Flat Back Lookin' Up

I found Narnia last night!

Just kidding. Still haven't found it, though the wardrobe seems to be shrinking in size, rather than getting bigger. Also, just kidding, though there is less space now that my package - parcel, excuse me - has arrived from home. Which means that I have more clothes and more outfits to add to my rotation. I was getting pretty crafty in switching things up, though, mathematically, there's only so much rearranging of a set number of outfits that you can do in a week.

Anyway. These past couple of weeks of being all day in a school have really dredged up some, well, interesting (if nothing else) memories from my own days of high school. I'm in a primary school, so you'd think I'd be remembering elementary, yes? Well, not so much. Nothing overly exciting happened back then, really. I mean, there was kindergarten graduation (that same spring, while I graduated kindergarten, my sister graduated high school), I started playing soccer, and I generally formed the impression that I'm not really head over heels about math.

Fourteen years later I still don't like math. But, since I've done my required two semesters for my major - as well as my required two semesters of physics, which I'm on the fence about most days - it doesn't really bug me anymore.

What's sort of eating away at my brain are the memories that are dredging themselves up from high school. Most notably from junior and senior year when you more or less figure out quite a few things. Or try to, at least. I figured out junior year that I'm not a big fan of pre-calculus, but that I did miss having Spanish in my schedule. Also figured out that while I do enjoy American history, having to take band independently was not as fun as it sounds (and you should have heard the concerts - one lost first/second clarinet comin' up) and physics was at times the bane of my existence.

Which I just realized I repeated my experience last year in college.

What I figured out senior year is that it is possible to make yourself go more or less batshit crazy within the first month of school; that half-assed taking independent Spanish isn't what you think it is (and procrastinating on Immersion again is still not a good idea); and both calculus and economics suck while taking the last regents (literally) of the year - and your high school career - and thinking you are going to scrape by with a 67 (but really get a 98 and wonder which body orifice you pulled that out of) is just ballistic.

I could probably do a series titled What I Learned in High School and not all of it would be academic. Because, seriously, who really learns anything about economics when you're trying to do calculus at the same time? It's like an overload for your brain.

And for the record, though I took AP/ACE calculus, I did not take the AP test. I wasn't sure I was going to do well on it, and therefore didn't want to pay $86 to get a 2. And wound up taking it again in college for my major. Funny how those things work.

I think back to senior year - which is what I really remember best in terms of, well, almost everything - and remember the multiple days of wanting nothing more than to whack my head against the desk, running on five hours of sleep, taking a science class with the sophomores, and the ever-loving Spanish phrase, Como se dice.... which means, How do you say.... and then you insert one long English sentence in there and call it good. Oh, and actually attending band practice was a plus.

Why am I going through a backlog of memories? Might have something to do with the notice I got from the CGE staff about registration. Yes, you might be abroad and yes, you might be traveling that week, but do remember that you need to register with the rest of your classmates during your day even when you're on the other side of the Atlantic.

Which means email conversations with both my advisers (my teaching certificate professor will let me know what's going on when I get back to campus in January, because that's how we roll as a program) because my copy of my major declaration sheet is currently in the box of stuff that crawled out of my desk at the end of last year that resides under my bed. Great place for it. The upside to all of this is that my adviser has a copy and it was crafted around the idea that I was going abroad this term (the one we're currently in). 'Tis wonderful.

I'm probably going to be the only junior in an intro geoscience class. Ah, well, when you think about it, been there, done that.