Color Me Oriented

(Please note: Today's post is in the three parts.This is the third part. Scroll down to start with the first one, or click here.)

My orientation was last week. It was informative but overwhelming. There are 121 people in my program (7% men). I got to know some of the girls better and met some other nice people. Now I have the group of people I sit with and hang out with. They’re fun, and they all live in my ‘hood. They all live in the same complex, in fact, which makes visiting easy. On Friday night we went down to one of the girls apartments where we had margaritas and played games. I would have been happy to leave it at that, but these girls were set on going out. We did, and it was okay, but I really enjoyed the non-going out part best. I don’t know all these girls that well yet, but I know I will soon, and I’m glad to have that comfort that a group of friends brings.

Speaking of friends…I went to a birthday/house party with my journalist friends. It’s fun having two different groups, and I really like these journalists because they always know about the cool things going on, they’re closer to me in age and interest, and they’re just very interesting/fun/good people. We actually discussed this blog a bit and henceforth the girl I referred to as LK will now be called Fiz Fay. And one of the girls I went to Brew in the Zoo with will now be called Sharpie.

The rest of my weekend has been/will be spent working on school stuff. They gave us some prep work a couple of months ago, which I had almost finished when they announced that we had about 9 more chapters to prepare before Monday. But they didn’t tell us this until Friday!!! That gives us two days to finish our other work and read/prepare 9 more chapters. The funny thing is that they kept saying things like, “Enjoy your last free weekend” and “This is a light weekend. It’s gonna get worse.” Joy.

Here is a picture of all the books I had to buy. Keep in mind, these are only for this summer semester. That means these are 10 weeks worth of books. They cost about $600 in total.

As part of our orientation they gave an extensive presentation on time management and how to stay afloat during these 13 months. They said we need to be ruthless about prioritizing and cutting out non-necessary obligations. We have to learn to say “no.” I am HORRIBLE about saying no. But I do realize it is going to become an important step to maintaining my sanity. That being said, I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up with the book club and with some of the photo editing I had in progress ( I have to finish my Spain pictures and edit/post my cross country ones). I’ll also have trouble talking on the phone as much and emailing/blogging as frequently. My apologies ahead of time if I become a bit MIA.

On that note, I must hit the books again. Have a good week and I hope to post more soon!