Day 3 became college life at its truest. Lots of awkward schedule pauses, lots of fighting with the bureaucracy, lots of unexpected setbacks, and yet some of the most fun I�ve ever had.
I felt a little more refreshed than I had after the first night�s sleep, having adjusted to the bed I was to be in. Breakfast was a bunch of those tasty little peanut butter crackers while walking to the P2 office once more for the first business of the day. Apparently I figured out whatever strategy there was to getting what P2 classes I wanted and ended up getting all three of my first choices:
-World Literature taught by Elizabeth Scala, an English woman that I met at the Honors Colloquium and should be thoroughly interesting. The theme of the yearlong course is love and so there are lots of works to be read that deal with it. All in all a good list of stuff to read.
-America from the Outside is a P2 Tutorial Course basically taught like a seminar. This one has a government / foreign policy slant and should be really mind-expanding.
-Logic and Modes of Reasoning. I got the giant class instead of the itty bitty section taught by an astronomy prof. So the P2 session lets out and I realize this is my best chance to do all the stuff I have left to do: get my university ID, set up my computer account, and clear my issues with the health department regarding my immunizations. Expected setback: the Student Services Building is across campus. Unexpected setback: it�s raining. With no alternative, I start the hike in the rain and take care of all that business with little trouble. Well, just one problem. I have a mullet in the picture for my university ID. The flash from the picture cast a shadow from my ears on the blue background. My hair was wet from the rain, so the shadow is the same color as my hair. The result: Blake has a mullet. I spent the afternoon relaxing, enjoying the first bit of actual downtime I�d had in a while. Late in the afternoon, my wing went to dinner at a wing place called Pluckers. If you go to Pluckers, ever, do NOT order anything beyond Medium. It�s impossible to eat. I ordered Hot wings, which are just one step above Medium and yet only three stars on a five-star scale. I ate two and nearly exploded. I ate one more and I was sweating. I think I successfully downed five wings with the help of lots of fries and water and Dr. Pepper and whatever liquid was nearby and my mouth was on fire all the way back to campus for The Freshmaker. The Freshmaker was another comedy routine put on by the OAs in the spirit of SNL. We found lots of UT jokes, and a few clever cracks at the other state schools thrown in for good measure. The Weekend Update ripoff was classic: �Recent employment statistics show that employment for Liberal Arts graduates has improved dramatically in the years 2002-2003. In unrelated news, two new Wal-Mart stores have opened near campus.� �Satan, the Prince of Darkness, has signed 149 new souls to his roster of Hell. In other news, 149 new students have been accepted to the Red McCombs School of Business.� Finally, the third night was the amazement I had hoped college would be. It came in this little party split into two rooms: dance and karaoke. When I first arrived, the dance party was completely dead, but I found a cute girl named Bailey who was acting shy in this really cute way. Giving up on Bailey for the time being, I checked on the karaoke party, where I found Kinsey and Laura once more. Signups were starting to happen for Longhorn Idol, where they�d have five singers compete by applause and three audience-picked judges. What the hell, I thought, and entered. I was to sing second. The first girl picked a song which she thought was by Christina Aguilera but really was a song from the 80s that Aguilera had covered. Whoops. Choking, she sat down and agreed to go last. So my turn came. Having nobody to follow due to singing first, I figured I had no chance of getting anywhere. No longer having anything to win or lose, I sang John Lennon�s �Imagine� just relaxedly, trying to keep a smile on my face just for the sake of being on stage. �Imagine there�s no heaven��
A few people cheered from the audience. Maybe this isn�t so bad. Some people ended up singing along, and others occasionally cheered at ends of lines. At one point I looked out into the audience to see people waving their arms back and forth slowly. What the hell, this is going well? So I got into it and finished the second verse. The karaoke god stopped the music and I sat down to cheers aplenty. That was way too much fun. The remaining four people finished. A pair of guys hip hoppin� to Little Red Corvette did really well, then two guys were train wrecks on cheesy slow songs, and the final girl sang pretty well and got huge cheers for representin� Sugar Land. WTF. Once that round finished, three people advanced to the final round. This was judged by applause. The top three were pretty clear winners. Thankfully, I was among them. So we stood up for the second round, all three at once. Then began the OA running the competition: �In this final round, you�ll all be singing the same song, and it�s already been chosen. It�s Like a Virgin.� The title appears on the projector screen behind us and on the karaoke screen in front of us. Oh shit. �When we point to one of you, you�ll sing until we point to the next person.� So the song starts and they point to Sugar Land girl. My prayers were answered: everyone under the sun knows the chorus to this song and nothing else. So she does everything she can to improvise until they point to the hip-hop brothers. They barely get the words out over the laughter between the two. Then they point to me. Quick, be funny. So I start singing bullshit in my best Brothers Gibb voice, strong falsetto and huge vibrato. I�m completely improvising trying my best to follow the change of the words from white to blue. It works. I can hear a few laughs over the sound of the song and my idiotic self on the monitors. The magic finger points away from me. Thank God. Now do something new to not be stale. When the finger comes back, I eat the mic and start screaming the words in my best James Hetfield voice, throwing on a �yeeeeeh HAH!