fierce!

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Here is a quote, which I found relevant to my life, from an excerpt of Airs, Waters, Places, a thing about the effects geography and climate have on societies which was probably written by a disciple of Hippocrates:

"A variable climate produces a nature which is coupled with a fierce, hot-headed and discordant temperament, for frequent fears cause a fierce attitude of mind whereas quietness and calm dull the wits."

    Emphasis mine.

    Three exams to do this week! Let me die. Well, no; let me be fierce.

    Pictures from life soon, I think. In the meantime, philosophy/theology class.

    Post-class PS: We watched the first half of The Truman Show instead of talking. Such an awesome class. I should be studying for my tests now, but I decided to screw around with my blog layout instead. (I was never going to be that kind of college student and yet here we are.) It's blue now. It has a picture of me taken at the Reagan Library and Museum last Saturday in the Air Force One exhibit thing. Doesn't it look perfectly hideous? So amateur, and I can't adjust the size or font of the blog description. Oh well. The brown was getting on my nerves. This, at least, is brighter. I'll make it yellow and white soon or something.

I blame sugar cones and my professor for everything

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I will have been in college for exactly one full month next Monday!

    I also run a gamut of emotions regularly. I can go from utter despondence and sitting on the floor weeping over the phone to my mom to giddy spinning in chairs to exhaustion and emotional dead zones to being high on sugar and brain-buzzingness while listening to Elvis, all within less than 24 hours.

    It's still weird having a Fresh Start. None of these college people have known me very long; they all know my name, but it's still new to them when I'm being me or expressing myself in my own ways. My family will just ignore me or sometimes smile pityingly whenever I'm off doing something dumb, so I'm used to people being used to me, if that makes any sense, but here it's apparently an unusual thing to start spinning rapidly down the dorm hallway, get disoriented and smack into a wall, say "hi, wall!" and go beaming and skipping off. (I'd just gotten back from my first proper swing-dance lesson - the dance club meeting last week was just official non-dancey business - and I'd had chocolate ice cream on a sugar cone after dinner, what the frig else was I going to be doing?)

    In other news, I'm horribly behind on math, I have to write an outline for my first speech for public speaking class, Professor Mine Enemy continues to be both intimidating and to have the most exciting brain in the world, my Auntlet sent me another package and this one was full of shirts and shoes and jewelry and other odds and ends, Mother has been sending me small weekly packages full of tasty snacking-things, everything is awesome right now and in three or fours hours' time it will probably all be horrible.

    (Also, I bought the book of The Scarlet Pimpernel online. Immediately after seeing the shockingly late estimated arrival date, an idiotic little voice inside me said hey, this book is old and well loved, it is probably on Project Gutenberg, I could read the first couple of chapters online just to keep myself going. The book arrived last Tuesday, I think. I had finished reading it two weeks before.)

    (ALSO ROOMMATE COURTNEY AND R.A. AUGUST HAVE ACTUALLY BOTH READ IT WHICH MAKES ME HAPPY)

    *Edit: I forgot to add that there is absolutely no feeling in the world like being comfortably settled in one's bed and accomplishments at the end of a long day and on the far side of drifting off to sleep when it occurs to one that one did not thoroughly read one's history paper through before submitting it online and it might still have editorial comments which one might have forgotten to remove before submitting it. 
    Oh my lands it was like the floor under my bunk bed disappeared and I plunged down into a pit of ice water. That is how bad that moment was.
    Thankfully I checked the document the next day and my fears were unfounded! The paper wasn't especially good, but it had no parenthetical notes to self saying to rewrite the thesis statement, at least.

my life is basically a Greek tragedy

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Lately I have taken to mentally listing all of my problems (which are rapidly increasing in number and panic-inducement-potential) and adding the phrase "- and I feel fine!" at the end. Actually feeling less and less over the past few days. "Fine" is a positive word for it.

    Two general, non-homework-related problems have arisen since I've been here at college. One is a puzzling and bizarre little internal emotional kerfuffle which occupies my thoughts a good chunk of all of the time and which was not a problem I expected from college even to the point of being aware of it as a possibility, and the other is the state of my feet. My feet just keep getting more and more damaged the longer I'm shuffling around in flip-flops all the time. They're not only dirty but bruised, blistered, sunburned and now scraped and oozing yellow goo. What joy.

    Now, back to math.
    (Damn everything.)

I just like bullet lists ok

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Here is a list of things that are making me unhappy today:

• I got an hour less sleep than I intended to get.
• I have to write my first history paper by Wednesday and do not feel the least bit confident in my paper-writin' skills. I also have to pick a topic-person for my tribute speech for public speaking class and start working on that.
• I have to study math like crazy and it takes me too long to do.
• I need more time to do things in.
• I miss my mom.

