Last year, whenever people would ask, “You’re a freshman, right?” I always wondered how they knew. I wasn’t back on campus more than twenty minutes before I realized just how obvious it is. Some people say you can tell the girls by the fact that they’ve still got a lanyard attached to their Vera Bradley ID case. Not so (I still have mine). It’s the half-smug, half-confused looks on their faces – the “Yeah, I’m a freshman in college” swagger in their walk. I can’t help laughing, knowing that I stepped back on campus rockin’ the slightly less dramatic “Yeah, I’m a sophomore in college” walk myself. I guess everyone’s just over-excited to be where they are, wherever that may be!Coming back was stranger than I expected it to be. It wasn’t quite like going home after breaks, though the rush of familiar sights and sounds certainly helped mimic the feeling to a reasonable degree. Since I live in town, I’d been able to stop by campus a few times over the course of the summer to visit with friends who were working in the admissions office or doing research, so I didn’t really get to miss it. While I missed my college pals then, I miss my high school friends now. The trade-off leaves me more or less where I was. Any independence I gain by leaving home is swapped out with the availability of home-cooked meals, my own laundry service, and a very large amount of living space. (I’m sure my mom will appreciate that I’ve equated her with her ability to cook and wash clothes – Haha.) Needless to say, while I was happy to be back at University of Richmond, I wasn’t ready to burst out of my skin with anticipation at any given moment like last year. The familiarity I now have with college freaks me out a bit. I know it now. It’s just something I do. It went from the highlight of my future to my day-to-day existence. Only three years left. Yikes!That being said, I will now mention the one thing about school that I was thrilled about getting back to. I can more or less guarantee that it won’t be what you’d expect. After a summer of letting the conscious part of my brain sink slowly into oblivion while I washed out all my critical thinking skills with prolonged Family Guy marathons, I was pumped to get back to class. It took a few days (weeks) and a few long sessions at the library for me to get back into the swing of things, but I’ve managed to resurrect the tattered remnants of my analytical psyche. Confession: I have no idea what “analytical psyche” actually means. I literally just picked two words that had a nice ring to them and stuck them together.I’m currently taking Intro to Chemistry, Evolution, People and Cultures of Latin America, and Statistics for Social and Life Sciences. It’s only 4 units, but the two science classes each come with a weekly three-hour lab and, after last semester, I needed a bit of a break. For those who don’t know, 1 unit is equal to roughly 3.5 credit hours. The University strongly recommends that freshmen take 4 units their first semester and so do I. Between adjusting to new surroundings and trying to make as many new friends as possible, you don’t want to be swamped with work first semester.Here ends my little re-introduction! I hope you’ve all had a good summer and a good start back to school. Sorry for the lack of pictures – I sort of broke my camera and am waiting for the University to generously supply me with a replacement.
Archive for the 'Class' Category
The first three weeks of spring semester have taken their sweet time going by. I’m taking five classes now instead of four, and the extra workload makes the weekdays drag. Weekends, on the other hand, have no trouble passing quickly. Saturdays are gone in the blink of an eye, and I feel a twinge of dread when I watch Sunday night’s 11:59 become Monday morning’s 12:00 on my alarm clock. I do enjoy my new classes and my new professors, as I’ve stated in previous posts. I think it’s thrown me off a little bit that even though I’ve come back to the same school, the same dorm, and the same (delicious) D-hall, my routine is completely different. Everything about where I am in life feels so different than it did the third week of fall semester, save one thing. I’m still confused about where I’m headed. People tell me there’s no rush, that this is normal. As normal as it may be, it’s still obnoxious.
I’ve gotten very used to campus. I’m comfortable here, but I’ve started to feel like there’s not much variety in what I see. It was a beautiful day outside yesterday, so I decided to expand my definition of “campus” to include the surrounding neighborhoods. I ended up taking a trek over the Huguenot bridge, to the south side of the river. I remembered (more or less half way over the bridge) that I’m deathly afraid of heights and had to concentrate on the movement of my legs to avoid panicking…as though somehow watching my feet prevented them from flying out from under me. The view from the other side was worth it.
Mosaic - a cafe that’s a 5 to 15 minute walk away, depending on where you are on campus. They’re most famous for their cookies, but I hear pretty much all of their food is delicious. You pass it on the way to the bridge, if you’re wondering why it randomly showed up here.
The Huguenot Bridge - note the perfect little cloud reflection :)
I found this great spot down by the water to sit and relax. Campus is always moving, so I was happy to find a place where everything was almost still. When I was heading back toward campus, I looked over the side rail of the bridge and saw a man painting. I’d like to do that and, in the springtime, maybe I will. I’ve gotten so wrapped up in the new excitement of college that I’ve forgotten the old excitement of art. Now that there isn’t much left to discover on campus, I’m going to try to slide back into drawing again. I miss it like I miss my high school friends. Even though they’re hours away and the nearest pencil is right beside my laptop, I spend more time stalking them on facebook that I do sketching.
