College... it has classes!

I don't believe I've written anything here in the past two weeks. Class seems to be taking up my time, what with the attending, and the doing work beforehand, and the getting sleep in advance. It's a pain.

However, there is good news. The classes here are awesome.

Theories of Nationalism is a bit overwhelming. In a class of about 5o, I'm one of four (I think) freshmen. It's a fairly fast-paced class, and it's full of deep philosophical discussions of political theory. However, I'm doing a decent job keeping up with the class, and I'm occasionally even saying something thought-provoking. (I doubt that this'll become a habit or anything, but who knows.) The reading is really interesting stuff, and paper-writing is 100% of our grades, which I happen to love.

English II is a comfortable environment for me; most of the class is made up of students who are, like me, freshmen who placed into the class with AP or SAT scores (or both). I really like both the professor and my classmates, and the curriculum looks like fun. I'm fairly far into our first book already; it's A Hope In The Unseen by Ron Suskind. It's non-fiction, which I've always preferred, and it's about a kid going through high school and college, and struggling against adversity to find his place. I've never understood why 95% of high school reading is fiction, despite the fact that 99% of what people end up having to write in the real world isn't. Of course, I made the percentages up -- sue me -- but my point is that I'm really happy be reading a great piece of non-fiction for an English class. It's the first English class reading I've enjoyed in a while (probably since 1984).

Intro to Psychology is fairly boring so far, but I'm not about to blame anyone for that. The really, really introductory stuff is almost over, and I'm hoping that it'll get interesting soon. Abnormal psychology should be fun. You know what? I'm not writing a full paragraph about this class yet. That just wouldn't be fair. Let's move on.

Spanish? I guess I could talk about Spanish. Basically, it was the only class I signed up for that made me feel like I was still in high school. Endless busywork, being assigned in a class that didn't even need busywork for me to consider it incredibly dull. It's times like these that I wish I could meet the inventor of add/drop forms and thank him in person.

The reason I could drop Spanish? Simple! I finally got into Analysis of Baseball Statistics. The first class was last night, and MY GOD is it the class for me. The homework for yesterday's class (a reading of Moneyball by Michael Lewis), I had already finished years ago, and the class discussions, well... they were mostly discussions that had already taken place in my family at one point or another. Plus, any environment that leaves me surrounded by Red Sox fans is a good one. I'd talk more about this class, but perhaps I'll wait until after I've been there more than once.

Anyway, as far as non-class related things go... five big headlines in my life.

1. I love the Hodgdon Cafe. They will give you $7 worth of food every day for lunch, and $9 for dinner, despite the fact that the dining halls have unlimited meals on top of that. So my new daily ritual is to stock up on snacks and drinks to keep around my room, before going to the dining halls. I don't get many sodas because I don't have a fridge, but water, juice, Gatorade, lemonade, and iced tea are all fairly decent at room temperature.

2. I also love my schedule. Thanks to the droppage of Spanish, I am left with a total of:

- Zero classes before noon, ever
- Zero classes on Fridays, ever

Plus, my Mondays and Wednesdays both start at 4 PM. I should probably keep a lower profile about all of this -- after all, I'm getting quite a few death threats out of sheer jealousy -- but I just can't help myself.

3. The Facebook friends race is no longer close. I've exploded into a 271-192 lead over Nate. He's a good competitor, but he's got nothin' on me.

4. Weezer is playing in Worcester in October, and I HAVE TICKETS! There are a few issues, and I might not end up going, but at the very least, I have a good ticket-scalping career ahead of me.

5. Writing has pretty much become my life. Not only am I writing obscenely long entries in this here blog here, but there's also a poker blog getting underway (although it may not last, and by "may not," I mean "probably won't"), and oh, I almost forgot... I am writing an unbelievable amount of articles about baseball. I should be getting my first Daily article published Tuesday, and then my first Observer article on (I think) Wednesday (edit, 9/21/05... today's Wednesday and it's not out yet... maybe Friday?). Plus I'll write three more Daily articles in order to apply for my own column. And I have an essay on baseball in the media due Thursday for my baseball stats class. Overwhelming, but manageable. I think.

