Back To School

Life at New Saint Andrews is good. Although we freshmen had our first orientation day on Monday, and then the all school orientation yesterday and convocation last night, today was the first day of classes.

I came in around 12:45, and plunked myself down in the student lounge next to Cathleen (we had to introduce ourselves to each other again, lol), and started reading the book for Math class.

It's kind of an interesting book. I say its interesting because, well, how else do you describe a book in which the author goes back and forth between evolution and Christianity, and lists Buddhism as one of the "greater religions" and says that the Jews held human sacrifices up until the time of Abraham. Yeah. Its interesting in a rather odd sort of way.

After reading about a page of the way into the first chapter (this was my second read-through as I read through the assignment last night), Josiah showed up and joined Cathleen and I, doing the math reading as well. Cathleen was furthest ahead, with me trailing about a page and a half behind, and Josiah some four pages behind me, although he was catching up slowly. We sort of took turns looking up from our books to proclaim how odd this guy is. We read through the Human Sacrifices section at right about the same pace, and Cathleen and I couldn't help being grossed out about it. Staab, who was sitting over at the table, would occasionally add his opinion to the conversation, although he was working his way through the Rhetoric reading. As Cathleen and I reached the end of the chapter and started talking about what the author meant by this or that, he eventually gave up and came to sit in one of the big armchairs and talk to us about the reading. Josiah was reading one of the paragraphs as saying something totally different from how I read it, and I read it totally different from how Cathleen read it, and Staab had read it as meaning something else entirely! So we had fun comparing what we though he was trying to say. I still am confused as to what we finally settled on.

Pretty soon I took a little break and went up to "audition" for the choir. Dr. Erb is really nice and very funny, so I had no trouble at all singing for him. The fact that he played along with me really helped me to keep my voice from sounding too nervous. I was nervous, but he wasn't worried about that, and understood. At the end of it, he said I was in and that I would be placed as a first soprano. FIRST SOPRANO! Oh my word, I almost died of joy.

See, I'm really what's called a "true alto", meaning that I can sing about as low as a low tenor, and as high as a first soprano. So, not to gloat or anything, but my range is pretty much awesome, and I'm happy with it. All my life, though, I've been a second soprano, although I've pretty much dreamed of being a first soprano for a long time. Therefore, I basically had a dream come true today, haha.

I came back down and took Cathleen's spot while she went up to audition. Josiah was now on his third read-through of the book, and by now was thoroughly confused and amused by it at the same time. I decided twice was enough for me to handle, so I moved on to Rhetoric reading until it was time for math class.

Now here's the cool thing:

As an auditor, I wasn't assigned to a certain section for Math. I got to choose which one I want to be in. I chose A (the 3:30 section), because it gets over sooner, and I have time to make it home to help with dinner and all that. But if I wanted to, I could technically go to the 4:30 class. Buahahaha... power...

Anyhow, math class started with role call, and then we had a quiz. I aced it. Five out of five. It was awesome! Of course, it didn't count for anything since I'm not taking the class for credit, but my family was still really proud of me, so that does count for something. :) We then went over the syllabus and eventually got around to the two questions that I knew Dr. Stokes would be asking at some point; what is a number? and do numbers even exist? It took last year's freshmen the entire 7 weeks of Jerusalem term to figure out if numbers exist or not. We decided that they did in five minutes. My classmates are officially awesome. The rest of the hour was spent going over various things, like taking detailed notes, and not multitasking on your computer if you use a computer to take notes (Dr. Stokes said if he sees any other tabs open during class, "I'll just come up and take your computer... and throw it." Dr. Stokes is so great). At 4:30 we filed out past the other freshmen waiting to go into the room, and I grinned and said they were going to love class. It was fun, and I was so excited. For me, for them, and for Dr. Stokes. I really do think we have a great class. We're good at partying, good at studying, quick thinking, clever, and, well, we're a good looking class too. All sixty of us. We're pretty much a miracle class. And I don't care what Anthony says; math class is going to be a BLAST.

The last thing I did in town was head up to Walmart to buy a compass, and while there I (almost literally) ran into Cathleen and her roommates. They were buying compasses too. After we had decided what color to buy and what size and such, we said aur revoir (literally), and parted ways.

Since then I've had dinner, did the dishes, started laundry, and am now drinking a margarita and reading How To Read A Book for Rhetoric class tomorrow. Later tonight I'll take a break to decide what to wear to school tomorrow, make myself a cup of hot chocolate, and get back to learning how to read a book.

I love being back at school.