Two weeks and many, many miles later...

Hello all,

I'm now officially a college student.  So much has happened in the past two weeks... school has a way 0f warping time.  At any rate, all is well.  Orientation was a giant bundle of stress... I must admit, I'm not a huge fan of the structure of orientation.  It's 5 days of constant pressure to meet and greet everyone on the entire campus all at once in a blur of stilted "ice-breaker" games and 300-person gatherings in small spaces.  I suppose it's a "quintessential college experience," for what it's worth.

I managed to fall off my bed at about 6:30 in the morning my first night on campus.   My knee was cut up pretty badly, but, assisted by a trip to medical and a strong antibiotic, it's healing up rather well.  Since that time, I've managed to avoid any sort of catastrophic injury, and the knee did give me a nice blanket excuse to postpone my swim test and avoid going to some loud noisy parties I didn't want to go to.

The defining moment of my week, I'd say, was the school wide viewing of The Graduate on the night before classes started.

I mentioned this movie and Swarthmore's tradition with it in my "Why Swarthmore?" admissions essay as a reason I felt the school was right for me.  It was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, of course, but it really was one of the best things about orientation week.   When Elaine turned around and screamed "BEN!" at the church window in the final scene, the noise on Parrish Beach was basically deafening.  I loved it.  It was outdoors, wet, and cold, but it made me very, very happy.

Things have calmed down and settled in nicely since the end of orientation.  I have no complaints about my classes, other than ballet being physically evil if you don't have "ballet muscles" yet.  I'm singing in chorus starting tonight, and, unexpectedly, playing co-first chair flute in the symphony for the fall semester.  We're doing Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream.  It's simultaneously beautiful and deadly.  I love it, and it's by far the hardest orchestra part I've ever played.

That's all for now.  I have a chorus tonight, an interview for an on-campus job tomorrow, and auditions for private lesson funding on Friday.   I'm a busy bee, but not an unhappy one.

Until next time,

Ana