First Week Back

In my new effort to focus this blog more on the happenings of my life, I figured I should post something here about school starting up again.

Yep, it's happening. My second year of school has begun. Summer is officially over, more evident than ever whenever I have to know the date. Today was the last day of class for the first week, so I guess I'll jump into the happenings and whatnot.

For those of you that don't know, I am currently at 55 credit hours thanks to dual credit classes in high school. While 55 hours still classifies me as a sophomore, I will become a junior after attaining 60 hours. Since I'm taking 15 total hours this semester, I'll start next semester as a junior. Sorry if that was confusing but now for the fun stuff!

I get to live in a really nice dorm this year, no longer confined to the smaller and somewhat under kept Freshman dorms of last year (but now they've built a new one and moved people around so the new Freshman get treated a lot better.). This semester though, I'm in the Sophomore dorm called Seguin Hall. It's the second newest dorm on campus, making it one of the nicest. The rooms are suite style, with the individual rooms connected by a living room. Each room off the living room has two people and there are usually three to four rooms meaning that 6 - 8 guys can share one living area. Ew.

However, I was super lucky in my roommate situation. Originally, I was going to be in an 8 person suite with 7 other guys I didn't know. While I'm all for making friends, that could have been pretty uncomfortable. Thankfully though, the director of Residence Life on campus called me about 3 weeks before move in day to ask if I'd like to room with my friends Henry and Rene. Henry is a Resident Assistant (Dorm Monitor), so he gets his own room, meaning that Rene and I share a room and that it's only the three of us sharing the living room (We're in a special RA room with only two rooms) so it's pretty great. Below are some pictures of our dorm rooms and living area so you can kind of see what it's like :)

Walking into the Living Area. My room is to the left, around that wall.
(We're constantly in a state of unpacking)

The Living Room
(Say hi to Brittney!)

The Entertainment Center.

My room's door.

My side of the room. There's a sink and things to the right that you can't see. 

So that's my rooming situation, which is just one of many great things about this semester. I'm in love with all of my classes (that might change as the semester goes on but right, I'm loving them). I'm currently double majoring in Communications and English and I'm thinking about picking up a minor in Marketing, but I'm not sure. I'll meet with my adviser on Monday to work that out.

Based on my degree plan, I'm taking Spanish 1, Creative Writing: A Fiction Writing Workshop, Rhetoric, Ethnography and Advanced Composition. As for what these classes actually are....

Spanish 1 (MWF 9:00am): 
   Somewhat obvious. This is me learning Spanish, but unlike my high school Spanish courses, we're actually learning conversational Spanish so it's ACTUALLY USEFUL. It's a little bit of a shellshock because our teacher talks to us in Spanish throughout the class, so I spend most of my time just trying to keep up with what he's saying. But I'm liking it a lot and I think it will be easier as time goes on. 3 of my friends (including Brittney) are in the class with me so that makes studying a little easier too.

Creative Writing (MWF 10:30am) 
   This is my favorite class, possibly ever. The entire focus is to hone your skills as a fiction writer and, considering my dream is to be a novelist, this is perfect for me. In here we're going to be writing 4 short stories about 1500 words apiece and then review them as a class, which I'm really excited for. This will happen a little later in the semester and, depending on how happy I am with them, may post the finalized product on here.

Rhetoric (MW 1:00pm)
  This one looks to be tied with Ethnography for my hardest class right now.  It's the study of social movements and how you can use argument to influence and instigate these. It's going to be a LOT of tough reading and projects but I think the end result will be worth it. It's also taught by my favorite professor (shown below) so that's exciting.

Advanced Comp (TR 1:00pm)
  This one is going to be fun too. It's basically how to write for a certain demographic, i.e. newspapers, websites, etc. This semester is focusing on blogs (like this one, but not really). We get to research a bunch and then use Rhetoric (the cross usage of classes was unintentional) to determine how and why these blogs influence their readers. By the end of the semester, we'll actually have made our own blog that fits in with our researched area and then do a rhetorical analysis of the whole thing. This teacher is new, she actually came from Colin College in McKinney so she's from my area of the country! Haha. She's also implementing a cool grading style where we're not graded on anything until the end of the semester, so that we're graded on our work as a whole and the improvement of it over the semester. It's pretty cool and doesn't let a low grade on an early paper pull down your final grade.

And finally...
Ethnography (TR 2:30pm)
  This is tied with Rhetoric for hardest class of the system. Put simply, Ethnography is the study of social trends and movements. Ever been to or heard of a focus group? Ethnography is the reason those happen. This one is a lot of projects and readings but should be really interesting. It's taught by two tenured professors at the University, each one focusing on a different aspect of the course. I've never had either one of them but I already like them a lot. This one could very easily become a favorite of the semester.

Those five classes make up my 15 hour academic load. On top of that, I am working for the Student Counselor on campus. I'm a "test proctor" meaning that any student who has a disability (i.e. dyslexia) that allows them to receive help on tests, I help them however they need (reading the questions or writing the answers, specifically). I'll be working with one girl in particular who needs both on her tests. However, instead of only getting to work whenever there are tests to be taken, they give me six hours a week (3-5 on MWF) so I get to work throughout the semester, helping with whatever they need in the office. 

I'm also working at a bookstore in town for about 25 hours a week. That one is still kind of up in the air (I do training tomorrow morning) so I'm not sure how many hours or when I'll work yet.

As far as the rest of my life goes, I'm trying to get involved on campus more. As such, I'm a student writer for our campus magazine "The Lone Star Lutheran", re-forming our Quidditch team (yes, the sport from Harry Potter), applying for Student Government, helping in the Community through the Center for Student Leadership, helping in Chapel services when they need me and joining MASA (Mexican - American Student Association) to help with Spanish and do some more work for the community. Needless to say, it's going to be a busy, busy, BUSY semester.

On top of all that work, groups and homework, I'm trying to carve a little bit of time for writing. I recently fleshed out the plot of my entire novel and it's three sequels and have outlined all of them. Now it's just an issue of finding time to write it all down haha. I'm hoping to have the first finished and ready to be sent off by December, but I'll keep you updated.

That's pretty much it. One whole week of being back in school and I had this much to say. Family, this might have been better than a phone call! I'll try and update this about once a week to keep y'all informed on the happenings. If you know me personally (not that this blog has a lot of followers), feel free to text and I'll try and respond. Family, call whenever and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Love you all and I'll try to survive the craziness that is this semester and see you soon.