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.)