Wow, that Catholic Imagination class sounds pretty great. I wish I had a class like that at my school. I'm in a Catholic graduate school now. All I take is basically early church history, history of the council of trent, and catholic social ethics.

The professor of the class is a priest who claims to have performed the marriage ceremony for one of the Farrelly brothers. I don't doubt this claim, as they are from Rhode Island (in fact one town away from where I was born), and he has been an extra in a couple of their movies. His IMDb profile.

Man, his imdb message board is hilarious.

I've been so unstable with my anticipation for college. When I was applying last fall, I had a bit of scorn towards myself for not striving for anything out-of-state. But once I was actually accepted to schools, I felt accomplished regardless of their calibers. I even visited campus last month and felt extremely comfortable when I looked at everything: the campus, the brick buildings, and even the dorms that my friends despised.

But now my excitement is ebbing again because I felt uncertain about my intended major. I didn't get into film, but I am beginning to question whether English is good for me either, mostly because I haven't been doing as hot as I should in my current high school English class. Grad school is definitely a path I want to take in the future, so a point of view like that makes me less worried about majoring in English.

Speculation, speculation! That is what this all is. Perhaps I should only inquire once I actually get to school and start attaining a true feel of it all.

no worries at all mate! i'm a freshman; i think the in-state thing is really just wise if you can deal with the school. it's so much cheaper!

as far as your friends hating the dorms, i like my dorm bed better than "my own bed" at home. i think a lot of people would find it strange, but i'm always glad to get back to my top bunk.

I graduated from high school last night. It felt weird, but I wasn't sentimental at all.

Here are various pictures from school events if you guys are interested:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/asianmammal/sets/72157594143634940/

College, here I come!

congrats on graduating! and enjoy college, ye haw.

Re-congrats to you, Kingsley. I'm glad you happened to post over here -- I am a 'tard for posting that in the Vacay thread.

Ph.D. Have fun with it! So, back to 'Bama you go?! And did you write a thesis? And what was it on? And can I read it?! :]

(I'm all interested. Psychoooohistorian.)

Sunniebunnie. Congratulations. IOU an email, don't think I don't know it. It's coming soon. Still getting all my poo in one bag down here.

I received my room assignment yesterday and I surprisingly have a roommate. I applied for housing the first day I was able to do so, yet I didn't receive the hall nor the room type I requested. So now I'm in a newly renovated dorm, but I have a roommate. /

My first two hall choices were both of the dorms left especially for honors students, so my guess is that they're stuffing all the honors freshman in the new place to make them feel welcomed.

I was looking forward to a space my own, but I guess this will be a good step for me to get out there and meet people. She lives a couple of miles away from me, but I'm hesitant to call her.

Now I'm shy about how I'll decorate my room and how she'll take my excessive organization.

welll .. I can bet anyone would choose excessive organization over excessive messiness!

so.. exciting! i think you're better off in a renovated dorm,anyway, dont' you? the last thing you want is gross, mouldy showers, etc.

Yes, a newly renovated dorm is a great thing. The one I originally wanted looked amazing too when I visited it in March.

It is just that I wasn't really nervous in a worried way about college until now. I figured my single room would at least let me wallow in my adjustment to college alone, but now I have to do it with another person in a shared personal space.

I wanted summer to speed up to get me to college, now I want to enjoy all the time I can with my "own room!"

I can only hope she feels a little similar...

My freshman year I was stuck with a roommate I couldn't stand. We just didn't have anything in common. We'd talk, and we were able to be nice with each other, but it wasn't very enjoyable to live with someone you don't like.

This year, I had a single. It was great because I could study whenever I wanted without having to go to the library or study lounge or someplace else, and I could go to bed when I wanted, I could do whatever I wanted. But I found myself not wanting to leave my room much. It was my own private place, and I tended to isolate myself in it.

Next year I'm living off campus with a couple of friends. That should be a good balance. I'll have my own room, and I won't be on campus, so there's more privacy, but I'll also share an apartment with two other guys I enjoy spending time with.

As usual, since I'm not in school right now, I want to be. I really can't stand the summer. Working a meaningless job sucks. I want to be back already.

This is quite pessimistic.

I start college in a couple of weeks yet I am already regretting my lack of risk-taking. I was a pretty great student in high school and I was very dedicated to two extra curricular activites for the majority of my high school career. I'm the kind of kid that the teachers loved and that other students admired because I was silly and approachable under my studious veneer.

So I guess I could have been a player in the whole college admissions game, but I settled for applying in two schools in-state, got into both, and chose the one that had a stronger reputation for their arts/humanities related programs (I'm majoring in English). Plus, I always figured I could go to one of those elite-type out-of-state schools for my graduate career.

But the networks of things like Facebook and word of mouth have shown me kids I knew in the past and some of them are going to really, really cool schools. This got me rather jealous in the worst of ways. And in the boredom of my summer, I started reading about various graduate programs since the nature of my major isn't really something you can get a career with right off the bat.

Grad school seems so hard to get into. Advice to me has always been to use the free ride I have now and go to a "dream" school for a master's, but it doesn't seem like a simple task, and it surely seems harder than getting into a school for a undergraduate education. Not that I expected grad school admissions to be a shoo-in. It is just very scary to think that I didn't capitalize on my success in high school; I now find myself asking if that was my peak of academic success.

And there was my whole rejection from film school ordeal earlier this year. Applying to grad school seems a lot like the experience I had applying to film school (a very competitive program, great academics, letters of recommendation, personal statement, resume, etc.) and I was rejected from that.

So the questions come in: why am I so concerned about attending a "great" school sometime in my life? Why I am even worrying about grad school now? Who knows what will happen in the next four years? I could decline as a student or be just as successful as I was in high school or even better.

I might get over this once school starts and I get into the whole "yay, I'm in college and it's great!" spirit. The fact that I didn't even apply to any of those dream schools will, however, always be a minor regret of mine. And I know any experience is what one makes of it, but last year this time (the whole college application process) is surely an experience where I settled for less too quickly and was far too cautious and unconvinced in my abilities.

Oh, so besides my little feeling-too-sorry for myself rant, is getting into grad school really as daunting as it seems?

grad school is a lot farther off than it seems. i just finished my first year, but college is an entirely new beast. check that out first; move if you don't like the school.. iduno. this always seemed like the least of times to consider graduate school.

I realize it is a bit early, but I was also the same kid who was already looking for colleges when I was a freshman in high school. I get easily obsessed.

Plus, unless something very, very lucky pops up for me during or right at the end of college, grad school was something I was always planning to do.