� on the end of every line for good measure. I can tell by the waning laughs that now it�s just getting stupid. Please, for the love of God, take that finger off me. Finger goes away. THANK YOU! After what feels like ten minutes, the song ends and now we�re to be critiqued by a panel of three judges. None had anything to say. They chose their winners while the OAs yapped about the importance of class registration the next morning. Once the judges had arrived at their conclusion, they named off the second runner up. Hip-hop brothers. I knew I was going to lose, since the one female judge on the panel was from Sugar Land and the other two guys probably thought the girl I was singing alongside was hot. Sure enough, I�m first runner up. I got a pen. As I walked back to the dance party, I got lots of congratulations and �good job� remarks from various people in the audience. That was fun, at least. Kinsey made sure to point out that she sang along with me, which I thought was terribly cute for some unknown reason. I followed the two girls back to the dance floor, where it had started to pick up a lot. While the two of them danced together, I found my way back to Bailey, who apparently lost quite a bit of her shyness. The two of us spent twenty minutes dancing together until the party reached its end. 11:45 PM. Back in Jester. Whilst walking back, Kinsey and I had agreed to hang out again and go in search of coffee once more. I explained my emergency wing meeting to her (due to Pluckers taking way too long) and promised I�d be downstairs at midnight to head out with her. Thus began the greatest point of frustration during my stay. Only four people showed up for the meeting, and two of them were idiots with A.D.D. who asked questions that our OA had just explained in his spiel. The 15-minute emergency meeting turned into a 45-minute walkthrough and I already had the process down. I wanted just to jump up and run out, while I stayed imprisoned in that Jester study room, praying she hadn�t left without me to go do something. 12:30 PM. I rush downstairs and find Kinsey right in the front having a friendly conversation with an OA about registration. As soon as that ends, I apologize for being a half-hour late and she says it�s OK as she had things to sort out. A potential four-some outing (consisting of the two of us plus Laura and my friend Mike, who will be explained in the appendix post) was ruined because Laura had to stay in and figure out her schedule. So by 12:45, Kinsey and I left alone and decided just to go for a walk around campus, figuring the coffee shops were all closed. She and I walk a circle around campus in a continuous conversation that never hits any pauses or awkward stops. It just goes. And goes. Even as we find a spot with benches to sit down and talk, the conversation keeps going. That convo went on until 3:15AM, and as we walked upstairs to bed just like the night before, I felt the same thing I had the night before, but this time even more intense. Day three ended with a smile on my face. Day four will appear soon.
-America from the Outside is a P2 Tutorial Course basically taught like a seminar. This one has a government / foreign policy slant and should be really mind-expanding.
-Logic and Modes of Reasoning. I got the giant class instead of the itty bitty section taught by an astronomy prof. So the P2 session lets out and I realize this is my best chance to do all the stuff I have left to do: get my university ID, set up my computer account, and clear my issues with the health department regarding my immunizations. Expected setback: the Student Services Building is across campus. Unexpected setback: it�s raining. With no alternative, I start the hike in the rain and take care of all that business with little trouble. Well, just one problem. I have a mullet in the picture for my university ID. The flash from the picture cast a shadow from my ears on the blue background. My hair was wet from the rain, so the shadow is the same color as my hair. The result: Blake has a mullet. I spent the afternoon relaxing, enjoying the first bit of actual downtime I�d had in a while. Late in the afternoon, my wing went to dinner at a wing place called Pluckers. If you go to Pluckers, ever, do NOT order anything beyond Medium. It�s impossible to eat. I ordered Hot wings, which are just one step above Medium and yet only three stars on a five-star scale. I ate two and nearly exploded. I ate one more and I was sweating. I think I successfully downed five wings with the help of lots of fries and water and Dr. Pepper and whatever liquid was nearby and my mouth was on fire all the way back to campus for The Freshmaker. The Freshmaker was another comedy routine put on by the OAs in the spirit of SNL. We found lots of UT jokes, and a few clever cracks at the other state schools thrown in for good measure. The Weekend Update ripoff was classic: �Recent employment statistics show that employment for Liberal Arts graduates has improved dramatically in the years 2002-2003. In unrelated news, two new Wal-Mart stores have opened near campus.� �Satan, the Prince of Darkness, has signed 149 new souls to his roster of Hell. In other news, 149 new students have been accepted to the Red McCombs School of Business.� Finally, the third night was the amazement I had hoped college would be. It came in this little party split into two rooms: dance and karaoke. When I first arrived, the dance party was completely dead, but I found a cute girl named Bailey who was acting shy in this really cute way. Giving up on Bailey for the time being, I checked on the karaoke party, where I found Kinsey and Laura once more. Signups were starting to happen for Longhorn Idol, where they�d have five singers compete by applause and three audience-picked judges. What the hell, I thought, and entered. I was to sing second. The first girl picked a song which she thought was by Christina Aguilera but really was a song from the 80s that Aguilera had covered. Whoops. Choking, she sat down and agreed to go last. So my turn came. Having nobody to follow due to singing first, I figured I had no chance of getting anywhere. No longer having anything to win or lose, I sang John Lennon�s �Imagine� just relaxedly, trying to keep a smile on my face just for the sake of being on stage. �Imagine there�s no heaven��
