My night without shoes

I love telling this story and rarely get the chance to explain it fully because it just takes too much time to tell only a little bit of action, but I thought that any readers needed a lighthearted read after my last post, so here we go. It takes place the second Friday of the school year, but I feel you need a little bit of background on how the year was going so far.

My first two weeks of college opened my eyes a lot. My roommate, whom I meshed with perfectly on paper, turned out to be a bit more wild than I anticipated, so we got off to a rocky start. The girls in my hall all seemed more interested in fraternity parties than comparing schedules and the boys...well, boys will be boys. It was like they were at camp for the first time, each one claiming his turf while trying to impress whichever girl happened to be watching. That sounds more like an Animal Planet special, actually. I had met a lot of people, mainly thanks to my roommate. My classes were boring; I felt like I chose the wrong college. I was overwhelmed and wanted nothing more than to hide out in my room like a hermit. The first weekend was Labor Day weekend. I went to my boyfriend's apartment 6 hours away and spent most of the weekend complaining to him how awful it was, fretting about the return and how to survive the rest of the school year.

On the eve of my night without shoes, it seemed surviving the first two weeks of college was enough reason to celebrate with a dorm party in the boys hall. My roommate had already cozyed up to one of the boys living in the room that was hosting it and she invited me to attend. I agreed, planning only to stay for 10 minutes, then return to Guitar Hero in our room. When I got there, they were mixing drinks (mainly vodka and whatever fruity drink they had), playing Halo/Call of Duty/other popular multi-player FPS and smoking weed in the far corner by the open window. I recognized a couple of people - an older guy I had met my first night at the college, some other people my roommate had introduced me to, two girls in my Journalism class, and a girl who I had met at dinner that very day. We shall call this young lady R.

R was on her way to another party with her track friends from high school. These friends were a girl we shall call C (who lived right across the hall from me) and a male senior we shall call D. D's friends were the ones hosting the party and he had promised C and R that he would take them to a proper college party in the first month of school. They were cashing in tonight, and also doing him a favor. D was only attending the party because he felt like he had to. He had recently drunkenly made out with the host's best friend and was terribly guilty about the situation and needed to clear it up with her group. C and R were moral support.

How do I know this? When R was leaving the dorm party to meet her friends, two RA's walked by. They noticed the large number of people and entered the room. I was in the doorway when they walked in. As soon as the female RA opened her mouth, I was hit with an overwhelming urge to run away as fast as I could. Call it fight-or-flight or whatever, I just knew that I had to get out of there. I had my ID card in my right back pocket, my cell phone in my left back, my key in my front left. I was set. R and her friends were at the elevators. They had seen the RA's and decided to leave while they could. I asked if I could come with.

It isn't until we are all in C's car, driving to D's apartment that I realize that I don't have any shoes on. I was too busy trying to process that I had just ran away from getting written up for being in the same room as alcohol and drugs. My roommate was texting me, telling me to just stay in the room. C and D were trying to introduce themselves but none of it really sunk in until D pointed out that I didn't have shoes on. "Do you want to turn around?" he asked. "Not really. I don't want to go back there. What if they know it's me who left?" The others look around, wondering why the agreed to take the girl currently freaking out in the backseat. R is nice enough to change the subject, hoping to calm me down, maybe stop me from shaking. "What's your major?" D and I realize that we share similar interests, so we get to talking about cameras while the others listen, uninterested, until we reach D's apartment.

D's roommates are at their apartment getting ready to head out to other parties. All three stop and ask me where my shoes are. Each time I turned so red, you would have thought they were asking personal questions about my love life or something. As I had this thought, I realized that I had a cell phone in my pocket that I could contact my boyfriend with. This calms me a little, but the prospect of attending a party where there would be more hard alcohol, illegal substances and general debauchery made me panic even more. I was a good kid, I never drank or smoked and, for the most part, my group didn't either. In fact, I made a point to stray away from those who did.

When we arrive at the party, I feel completely lost. I didn't have a very good grasp of where I was in the city and it was already pretty late so I was a bit tired. Most of the people there were seniors and over 21. There were more guys than girls, but I guess that's kind of typical because no one seemed to care too much. The girls weren't in any state to care. After five minutes at the party, I completely understood how you get those crazy pictures of girls all over each other looking stupid. The rest of the night is kind of a blur. Some drunk dudes come over and try to dance with us girls, who are drinking very little (I think they were doing that for my benefit and I'll always appreciate it). I spent most of the night in a state of shock. It was just a normal party, but it was my first experience around this scene. And I had no shoes.