It’s great when someplace so close can take you so far away. This is my new favorite spot to escape to. It’s roughly a 35 minute walk (as in, power-walk, not leisurely stroll haha) from Moore.
In the spirit of exploring, I also attended an Intervarsity Christian Fellowship meeting this week. Intervarsity is a Christian group on campus…if you didn’t catch that from the name. Normally, I wouldn’t have gone, but I’ve met a lot of students in IV over the past three weeks and they all seemed really nice. A woman spoke about Jesus’ role in our lives and about making a daily, conscious choice to have a relationship with God. Though I respect religion and the dedication of religious individuals, the meeting really wasn’t something that hit me emotionally. I tend to feel embarrassed when praying or meditating in large groups that aren’t part of a formal service, so I’m sure that had something to do it. The music was really great and my friend Mallory said it reminded her of the youth group she was involved in at church back home. So, anyone who’s looking for that kind of connection on campus should really check it out! The people involved are trully fantastic and incredibly friendly.
Have a great week, everybody! And congrats to all you Steelers fans!
I expected winter break to feel a lot longer this year, seeing as I had almost a full two weeks more off of school than I’d ever had before. That was certainly not the case.
It took a few days for me to get over the sensation that I was in the way at home, that I was now a familiar-looking disturbance in what had become the normal flow of things since I’d left. After getting over some initial awkwardness, I spent a lot of my free time lying on the couch watching movies and realizing how much I missed everything about my house – the sights and the feelings of the world I grew up in. I enjoyed seeing all my friends, referencing inside jokes that no one else understands for the first time in months, driving my car with the music up so loud my ears rung afterwards, hosting private dance parties while washing the dishes, and (to my great surprise) feeling like I was in high school all over again. My friend Mallory and I went up to New York City to stay with my aunt for the last three days of break. As excited as I was for the trip to start, I found myself waking up every morning wishing it was farther away.
Despite all my wishing, time proceeded forward (as is its most annoying habit) and the two of us left for NYC on the 8th. We had a spectacular time. I usually go up to visit my aunt about once a year, but I’d never been with someone else before. We went to Times Square, Rockefeller’s Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Sak’s, Macy’s, and the East Village. The trip was fairly short so it was a lucky thing that both of us had already seen the more touristy places, like the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island. It let us slow down and enjoy simply walking through the city.
NYC, courtesy of Mal’s photography skills
pretending to be lawyers outside City Hall, where Law & Order is filmed…our immaturity knows no bounds 
It snowed on Saturday, which was basically thrilling. I’m a big snow lover and we haven’t had even a decent dusting in Richmond for about two years. Forget about accumulation. I loved staring out my aunt’s window at the cityscape, watching the snowflakes dance over the Hudson. The cold weather may have meant snow, but it also meant bundling up even to walk from the car to a restaurant. Man, we ate so much. For a three day trip, I think I ate enough to last me a week… a week and half, tops. It was all so delicious, and hey – you only have the metabolism of a college student for a few years, right? Ha ha, I say that like having any other metabolism would have stopped me.
enjoying the snow on our way to lunch in the meat-packing district
Getting back to school was less bizarre than I thought it would be. Suddenly I feel like I never really left, as though over the weekend everything somehow shifted. My routine is different now since my classes have changed. That’ll take a little getting used to, but I like the way my schedule is laid out now so I’m not at all worried about it. All the students who studied abroad in the fall are back, and campus is noticeably more crowded. It really isn’t bad unless you want to eat in a hurry. The lines at D-hall usually wrap up into ETC and tables are scarce whenever classes have just let out. I’m glad to see my friends here again and have resumed spending a ridiculous, borderline excessive amount of time in Nellie, Meg and Mallory’s room. I’m there right now actually (thanks guys) because the heat isn’t working in my room and sitting at my desk is about as enjoyable as hiding out in an Antarctic igloo. It’s 25 degrees outside according to my computer, and I’d estimate that its around 26 in there…I have to bundle up like that little kid in A Christmas Story before I go to bed.
So far I like all my classes – short fiction, core, Spanish in politics and society, financial accounting, sociology – and my professors seem enthusiastic about their subjects, which is what really makes a class worthwhile for me. I feel like this semester is going to be a lot of work. The majority of my classes are centered on reading/writing, so while the homework will be time consuming it shouldn’t be all that terrible to push through. I’ll let you know more about them next week, when I’ve had a better chance to feel them out. The first week isn’t usually a good indicator of how the whole semester will turn out.
Until next week, welcome back! I guess you didn’t actually go anywhere…but its nice to see you again anyways.