A few people cheered from the audience. Maybe this isn�t so bad. Some people ended up singing along, and others occasionally cheered at ends of lines. At one point I looked out into the audience to see people waving their arms back and forth slowly. What the hell, this is going well? So I got into it and finished the second verse. The karaoke god stopped the music and I sat down to cheers aplenty. That was way too much fun. The remaining four people finished. A pair of guys hip hoppin� to Little Red Corvette did really well, then two guys were train wrecks on cheesy slow songs, and the final girl sang pretty well and got huge cheers for representin� Sugar Land. WTF. Once that round finished, three people advanced to the final round. This was judged by applause. The top three were pretty clear winners. Thankfully, I was among them. So we stood up for the second round, all three at once. Then began the OA running the competition: �In this final round, you�ll all be singing the same song, and it�s already been chosen. It�s Like a Virgin.� The title appears on the projector screen behind us and on the karaoke screen in front of us. Oh shit. �When we point to one of you, you�ll sing until we point to the next person.� So the song starts and they point to Sugar Land girl. My prayers were answered: everyone under the sun knows the chorus to this song and nothing else. So she does everything she can to improvise until they point to the hip-hop brothers. They barely get the words out over the laughter between the two. Then they point to me. Quick, be funny. So I start singing bullshit in my best Brothers Gibb voice, strong falsetto and huge vibrato. I�m completely improvising trying my best to follow the change of the words from white to blue. It works. I can hear a few laughs over the sound of the song and my idiotic self on the monitors. The magic finger points away from me. Thank God. Now do something new to not be stale. When the finger comes back, I eat the mic and start screaming the words in my best James Hetfield voice, throwing on a �yeeeeeh HAH!� on the end of every line for good measure. I can tell by the waning laughs that now it�s just getting stupid. Please, for the love of God, take that finger off me. Finger goes away. THANK YOU! After what feels like ten minutes, the song ends and now we�re to be critiqued by a panel of three judges. None had anything to say. They chose their winners while the OAs yapped about the importance of class registration the next morning. Once the judges had arrived at their conclusion, they named off the second runner up. Hip-hop brothers. I knew I was going to lose, since the one female judge on the panel was from Sugar Land and the other two guys probably thought the girl I was singing alongside was hot. Sure enough, I�m first runner up. I got a pen. As I walked back to the dance party, I got lots of congratulations and �good job� remarks from various people in the audience. That was fun, at least. Kinsey made sure to point out that she sang along with me, which I thought was terribly cute for some unknown reason. I followed the two girls back to the dance floor, where it had started to pick up a lot. While the two of them danced together, I found my way back to Bailey, who apparently lost quite a bit of her shyness. The two of us spent twenty minutes dancing together until the party reached its end. 11:45 PM. Back in Jester. Whilst walking back, Kinsey and I had agreed to hang out again and go in search of coffee once more. I explained my emergency wing meeting to her (due to Pluckers taking way too long) and promised I�d be downstairs at midnight to head out with her. Thus began the greatest point of frustration during my stay. Only four people showed up for the meeting, and two of them were idiots with A.D.D. who asked questions that our OA had just explained in his spiel. The 15-minute emergency meeting turned into a 45-minute walkthrough and I already had the process down. I wanted just to jump up and run out, while I stayed imprisoned in that Jester study room, praying she hadn�t left without me to go do something. 12:30 PM. I rush downstairs and find Kinsey right in the front having a friendly conversation with an OA about registration. As soon as that ends, I apologize for being a half-hour late and she says it�s OK as she had things to sort out. A potential four-some outing (consisting of the two of us plus Laura and my friend Mike, who will be explained in the appendix post) was ruined because Laura had to stay in and figure out her schedule. So by 12:45, Kinsey and I left alone and decided just to go for a walk around campus, figuring the coffee shops were all closed. She and I walk a circle around campus in a continuous conversation that never hits any pauses or awkward stops. It just goes. And goes. Even as we find a spot with benches to sit down and talk, the conversation keeps going. That convo went on until 3:15AM, and as we walked upstairs to bed just like the night before, I felt the same thing I had the night before, but this time even more intense. Day three ended with a smile on my face. Day four will appear soon.