I woke up in plenty of time to get ready for the day, which was nice, especially since I had my Connections course this morning. After leaving Blue Square, I walked up the hill to the Spectrum (the basketball stadium). There, we freshmen were split into our separate classes, were taught the fight song, and we heard from the professor who had written a summer reading pamphlet-book. We were also told that we're not allowed to sit at games because the sports teams want to be cheered on. Har har.
I think the seats look like pieces of cat food, but maybe that's just me.
I did run into my friend Molly on the way out, so it was nice to say "Hi". Our class moved to the library, where it looks like we'll be meeting most of the time. Today was long. And painful. After an hour of "get to know you games", then if I remember correctly, we spent most of the day talking about brevity. My teacher enjoyed rambling on about it, showing us videos, initiating partner discussions, calling us to the front of the room to explain brevity, and having us type a response that showed on the projector. Oh, the irony.
On top of that, she cited those little blue summer reading pamphlet-books as examples of good writing, which I got a kick out of since it's literally fifty pages of the professor repeating himself. Definitely not "brevity" material.
Fortunately, this "USU Freshmen 101" course won't last forever, and we did get some famous Aggie Ice Cream. I ate mine while we played parlor games because obviously that's what this class is for.
Aggie Blue Mint
We had only an hour for lunch. Since I had left my glasses back in my room, my hope was that I could grab them from Blue Square, get something to eat, and still make it back. The shuttles were slow, since I had missed one by two minutes, and then the next had to change drivers. Once I'd made it, I ran in, said hello to Demetria, gobbled down some food, remembered the glasses, and got out to the bus stop just as the next shuttle was rolling in. I made it back to the third floor of the library with about three minutes to spare. Now I know!
When parlor games had ended, we took three hours' worth of notes on grit, success, and motivation, and were assigned more homework than I was hoping for. I came back to Blue Square and took a restful break before Demetria and I headed out to grab some free goodies from town. It was the "Taste of Logan" event, so after a brief excursion of wandering campus and not finding the booths and tents we'd been looking for, we realized that we were supposed to actually ride the shuttle into Logan. That makes sense, looking back on it.
This map key made me laugh
I'd heard that we should expect to be given out free stuff, and we were showered with it. We swiped a few pieces of candy, several coupons, notebooks, and food samples. Lee's Marketplace handed out apples and water along with grocery bags for people to carry the stuff they picked up from other booths. Clever.
Cold Stone decided to set up their booth inside a jewelry store. Don't ask.
Totally free! Now that's service!
Demetria and I scouted out a few more booths. Turns out there's a pizza place with food that tasted really good, although the entrance to the store was weird because you had to descend a bunch of steps to get to it. Like a creepy basement. The lights were dim too. We also passed a sandwich shop called Logan's Heroes. Ooh, a triple pun! I stopped to applaud that.
We found one more ice cream place around the corner handing out miniature tasting cups. Their mint was pretty good, although of course Cold Stone's samples beat them out.
Close to seven o'clock, we made our way back to the shuttle, and several minutes later we were off. Demetria and I parted ways at the door to Blue Square, and I grabbed the packages that had been mailed to me. It was nice of her to take up my Lee's bag of goodies, because one of those boxes was huge! Inside I found my blender, and the other was a utensil holder from my family. It's blue and very nice.
I got to work on homework straight after that. It took me somewhere between two and a half to three hours to do. Not fun, but had to get done. We were supposed to watch a couple of TED talks and motivational videos and upload the notes we took on them. Then I re-read and annotated the first chapter of my summer reading book. After I had compiled those notes (rewriting them, since I didn't think scanning my book would work as well), I took a quiz on what I had learned.
Luckily it's a participation grade, because I scored poorly. And no, I was not amused to see that the questions I had gotten wrong were ones with the correct answers - the same ones I had chosen - written down. Looks like someone's going to have to fix that, because I have the notes to prove I was right.
When that was done, I wrote up a three-paragraph reflection on all that I had learned, and then I turned to writing this blog post. And now, I go to bed.
