Another e-mail excerpt

I have my first long paper due on the 2nd; it's for Literary Nonfiction and is to be on a writer or piece of writing and basically your interactions with them/it. I have to know what I'm going to write about by tomorrow, and I still have no idea . . .

We got our group project for that class back (the end result was a several-page document) and we did kind of badly. It hadn't been proofread very well and some people had had bad grammar and used sentence fragments, and he said it wasn't put together well. That made me more annoyed about it because if I had done it myself I wouldn't have had any of those problems.

This past weekend Jaela and I went to the Civil War weekend in Angelica, which was fun. It was kind of like heritage days with lots of tents set up and people at them showing/selling different things. It was nice to get off campus. Also this weekend I watched a movie with a bunch of people outside at night; the movie was Signs, and there's a creepy cornfield in it, so we watched it right next to a cornfield. It was scary and fun, and freezing cold.

The writing festival was last week; they had writing festival chapels which I went to, and I went to one of the other events. The one I wanted to go to was the readings, but I couldn't because I had class. The thing is it's so dependent on what writers they have and what genres they write, and I wasn't super interested in any of them, so although it was good it wasn't that relevant to me personally. For Literary Nonfiction we were assigned to go to some of the events, so I would have gone to the readings if I could, because out of all the events that was the one I was most interested in; my professor for that class was reading (he writes poetry).

I got one of my papers back today (from the fantasy class), just a short one-page one, and I got an A. I didn't think it was that good, so I was happy.

We're reading John Muir for bio; I remember learning about him in homeschooling a long time ago. I like his writing; it's usually pretty interesting, although sometimes his descriptions of trees and plants get a little long.

On Friday there's the first Lanthorn meeting. The current editor is a senior, so next year I might apply to be editor. I think it would be really fun.

Adam wrote an article for the school paper on the new 4-credit system and quoted me in it. It's going to come out on Friday. It's not that big a deal, but I think it's cool.

Today was rock climbing class again. I've definitely retained some of my skills, because I can still figure things out and do most of the routes fairly easily.

This is really random and snippety. I'm curious--does anyone actually read this anymore besides my immediate family? Let me know if you do, please, so I know that it's worth it to post!

I haven't been posting . . .

Sorry. Not much is really going on here yet. It's been great to see friends again, and I'm enjoying the academic aspect for the most part. Here's part of an e-mail I wrote to my mom:

Right now in Literary Non-Fiction we're doing a group project where we read an article the prof. gave us and then had to look up and compile background info on the author, information on the other authors he mentioned, and stuff about the historical events he mentioned. I found I really don't like working with other people on something like that; it's way easier when it's completely up to me what I do and how. Although, Adam and I are going to work together on a presentation for the fantasy class, but I'll like that better because it's just one other person who I know, and it will be less stressful presenting in front of the class with Adam up there as well.

I stayed up late a few times this week, but last night I was asleep by 11:30. This weekend Jaela and Alexa went to Alexa's house, so I had the room to myself, which was nice. On Friday I watched a movie with some other London girls, and a few of us stayed up till 1 talking about London and telling travel-afterward stories. On Saturday my floor went to Letchworth; it wasn't a very nice day, so we didn't really do much, just had a picnic and talked. That evening Adam and Eri and I hung out in my room until Adam got kicked out, then we went to the basement of the campus center and hung out there. Adam and I haven't been playing chess as much, just once a day recently or less. I'm up by 6 now.

School is going well; homework remains easy, and I'm getting it all done in plenty of time. Tomorrow I'm not going to have much at all to do, since I did most of Wednesday's reading today.

I didn't say this to mom because I forgot, but last week we had our first rock climbing class where we actually got to climb, and that was all we did; the guy filling in for the usual teacher (who's away, in Alaska!) basically said, "Go boulder," so we did. It was a really fun class. That's definitely going to be the easiest.

I like Conservation Bio as well. It's not a typical bio class at all, which I'm really happy about; we've been learning about people like Carl Linnaeus and John Muir, and our lab last Thursday was to go out and count as many different species as we could. There are so many different plants around Houghton! We had to write a short paper about it, and today in class the prof. read parts of some people's, including mine and Dan's. That was fun.

So I'm really enjoying being back at Houghton. There are some things I don't like, but I'm not going to start complaining now. I'll probably continue to post sporadically as the mood strikes, or as interesting things happen. I guess that's it for now.

P.S. You can see pictures of my new room on my facebook; there's a link on the left.