Thursday, September 16, 2004

what i know now about...

Fredericton: the farmer's market is lovely, on Saturdays, down on George Street. Lots of produce, bakeries, clothes, jams, cheeses, meats, juice, samosas, leather belts, and on and on...pottery, fresh flowers, wooden furniture. I quite like it. Patti and I went down last weekend and ate samosas and drank orange juice and I got some bread and it was sunny out, and packed with people, mamas with babies, new students wearing frosh bibs, older folks selling baskets of fresh corn and tomatoes.

Also, Fredericton is lovely in the fall with its Harvest Blues and Jazz Festival, which is transforming the downtown into a funky place to be, not that it wasn't already. I probably won't be seeing any of the shows, due to the newfound economic restraints of being a student, but that's alright. I might walk down and see if anyone's playing for free, anywhere. I have hope.

What else: well, there's The Hill (accompany with alarming music)...Yes, Ftown is built on this well-inclined, long hill, that you have to take into account if you want to go downtown, or up to the highway and the mall, or to school, or, well, just about anywhere. I live on a relatively flat street and for most of my commute to school it is flat, so for this, I give thanks.

Being a student: I'm enjoying it, much to my own surprise. OK, not surprise, so much (would any of you have guessed I actually like writing copious amounts of papers?) but happiness. Because it seems the tactic of a number of my professors is to intimidate us newbies by telling us of all the work we'll have to do, and then seeing which ones don't keel over with discontent, and then continuing on. My strategy is not to show any sort of disgruntledness and pretend it will all be fine. So far, so good. But I'll just admit here: you were all right, you who said that it would be a bit difficult or different to get back into school after two years off. It's going to mean a lot of...reorienting my priorities? Or just plain old grunt work.

Making friends and influencing people: So far, so good. Even though I'm not a campus resident, I'm still having a good time and meeting nice folks. I joined the choir on Monday, that seems like it will be fun. I also went to a reception on Wednesday night where I got to meet various members of faculty and other scholarship kids, and eat cheesecake. And tomorrow I think I will go to a meeting of the theatre, but that might be the limit of my time and concentration skills.

Schoolwork: Latin is fun, but a lot of work. (Laudo, laudas, laudat, laudamus, laudatis, laudant--to praise, in present verb tenses). Political science will be a lot of reading and writing, but I'm down with that. Same goes to English, and the professor is hilarious, a young man expecting his 4th child any week now, he also hates the morning (we meet at 8:30) and once memorized the entire poem of Beowulf, in olde English. Biology will be an updated review on that which I did in High School, but that is welcomed. And psychology is only once a week and the rest we do on our own via software, so it seems a bit lackadaisical so far, but I think it will get better.

Other: Books cost a lot of money, and students like to party. This is my impression thus far. Stick with me, folks, it will only get better!

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