By the end of the night D is completely trashed and R is getting there. C drives us home about 4am. I enter the room quietly as to not wake up my roommate, but she is still up, waiting for me. I think this is the first night I know that she actually cares about me. She said that she knew I would be a bit freaked out and she was here if I wanted to talk. I was too tired to really appreciate this at the time, but took it up the next afternoon when we examined my socks. I swear, if anyone ever takes the time to go through my socks they will find a pair darker than the rest. No amount of Shout could return them to the same level of dirt of my other pairs.

After that night I knew I could survive at my university. I felt more welcomed by my roommate's (and soon my) group. I made friends in my classes and in my hall. I thought of this because I recently did my laundry. I was trying to match my socks based on how worn out they were and I found the socks from that night...they were the only ones I could match.

A case of the worries

My apologies, this post will diverge from the general topic of college and branch into a whole bunch of things.

I've been thinking a lot about the future lately. About a lot of different futures in a lot of different points in my life that can go a lot of different ways. I kinda just want to get them out, but I'm not entirely sure how to begin.

I guess I'll start with the closest. I want to volunteer at the local Humane Society for the rest of summer. It probably won't happen because they make you take a information course, but it's only offered the 3rd (insert weekday that I forget here) every month. And this month's passed by the time I came up with this brilliant idea and the next one held is the week before I go back to school. Load of good that does me. But...at least I have ideas for what to do when I'm bored during a break? Of course, I won't have many of those in the future.

I'm so scared about living in an apartment next year. There is someone there who wasn't in the "original line-up" and this person might just make my life hell. At least I'm taking charge of the bills. That should be fun. And that means I should get the mailbox key! I'm kind of excited about checking mail everyday. I used to love doing that as a kid.

I want to take a whole bunch of cruises and I can't get that stupid idea out of my head no matter how many times I look at cruises and be like, "Ok, see these? Now put them aside and bring them up when you actually have the means to take a cruise oh a whim."

I want to go to Alaska with my mom and only my mom. I want to bond with her before it's too late. I feel like I know nothing about what my parents were like before they were parents and that sucks. I finally realize that I don't know my family. I mentioned it to her in passing and she was like, "Not this summer, right?" I said no, the next, but that makes me worried too b/c I'm going to Japan next summer! How will it fit?! And my brother graduates high school! I can't miss that! But that means the cruise would have to be in the maybe 2 weeks I have after school gets out and before my brother graduates and my dad and brother won't want to take care of the dogs!

My boyfriend wants to take a cruise to somewhere warm so I thought of the Caribbean. Perfect winter break idea. Week after holidays, right before school starts. But that means we can't go to California like we did last winter break. Or to Colorado to ski like we kind of planned last year (we were sleep deprived and almost decided to take an extra weekend to ski in Colorado meaning we get back almost midnight the day he goes back to school). Or go to NYC like I kind of wanted.

Kinda speaking of my boyfriend, from time to time one of us will say something about after college and it's always assumed we'll be together. Living together, taking vacations together, working in the same city-ish. That's a really big assumption to make and I think we both know that we'll take any job we can get, but it's weird thinking we could be on completely opposite ends of the country. But that's still 2 years away until I have to deal with that one. I'm not even going to get into the possibilities of more than 2 years with him. Not this publicly, not when I'm being this candid.

Oh, going back to cruises, there's my desire to take a cruise and hit Italy and France and Spain and maybe Greece again. Egypt would be cool too. After a 7 to 10 day cruise, I could spend no more than a week hitting other major European cities. Actually, a friend put the idea in my head and it's something I would like to do with a group after we graduate college (the group in my head are all HS grads from 08). But I graduate a semester early, one member is going onto med school, another is on a completely different school schedule than the others...I don't know the details of the others but I'm sure there will be issues there too. No clue how that will work.

I'm worried about going to Japan and how I'll do with my host family since I'm not taking a language course this year. I'm afraid I will get lost - I'll need to make sure to bring my GPS with me. Hopefully that will do the trick. I'm not sure who will go next summer since it's usually a lot of freshman and I don't know them. Ugh, I hope someone from my year-ish considers going. It will make me a lot more comfortable.

Now that I'm on the college topic, I'm taking two journalism courses next semester and I cannot wait to get started on those. But I don't know what to expect and one is writing intensive and I really need to do well so I can get into my sequence early...I think I'm going to turn this future concern into a separate blog post. It's kind of important.

