Yesterday we made good time and got to Wells by 6, and I reluctantly parted from Brian and April. I had such a good time with them, I'm so glad I got to spend the week at their house.

I spent two and a half hours frantically trying to unpack what I could in light of the fact that those fuckers at Buildings and Grounds didn't give us bunkable beds after I asked for them to be replaced so there is no place to put my bookshelves or really anything at all. I still have a pile of boxes up to my shoulder with no place to go. The rats are in the closet and I discovered that the little bastards will eat my clothes after they destroyed my army jacket. I'm really pissed off about that, I liked that jacket.

If we can't get the beds bunked, I'm going to have to send stuff home with my parents when they come visit. If we can't get the rats out of my closet, I'm going to have to send them back, too. I love them, but I can't have all my clothes smelling like rat and with holes chewed in them.

Anyway. Last night McKenna and Meg hosted a dinner party in Faculty Parlors for about nine people. Most everyone brought something or made something. I had help from Mary and Shane in making basil lemonade and strawberry empanadas, but they were both well-received. And it was nice to see people and catch up from summer and just very nice to not have to eat dining hall food the first night back.

Mary and I watched a couple of episodes of Venture Brothers while we got ready for bed last night. I went to take a shower and made the dumbass mistake of not bringing my towel, so I had to dry off with my t-shirt. Ew. And I couldn't get my internet to work last night, I had to call Apogee and get their help, but they were very helpful and fixed my problem.

And now I feel gross and sweaty again because I wore my robes to breakfast, like tradition states, and I missed the champagne anyway. I'm not really sorry about that. All my classmates are drunk and acting like morons on the lawn in front of the Sommer Center. I had shit to do today, I couldn't afford to be stupid drunk anyhow. So I got my mail, got my textbooks, brought it all back to the room with Mary's help (SO MANY PACKAGES SO MANY BOOKS), and took the fucking robe off.

I made it to Cleveland Hall and was immediately put to work running things up to the library for Professor Munoz. Amy said she'd leave a note with what I should do when I got back, but there was no note in the office, so I've been on the internets since about 11, trying to e-mail B&G about those beds, catching up on Facebook, and finally updating LJ.

So far I have seen only a handful of people I like enough to hug, although I've seen James twice now, and I did catch Mattie in the library. I cannot afford to go looking for people, I have to eat lunch and then get to my first class. Biological Bases of Behavior at 12:30 in Macmillan, Poetry Writing immediately after that and three floors up, then I get a couple of hours in which I'm going to have to work on that annotated bibliography because one of the sources I wanted is completely unavailable so I have to find a new source, and also do the annotations. Luckily I can stay up fairly late to finish that if I need to because the earliest thing I have to do is show back up at Cleveland at 11, and if I have free time at work (which is doubtful) then I can do the last bit of tweaking here. But I would like to have it all done tonight. And then I have Yoga at 7, but I got my pretty new yoga mat in the mail today so I'm all set for that.

I can feel the stress settling along my spine, but I think I can deal with it. But I haven't even been to one class yet, so that might be unwarranted optimism.

The final Swan Song of the Wells music department was tonight. After this, almost all of the music groups are disbanded following the termination of the majority of the music faculty. This has generally been regarded as a fucking idiotic move by the majority of the student body, many of whom are royally pissed off at the administration in the wake of this decision. I count myself among that number. I am pretty depressed about the fact that I only got to participate in a brilliant choir for one semester. The choir will exist next year, but our director, Crawford Thoburn, was among the staff that was dismissed. He's been teaching music at Wells for 51 years. We're all going to miss him greatly.

Among the performers were my friends Nora and Sarah, the Early Music Ensemble (who play medieval instruments and music) joined by four singers including a virtuoso soprano soloist, a tenor saxophonist, a seven-person choir led by Sander, who wrote his own chorale music for his senior thesis and directed it as part of the show, and Professor Thoburn accompanied by Professor Posegate performing Der Erlkoenig, which was beyond words phenomenal. I had goosebumps for most of the performances. I would qualify the Swan Song as one of the most ecstatic musical experiences of my life that I wasn't performing in.

It is really depressing that the huge assortment of very good groups on campus has now been slashed to basically choir and a piano class. However, a lot of the best performers are seniors who are graduating in two weeks and wouldn't be coming back anyways, so I can't be sure that we'd still be very good without them.

