A New Year!

Greetings!

Welcome to my first official blog of the new school year!

As opposed to the summer, my school year here at Oxford has so far been anything but uneventful. I came back and was instantly thrown into the wild circus that is orientation. I helped move the new freshmen into their dorms, participated in a bunch of the meet-and-greet activities and acted as a ref in the Oxford Olympics. The Olympics were a series of games that pitted each of the residential hall floors against each other. The games included tug-of-war, water balloon tossing, inflatable obstacle courses,and relay races with kids bikes. Basically, the whole spectacle was like a game show from the early days of Nickelodeon (and I mean that as a definite positive--I grew up on that stuff). Overall, the games were a lot of fun and got everyone REALLY excited about Oxford.

In addition to Orientation, I also spent time training for my two new jobs on campus. As a Writing Tutor, I underwent a four hour training session on a Sunday. It wasn't actually as bad as you'd think; we ended up cracking a lot of jokes (Dr. Ivey, our supervisor, is awesome) and engaging in several interesting discussions on what we believed to be the qualities of "good writing." As one the new SAA Coordinator, me and my three colleagues went on a two day retreat (or ADVANCE, as our boss preferred to call it) where we ate great food, went tubing on the lake, and even got to ride a jet ski. Overall, definitely the best Oxford retreat I've ever been on.

After Orientation, we were all through right into classes. This year I'm taking Spanish 101 (to fulfill my language requirements, a religion class focusing on the sacred texts of world religions, a poetry course, and a course in statistics. They are all challenging in their own way and I am never without some form of homework.

Besides my school work and jobs, I'm also participating in our Drama Guild's production of Thorton Wilder's Our Town. We're still in the early stages of development, but rehearsals are demanding and require a lot of time and focus.

Last week was a particularly stressful one with tests, papers, quizzes, and assignments galore. I'm glad its over now, but I still feel exhausted by all the work I had to do. I'm taking this weekend to recuperate and try to get an early start on some future assignments so I'm not as pressed for time.

Friday night, I ended up ordering a large stuffed-crust pizza from Pizza Hut and watching a rerun of the first episodes of two new shows: "FlashForward" and "Modern Family." Both were incredible and I can't wait for future episodes. I also rewatched "Double Indemnity," one of my favorite movies of all time. I even rented the first season of "Flight of the Conchords" from the Oxford library. All of this served to give me a weekend filled with laughter and high-fat, greasy fun (thanks to the pizza).

Well, that about does it for me. Until next time!

Shows seen this weekend:

FlashForward-Pilot (8/10)
Modern Family-Pilot (8.5/10)
Wonderfalls (8/10)-a highly entertaining but sadly canceled-before-its-time show from Bryan Fuller (the mastermind behind Pushing Daisies).
Flight of the Conchords (9/10)
Heroes-Fourth Season Premiere (6.5/10)
Glee-(7.5/10)