Day 1: Orientation
And how I'm awake now is beyond me. I sure as all better hope I get up for tomorrow's classes! Ah well, even though I'm 30 I can still rock the college life. It's probably my last chance to do so, right?
I snapped out of some odd dream at 4:30 AM and tottered out to plug in the stubbornly dispondent cell phone. Oh me, why did I get out of bed. Not too surprisingly, I suppose, I couldn't get myself back to sleep. So I just pulled down the player and turned on NPR till shower time.
I set off to catch the bus at 7:35, thinking I needed to be at orientation by 8. As it turned out though, not only did the actual orientation start at 8:30, but the second-years weren't expected to show up till 2 hours later. So I did what I always do in these situations: I turned into a big, lazy seal basking in the lovely sunshine. Just feeling the full-throttle pulse going throughout the university excited me more than I can say.
Shortly after 10:15, my classmates started trickling over. They told me about their summers in such places as Florida, 104-degree Dallas, and other cool places; and I told them about the fascinating time I had lying on my carpet listening to audio books. I know they were jealous of me!
Into the building we went. I was told that all of the first-years look like they're fresh out of undergrad, and there are two incoming guys. I don't know if that's ever been the case for this program. In my other elective class, there is only 1 other guy. We surmised that the ratio of girls to guys at this university is something like 4 to 1. I know it's one of the highest in the nation at a school that isn't designed specifically with such things in mind. Anyhow, none of them talked to me.
Basically, they just welcomed us back and shooed the part-time outcasts, myself of course included, from the room. Back to the lazy seal routine, this time only for fifteen minutes as we had pizza coming for lunch. I had a slice of hamburger pizza and one of peparoni. It was ok, but one of those where the different types of meat could hardly be distinguished.
After lunch, we part-timers got the special treatment in the form of a meeting in a 2nd-floor room. We were able to ask questions regarding how we would enter clinical placements, the composition of research papers/projects, and generally handling class loads. The advisor did get a little testy at times, but I wasn't really surprised by that. I did get a slightly better idea of what is expected of me, and I'm holding onto hope that I will achieve it by 2012. That is assuming I manage to find the finances for this, which will be no small feat. Halfway through the meeting, we got kicked out of that room as I think some folks were waiting to have class. Ah, crossed wires. Gotta love it.
So once that meeting was done, I scrambled up to the library desperately hoping that a certain e-mail would be there. It wasn't on arrival, which made me really nervous. However, by the time I finished downloading my NPR stories and checking a couple other things it had shown up. I was very much relieved.
Out into... the pouring rain! Aaahhh! I was driven onto the benches which are positioned under the library's awning, where I sat and read until the tempest had passed. While I stood waiting for my return bus the sun popped back out for a while, but by the time I'd gotten back to my apartments the skies had opened up again. This caused me to have to stuff my hearing aids into my pocket and bag the barely working cell, and to make a run for it! It was nerve-racking, as I could barely hear cars that might have been passing through that giant parking lot.
that was the crux of my day. I got back and skimmed through 1208 tweets, chilled on the porch for a bit, and ate. Because I was too tired to make anything substantial, I had peas, apple sauce, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner. What! I finally got the blasted cell to charge too! This thing's gonna make me grey.
Let's see what kind of trouble I can get into tomorrow. I have to go to class from 9-11:50, to Disability Services to pick up the FM system that'll make it easier for me to follow in-class discussions, to the bank, back over here, and finally to class from 4-6:50. I'm exhausted just writing that! Glad to be finishing this day in a good mood, though. Night, all.
I snapped out of some odd dream at 4:30 AM and tottered out to plug in the stubbornly dispondent cell phone. Oh me, why did I get out of bed. Not too surprisingly, I suppose, I couldn't get myself back to sleep. So I just pulled down the player and turned on NPR till shower time.
I set off to catch the bus at 7:35, thinking I needed to be at orientation by 8. As it turned out though, not only did the actual orientation start at 8:30, but the second-years weren't expected to show up till 2 hours later. So I did what I always do in these situations: I turned into a big, lazy seal basking in the lovely sunshine. Just feeling the full-throttle pulse going throughout the university excited me more than I can say.
Shortly after 10:15, my classmates started trickling over. They told me about their summers in such places as Florida, 104-degree Dallas, and other cool places; and I told them about the fascinating time I had lying on my carpet listening to audio books. I know they were jealous of me!
Into the building we went. I was told that all of the first-years look like they're fresh out of undergrad, and there are two incoming guys. I don't know if that's ever been the case for this program. In my other elective class, there is only 1 other guy. We surmised that the ratio of girls to guys at this university is something like 4 to 1. I know it's one of the highest in the nation at a school that isn't designed specifically with such things in mind. Anyhow, none of them talked to me.
Basically, they just welcomed us back and shooed the part-time outcasts, myself of course included, from the room. Back to the lazy seal routine, this time only for fifteen minutes as we had pizza coming for lunch. I had a slice of hamburger pizza and one of peparoni. It was ok, but one of those where the different types of meat could hardly be distinguished.
After lunch, we part-timers got the special treatment in the form of a meeting in a 2nd-floor room. We were able to ask questions regarding how we would enter clinical placements, the composition of research papers/projects, and generally handling class loads. The advisor did get a little testy at times, but I wasn't really surprised by that. I did get a slightly better idea of what is expected of me, and I'm holding onto hope that I will achieve it by 2012. That is assuming I manage to find the finances for this, which will be no small feat. Halfway through the meeting, we got kicked out of that room as I think some folks were waiting to have class. Ah, crossed wires. Gotta love it.
So once that meeting was done, I scrambled up to the library desperately hoping that a certain e-mail would be there. It wasn't on arrival, which made me really nervous. However, by the time I finished downloading my NPR stories and checking a couple other things it had shown up. I was very much relieved.
Out into... the pouring rain! Aaahhh! I was driven onto the benches which are positioned under the library's awning, where I sat and read until the tempest had passed. While I stood waiting for my return bus the sun popped back out for a while, but by the time I'd gotten back to my apartments the skies had opened up again. This caused me to have to stuff my hearing aids into my pocket and bag the barely working cell, and to make a run for it! It was nerve-racking, as I could barely hear cars that might have been passing through that giant parking lot.
that was the crux of my day. I got back and skimmed through 1208 tweets, chilled on the porch for a bit, and ate. Because I was too tired to make anything substantial, I had peas, apple sauce, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner. What! I finally got the blasted cell to charge too! This thing's gonna make me grey.
Let's see what kind of trouble I can get into tomorrow. I have to go to class from 9-11:50, to Disability Services to pick up the FM system that'll make it easier for me to follow in-class discussions, to the bank, back over here, and finally to class from 4-6:50. I'm exhausted just writing that! Glad to be finishing this day in a good mood, though. Night, all.