Also it is depressing that I only discovered the hotness of Professor Penniman on Tuesday and now I'm never going to see him again. Because dear god, if he isn't the hottest faculty member on campus, I'm not sure who is. Of course, I do have a weak spot for musicians, but he pushes a lot more of my buttons than just that one... and he's one of very few guys I've seen with both ears pierced, which really looks fantastic on him.

Yeah, I can't stop being shallow for long enough to mourn the music department properly, shut up and leave me alone.

So last night was the Wells tradition of Moving Up Day. What this involves is the seniors putting on skits making fun of the faculty, and then singing a song that says "fuck, we're never coming back... well we'll come back when..." and then saying something about every single underclassman who lives on campus. I did not clearly hear my line, but I was informed that they said "we'll come back when Danielle stops recording other people's podfic." Which is just hilarious to me because I don't know which of the seniors was responsible for writing that but there's only a limited number it could be.

So they make fun of people in groups according to the dorm you live in, and then you have to go drink punch while standing with one foot in a kiddie pool filled with water while everyone else sings "so here's to sister Wells, she's with us tonight, she eats it, she beats it, she goddamn mistreats it, so here's to sister Wells, she's with us tonight, so drink motherfucker drink motherfucker drink motherfucker drink!" Also you have to go up after the skit making fun of the faculty in the division you're majoring in... which is really sad when it comes to the single Economics major, or the four Women's Studies majors. But the skits were funny and some of the lines about underclassmen were hilarious (though some were really mean), and then at the very end, seniors put the senior pins on juniors and officially deemed them to be seniors. And then we got to sing the Senior Drinking Song!

So I'm a senior now. Which is kind of terrifying.

Anyway, all of the major traditions at Wells involve drinking, so I had... a lot to drink... before I went up there, and Shane showed up tipsy and proceeded to get more drunk, so I told her she could spend the night so she didn't have to bike back through Aurora while drunk. And after the tradition was done, we came back to my room with Sabrina and Rebekah and Sammie and stood around talking for half an hour before I kicked their asses out because I did all of that on three hours of sleep and I was fucking exhausted.

I don't know what to do with my senior pin besides put it in my jewelry box. I don't know when I'm expected to wear it. I also don't know if the champagne breakfast tradition is going to happen on Friday, but if it does you bet your sweet asses I'm going to class drunk. It's the last day of classes, we're not going to learn anything new, it's only going to be review for the finals, and I can write a review sheet just as well drunk as I can sober.

More traditions: on the last day of classes they trigger the fire alarm in every dorm at 6 AM and we all go stand around the sycamore and sing. Then after classes are all over, we have Junior Blast, which is when juniors mock/imitate seniors. I'm going to be doing Evian, which means I need some face face jewelry because really the nose ring is what's going to sell it, and I'm going to have Naveed do my makeup because I am really bad at makeup and Evian is really good at it... and I'm going to see if I can borrow someone's DS, walk around with a cigarette in my mouth talking about my gold Pokemon and my Oddline colored armor in Halo and how I can kick everyone's ass because I am an awesome gamer goddess and bitches better recognize. I might also make a Harry Potter joke. I love Evian, I just want to make her laugh.

So... yeah, the last couple of weeks at Wells get a little crazy. And this isn't even mentioning Senior Week, because I don't get to participate in it, but it's basically a week long party after finals, the seniors do things like go on wine tours and booze cruises and basically run amok until graduation. I'm looking forward to my Senior Week a lot.

Anyways. I still have to upload the pictures from the Anything But Clothes dance, and then I have an 8-10 page paper and a 2 page paper for Deviance (due Thursday), at least 6 pages for my Psycholinguistics final and at least 3 pages for my Science and Religion final (due next Thursday), and also I have to study for my French test tomorrow (fuck the conditional passe, fuck it in the ear).

I got this, I'm not worried about any of it, I just... don't want to have to leave Wells for the summer.

This is not actually a video blog... technically it's a video journal response to my first assignment for Wells 111. The assignment was "talk about where you've been and why you chose Wells." I recorded it the day after I moved into my dorm room, it's just taken me this long to upload it, and I figured maybe someone else would want to see it besides the TA who'll be grading it.



I still have all this reading to do... I basically fucked off all afternoon. I am stupid sometimes...

