Try New Things

This phrase, "Try new things," is, I have decided, going to be my grad school motto. I'm already on my way with living on my own in a new city, but I don't want it to stop there. There's only one thing I wish I had done differently in undergrad and that was get involved with Corn from the first year. After this past year, I wish I hadn't waited until senior year to get involved, but there's nothing I can do about that now. The only thing I can do is make sure that from this point forward, I'm not afraid to try things.

So, that being said, let me recap the weekend so far, starting on Friday morning. I had an interview here in town for a company that publishes math-based products, but has a side project compiling what is basically a phrase thesaurus. They're in the stage where they need humans to check what the computer has done to make sure that the uses the computer puts in are legitimate. It was a pretty short interview, but I got the job and start on Monday. The director/owner of the company said that he can't guarantee me work after the end of October, but that still gives me a couple of months to put some money away and get my bearings here. Plus, like my grandpa said, you never know when something temporary might turn into something permanent. We'll see where this goes, but for now, I'm just relieved to have a job.

After my interview, I met my family for lunch downtown, then we came back to my apartment to unload some of my brother's stuff. We said goodbye as I was going to my department orientation, which was really hard. Don't get me wrong, I'm really excited about everything that I'm doing, but I cried when I hugged everyone goodbye. That will be one of the biggest adjustments, I think, because I'm used to seeing my parents/brothers/grandparents at least 3 times a week, if not more. But I'll adjust, I know. And my dad's planning a trip down in a couple of weeks to bring me some chairs for my living room, so it's not like it will be months before I see anyone.

Department orientation was good. There are 16 of us that are coming in (or at least, according to the program director, have accepted the offer), and I've met about half so far. It looks like I've picked a program that's pretty close-knit; the 2nd years who were running the orientation talked about library study evenings and group think sessions and lots of professional development events that the GEA (Graduate English Association) sponsors. After a summer spent being a teacher, I'm ready to be a student again, and I'm so excited to start classes on Wednesday!

The first night was hard, I'm not going to lie. Pat and I got pizza, watched The Office, and hung out; I also started alphabetizing my books, a project that took me until last night to finish. I cried a little when I went to bed, but I woke up feeling better about life. It'll be good to have him so close-kind of like a little piece of home :)

Saturday morning I had the college-wide orientation/ethics in research seminar. The orientation part was useful; I found some people from my program that I had met the day before and we sat together. The ethics in research seminar was not quite as helpful. It was pretty much totally geared toward the sciences, with emphasis on what federal regulations/organizations controlled testing with animals and human participants, etc and the requisite bit about plagiarism. As one of the other students in my program said, "I write about dead guys. As long as I give them credit and everyone else who's written about them, I'm good to go." Nonetheless, it was at least good to have friends to sit with.

After the orientation, I headed further downtown for my brother to pick me up-it was freshman move-in on the street that my orientation was on, so the street was blocked off. As I was crossing a major intersection, I saw a girl that looked familiar: an MCG who I had Spanish with for 2 semesters freshman year. She's just moved down here for a job; it was so fun to see someone I knew. Once he picked me up, my day got boring: lunch, nap, grocery shopping, finishing my alphabetizing, dinner, cleaning up, then entertaining some of his friends. Actually, entertaining is an exaggeration; really, they just needed to get off campus so they came to hang out with him here.

That brings me to this morning, which so far has been quiet, except for my brother's snoring from the next room. My "new thing" for today is to go to Mass tonight with the Catholic Campus Ministry (CCM) at my school, something I wasn't into in undergrad, but think I ought to try here. I may end up at a parish yet, but the chaplain at the Del suggested that I might want to get involved here, so I'm going to give it a shot.

That's all I have for now; if you really made it to the end, you deserve a cookie. Or you should come see me :)