I am now in the middle of my first semester here at Washington College. It is very different in some aspects yet very similar to high school. I have four classes, two on MWF and two TTH. Due to my AP history credits I was able to skip out of a survey history course and literally jump head first into a 300 level history class with a bunch of juniors and seniors... Needless to say it was a little intimidating. Did I mention that this class, Victorian America, starts at 1:30 in the afternoon? It's pretty weird. My next class is Elementary Spanish 101, which is a full immersion course. So the first day my professor actually says "This is the last day I am speaking English in this class." so I'm doing well so far, I am just struggling mentally. But I need two classes of a language to fulfill distribution requirements. Then, on Tuesday and Thursday I have English 101 and Intro to Sociology. English 101 is one of the strangest classes I have... My professor is a guy first off, which is not a bad thing, it's just that I've only had two male English teachers in 13 years of school, and they were both really chill guys where as Professor Daley is very blunt about everything. He also curses a lot, which is something that everyone does in college, professors and students and probably even the squirrels. But he did find Mrs. Burnett's comment about making the first sentence in each body paragraph a mini thesis a very good idea. But that class is going well, it's just different. Sociology is really cool though, my professor is from Ohio State where she just got her doctorate in August. I can now say I understand all of Urig's little aneurisms a little better now because she explains all of them. It's pretty fantastic.
Anyways! I have made friends, and they're all awesome in their own rights. A lot of them are political science majors, a couple history, some English, and quite a few Bio/Chem majors. One guy is a Chemistry and Psychology double major with a minor in German... He's crazy. But we all have similar interests, and we spend the weekends watching random movies because none of us party. Now my dreams of working at the Library of Congress don't get as many weird looks, though now I want to work at the Fred W. Smith Library at Mt. Vernon, it's gorgeous and I was literally so happy I was going to burst into tears. But one of my friends wants to become a Supreme Court Justice, which is the coolest thing ever because he would be really good at it too! Another one of my friends is from Arizona, she lives right next door in my hall and kind of roped me into the group. I greatly appreciated it as well because my roommate and I circle in different friend groups. But they make me laugh and they're all great people who I am so glad to have met.
I also had the honor of being hired as a technical engineer for my school. (Look Mom! I became an engineer in 5 weeks ;D ) Basically I will help run all of the sound equipment for events on campus and get paid! I begin this week on Friday. On top of that I am a student associate for the CV Starr Center where I get to research and do historical stuffs on a regular basis and meet some fantastic authors such as Adam Goodheart who wrote 1861. I am also doing run crew for a show called Old Times this week (very poor planning on my part as there is also a gallery opening for a project the Starr center is doing this week as well), where I sit in a dark tunnel for 2 hours and do three things (woohoo). But I get credit so thats nice :-) I also joined the Student Events Board SEB and within the first week I earned myself an imaginary Gold Star as I showed up to set up an event (Go Me) and the people running that are also very cool so I am looking forward to working with them a lot over the next four years or so.
So yeah... College really isn't that scary. The people are pretty great and so are the professors. The food does get a little boring every once and a while but it's good. And I'm looking forward to the next few years... I now know that I will be able to follow my dreams wherever they may take me. I still do miss the High School, but Washington College is now my home. I look forward to coming back to visit every once and awhile but I am officially an alumna of Oxford Area High School.
