Back to School

I have returned to Albion once more for my junior year and although my first week of classes went successfully, I have not yet departed the super stressed out train. As you all know I am applying to go abroad to Scotland in the Spring and I have needed to get the required signatures from various faculty members in order to turn in the application. Let me just say that it is not going well. I don't think I've ever been more frustrated with people. Before I even got back to Albion I had emailed professors letting them know I wanted to set up a meeting as soon as possible and each one told me to email them at the start of school. So I did, but to no avail. Once again it is not until I get pushy that I get responses from the professors. I even went to their offices to find out their office hours and it wasn't until I told them I would be coming to their next class to set up an appointment did they respond with a time in which I could meet with them. AHHHHHHHH! I'm beginning to feel like I won't be able to get the application completed and it's not because I haven't tried. Hopefully things will start coming together soon.

With that said my classes are going relatively well. My first day of Spanish, my former roommate Jill and I were sitting together when our professor walked in and says: Hola clase...and continued in super fast Spanish, Jill and I looked at each other and both go Oh crap. She told us that the first day was the last day she would speak english to us and as worried as I was, it's not that bad. I'm acing spanish class, having gotten 2 extra credit points for helping my team to victory in spanish charades. I know I'm amazing, just kidding. The nice thing about it, is that we do a LOT of discussion and interactive stuff in spanish getting you comfortable speaking, which let's face it I'm NOT comfortable with. The only thing I wish we did more of is vocabulary. I am finding that my lack of Spanish classes for the past 3 years has greatly depleted my vocabulary abilities, but it is slowly coming back to me.

I found it rather ironic that the class that's the most interesting in lecture, developmental psychology, has the most BORING textbook, and the class that has a pretty boring lecture, Neuroscience, has a pretty interesting book. Typical at least I'll be able to follow one part of the material in each class haha.

Then comes my invertebrate zoology class. It's fascinating, one of our textbooks talks about parasites and what not and it's absolutely disgusting but it is just amazing!! However, a great portion of our grade for the class relies on a group collection project. We have to collect a list of specimens from the field, all bugs, kill them and then mount them and present to the class. I am having a really hard time with this one. First of all I'd rather not have to catch bugs and usually I don't mind squashing a mosquito or spider but I feel so terrible about putting them in killing solution and watching them die. So bad in fact, that this weekend I caught a beetle but I don't have my ID card coded for 24 hr access to the science building yet, as it wasn't available until yesterday, and I felt so bad about keeping it in a jar for 2 days that I let it go. I don't think I would make a very good invertebrate zoologist.

My roommate situation is going pretty well so far, but we will not be rooming together again as I have spoken to one of my good friends from bio and we are planning to live together WOOHOO!! My roommate told me the day she moved in that she likes to move stuff around a lot and I told her I didn't care as long as I was able to use the internet, which meant being close to the only ethernet jack in the apt. So her solution was to get us wireless, works for me. She isn't around much as she has a very busy schedule being a chemistry major and very active in the theater technology dept. One thing I could definitely pass on is the hamster, Twink, that she brought to school with her. I am SO glad we never had one of these things. They smell, make a mess and the stupid thing bit me, not to mention that it feels the best time to play in it's squeaky wheel is right when we go to bed.

I am working really hard to be more organized this semester and getting stuff done, actually reading my textbooks and working out regularly. Being a week and almost 1/2 into school I'd say it's going well. Let's hope I can keep it that way!