My Head is Spinning

Wow. Welcome Days ended a few minutes ago. I have some time before I eat lunch with my parents, so I figured I'd update my wonderful readers.



I am in a whole new world. The going-to-camp feeling hasn't quite faded yet, but when I'm looking at my wreck of a kitchen (okay, it's not quite that bad) tomorrow, it may. Or when I get the syllabus for my Shakespeare class (junior-level, as I found out, yay). Part of it drained with alarming rapidity as I waited at the bookstore desk for my Honors College books. The guy went into the back and reemerged with two white boxes. For two classes. There are four books in the first box, which is doable.



There are eleven in the second box. Lucretius. Plato. Pre-Socratic. Aristophanes. More Plato. I'm excited about getting into this stuff, but my word, that's a lot of heavy reading. *sighs*



I think I've decided how I'm going to blog for a while. Interesting things keep happening to me, so I think I'll post something in nonfiction, and then sort-of fictionalize the second half of the post. You know, a series of College Vignettes (I like capitalizing things, becuase it makes them seem More Important. Weird, I know :-)



Wow. I just typed in labels for this post and began to tap out 'losing my mind', and blogger supplied the rest of it. This may not be indicative of good mental health...



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We sit in the little auditorium, the cross-country team coming together the first time for the semester. I stare at the paper in front of me, and not reading it, write my signature for the 19th time. The letters start to blur, and my autograph is distinctly more of a scrawl on this sheet than the one before it. Yes, I am an amateur. No, no recruiter has ever given me or my family/friends free tickets to more than three athletic events. I have not taken HGH - hold on. I'm a skinny white girl. Seriously. Do I look like I've taken HGH?



The woman handling NCAA compliance issues begins to hand out another packet of information, and I groan under my breath. She followed the NCAA rules and read the first miniaturized version of the handbook to us. It's sixteen pages long. Double-sided. I skim the first page. Ah, the fun stuff. Yes, I give the NCAA permission to ban me for a full calendar year (i.e. 365 days) from NCAA Athletic Competition if my drug tests return positive or if I miss a scheduled drug test. That's harsh. If your alarm decides to fail you, or you're deathly ill of pneumonia, or someone T-bones your car, you will miss a scheduled drug test.

This counts, automatically, as a positive test, and you're banned for a year. Nice, huh?

The compliance woman looks at all of us. It's a small group - the team started just last year. "Before you start on this next form, are any of you under eighteen?"

I slouch and throw up a hand, with a half-smile like yeah, I'm the young one. It wouldn't surprise me if someone else was just under eighteen.

It does surprise me that no one else is. First thought: Aw, crap.

The woman adjusts her glasses and looks at me. "Alright, put a big X at the top of your form."

What if I put two Xs side-by-side with a nose and frowning mouth below?

I dutifully etch an X into the top of my form.

She glances at my form. "That's great. When will you turn eighteen?"

Next thought: Aw, Crap. (Remember what I said about capitalization?) I shrink into my chair. Can I just say August? I keep my voice low, like I'm passing off a classified secret. "Next August."

I hear a few 'Ohhhs', see a couple knowing looks.

"Cool, seventeen," one guy says.

I think for a long time about blowing my last ace, just to see the reaction. I am a sad sucker for reactions, have I mentioned that? "Actually, I don't turn seventeen until next Friday."

The 'Oohs' this time are a decibel louder, and now everyone is looking at me. I wouldn't call myself desperate for attention (by a far stretch), but I might as well go down with style.