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From an email:

My first week went pretty well, and this week is going okay too, but it feels like time is going by really slowly. I'm tired of school and ready to be done already! I don't have a lot of homework or anything, just reading so far, but I'm not enjoying my classes this semester as much as I did last semester. None of them are bad classes, but it seems like none of them make very good use of class time--for Principles of Sociology we just go over what was in the reading, so it feels like a waste of time because I already learned the stuff, and one of my poetry classes is mostly discussion, so people get to talking/arguing and we don't really get anywhere, and for Physical Geology the professor gives us the powerpoint slides beforehand, and then the lecture is pretty much exactly what's on the slides. So going to all of those classes kind of feels like a waste of time or is boring.

I am enjoying skiing. We just had our second class yesterday, and it was icy because the snow melted some, so it was a little harder to ski on, but it was still fun. I got to ski down the smaller hill backwards, which I thought would be really hard but actually wasn't too bad. It reminded me of backwards roller skating a little.

So, everything's going okay . . . it just seems like this is going to be a really long semester.

A new semester

Email to Mom, January 11 (first day of classes):

I'm a little nervous for my classes--Principles of Sociology has a lot of assignments, Modern and Contemporary American Poetry is just going to be hard because it's analyzing poetry, and for the poetry writing class we have to write a poem a week. We'll also be doing a lot of peer editing, and the professor was emphasizing the importance of reading poetry out loud, so it sounds like we're going to have to read our poems out loud to each other, which of course I don't want to do. But it still sounds like a good class. And the other classes seem good too. We're starting with Robert Frost for the other poetry one, and I'm really enjoying reading him.

Other random things (not from an email):

I had my first skiing class on Tuesday, which was hard and tiring but also lots of fun. I think I'm really going to enjoy it. I'm also working for the first time this semester, cleaning one of the stairwells in my dorm as well as cleaning floors one afternoon a week in the dining hall and being "salad runner" one night a week in the dining hall. The only one I've done so far is the stairwell, and it's really not bad. The whole time I think, "I'm making money, I'm making money," and I feel happy. ;)