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2004-09-03 - 2:51 p.m.
standing right on campus
The Nine Greatest Songs of All Time (Right Now)
1. Morris Day & The Time
"Jungle Love"2. Korn
"Word Up" 3. Mannie Fresh
"Real Big" 4. U2
"Discotheque" 5. Bossman
"I Did It" 6. Zwan
"Ride A Black Swan" 7. Talking Heads
"Drugs (Electricity)" live 8. Jadakiss f/ Styles P., Common, Nas and Anthony Hamilton
"Why" (remix) 9. Robbie Williams
"Angels" |
This week the fall semester began, and since I’ve been working on campus all summer, my routine hasn’t changed all that much, other than that after I work every day I go and sit in a classroom for a couple hours. The biggest change is there suddenly being students everywhere again. During the summer it’s easy to find parking and things are pretty quiet, just faculty doing their jobs and the miniscule number of summer students around. But that first week of school is a bitch. In fact, I think I’d been dreading the start of the semester more because of parking than anything else. The parking situation on campus has gotten progressively worse every year, even after they built a new garage a couple years ago, and the first week or two of the semester is always the worst. Basically unless you get on campus before 8 or 9am, every garage is full, and you have to go park out by Towson Center, which is way down the road from everything else, a 10-20 minute walk from where I work and where all my classes are. So of course, the first couple days of school, I had to park there. And because I get to campus in the late morning 2 days a week, I’ll probably be parking out there those days for most of the semester. The most frustrating thing about the parking situation at the beginning of every semester is that I have to buy a new parking permit right at the time when parking spaces are hardest to come by. I pay over a hundred bucks a semester for parking, and there’s no gaurantee I’ll find a space anywhere near where I want to park, and some days no spaces at all. And on top of that, I’ve got to buy textbooks for all my new classes. Every semester, I end up not being able to afford most of my books until at least 2 or 3 weeks into the semester, and I fall behind in classes and makes things harder for me. And every time, I swear it won’t happen again, that I’ll save up. And every time, it happens again. Vicious cycles like this are a big reason why I can’t wait to be graduated. So I’ve got parking permits and books go buy, but of course, I have to pay rent this week, and I’m going to have just barely enough, so permits and books will have to wait. One class loaded me up with reading assignments on the first day, so I broke down and against my better judgement bought just one of the class’s 2 required texts, picking the one that there were more assigned pages for. The book turned out to be completely bullshit and useless, just a lot of basic advice about writing, and I know I won’t need it for the class. So I’m going to take it back for a refund so that I’ll be able to make rent. The one nice thing about school starting is it means I get a new work schedule for the Towson University events department, because my summer schedule was getting pretty monotonous. I only worked 4 hours a day, but for 5 days a week I had to be in at 8am. All summer. So I was actually getting up earlier every day on my ‘summer vacation’ than I was while school was in session. By comparison, I only work morning shifts 3 days a week this fall. I’m working about the same amount of hours, plus classes, but it’s going to ease some of the stress to be able to sleep in a lot more often now. Plus, over the summer I got into the habit of dragging myself out of bed and going straight to work, and I felt sweaty and disgusting all day until I got home and took a shower. But now that I’m going to be on campus for longer amounts of time and I’m going to be going to class and will want to look presentable for my peers, it motivates me to get up in time to shower and shave before leaving the house, and I just feel better in general. All summer I was the right hand man of Bruce and Batty, the older contract workers in my department, one of the only 2 student workers that stayed for the summer. And I feel like them having me to help out with the work every morning made them take me for granted. A lot of the student workers really dislike them and make fun of them, and while I get along with them better than most, they’ve definitely worn on my nerves a bit, especially Batty, who’s very old and hard to communicate with. The thing Batty always does that pisses people off is he’ll tell them to do something, and then go have a smoke or stand around and watch, or stay in the office or something. Today I called him on it. He asked me to set something up outside, and so I took the first stack of chairs out and started setting everything up, while he and Bruce walked over to the side of the building and kind of stood there talking and looking at the work order. So I said “hey Batty, you know what? don’t bother helping me out with the chairs, just stand over there and stare at shit for a while”, and he kind of sputtered and made some excuse and got kinda mad. It was worth it just to bust his chops for once, keep him in check. I really just feel a general exhaustion about my surrounding lately, and I hope this fall won’t wear me down any further. I’ve only got one more year of living like this, a full time student with 2 part time jobs. It’s been the hardest I’ve worked in my entire life, and it doesn’t feel very rewarding, not spiritually and certainly not financially. I just want to get through it and move on. -al
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