Melting Brains

Should you want a visual, I'll be cooped up in here for the year.

Well, the first week of classes is over. It was a lot of information, but a decent primer for the "fun" we have coming to our class in the next few weeks. The program has all of the classes packed in a 6-week schedule - that way the rest of the time we can slave work away at the many large academic projects we have to finish before May 31st (we have a 1.5x longer break than the rest of the school). If you think about it, though, a 3-month semester is a frightfully short period of time to pack in so much information into my brain. I am  nervous about doing well, considering the amount of work I see in front of me.

But hey! We celebrated the end of the week by rallying as many classmates together as possible for some drinks at the campus bar. I enjoyed an early evening talking to water nerds over cocktails and beers...surrounded by college kids.

I still cannot get over the fact that I am going to be on a real campus for the next year. NYU was such a different beast in regards to geography and lifestyle; there, we were city slickers who happened to go to class between work/friends/parties. The people who walked past me were New Yorkers, and I never knew to where anyone was going. A gallery opening? A boardroom? An audition?

At UQ, on campus, anyone who walks by me is a student. And I know they're a student. And they know I'm a student. How surreal! I keep thinking to myself, this isn't reality!

Today it was hot out. Uncomfortably hot. The thermometer tried to trick me by saying it was only 86F out...but I knew better. The humidity - attached to the sun and the warmth - made it feel more like the late 90s in temperature. I was melting all over the pavement.

The water ladies and I met up early in the morning to go to the City Welcome Festival - a day the city council puts together for us international students. There were booths filled with swag for students in hopes to gain some of our pocket change. We went to a few booths for free things (notepads and bags), the  sun beat us unforgivably with rays of death. We did not last very long, and quietly bumbled our way to get some groceries before heading to our cooler, not-so-sunny flats.

I ended up holing up in an air-conditioned library at school for the better part of the day, reading hundreds of pages of required reading for next week's classes, and writing critiques of each of them. I forgot that is how the weekend looks for graduate students - squirreled away in libraries reading and thinking and writing and having mild panic attacks.

For the next year, I will be spending my weekend hours staring at text, trying to make sense of it all. And writing things in my computer about how smart I want people to think I am.