Day 4 started as an anticlimax. After all, who honestly would want to do nothing but lame academic business after one of the best nights in recent memory? There was happiness to be found, however, in my pride for P2 and their lavish treatment of their students. The day before, the P2 advisers offered me the option of coming to the office to register using the P2-only computer lab attached to the office. I happily accepted the offer and showed up at 9:00 AM to register.
There, I found a couple of cute surprises which weren't really so cute. As I registered for my Tutorial Course on America from the Outside, I discovered that my perfectly timed MWF afternoon course had become Monday only, 3:00-6:00. There was no way to change my P2 classes, so I sighed angrily and signed up for the remainder of my courses. My world lit produced a conflict with the only good remaining afternoon sections of American History After 1865, so I wound up taking that class at 9:30-11 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. All in all, here's my final courseload:
World Lit
Biology 301E (P2 Bio)
Logic and Modes of Reasoning
American after 1865
America from the Outside 15 hours. That whole mess of wrong classes probably could have been avoided had I taken calculus and Japanese instead. Oh well, too late now. That was it. From that point forth, I now had the option to grab my stuff and leave whenever my little heart desired. There was two things, however, that kept me in Austin. The first was Tarek. I promised him I'd give him a quick visit at his dorm room before I skipped town. After checking out from Jester, I drove up Guadalupe and parked my car in my favorite lot on the corner of 25th, and walked the rest of the way to Kinsolving where it took him a good 10 minutes to crawl out of his bed and come downstairs to meet me. I followed him up to his room, where his roommate still hadn't shown up, and we spent a few minutes there before heading up to a girls' floor to meet a couple of girls who were slightly hung over. Overall, nothing really special happened before Tarek had to go to an advising meeting and I was off on my own. What perfect timing, I discovered, as I checked my voicemail. Some 15 minutes before I left Tarek's dorm, I had a voicemail from Kinsey, predictably reason #2 to stay in town. We had agreed the night before to try to do lunch before I headed home, and she had called to say she was available. I talked to her while walking back down Guadalupe and eventually I decided to sit in my parked car, charge up my cell, and listen to John Mayer while waiting for her to come pick me up in her car. 15 minutes later, the wonderful black X5 appeared in my rear-view mirror and I jumped in. We quickly decided to head to a place called Shady Grove for lunch, a pretty basic hamburger place not unlike Chili's done Austin-style. The same kind of conversation that had happened all night the night before felt like it had picked up right where it left off. Lunch was over all too soon, as was the short ride through Austin streets back to my car. After one last goodbye, and an offer to hang out whenever I was in town, I hopped out and walked down the street to the Co-Op to get a chrome Longhorn decal to go on the back of my new car. A quick, painless, successful trip. I love shopping guy-style. In, buy, out, simple, easy, done. No room for bad things to happen. I then climbed back into my car, feeling positively bittersweet. I didn't want to drive back to Arlington. Not just because driving home is always a bitch, but because leaving Austin for the place I still call home is such a pity. I tried to remain optimistic, however, as '3x5' accompanied my departure from downtown Austin and I hit the highway on the way home. The ride seemed to blur into a short 3 hours. Maybe because I spent the whole trip coming home at 85 miles an hour fighting off sleep as hard as possible due to a 4-hour nap constituting the rest I had been running off of. The optimism hasn't left me yet - I can't wait to head back, and not just for reuniting with my friends from this trip, or taking Kinsey up on her offer to see one another whenever I'm in town, but because I loved the life I led there. I was absolutely my own individual and it took me no time at all to start carving my niche. I had nobody to depend upon except myself and that pressure dissolved as soon as I came to the realization that I could trust myself. So maybe I feel bittersweet now. Maybe, four days after arriving home, I'm still catching up on the sleep. It doesn't matter. I still am, and will be for the forseeable future, floating high on the thought of returning to that wonderful city, and those amazingly heart-breaking people, and reclaiming myself as I had long dreamed.
Biology 301E (P2 Bio)
Logic and Modes of Reasoning
American after 1865
America from the Outside 15 hours. That whole mess of wrong classes probably could have been avoided had I taken calculus and Japanese instead. Oh well, too late now. That was it. From that point forth, I now had the option to grab my stuff and leave whenever my little heart desired. There was two things, however, that kept me in Austin. The first was Tarek. I promised him I'd give him a quick visit at his dorm room before I skipped town. After checking out from Jester, I drove up Guadalupe and parked my car in my favorite lot on the corner of 25th, and walked the rest of the way to Kinsolving where it took him a good 10 minutes to crawl out of his bed and come downstairs to meet me. I followed him up to his room, where his roommate still hadn't shown up, and we spent a few minutes there before heading up to a girls' floor to meet a couple of girls who were slightly hung over. Overall, nothing really special happened before Tarek had to go to an advising meeting and I was off on my own. What perfect timing, I discovered, as I checked my voicemail. Some 15 minutes before I left Tarek's dorm, I had a voicemail from Kinsey, predictably reason #2 to stay in town. We had agreed the night before to try to do lunch before I headed home, and she had called to say she was available. I talked to her while walking back down Guadalupe and eventually I decided to sit in my parked car, charge up my cell, and listen to John Mayer while waiting for her to come pick me up in her car. 15 minutes later, the wonderful black X5 appeared in my rear-view mirror and I jumped in. We quickly decided to head to a place called Shady Grove for lunch, a pretty basic hamburger place not unlike Chili's done Austin-style. The same kind of conversation that had happened all night the night before felt like it had picked up right where it left off. Lunch was over all too soon, as was the short ride through Austin streets back to my car. After one last goodbye, and an offer to hang out whenever I was in town, I hopped out and walked down the street to the Co-Op to get a chrome Longhorn decal to go on the back of my new car. A quick, painless, successful trip. I love shopping guy-style. In, buy, out, simple, easy, done. No room for bad things to happen. I then climbed back into my car, feeling positively bittersweet. I didn't want to drive back to Arlington. Not just because driving home is always a bitch, but because leaving Austin for the place I still call home is such a pity. I tried to remain optimistic, however, as '3x5' accompanied my departure from downtown Austin and I hit the highway on the way home. The ride seemed to blur into a short 3 hours. Maybe because I spent the whole trip coming home at 85 miles an hour fighting off sleep as hard as possible due to a 4-hour nap constituting the rest I had been running off of. The optimism hasn't left me yet - I can't wait to head back, and not just for reuniting with my friends from this trip, or taking Kinsey up on her offer to see one another whenever I'm in town, but because I loved the life I led there. I was absolutely my own individual and it took me no time at all to start carving my niche. I had nobody to depend upon except myself and that pressure dissolved as soon as I came to the realization that I could trust myself. So maybe I feel bittersweet now. Maybe, four days after arriving home, I'm still catching up on the sleep. It doesn't matter. I still am, and will be for the forseeable future, floating high on the thought of returning to that wonderful city, and those amazingly heart-breaking people, and reclaiming myself as I had long dreamed.