My first three weeks here have been quite the adventure. On the first day of classes I got a little lost and embarrassed myself a bit in front of a professor, my second week here I tripped in heels and almost broke my ankle (though I still don’t think anyone saw), and my third week here I actually got lost in Shreveport. Overall though, it has been a great start to my college career.
During orientation, my advisor told me (and several other students) that it is never a good idea to say something like “Well that’s not the way we did it in high school.” Ever since he told us that, I have been tempted to say that phrase every single day because it turns out (as some of you may have guessed) college is very, very different from high school. I’ve actually made a top three list.
Number 3. I control my cafeteria portions. That’s right. The spoon in the food is now facing me and the control is completely in my hands. The first week, I had some fries from the hamburger line and chicken fried steak from the classic line. Let me say that again, I had two different menu items from two different food lines, and I had a salad. It was a great day in college. Though, I should note, I’ve quickly learned that eating a salad doesn’t make your meal healthy, it actually adds more calories to your meal. So don’t worry, I’ve stopped eating the salads; after all I don’t want to gain that freshmen fifty.
Number 2. The battle of “One” and “I” has resumed again, but this time “I” is winning. When you are in elementary school and taught how to write, the teacher always tells you to write about what you know: write a story about your weekend or your cat. In these cases, you mostly start sentences with I (and end with exclamation points because those are just so fun). In high school you learn to NEVER SAY I. It’s improper, unclean, and illiterate. You work for months breaking the habit and begin the phase of your life I like to call “the hypothetical.” Instead of “I went to the store with my cat” it’s “If one were to need some cat food, he could choose to buy some milk as well because cats like that too.” In college, the hypothetical phase dies and the “why” phase takes over. Now your sentence reads “I went to the store with my cat because I was lonely and I knew that cats inherently like cat food.” For those of us who are still adjusting to the culture shock of not using "one," we find ways to put it in our writing secretly to get our fix. Our sentences actually read, “I went to the store one day because I was lonely and I knew that cats inherently like cat food.” (Also notice the fancy words that don’t really fit there…that’s freshmen college writing for you.)
Number 1. Somehow when you enter college, you enter a time warp of some sort. It doesn’t matter how early you went to school for the last twelve years (for most of us it was 7:30), 8:00 is basically dawn. You stumble into your 8:20 class where everyone is looking at each other like "why?" Why did we take such an early class? The sun isn’t even up yet! Even the sun knows not to schedule an 8:00 class. You also begin to detest the people with later classes then you. In your mind you call them lazy when really you think they are the smartest people in the entire world. Then you remember all the little high school and grammar school children who go to school at 7:30 and you simply feel for them. It’s the strangest thing in the world. I know now that all the people who aren’t actually in college and have this “theory” that you should just get your classes done with as early as possible (I was one of these) are crazy. They obviously do not know about the college sun and how he doesn’t even get up on until at least nine (and that's only for Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes).
So that’s college life for me so far. I don’t have any pictures yet, but they will be coming soon. I will continue to blog on the ins and outs of my super college experience (from the “I” point of view) so I hope you will continue to read. Also, feel free to make fun of me in my picture. I’m just not sure what I’m doing there. I don’t typically walk around with one eye closed like that, just so you know. Maybe that’s my new college look; we’ll see.
