Reflections

Although the title of this blog sounds like it could be Evansville's next phone dating service, this piece is, in fact a short collection of reflections on the past however-many-months-it-has-been-since-September. If you play your cards right, you might even convince me to push my reflections back all the way to August.

Ok you've got me convinced. I guess the story really begins way back in May of last year. Well, while we're being honest about things, the story really begins in January of 1990 (you might even be able to say that it started nine months before that, or six years before that, when my parents were married, or in 1977 when they met, but we won't push it all the way back to '62 when they were born because that would be just too much), but the only part that matters for this assignment started in May.

By May, I had decided after a long and difficult decision-making process that USI was the college for me. That process nearly ended up at Indiana Wesleyan University instead of here (I actually had already been offered and accepted an on-campus job there when I made my decision), but it's too long of a story to tell without having to publish an abstract or summary to go with this blog.

The summer went by slowly, with the biggest highlight being the... interesting... three weeks that I spent in Michigan volunteering my toilet-cleaning skills at a Young Life camp. Then came a bunch of sitting around the house, and finally it was time to move in. I don't think that it is an understatement to say that Welcome Week was the shizzle-fizzle-bang-bang. It was everything good about college life jammed into one week, and the whole thing was completely homework free. In case you were wondering, I don't count intoxicated partying among the good things about college, so don't jump to any conclusions about me. I don't do that stuff.

Eventually, though, my romantic affair with welcome week came to a halt and my old mistress, mundanity, caught up with me. School had started and I found that it was a lot like high school, except I had more free time and the intensity of the weird people I met and the weird stuff that happened to me was cranked way, way up. I guess when some people go off to college, they feel like they no longer have to keep the fact that they are complete psychopaths under wraps, like they are just suddenly allowed to be as screwed up, lazy, suicidal, stupid, or crazy as they wanted to be in the interest of "self-expression." Now, I'm all for self-expression, but there are times when you just need to sort of try to be human for a while, you know?

I kicked off the year the right way by inadvertently getting involved in two relationships (one was platonic, the other was what some would call romantic), which turned out to be two of the biggest mistakes of my life. Coincidentally, both of those people's names started with the letter "J," and I hope they don't read this because I think they would immediately know who they are and would probably not be too happy with me. To my friends whose names start with "J:" it's nothing against you personally; it's just that you weren't right for me. At all.

Anyway, the rest of the year was pretty straightforward. I spent some time vacillating between having no idea what I wanted to do with my life and knowing that I didn't want to stay in Comm. Studies, before finally deciding, quite happily, on Psychology for a major. I pretty much did all of the typical college stuff (no... not that college stuff): got up, went to class, did homework, hung out with friends, made midnight trips to Wal-Mart, cooked out, hung out of windows, et cetera. That college stuff. I had a fleeting Storgic romance that ended as peacefully as it had begun (thankfully, not one of the biggest mistakes of my life), and from that made a great friend.

I took Geology lab at 9:00 am and a bunch of classes in the major that I don't want to be in (Comm. Studies), which collectively make me want to hurt cute animals or chop up pillows with a knife or something, but this semester only sucks two days a week, so I'm holding in there.

All in all, pretty good year. Lived. Learned. Laughed. Loved (platonically, of course). College.

Shoot... I think this is going to need an abstract...