So somewhere in all that cruise talk, my boyfriend mentioned that boats sink. Even though I assured him of the boat's safety that got me thinking about my death. The absence of everything. I'm less scared than I used to be, but only when I think about dying at an old age, having fulfilled everything I want to do (family aspects not included, many of those things are hinted at in this post) - like that one Scrubs episode where a patient (an old lady) doesn't want her family to know she will die soon. JD doesn't understand how she can be so calm about death. He creates a list of things he thinks people should do before they die and reads it to her during his afternoon off. The dying woman has done everything, but points out that he probably hasn't done more than a handful. She tells him to go out, enjoy his day off and to work on that list. I want to be that woman! I have a small list of things in my head, but it's more of a "do before you're 30" list.

All this boils down to is that I have a lot of things I want to do and no clue how to make it happen. Yet. I just need to calm down and trust that when it gets closer to when I can actually do these things I will follow through.

I think in the meantime I'm just going to blog surf and flip through the infinite number of cruises out there. That calms me down enough for me to sleep.

Making it All Fit

Late first semester, a girl across the hall had a project that inspired me to create a plan of study. Nearly every class I needed to take was on an Excel spreadsheet, organized into neat charts explaining what that course was, what requirement it fulfilled and when I would be taking it. I created a table to show the courses I was taking by semester and their hours, added these up by semester and totaled them all together to make sure I met the requirements to graduate. I made sure everything fit into the three and a half years I planned on staying at the university (I brought a in lot of previous credits). I had it all planned out. I was a Photojournalism major with three minors. I was good to go. I never had to worry about my courses again.

But then...my first minor was dropped due to lack of funding. Actually, according to an email from the school over the summer, this minor is once again available...gee, thanks university for causing all this for no reason! It's not solely that department's fault though. After doing a bit more research, I didn't really like the second minor. I thought it went nice with Photojournalism, but many of the courses didn't relate or interest me so I would have dropped that anyway. This left me scrambling, seeing if I could find another possible minor that would interest me. I had empty spots in my charts to fill! Certainly nothing scientific. Math was out of the question. I considered English for a while (my university supposedly has a decent English program), but there were too many choices to make. I couldn't pick up another foreign language and everything else just seemed totally unrelated to journalism. So I looked into the Japanese major.

Japanese is hidden at my school. The courses are not listed in the Romance Languages and Literature department, but in the German and Russian Studies department. If you want to minor or major in it, however, you have to go to the Special Degree Programs department. Technically, my second major is International Studies with an emphasis on East Asian Studies. I am often tempted to add "specifically Japan" on the end, just because it sounds so pretentious. Honestly, it's for clarification. Now I just say Japanese. If my professor caught me saying that, he would lecture me, so shhh, don't tell.

After clearing my three minors from my spreadsheet, I faced the daunting task of looking up a whole new set of requirements for my new major. I also had to work in 12 more credits, since to double major at my university you need that many more credits to graduate...it makes no sense to me. I filled enough spaces with blank three credit hour courses, distributing the course load as evenly as possible. It still fits in three and a half years. Barely. I am at or just under the limit of hours you can take without special permission almost the whole way through. I have no room for error. If I mess up anywhere, my whole schedule is thrown off. That's why I won't. I have worked my tail off for a year to make sure that I can keep this semester early graduation. I will work my tail until I see this through.

Most people who double major take an extra semester or an extra year to graduate. I'm taking one less than what is expected for one major. My adviser doesn't think I will be able to do it, but I know I can.

Decisions, Decisions

We all make a lot of decisions in our lives. That sounds so typical. What I really mean is that we make decisions about who our friends are. This effects who we become. It effects our choices when it comes to our majors. A bit of a stretch, but let me explain.

As I've mentioned, I used to live in California. Northern California. Silicon Valley, if you must know, but I won't get more specific than that. I went to public school. I've always gone to public school. Well, save for preschool, but that's never public, it's glorified babysitting. I digress. My point with this is that my friends in Silicon Valley were very typical students in Silicon Valley with very typical families in Silicon Valley. Their parents are business men and women, people who work for Yahoo and eBay. They are engineers who work for IBM and Google. They are doctors and medical researchers. This is what I grew up in. A competitive region where you are only as good as your SAT score. Where your friends help you, but secretly pray that you just bombed the latest test. Where AP classes are expected to be taken and aced (IB had yet to break onto the scene, but I am sure it is comparable to AP). Where if an AP class is unavailable an honors course will suffice. Where, by the age of 16, you have your life pretty much set. You know what you want. You know how you will get there. Your parents support this. Your friends support it.

Most of my friends had dreams of becoming successful in ways very similar to their parents. And now that we are in college, most are starting on the path that will lead them to this dream. Some are business majors. Some are computer science majors. Some are engineering majors. Some are biology and chemistry majors in preparation for medical school post graduation. The few that took the arts path want to end up in video game design. I cannot think of a single person who is not planning to graduate with a bachelors degree in more than four years, even if they are double majoring.

