Been a While

This project is not forgotten. I've been trying to keep myself busy, doing chores and errands and dealing with the fact that my best friend is diagnosed with prostate cancer and is not taking it all that well. It is not my plan to leave five weeks between every post, but the fact is that life sometimes gets in the way. Family is a very funny animal.

Since orientation I've been quite busy, schoolwise. Having finally calculated that my summer would not be spent - as I had hoped - doing pre-reading of all my texts, I decided to settle down and relax where I could. As of today there is a little less than five weeks before classes start. I did purchase a couple of text books, you may recall, for the Introductory course and basics of Technical Communications. I have been slowly working my way through those, and will continue to do so. I also read "Little Princes", which is the prescribed Common Reading Program book for all new students at U of C this Fall. Actually, and this came as a bit of a surprise to me because I don't habitually think about the topics it studied, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now I am to write a short essay about it and try to win $500 worn of books.

I don't mind writing the essay, but I'm a bit conflicted: I have to look after myself, but I know that I already know how to write - so is it fair for me to try to take a prize from a high-school grad who's hoping for a good start to his/her university career? Do they even consider the age of the student when those papers are submitted? I want success like anyone else, but will everyone hate a mature student on the dais who's accepting an award for best essay? Is this all just bullshit? Perhaps I haven't got a hope in Hell of winning anyway? I don't know - conflicted.

Last week I paid my non-refundable deposit and today
I reserved a locker. I can pick up my bus pass from the 22nd of this month, then the week of the 5th to the 12th is Orientation Week. I'm going to make sure I attend that, and that I'm at my bright and breezy, jovial, smart-cracking self. I want to meet profs, get to know some students and so on.

I also need to figure out where I will volunteer. Perhaps I should chase the radio station, although youngsters' music these days - I don't know... I could volunteer at the campus newspaper quite easily, but when I picked one up and saw the F-bomb three times on page two it made me question if I wanted to do that. There are so many words to choose from in the English language - I believe it is literary laziness to go straight to the F word because you can't think of any other. Perhaps guidance is needed. Perhaps if I even so much as bring it up I'll just be the campus prick. I'll have to see what the profs say about it. As an older bloke with experience I'm pretty sure I could slide in just about anywhere.

So you see, no indolence here.

J

James m