First Day of Class

     I opened my window again last night because my room is still way hotter than the others in the suite. We agreed that I'll be a little bit hot in the summer and they'll be a little bit cold in the winter. This deal seemed fair enough, I have a fan and a window that opens.

     I awoke to a loud banging and assumed the purge was happening and someone was dying outside. I've been hearing about that happening, and that was immediately where my mind went with the incredibly loud noises. Turns out that trash gets picked up on Monday mornings, and the dumpsters are right below my window. I had planned to get up around half an hour after this nonsense, so I just went with it and watched some boxing until I had to get ready to leave.

     Fair warning, the next few paragraphs will be pretty lengthy. This won't be a normal thing, but I have a lot of thoughts to put down about these three classes.

     I decided to skip breakfast since I was still full from my 6 reasonable number of McDonald's cheeseburgers. Got walking to my first class, Honor's Writing, and found it without any trouble. The class actually went well. It's a small group setting, and mostly discussion based. The professor is an older man with 12 published books and over 200 published articles. He introduced himself by his first name and told us titles are just formalities. He emphasized how he cared just as much about us enjoying his class as he cared about us learning, and how his class was more about learning to effectively communicate than anything else. He is, without a doubt, the most positive and encouraging person I have ever met. He went around the room, asked where we were from and what our major is, and spoke a bit about all of the great things going on in the field of that major. We were given a book of paintings and told to "just write about whatever one of these paintings makes you think about." The instructions were vague, but I found a painting (this one, to be exact) that made me think about the imprint people leave on the world, and wrote about what I want mine to be. He gave us three minutes to think and write, and then randomly chose a few people to read their answer. He went on and on about how wonderful all of these answer were, and pointed out a ton of things he liked from them. He told us he left the prompt vague intentionally, because interpretation is key in communication, and he will continue to do this with every assignment. He fully expects everyone to interpret assignments differently, and wants us to just go with out gut. He told us we will never interpret anything in his class incorrectly, just differently than others. Class ended with him telling us he will finish teaching one week before finals, because when he was in college he hated all of the cramming, and him leaving us with a quest to complete before next class ("homework" and "assignments" sound so negative, and "quest" better describes the growth he wants us to experience through his class). I like him. I like his class. I've always hated writing, but I'm looking forward to this class.

     As class ended, I got a text from a member of my orientation group asking if I wanted to hang out. I needed to print off the syllabus for my next class, so I told him to meet me at the library. It was cool catching up with him and looking through the syllabi for our various classes. The syllabus was 15 pages and cost me 12 cents to print. I get $1.20 of free prints every semester. Thank you, professor, for blowing a tenth of my printing money on the first day.

     My friend had just purchased an outrageously priced water bottle, so we went looking for a water fountain. Finding a water fountain was a lot harder than I had anticipated it being. We found one, though, and headed off to our next class.

     My next class, Criminal Justice 101, was a lecture. There was probably 80 people in there, and we ran out of seats so a few people had to sit in the aisle. The teacher was a young woman, and I liked her immediately. She referenced The Office on the first slide of her presentation, so she instantly became my favorite person on campus. She continued to throw out references throughout the rest of the class. Her class is structured so that we have three tests, seven quizzes, and a presentation. She told us that the class before tests and quizzes, we will be given all of the material that will be on the assessment, and she will spend the entire class answering any questions. According to her, as long as we show up to class, it will be hard not to get an A. Great to hear. The class material seems interesting enough, a unit on policing, a unit on courts, and a unit on corrections. She let class go twenty minutes early, because she isn't here to waste any of our time with busywork. I REALLY like her. That class will be fun.

     I have three hours off after JUS101, and not much to do. I decided to go grab some lunch, and ran into some other guys from my orientation group. I learned that the dining hall always has sausage pizza, and it has red pepper flakes to put on it. I love sausage pizza with red pepper flakes. I grabbed two slices of pizza, and a spoonful of pepper to sprinkle on it. I learned today that if you grab a spoonful of pepper, no matter how hard you try to just sprinkle a little bit, a spoonful of pepper will be on your pizza. I still ate it. It was still good.

     I was going to go to the gym, but I had an email saying a water main had burst and it was closed indefinitely. I just jogged around campus instead. This was my third or fourth jog so far, and I pass a lot of the same people while I'm out. Some of them are nice and greet me. One group of people has taken to calling me Green Bay, because I'm wearing a Green Bay Packers hat. I guess I can live with that.

     Came back to my room and showered up after my jog. I still had a while until my next class, so I watched boxing. I've never watched boxing before moving down here, but I'm beginning to really enjoy it. It makes me want to learn to box. I also don't want to get hit. It makes me want to learn to box someone who will stand still and not hit back.

     My last class of the day was IT Fundamentals. I assumed this would be my favorite class. It's the only one today that related to my major. It sucked. The information covered in the course is very basic, and it was a 2 hours of learning the parts of a computer. We're building a computer on Wednesday though, so that should be fun. Looking at the syllabus for this class, I won't learn much that I don't already know, but it'll be an easy A. Almost all of the grade comes from labwork like building the computer.

     Went back to my room and watched poker for two hours. I had no idea how much fun it is to watch poker, but I got really absorbed in it. Poker ended and MMA was coming up next, so I decided to run and grab dinner before that started. Got a burger and managed to not screw it up.

     So, yeah. That was my day. Sorry again for how long this was, I'll try and keep them shorter when the new-ness wears off. I did also learn today that we cannot put screens in our windows, so I'm accepting bets for how long it takes me to fall out of my third story window.