    And here is a list of things that are making me happy today:

• I look nice. I've got on black shorts, a well-fitted red polo shirt and a skinny black necktie.
• I had the foresight to get two cookies at lunch. I'm always hungry after classes are done. I spent the whole of my last class thinking "there is a soft delicious chocolate chip cookie waiting for me in my messenger bag".
• Campus Beach Day is tomorrow. (Small school = we can get all of us onto a beach no problem.)
• Professor Mine Enemy was wearing a panda tie.
• Professor Mine Enemy had us do a quick quiz of five questions, but was six minutes late to class due to printer difficulties, leaving me just enough time to review the textbook chapter summaries. I got everything on the quiz right! (I'm homeschooled, okay, I've never had quizzes before, it's all new to me)
• I feel much less intimidated by Professor Mine Enemy today. Not only because of the endearing tie and the quiz success, but also this is because after class was done and I had got my books in order (one must always have one's bag ready to flee with whenever taking risks), I went up and asked him an intelligent question about a thing and he answered cheerfully and talked with me about it a bit and everything was ok. (He couldn't give me specific details on what I wanted to know about, but a general answer worked fine for me. The important bit was the encounter, not the knowledge.)
• I've signed up to join the ballroom dance club and our first meeting is this afternoon.
• This evening I'm going to go to see Laurie R King at a book signing for her latest Mary Russell mystery. (I have grown up on those books.) I am excited.

    Overall it could all be worse!

    (why am I blogging instead of studying why why why whyyy, because it helps me put things in order that's why, but I have so much to dooooo aaaagh)

Professor Mine Enemy

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    This is me today after managing to miss both breakfast and lunch. Also, I had two classes.

    I cannot handle an hour and a half of the alarming professor I mentioned before (that is, the one I've decided to be inwardly belligerent towards, the intimidating enemy-professor; Professor Mine Enemy) on a cup of coffee and a handful of fries (the latter generously donated from Upperclassman Kim's lunch). It is not to be borne. Just...no.

    Thankfully he was relatively laid-back today and talked about interesting things, so it could have been much worse.

    Whyyyyy does he remind me of Enemy/Sandy/Dr MacRae from Jean Webster's book Dear Enemy? He's not even Scottish. He's a doctor, yes, but not a doctor of medicine, just a doctor of smart things. Gah. My brain makes the weirdest connections sometimes.

    And I realized today that I really want to just adore the man, because he's so intelligent and passionate and weird and cool, but he's still intimidating and I honestly don't know if I'm going to be able to do well in his class but I really want him to think well of me but I don't know if I can make that happen through effort so really it's too emotionally dangerous to adore the man so I feel like I just need to say "arr hwar gar this is my enemy, damn that Dr S, damn him to bits! I'll show him who's a dimwit who can't keep up with what he requires of us as students!" Except that I'm the one thinking I'm a dimwit and he is probably only conscious of me as a girl who sits in the front row and looks like she's trying really hard to process everything he's saying and blah

    I'm just going to stand over here and build complicated one-sided relationships now ok

    my brain is like a foggy, sticky labyrinth made of dry twigs and unwashed wool

    blaaaahhh fear me

there is one grand thing

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Damn. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, baked beans, damn, damn and damn.

    (Math 100. Remedial algebra class. Didn't study math enough in high school, scored badly on math bit of SAT.)

    Damn.

    Anyway, just for kicks, here is a picture of me at La Plaza in Los Angeles taken last Saturday as I was being taught the history of the city along with most of my freshman class and a few upperclassmen. I had a squinty face but I like the lighting. (Photo by Roommate Courtney, who is very good.)

L to R: Mr B the director of student activies, Freshman Luke, me.

    Cannot wait to get my own camera. Also, extra notes:

• Mother and I have begun abbreviating "The Scarlet Pimpernel" to "Spimper" for ease of texting. It amuses.
• My Auntlet sent me - wait, have I talked about my Auntlet? She's an older woman who is one of my very best friends for life, she's not an actual aunt but I've known her since I was nine years old and within the past year or two we've become very close friends, she's the most extraordinary woman and she absolutely adores me and I literally am not even sure why - anyway my Auntlet sent me a care package containing a stuffed carrot toy/pillow thing with a happy face and arms and legs and his green leafery is boxer shorts so he's kind of upside-down and so hard to describe so here's a webcam picture:

     ...and she also sent me:

• one fancy kaleidoscope with three color-stick-things which one sticks into the kaleidoscope, 
• one tiny toy bird thing which one can stick into things and 
• two wooden tops which look either like apples or acorns, I'm not sure, but probably just mutant apples because they're red and green. 
• (Mother sent me a care package full of snacks and junk food. Thanks, Mom, I love the gummy dinosaurs!)
• I believe my Auntlet is also sending me a memory-foam mattress pad, orange Christmas lights for my dorm room and new clothes, because she's just amazing like that. She's like my fairy godmother, personal Santa Claus, Daddy-Long-Legs, cheerleader, number 1 fan, antiqueing buddy and therapist rolled into a great big beautiful mess of love and support. And why does she love me so much, anyway?! She sees right through me and understands me and loves what she sees and I don't even feel like I've deliberately revealed much of my self to her but I don't need to because she gets me and it's very alarming and unsettling because I'm a very private person and thought I was more mysterious and obscure than that augh. BLESSINGS AND GREAT FORTUNE ARE WEIRD BASICALLY

    Time for class now. Between classes and interacting alllll the tiiiiiime with other students, every day I am more and more convinced that I'm a complete idiot and haven't the wits of a fish that was dropped as a baby. It's very Socratic.
 
(post-class PS: the title of this post is from my notes on the word "monists", which I learned today in my philosophy/theology class)

college/ugh i just love his hat so much

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    This is how long I have been at college.

    I would write more - there's certainly plenty to talk about - but right now I need to study like an angry badger.