freshman

As of Thursday, I completed my first real year of college. Since I'm no good at introductions, I hope this post can just get you through getting to know a bit about me.

I went through college a lot differently then I thought I would. I always imagined myself actually studying in college more then I did in highschool, but the ratio ended up being the same. I never imagined myself in the dorms but I didn't have much of a choice. However, the dorms weren't regretful. I had a fun time there and getting away from my parents seemed to make my relationship with them better. My roommate was a football player named Jared. Surprisingly, we got along really well. He moved out halfway through the semester, but we had fun the first semester being stupid college kids. Freshman year was a time for me to manage my own time and do what I wanted.

Basically, I skipped a lot of class.

My first semester schedule went like this. MWF I had World Religions and Environmental Science, and on Tuesdays I had Public Speaking and Ballroom Dance. Thursday I had a lab that was taught by a professor that could hardly speak English, who gave everyone pretty good grades if they showed up.

So this is how my schedule would go. On Monday I would go to work if I had it that day, walk to my dorm and take a shower and then go to Religions. The first few times going to this class took some getting used to. "Wow, there's 300 people in this class" and "I'm just listening to this guy talk," were the main thoughts to go across my head. I had the class with my girlfriend at the time, Leah, and a buddy of mine, Steven. Steven had a break after the class before his 2:00. So when I went to ENVS, Steven would be going to class. So why not skip ENVS once in a while and play some Smash with Steven?

Long story short, I went to Environmental Science for the first two weeks, and then maybe five or six times for the rest of the semester.

Ha-ha, okay, that sounds really bad when I write it out. But it's what happened. I had a dorm to myself and could invite people over to play Smash whenever I wanted. Holy gods! My roommate was never home. So I would play Smash with people in my dorm four times a week on a bad week. If it wasn't smash, I'd be out playing magic or being stupid with my high school friends. Basically, keeping myself busy with doing anything but going to class.

Two weeks into the semester Leah and I broke up. Being the emo kid I am, I would barely go to Religions, and if I didn't go to that class I obviously wasn't about to go to Environmental Science.

On Tuesday I would usually go to Public Speaking. I mean, I skipped it a lot less than most of my classes but I still skipped it more then I should have. I only skipped my lab twice to go play Magic, actually (only twice sounds a lot better in my head).

Then there was Ballroom Dancing.

I took Ballroom because I needed something at least two credits (so I couldn't take a normal PE) to make my full time schedule for UNM. It was the only thing that really fit my time schedule. My advisor said he took golf and African dance just because they were classes that seemed interesting and he didn't regret it. Why not try Ballroom if it fit the schedule? Sure.

Ballroom had a lot of girls, a lot of cute girls. I went just about every day, the only days I didn't go were to play Magic when I already knew the choreography we were doing that day. But other then that, I went to Ballroom every day. Fucking hilarious, I know.

This was my schedule. Work, maybe go to class, play video games, and crush on random girls I had no chance with (a lot of which were in Ballroom). There were a lot of these girls around campus and in my dorm that found me as that hilarious nerdy guy they could consider on the same level as their gay friend. Awesome, but, I wasn't about to spend all of my free time being that shut in guy in Alvorado dorms who played Indie really loud in his dorm near the stairs and never showed his face unless his door was open because six guys were in there playing a weird game where Pikachu yelled his name a lot. I might as well hang out with hot girls, even if they didn't see me as anything but that awkward guy in the movie who puts the suntan lotion on.

Then about eight weeks into the semester or something, Leah and I got back together. Leah was like my first real girlfriend. I mean, I've been in relationships, but they've just felt like relationships looking back on them. Either I wasn't way into the girl or she wasn't really into me, or we were in high school and never really saw each other, or she lived in another state. Leah lived about a six minute drive down from my dorm. I was stupid for her, she was stupid for me, it was wondrous. We went to movies, slept at her duplex or my dorm every night, we were that stupid newlywed couple on campus. Oh yeah, did I mention we work together?

Advice: If you really, really like someone you work with, find another job, quit, and then date them.

Now that I was dating Leah I would start going to Religions more right?

WRONG.

Now that I was in a relationship with a girl I had been crushing on for the past three months who wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with her, who wanted to go to class? I think I went to even less class when I was with Leah, which was difficult to pull off, but I found a way.

Fast forward to my sudden realization: "Oh shit! I have to get decent grades or I'm going to lose my scholarship!"

So I pulled a few all nighters studying, went to more classes, etc, etc. In the end I was alright and kept my scholarships, but I had to take one of those classes over the winter that lasts two weeks for 20 hours every week for dumb freshman that needed to boost their GPA. Woo.

During winter break I decided I wanted to get better grades for the semester.

I still skipped a lot of class.

But not nearly as much! I'm proud to say that the grades I've gotten back so far are an A, A+ and a B+ (the B+ was in statistics, a class I thought I was going to fail, huzzah! I'm also not sure if I'm allowed to have punctuation in these parenthesis but I'm going to anyway). Psych and Teen Rebels grades still are to come in, but I feel confidant.

I won't go into great detail in what happened in my second semester, but it can be summed up probably in this paragraph. I played smash, but not nearly as much. I hung out with Leah, but not as much so I could try to concentrate on class. This eventually ended up in us fighting a lot and calling it off and evolving into a perfectly awkward relationship in the work place, which is fan-fucking-tastic. I'm not trying to sound like it was all her fault for not wanting to give me time to study, we had the normal couple problems, blah blah. I partied a lot less, and I don't mean go out and get plastered with random people, I mean I "partied" less. If you don't get it, don't worry, eventually it'll piece together. I took Ballroom again and decided I like it enough to keep doing, which (I think) makes it my first hobby that doesn't involve something extremely nerdy.

That's about it, my first year of college. Turning my back to most classes, being the awkward nerdy guy on campus who wears a lot of colored denim, believing my own college relationship would last (like everyone else, haha) and of course, doing a lot of stupid geeky activities.

Now it's summer, here's to hoping I'm motivated enough to write in you about it, blog.

Cheers.