Day 2

I think I slept mostly okay. I woke up a couple of times because I was sleeping on a plastic-wrapped matress, so the “crinkle” would occasionally wake me. I also woke up a couple of times in a “Is it time to get up yet” way. But still, I didn’t feel sleep deprived when the alarm went off at 6:30.

Today’s meetings were mostly informational, but I did come away with this:

* There are some people who literally have not looked at anything the school has sent us. Some people didn’t even know we had a paper to write or that there was reading to complete.
* A lot of people didn’t finish the reading.
* This is going to be tough 10 days, even for someone who did finish the reading.
* There are the requisite “I know it all and will tell you all that too” people, “I’ll ask you a question that you just answered 5 minutes before” people, “I’ll ask you a question that you can’t answer and continue to ask you about it even after you tell me that” people and the “I think I’m the funniest person in the room but I’m really just an asshole” people.
* There are 55 people in my “cohort,” and 41 of them are from Illinois. There are 4 of us from CA – two from Davis, one from Long Beach and me. Sarah, there’s someone from Burlington, VT (she grew up in Waterbury Center though).
* Everyone was suffering from the humidity by the end of the day like I was. I swear, I must have sweated out a gallon of water by the time I left.
* Everyone thinks the dorms are kinda depressing.
* Everyone is as nervous/scared as I am.

Tomorrow is going to be more intense. We have a bunch of workshops, start class and apparently get our first assignment – a non-graded writing task so the TAs can gauge our writing abilities. So I may not blog tomorrow. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’ve updated the gallery with new pics and added captions (which are shown with sometimes redundant titles). Daddy, I haven’t found your frat yet (what street was it on?), but I did find the Armory. It was too big to get a good pic of, and by the time I found it, I was really, really hot n’ sweaty and in desperate need of coffee. I’ll try to snag a picture later.

Oh, and if you’re curious, here’s a map of campus. Wardall Hall (part of the Illinois Stree Residence Halls) is right across the street from the Krannert Center.