe it's just a clever class bonding activity. The Hofstra-operated things I've done this week have been... speeches. Lots of speeches. Horrible, long, boring speeches that I wouldn't learn anything from even if I were paying attention, which I don't do. I'm steadfastly refusing to go to any more.
On a brighter note, I've gotten back to being close with my friends from Orientation earlier this summer, which is terrific because I never have to eat alone in the cafeteria. And I've even made some new friends! Can you believe that people actually like me? The longest times I've been alone is when I'm walking from one building to another to meet someone. That means my room is already a mess, but what can I do? I'm a busy girl. My roommates and I don't talk much but we seem to be functioning pretty well, maybe because I'm hardly ever here except to sleep, which usually happens between 1 and 10 AM, when they're sleeping anyway.
Speaking of sleep, I haven't been doing much of it, so when one comes across my friends and I around 9PM we're all delirious-- not from all the rowdy college partying, but because we stayed up until 3 playing Apples to Apples in the lounge. Drama is already erupting in the Honors Dorms (Liberty/Republic), which as some of you know I don't actually live in. Sometimes I'm very thankful that I don't necessarily have to be there. However, living in Vander Poel (now known as Vander Fail) is still less-than-ideal, but I'm making the best of it. I'm allowed to go into Lib/Rep whenever I want without having someone sign me in, so when I'm bored I usually go over to their lounges and see who's around, which usually means I find someone. Oh, and we have located a room in Lib/Rep with ROCK BAND which is inhabited by two very nice boys who allowed us to crash there for about 4 hours the other night.
I took a trip into the city yesterday for a tour called the "Museum Mile." We spent about 5 hours in the city, with an hourish each way of travel time (and that's going from Hofstra, to the Hempstead train station, to Penn station, to the Upper East Side on a broken subway), which means yes, I am THAT close to New York. Anyway, my guides were the Dean of the Honors College, Warren Frisina, who will be lecturing me on such unfamiliar topics as Genesis, as well as one of my discussion professors, Dr. Slitt. It never hurts to get in good with your dean and professor, right? We started on Central Park West and went to the Museum of Natural History (location of the movie A Night in the Museum) and saw the dinosaurs and Asiatic peoples, just because we wanted to. Then we walked through Central Park, which is exactly the oasis everyone says it is-- you hardly know that it's in the middle of a city. It's quiet and practically a forest, there are so many trees. We ate lunch on the lawn behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art and decided to feed half of our food to the birds because they were so entertaining. Our group split in half-- some people went to the Met, which I've already been to at least twice, while another group including myself went to the Gugenheim, which had a pretty weird showcase of an artist named Louise Bourgois. I was enthralled by the architecture and a collection of great Manet, Rothco, and Picasso works.
I'm thinking of meeting with my advisor soon in order to discuss the addition of a new major-- Radio Broadcast. Which may fall under Communications. Anyway, that's the academic update for now since classes haven't quite started yet.
I haven't hardly talked to anyone from home, half because I've been busy and without internet connection, half because well... I'm here, and they're scattered throughout Delaware and Pennsylvania.