Today I did ALL THE THINGS.

no for fucking serious I'm so tired.

Like I posted earlier, I woke up at 4:30, went to breakfast, the transfer student meeting, then took my swim test. I came back to the room, took a shower, and rested for like five minutes before I was off again. I've been to... three more meetings since then? I also found out that I do NOT have a work-study in the library, I don't have a work-study at all, which is kind of a bummer. But I'm totally going to stop in and talk to Elsie all the time because she's awesome. I found out that I have to do three journals for Wells 111, but I can do them as video journals, so basically I get to vlog for credit. :D

There was a lunch for transfer students, and I got to see Connie from CCC again, I didn't realize she was coming here. I got sat next to the psychology chairwoman, who sort of recruited me into Psych as a major... so I had to go talk to Dr. Speaker to get that taken care of. I also had to try to hunt down a French teacher to get put in 123 instead of 101. And I signed the honor code. And I brought all my forms to the places they needed to be. And I got my mailbox number and learned the "congratulations" song and about all the Wells traditions.

EVERYBODY on staff remembers my name. It's kind of incredible that people recognize me so quickly, and everybody is so nice.

Oh, and I went to talk to Chris Richardson, and made a standing appointment to see him every week to keep him appraised of my mental health status so if I start going downhill I can get the assistance I need. He's also super nice, and basically now I have another person to do talk therapy with, and...

I think I'm happy. I realized when I was talking to him that I'm not scared any more, I'm excited, and I'm ready to start classes tomorrow, and to meet new people, and to start joining clubs, and I'm genuinely actually excited and not just manic, and even though I am tired beyond the telling of it I'm happy.

And it feels really, really fucking good.

Dinner starts soon. I think I'm going to skip it because as much as I feel good I also still feel a little bit sick.

I have two more things to talk about but they're both going under friends lock. Not filtered, just locked, because I want to give you guys my address without having creepers send me stalking letters (lol) and there's one other important thing.

Today was exhausting.

I moved in with my mom's help around 3pm, also with the assistance of Patrick and Emi. I got some stuff unpacked and turned to the serious business of getting the internet hooked up to my computer. It is damnably slow and they expect me to pay $20 a month if I want it faster. With what I'm paying to come here, I should get decent service for free. x.x

Then I had a meeting about work-study (not too productive) and a meeting for transfer students, at which I made a new friend. Felix had an awesome hat, so I said hi, and we got to talking and now we're friends. :D He's neat, studying languages and semiotics, and he's hip to the fanfic jive, lol. At dinner Matt found me again and introduced me to his roommate, Josh, who seemed nifty enough. Matt is very eager to be fast friends. It's kind of puppyish, but not really endearing?

Anyways. In a school full of women, the only friends I made on my first day are all boys. We wandered around a little, played a dice game in Matt and Josh's room, then went to a presentation about rape, which is a cheerful way to start the year, but it was an interesting presentation. Then the boys decided to go exploring. I'm tired as hell, so I came back to my room and spent a half an hour programming all my classes into my iPod. I couldn't find my iPod cord before I left, so I'm going to have to borrow someone else's. Emi and Patrick both have iPods so it shouldn't be too difficult to find someone to loan me one for a few hours, I hope.

I forgot my razor at home. My mom is going to bring it and my feather bed to me later this week. I'm really looking forward to the feather bed because my back is killing me.

Tomorrow I have meetings all day long, and papers to run into offices in between meetings, and I have to take my French test and schedule my swim test if I can and schedule an appointment with Christ Richardson and meet with Elsie in the library and, just, I don't know if I can keep up. I haven't even been here 24 hours and I'm already feeling overwhelmed.

Emi is talking on Skype. Japanese is such a pleasant-sounding language. I hope that her talking to her computer means she won't think I'm weird if she walks in on me narrating a podfic some day. I have to find out what her schedule is so I can avoid that happening, though.

God, I'm tired. The last thing I did before making this post was put together ldhenson's Consulting Detective Inna Box, which was nice and relaxing, but I need to go to bed soon if I'm going to wake up at 7:20 tomorrow morning.

Thanks to Amazon used books, I can get most of the texts for three of my classes for $100 instead of the nearly $300 it would cost me to go through the bookstore. Which means the $250 for books I'm getting for VESID might be enough to cover all the rest of my texts. omg this might just work out.

