Paper and meat.

I've been home for a few hours, and I still cannot begin to describe my experiences when I first stepped onto campus as a student, rather than a reprobate who needs to be escorted off the premises. The sheer number of people numbs me - it's hard to walk in a crowd without wanting to see who's there or if you recognize someone. Just keep walking, I said to myself, and find that damn building where the class is. I'm also surprised by the amount of paper and meat this campus goes through in one week. There were more barbecues roasting dead animals than I've seen in awhile, and everywhere I went some overly tanned stick figure wearing a seashell necklace was shoving a pamphlet or coupons or (why not comics?) flyers under my nose. Note to university administration: leave the grumpy, slightly chubby guy with bad hair alone. Of course, that description isn't exactly a narrow one for a university campus.

I saw three people from the old college today. One is in my English class.

Oh yeah, the classes I'm registered in: English 225: Poetry (analyzing poetry with a technical and rigourous methodology), Linguistics 100: Memorize a Whole Bunch of Jargon and Read Difficult Texts, and Sociology 350: Social Theories. The first two classes are straightforward, but holy moley (moly?) my sociology class is rough. It is one of my majors, for sure, and I need this class for graduation, but the standards are high, dear friends. A ton of written work. Forty to eighty pages of readings a week, some of them being pretty dense. Seminars. Seminars, people. I love the class, it's true, but my knees gave out from under me when I read the syllabus.

One story. According to my schedule, my first class, linguistics, is at 10:30. When time came to get to class, I got hopelessly lost. The massive map near the student union building helped me find my way. I barreled into the classroom with four minutes to spare, sat down and listened to the prof. He had the periodic table of the elements on the overhead. Now, I was thinking, this is cool. The prof was comparing language to the periodic table. I wanted to see where he was going with this. Then he said, "when I looked up my name on rate your professor dot com, some of the complaints from disgruntled students were how I didn't write any notes for my chemistry 350 class last semester." I tried to slink out of the classroom unnoticed, but he totally saw me.