Please compare this to the two states in the Midwest where I now have friends. The environment is the same. Their parents are doctors and medical researchers and business men and women and engineers. We had SAT tutors and competed against each other for the top spots in everything academic. Yet, for some reason I can't explain, most are undecided. They want to join fraternities and sororities. Most have a desire to be in the liberal arts. Some want to be successful entrepreneurs. There are the handful that want to be doctors or engineers, but these are far and few between.

The overall environment is the same. The upbringing is similar. So why such dramatically different results? Where did my friends from the Midwest make that choice, that decision, to stray away from the path their parents laid out for them? I can't answer these questions for them, nor do I wish to. I do wish that my Midwest friends could be the same way as my California friends. I think the world would be better off with more driven people.

Postponing Graduation

It's been a while since I talked about the academic aspects of college here, so I'll start with my plan before delving into the real reason I'm writing.

I am between my freshman and sophomore years. My major is photojournalism. I was going to have three minors (Japanese, Art and Psychology) but one of them doesn't have enough funding so it's status as a minor is questionable and the turned out to be not quite what I expected, so I am now double majoring in International Studies with an emphasis on East Asian Studies. All that is a lengthy way to say I am majoring in Japanese. I will study abroad the summer between my sophomore and junior years in Japan to fulfill my Int'l Studies requirement of studying abroad for four weeks or more. I will get six credits in upper level Japanese courses from this.

I will graduate in three and a half years.

No, I don't mean four and a half. I mean three and a half. No, not from this point in time. I mean overall. It will take me three and a half years to graduate with a double major. I'm not pulling any crazy stunts, I'm not taking more credits than are allowed without special permission.

I'm kind of proud of this fact. My parents are kind of stunned since my mom was a teacher and had to go to grad school and my dad switched majors so he had to take an extra year, but I think they're proud. They think I'm overwhelming myself, but don't say that to my face. Hooray for loyal siblings still at home to inform me of the truth.

Now that you know my general plan of study, allow me to talk about one of my friend's plan of study.

She is a Mechanical Engineering (ME) major, Spanish and math minor. It takes most people four and a half years (or four years and a summer) to graduate with a ME degree and Math minor. She will be taking six years and two summers, at least. The reason? She wants to study abroad a semester and take random classes because she likes their titles. Sound harsh? It is. But it gets even better.

I've been helping her make her plan of study since the end of last semester, but it's impossible because every other week, just as I'm finishing up the plan, she will come back to me changing something or other. "Leave room each semester so I can take a fun class." That'd be fine, but she's only taking the minimum credits required to be a full time student and struggling to pass all her classes. She has no room for fun. "I don't want to take three mechanical engineering classes at the same time." Later on, she's supposed to take that many; it's what the school tells you to do. I'm just trying to get her back on track for next year. Speaking of tracks, it's really difficult to try and keep her on any track. She just keeps jumping around. I almost want to tell her it would just be better if she went to a community college while working part time. She could explore her interests and not have to deal with working toward an ultimate goal. Then, when she is ready to finish her degree, she can attend the university we attend now, go heavy duty on the ME courses, be done in less than two years. It'd be cheaper too, but she has a full ride from a third party, so that doesn't matter.

Part of me thinks she just doesn't want to graduate. She doesn't know what she'll do with herself when someone isn't there to guide her. She's got a great personality, but she has no common sense. She can't and won't survive in the real world. She has no sense of who she is, and though she has big dreams of who she wants to become, no time frame or means of getting there.

Another example of someone who wants to stay in college. The first week of college, I met a 21 year old sophomore who has not taken a year off since high school. He has switched majors multiple times, but has finally settled on History. He attended community college for two years where he tore through three majors, a handful of minors and one study abroad attempt. Because of this conglomeration of courses, he transferred in as a sophomore. He attended my university for a year, but at the end of the second semester, he dropped out of my university and decided to go to another community college. He gave no reason for this. His academics were good. Even he claimed that the university I attend is the only public school in the state that will give him a decent degree in what he wants.

So why did he change schools? In our many conversations, I could never get my head around the fact that he was 21 (now 22) and only a sophomore. He comes across as a guy who knows what he wants in life. When we talked about the future, he had realistic goals and knew of ways to make these goals reality. I think he lives his life in slow motion. Graduate by the time I'm 30, marry by the time I'm 40, kids by 50.

I don't understand people like this. I plan to graduate early and most everyone else I know will graduate in four years - unless they are double majoring or are going on to some form of graduate school.

Actually, this leads me to want to compare some people, but I'll save that for my next post. I'm going to be updating this more frequently. I'll try to focus on topics related to college, but I might return to just talking about my life. I'll let you know when this happens.