Also, I forgot about the Salvation Army scholarship. So if I'm getting that, I won't actually be busted-ass broke for the entire semester! (I will be putting half of it in a savings account, because I am a financial moron and cannot deal with having money available to me.) If I do get money, I think I'm going to invest in a new coat. One that swishes pleasingly. Unless the weight I've lost means I fit properly into the leather coat Sue gave me years ago, because that's a sexy beast of a coat. Not entirely practical, but sexy as hell.

Speaking of the weight I've lost, last night I stepped on the scale and it read 159.8. This is the first time I've seen a number in the 150s since middle school, I'm pretty sure. I'm psyched. Too scared to step on it again today-- I did just eat dinner-- but now I know it's something I've achieved however briefly.

If I go to bed around midnight and sleep until 1:30 and wake up hung over, then if I go to bed at 9, I should wake up at a reasonable hour. Still be hung over but at least then I'll have time to get over it instead of feeling off all day long.

I finally got the spring rolls I've been craving for ten days, and they were delicious.

Uh... I didn't do anything of import today. I helped my mother put together an exercise machine in the living room. I may use it, once she gets it actually assembled, I just did the heavy lifting. Not that 10 days of working out on it will make much of a difference, but I can get my legs used to walking all over the place as I'll need to once I get to Wells. Right now I'm watching an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks with Martin Freeman looking adorably fuzzy. Unshaven blonds look much different from unshaven brunets, they have a softer sort of look to them. I want to squish him, but that's not a new impulse.

Tomorrow I have to renew my prescriptions, I'm almost out of the vile Wellbutrin. Though this would be the excuse I need to switch back to Aplenzin, I'm also running short on everything else, although not quite AS short. I've got maybe five days left of Geodon and two left of Wellbutrin and a week of Lunesta. I wish I could fill my scrip twice in a row so I wouldn't have to think about it for a while once I start school, but they don't allow that.

Er, I also should do laundry. And that unpleasant thing I was too hung over to do today. And start packing. Ugh.

[Poll #1602583]

So far I have packed away Robin Hobb, Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, Mercedes Lackey, and Jeff Lindsay. I'm going to need a larger tote for J.K. Rowling, Diane Duane and Dianna Wynne Jones. I'm doing a pretty good job at paring down only my absolute favorite books and movies to bring with me to Wells... the media equivalent of comfort blankets.

On the plus side, I got my bill totally handled, and I don't actually owe them any money. In fact, I might be getting $150 back... of course that's immediately going to go to textbooks, but hey, everything helps.

I also got the book list for my classes, and it looks like I'll be dropping about $450 on textbooks this time around. The list isn't specific about what edition I'll need, so I can't go checking for cheaper ones online. Not that I have money to get cheaper ones, either. Gah.

I am now officially a student of Wells College.

I had, what, half an hour? maybe forty-five minutes of being a student before my mother started in on me about how she would rather have me live here and commute to school than live on campus.

Either I would have to get someone to drive me there and back-- a half an hour each way-- every day, or I learn how to drive and then someone who needs a car doesn't have it because our family has two cars and nobody has money to get a third and my mother needs one to get to work and Julia needs one to get to school.

Am I just being stupid or is living on campus really the sensible option here even if it costs $5000+ per semester for room and board? I understand that that's expensive but the emotional cost is much less than having people in my family detest what a problem I am for everyone five days a week.

And, you know, I like having my own room. I like being able to have my cat with me. I like not having to use a public shower, I like not having to live with people I don't know, okay, I like living at home. But living on campus just solves all of the problems of transportation, plus it forces me to make some goddamn friends already, and I'm only going to have to be there more if I actually get this work-study job.

Now I'm all worked up about it. That was the shortest moment of victory I've had in recent memory. Nice while it lasted.

Well. Sunday classes are over and done. I know I got an A in Western Civ and I'm pretty sure I got an A in Ethics.

I also got my financial aid statement from Wells and, just. I didn't really think about how in debt this is going to put me, and social workers don't exactly make big bucks. I'm going to be paying this off until I die, probably.

I'm not going to let that discourage me too much. Even if it does make me want to cry like a little girl. With my credit, I'm going to be astounded if I can even get a loan to cover what financial aid/government loans won't cover.

Just, dear god, 43,000 for one year of school? I am so fucking glad I started off with community college. I don't know how anybody affords this school from year one.