The College Experience-Part I

*Before you read this post, you should probably read this post first.


Yesterday was my first day of that college program! I actually had a good time. Who knew?


Tuesday-2/22/11


Naturally, I arrived to college late the first day. Surprise, surprise. My dad was dropping both my friend Fleur and me down at one of the gates of the college. We knew we had to report to a building called "Brent Hall". I remember the conversation my dad and I were having as we stepped out of the car into the snow.


"So, you know where you're going, right?" he asked me.


"Yes, dad. I know where we're going."


"Where?" he challenged.


I gave him a look. "Brent Hall."


"And you know how to get there?"


I gave him this tired look. "Yes, dad. I know how to get there."


He finally left. Fleur looked at me surprised. "You know where it is?"


I looked at her worriedly. "NO!"


We scampered around the campus, going back and forth from where we came from, and we were completely, totally, utterly lost.


Later, one of my other late-coming classmates, Alex, decided to join us. "Where do we go?" he kept asking us.


"Okay, if we knew, we'd be inside, Alex!" Dumba$$...


Eventually, Fleur and I had figured out where to go. And apparently, so did Alex.


"Alex! Come on! We found Brent Hall!" we shouted, looking at the copy of the map of the university we had been given a week earlier.


Alex looked where we were pointing and shook his head. "It's this way!"


And you know what happened next.


"No, it's this way!"


"Uh-uh! It's this way!"


"No, it's not! It's this way!"


Instantaneously, we turned into arguing five-year-olds with the blink of an eye. And where did we choose to become five-year-olds? On college grounds. Oh, the irony.


It was two against one, so we ended up going the way Fleur and I had found. Ahem. The right way.


The second we walked in, a college student rushed up to us. "You guys part of that college program?"


We nodded. "Yeah."


"Go right in there," he said, pointing to a door.


We went in and saw pretty much all the kids sitting down in a mini-auditorium, the professor in charge of the program explaining something at the front. Just as we walked in, the teacher called my name.


"Here!" I said. But it came out really weird and squeal-y.


She handed me and Fleur a copy of our schedule for the rest of the week.


Fleur and I took our seats in the mini-auditorium, and everyone paid close attention as we were split up into groups that we'd be traveling with for most of the week.


There were four different groups, and these groups determined the classes you'd be taking. They were:


      -Human Relations
      -Shakespeare
      -Medieval Studies
      -Computer Science


The class I was put into was Human Relations, which was fine by me, because the description of the course sounded really interesting. It sounded like a mixture of philosophy and psychology, and something else, I guess. But I really wanted it.


So I was put into that class.


After everyone was put into their class-group, we had our first real class. It was somewhat of a lecture, as we were seated in the auditorium. The class was Toxicology. Which is actually pretty interesting, to my surprise. Toxicology ran for an hour. We took major notes in that class.


Second class we had was Sports Management. I swear, it was the most pointless, stupid, dumb class I've ever taken. Like, it was retarded. I don't even know how to explain it. So, here's the Wikipedia definition!


Sport management is a field of education and vocation concerning the business aspect of sport. Some examples of sport managers include the front office system in professional sports, college sports managers, recreational sport managers, sports marketing, event management, facility management, sports economics, sport finance, and sports information. Many colleges offer this in many degrees.


So. There ya go. Dumbest class I've ever been a part of.


Sports Management ended at 11:00, and then we had lunch. While we had all been together for the two previous classes, we were now split up into our class-group. I was with all the Human Relations students.


Since there's more than one cafeteria to a university campus, they decided to split all of us into different cafeterias so that we'd see more of the college. The plan was to let us see as much as we could before Friday.


Our cafeteria was really, really cool. Actually, it was pretty amazing. The walls were made out of glass, letting us all view the midday sunny weather (even though there was snow on the grass, but whatever). And the places to buy food was like how food stores are set up in the mall. There was a little Burger King, a Taco Bell, a Pizza and Pasta Place, and a lot more. I wanted to buy food, but my mother made packed me a lunch.


So whilst everyone around me was eating Whoppers and burritos, I was stuck with my handy dandy sandwich. Yee-haw.


The day improved greatly after lunch. We had two hours of Human Relations. When we walked into the room, we "oohed" and "ahhed" on how professional the room looked. There was a carpet floor, a GIANT flat screen television screen mounted on the wall (and I mean GIANT. Like, three feet by two feet. Or maybe even more!). And, most importantly, there was a lonnnnnnnng conference desk in the center of the room.


And spinny chairs. Lots and lots of spinny chairs.


So the teacher walked in and introduced herself as Professor Williams. She distributed the real syllabus that she gives out to her college students. We felt special. Special indeed.


It was a small class -- ten people in all. So Professor Williams wanted us all to go around in a circle, stand up, and say three things about yourselves to the class, and also say what you want do when you grow up.


Oh, $hit.


Professor Williams got to my friend Fleur. Fleur, being the outgoing person that she is, hopped up and faced the class.


"Well. I'm a relatively happy person, my favorite color is purple, I want to be an architect, and...I'm going to marry Justin Beiber when I grow up!"


My other friend MH, another avid Justin Beiber fan, was also in the room. And she does not like Fleur (You might remember MH from this post) . So she goes, "Um, whoa. Whoa. Uh-uh. No." She held up her hand, which had a small, cloth ring on it (You know the kind. The little neon-colored ones with stripes that look like a small piece of rope? They look like they're from Chucke Cheese's? Yeah, those). "This is our engagement ring."


Fleur angrily rolls herself over to MH on her chair. "Well, our wedding date is already set!"


MH goes, "I have sixteen posters of him up in my room! And when he turns seventeen, I'm going to add one more!"


Oh, God...


Professor Williams laughed, as if this was funny.


"This isn't funny, Professor Williams!" Fleur and MH said.


Eventually, I got the two of them to SHUT UP, and we continued the circle of sharing things about ourselves. I was up next.


"Well, I like writing...and I'm probably going to end up doing something sciency/nerdy when I'm older...and I want to go to Princeton."


I guess Professor Williams over here thought me wanting to go to Princeton was either:


    a) a joke
    b) really funny
    c) utterly impossible
    d) Mitochondria


It was one of those, because she started cracking up. CRACKING. UP. And I'm serious when I say I want to go to Princeton. I just stared at her, still standing, as she laughed herself to death. Then, when she saw my straight face and found out I was serious, she quieted down.


"Yeah, I'm ambitious," I said before sitting down.


Professor Williams is actually a really nice person. Her class was really cool. One of the topics we talked about was prejudice and racism. She gave us a list of twelve people. It went a little something like this:


      -Gay Physician
      -Black minister
      -Woman basketball player
      -Uneducated, poor, pregnant white woman
      -Latino engineer
      -Lesbian farmer
      -Chinese Psychologist
      -Unskilled male laborer
      -Quadriplegic child
      -Scientist/Researcher
      -Male teacher
     
And the list went on. We were given a crisis, such as, "An atomic bomb has destroyed everything. Twelve people remain sheltered underground. They have enough food and water to save seven people. Your job is to "kill" five of these people, and after the destruction is over, the seven remaining people will go out from underground and create a new society.


The activity was actually very interesting. At first, no one wanted to "kill" anyone. I mean, come on, that's cruel. But we got into it and saw that sacrifices had to be made. It was cruel, but it was life.


:(


After Human Relations, we had "Physical Education." It wasn't physical education. We took a tour of as much as the campus as we could in an hour, and then we basically went home.


I actually found it very easy. Probably cause they're going easy on us, but who knows?