I'm gonna go take a break from writing things, although it's not really possible for that to last. Hopefully this entry was long enough to satisfy all you fans who keep bugging me to write more. If not, please feel free to inquire as to whether I care. (Just kidding... of course I do.)

Don't hate... matriculate!

The first of many loads of laundry of my college career is in the washing machine as we speak. At the risk of being branded a total loser, I'll just come right out and admit that this is the first time in my life washing clothes without my mom's help. So I'm a bit nervous about ruining all my clothes, so I figured I'd sit down to do a little blogging to ease my mind.

So here goes... my first week in college... a review.

Sunday: Got to Tufts around noon. Spent an hour walking up three flights of stairs over and over again, carrying all my stuff up to Tilton 307. Fun. Did a bunch of ice-breaker games with my orientation group, went to a cookout, realized all my friends were Asians and I was the token white guy, and went to bed. There was some other stuff in there too, but Sunday was a week ago and I don't remember anything. Sue me.

Monday: Yeah, uhh... no comment.

Tuesday: Finally, at long last, the day comes. I have my password for the Tufts computer network. Which means I can get online on campus, which means I can access my email, which means I have Facebook. Life is good again. Finally.

I instantly become a facebook addict, friending everyone I knew back in high school and everyone I've met in college. I joined 56 groups and founded two of my own, and I spent about an hour adding as many musical/cinematic interests to my lists as possible. Then my roommate started a popularity contest, seeing which one of us would have more friends. It's an extremely close race; right now I'm up 156-155. Yikes... too close for comfort.

Wednesday: Regular orientation starts. (In other words, I get to meet some other white people.) IO was fun, but it got boring having only 10 people in the dorm. Matriculation was great; we got to see President Bacow speak, and he is the man. He's a huge Sox fan, and he's pretty liberal (big on religious freedom, so he gets lots of coolness points there). Plus he really likes his students. He goes running every morning and anyone's welcome to join him... also he handles all his own phone calls and emails.

Wednesday night I met my advising group... they're an awesome crowd. We played some lame get-to-know-you games and then had dinner in Gantcher (this really huge gym that managed to fit the entire freshman class). A bunch of music and dance groups performed for us... most of them were either really lame or just kinda so-so, but the Beelzebubs were amazing. I would totally audition for them if only I had a shred of musical talent.

Thursday: Language placement exam, bright and fricking early. It wasn't so bad though, because I did fairly well all things considered. I took three years of Spanish in high school, so it made sense that I ended up in Spanish 4, but I was really afraid that I'd end up in much worse shape. There were a lot of reasons, among them being the mediocrity of my last two teachers, the lack of effort I put into high school in general, and also the fact that it was a fairly tough test. I finished in 19 minutes, but it was a painful 19 minutes.

In other news, Dewick (the GOOD dining hall... uphill people are losers) opened Thursday, and I had the best breakfast of my life (okay, so I'm exaggerating, get over it).

Friday was a fairly boring day. I spent the day going to tons of panel discussions with people, learning about everything from studying political science, to not getting expelled for cheating, to not raping people (all three are very important skills).

Friday NIGHT however was one of the funniest nights of my life. I got to see Paul Ramsey -- who you probably haven't heard of, but it's okay, I hadn't either -- and he was AMAZING. He's a hypnotist, and he put on the coolest show I have ever seen. He pulled about fifty people out of the audience, and he hypnotized them all at the same time. It was downright hilarious from start to finish. He had people thinking they were secret agents with high-tech "shoe phones." He made a guy "protector of the fruit" just to make him go crazy when he saw an apple. He had everyone laugh their heads off at a pink handkerchief and then be disgusted to no end by a green one. He had them all enter a "dance party," attend a "film festival," and he would order them all to wake up or go to sleep every five minutes or so. And they followed his every word, and hilarity ensued. I can't really do his work justice by putting it into words, because it was just too weird. But I had to try anyway, because his show was so amazingly good.

