Starting a Life

Over the last two days, it suddenly feels like I'm really starting my life here in New Jersey. Yesterday I went to my first two classes. It feels very weird to me as campus is much smaller than the University of Minnesota. For comparison, I think that the main campus here is the size of the West Bank at the U, and the East campus is just one large building-- the graduate college. I know that being in a graduate program partly contributes to this feeling (my average class size is 20), however, I have classes at both the graduate college and on the main campus. Both are very small.

Yesterday I attended abnormal psych and stats. I am very excited for abnormal psychology. I took it as an undergrad and it was awful. All my professor did was lecture and we memorized and regurgitated information. This is starkly different: our class will be very project based.  Two projects will be making a video while we diagnose a "patient" and a film analysis discussing the misrepresentation of a disorder in the media.

Unfortunately, stats doesn't sound as promising. First, its from 7:30 to 10:15 at night.... so staying awake is a challenge. While I took stats about a year ago, I don't remember much of it. I'm hoping that its just buried deep and I'll remember more as we go along. We'll see.

At this point, the biggest challenge is getting to and from school. I'm about an hour away by train. This, in itself, isn't too problematic. The trains are quiet, I can do my class readings, and its much better than driving in New Jersey. That said, due to train schedules, I arrive at campus about an hour before class and have to wait an hour after class to board my train home. At this point, the plan is for Keith to rent a zipcar to pick me up from classes on Monday, but otherwise I ride the trains.

Overall, its nice to feel like I'm settling into a routine... that is, other than my weekday TV schedule which revolves around 90s shows. Starting school makes it feel like I'm really living here, instead of just taking an extended vacation.