I'm back at school. It's weird, this setup of living in one place half the year and another place the other half. Whenever you go back (to wherever you aren't) you feel like you've come home. I felt like I was home when I first went "home" for winter break, and I felt like I was home when I got here. It's very odd. I still don't have a roommate, and I probably won't get one. My dorm building only houses around 150 people, and around 25 didn't come back after break. And that's only in this building. There aren't near enough people to fill all the vacancies. Plus, 90% of the people who were moving on campus already did. (that's a guess) I love having the room to myself. Especially now that I have a microwave and can cook (somewhat) in my room, it feels a lot more like I'm living on my own. I like that. I like coming back here after class, unlocking my door, and knowing I can go inside my room and do whatever I want in there and nobody will care or notice. (well, as long as I'm not too loud.) Not that I really do anything crazy. Generally, I come back in my room and turn on Ani and read or study or surf. Or maybe cook. I feel very grownup making tea in my microwave. I had three classes today. My Political Thought class looks much better than I thought it would be. It's a lot of reading, but not textbooks, philosophy books like stuff by Plato and Machiavelli. That stuff is much easier to get through. Chemistry still looks very scary, but I think I'm going to sign up for a one credit "chemistry study skills" course that they just created. It might help. Medical Ethics was this evening. It was an hour and a half long, and by forty-five minutes into the class I had decided to drop it. The professor came in for that class and didn't even introduce himself, he just started lecturing. He lectured for over an hour. (an hour and ten minutes, to be exact) and then he handed out a syllabus (which was only 3/4 of a page long and didn't even contain the required attendance and disability statements) and made us sign an attendance sheet. That was it. And that in and of itself isn't enough reason to drop the class... except the lecture was about the most boring thing I ever sat through. I can take almost anything except for someone repeating themselves. I have trouble with classes that have a week of review at the end. This teacher was repeating himself within the first half hour. I basically got the impression he has been teaching for way too long and had memorized the lecture, only he kept losing his place and going back. I called up the registrar and withdrew five minutes after I got back to my room. (The first five minutes I made popcorn.) I'm not going to look for another class to replace it. Because of my chem lab, without it I'm taking 13 credit hours. If you take 15 cr. hours ever semester for four years you'll graduate with exactly the right number of credits. Right now, I'm two credits ahead of schedule (because I took Karate at the community college even though I didn't need to.) and so that'll even me out to being right where I should be. Not that I'd care if I graduated with more credits than I needed, but since I don't have to search for another class, I'm not going to. Tomorrow I have Health Psychology and Urban Politics. I'm looking forward to Urban Politics. I don't think Health Psychology will be very interesting but my parents convinced me it won't be very hard. They said it's the kind of class mostly Phys ed majors take (and there are a whole lot of phys ed majors at my school) and that because of that the standards will be relatively low. I buy that. I'm friends with four phys ed majors. One of them got a 3.8 last semester and I really don't think that applies to her. One of them hates it here and basically considers college a four year prison sentence. The other two just kinda drift. Anyhow. Tomorrow, if he has office hours after the class I have with him, I'm going to go talk to that teacher about my final. (Remember, the final he screwed up and gave me a C+ on.) I hope he'll change it without a problem. If it doesn't I'm going to have to go to the department head (who won't change it- "old boy's club" rule) so I'll have to go to the academic review committee and appeal and they'll hold a trial and it'll be a big mess and I'll have to change advisors since he probably won't be too friendly to me after going through all that. Hopefully it won't come to that, though. I have nothing to say. It was the first day of classes and I'm already stressed out. My Pooh page-a-day calendar for today has a picture of Pooh and says "Unmuddled days are best." I'm gonna tape that one on my door. You brought me to church Cinder blocks, florescent light Yeah you brought me to church seven o'clock on a Sunday night And the band was rocking and the floors were scrubbed clean everybody had a tambourine So I took a deep breath And became the white girl with the hair And you sat right beside me While everybody stared and through the open window I think the singing went outside And floated up to tell all the stars not to hide Cuz by the time church let out The sky was much clearer And the moon was so beautiful That the ocean held up a mirror And as we walked home we spoke slowly Yeah we spoke slow and we spoke lowly Like it was taking more time than usual to choose words to go with your squeaky sandaled shoes like time is not a thing that's ours to lose ~Everest, Ani DiFranco Isn't that an amazing song? Even without the music, just as a poem. I love the line "So I took a deep breath and became the white girl with the hair." My mom doesn't understand that line. I couldn't bring myself to explain it to her. I guess I think if you don't get it you never will. I think maybe my mom has always fitted in. But she didn't get that line. Way back, when I first heard the song on a bootleg, I told her about it, thinking she'd love it too. She said, "wasn't she the white girl with the hair before?" and she didn't get she was taking a deep breath to get ready to be only that to everyone who saw her, because she knew in that church, nobody was going to see her, they were going to see "the white girl with the hair." I can't say it better than she does, it's perfect the way it is. "So I took a deep breath and became the white girl with the hair." I love the line "and the moon was so beautiful the ocean held up a mirror" too. Anyone who says Ani is only political doesn't know what they're talking about. I've thought about renaming this journal after something on the new cd. Ani is so quotable, I don't know how I settled on one lyric the first time. There isn't really anything in Everest that I would use. But I could name it "full of earthquakes" from 'tis of thee "and I hold on hard to something, between my teeth when i'm sleeping, and i wake up and my jaw aches, and the earth is full of earthquakes." (ani doesn't use capitals on the lyric sheet.) Or "coming down" after the lyric in jukebox: "she says, my sister still calls every sunday night, after the rates go down, and I still can never manage to say anything right, my whole life blew up, and now it's all coming down." Or I could name it after practically any part of Up Up Up Up Up Up- "Boot Print" for "up up up up up up raises the stakes of the game, each day sinks its boot print into her clay and she's not the same" Or maybe my favorite possible-new-title - "Out on a limb"- "She crawls out on a limb, and begins to build her home, and it's enough just to look around, and know she's not alone" Actually, I think my favorite possible-new-title is from Virtue. "Sunset" from "virtue is relative at best, there's nothing worse than a sunset, when you're driving due west." But really, I guess none of those capture the meaning of my journal as much as "shivering and stunned." Basically, I guess that's because my journal is shivering and stunned. That's its name. I think things (usually) grow into their names until the name and the thing are one and the same, and I think my journal has done that. If I were to change the name, the journal itself would probably change, at least to some extent, to reflect that. Maybe I'll change it for the millenium. Or at least the year 2000. I can never remember if the millenium is 2000 or 2001. Enough, I'm going to bed.