Saturday started, like Thursday, way too early for my liking. I had an 8:45 meeting to plan my schedule. I'm not complaining though, because that means I got all the classes I wanted. I'm enrolled for a semester each of Theories on Nationalism, Intro to Psychology, the aformentioned Spanish 4, and a freshman writing seminar. I'm trying to add a fifth class through the Experimental College, called Analysis of Baseball Statistics. If I get in, that would be amazing... I feel as though I was born to take that course. I wouldn't get an A in that class... they'd have to invent a new letter for me.

I spent the rest of the morning book shopping, managing to spend only $440 thanks to the abundance of used textbooks. The afternoon was fun... I went with a few friends into Davis Square, and we went shopping for a bunch of extremely random things. If you want to know just HOW random we're talking, I'll provide you with an exact quote: "Hey, can't talk right now. I have a cannoli in one hand and a ukulele in the other."

Yeah, you read that right.

Anyway last night I had some reeeeeeeeeeally good sushi off-campus for dinner. Then came the orientation carnival... and of course I had to enter the freshman class spelling bee. Some of the people there shocked me by being at Tufts (although in their defense they might not have been sober enough to spell words like "vacuum," who knows). A few others were just spelling MACHINES though... it was kinda scary. I ended up fairly satisfied with my second-place finish, winning a shirt (kinda small) and a hat (kinda girly). I say only fairly satisfied because I was kinda bitter at the time that I lost. French words should be banned.

And that brings us to today. There's not too much to say about today since I slept til noon and then had lunch, and now I'm doing laundry. I can, however, provide you with one little nugget of wisdom: I am a moron. In one laundry session, I managed both to wash my wallet and to put $1.25 into the wrong dryer (the broken one).

I leave you with five random observations about how awesome Tufts is. Enjoy.

1. Okay, this first one isn't exclusive to Tufts, but it illustrates the awesomeness of college. I went to Target on Tuesday and got 24 packs of ramen noodles for $2.84. Now I have a midnight snack every night. I'm addicted, but couldn't care less.

2. Dewick has the coolest cafeteria ladies ever. They always have great music playing in the kitchen. Yesterday at breakfast it was Help (the Beatles), and at lunch it was Stomping Ground (Goldfinger). Today it was my favorite album of all time -- that's right, Pinkerton by Weezer. I heard a rumor that they're also big Green Day fans.

3. The keys to get into Tilton are really cool. You just swipe them on they keypad, and you're in. On Tuesday, I discovered something really interesting: I could put my key in my wallet, and swipe my whole wallet, and the keypad would recognize my key and let me in. As if that wasn't enough, on Thursday, I discovered the absolutely unthinkable. Yes, you guessed it. I could leave my wallet in my back pocket and swipe my ass, and it STILL worked. Wow, I am way too easily amused.

4. There are far too many Yankee fans in this school. I was expecting to come to Boston to get away from it all, but no, no one's heard of Tufts unless they're from New York or New Jersey. So I ended up swarmed by the enemy. It's terrible. But at the same time, it's really funny, because we watch games in the lounge in Tilton and we're segregated by baseball allegiances.

5. Last but not least, we have the world's greatest selection of facebook groups. Here are a few, just to give you an idea:

-A-Rod Is A Whore
-Association for the Advancement of Cowbell
-If there is in fact a loving God, Barack Obama in 2008
-Laura Bush Is a Cunty Robot
-PT Barnum Is My Homeboy
-Red Sox Fans Who Think Pedro Martinez Is a Douchebag
-Students For the Relocation of Tufts University to the Bahamas
-The What the Fuck Is With the No Paper Towels in the Bathroom Coalition
-Rivers Cuomo Is God - A Weezer Fan Club

(The last one is mine... I just founded it and people should join.)

...plus Tufts chapters of...

-Monica Lewinsky Had More President In Her Mouth Than George W Bush Has In His Whole Body
-I Just Tried To Ford the River and My Fucking Oxen Died
-Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good and Want to Learn to Do Other Things Good Too
-Don't Blame Me...I Voted For Kerry In 2004

All right, well... my laundry's done, and I don't think typing 1,647 words in an hour and a half is good for me. I'm gonna go take a nap.