Freshman year at Penn ... v.3

This (and similar future posts) are inspired by a Facebook note written by Keelan... hope he doesn't mind me stealing the idea :)

The following is a list of things that happened in my freshman year of college, in a fairly random order, as I think of them:

• first roommate I met - running into Erica in the Rodin lobby when I was checking in
• my dad helping Tatini and her parents install her mirror on her room door
• wearing my beach towel to the NSO toga party
• "sketchy toga party guys" and Jen (me), Lee (Simone), Natasha (Tatini), Monica Sanchez (Marcela) and...crap what was Ben's ?? [thanks to Simone for remembering Marcela's code name haha]
  
• fire drills at 4am and 7am, everyone trudging out to the stairway in pajamas
• the wind tunnel
• baking Nick's bday cake (buying stuff at Fresh Grocer, borrowing the heart-shaped pan, spelling the words on it with Cheerios)
• running from DDF to wind ensemble (only a half hour in between) on Thursday nights
• slipping on Locust Walk in the rain in my clogs and flip flops
• keeping the list of funny quotes ("Penn Quotes")
• discovering when I first arrived at Penn that I'd been missing out on Facebook (because EVERYBODY was talking about it), and hence getting it immediately when I set up my computer haha
• listening to Mae all the time on purevolume.com (before Ruckus)
  
• had a crush on a guy I'd started talking to over the summer; decided later on that it was probably superficial O:-)
• freaking out in my first CSE110 recitation because the TA TOTALLY confused me when he tried to explain something like x = x + 5 in Java, telling Eric Fisher about it, and ending up switching into his recitation
• getting breakfast at Commons with Dan every Thursday morning (because I had class from 9:30 to 1:30 I think?), then walking to our math104 recitation
• learning what spooning is, and discovering I'd already done it haha
• getting hot chocolate with Rebecca after band field rehearsals on our way back to the high rises...
• ...and eventually transferring to mochas, then lattes, and declaring myself a Starbucks coffee person (after years of thinking I don't like coffee!)
• falling asleep ALL THE TIME in the first row in music theory!
• eating chocolate covered espresso beans and absolutely cracking up over whatever with Rebecca instead of studying for something
• first time I ever slept in the same bed with a guy
• exchanging "stories" all the time online with Henri
• room switching in Rodin 108 halfway through the year
• over spring break, a 260 problem defeated both me and my dad for hours one night; then as I was falling asleep I figured it out, and later led Dan through the steps to figure it out :)
• doing math104 homework with Dan during his ITA lab hours on Wednesday nights (the night before it was due in recitation, of course)
• spending hours playing Stepmania with Evan one night instead of doing our homework (my first time playing it, and hence the beginning of my addiction haha)
• shopping for Freshman Formal attire at King of Prussia with Erica, Tatini, and John (and the craziness of the buses to get there and back!)
• going to Chris's Jazz Cafe with Rebecca (for my jazz history class) and with my jazz writing seminar class
• after playing Sweet Child o' Mine all the time in Penn Band, I finally listened to the real song and liked it so much that I listened to it over and over till Erica came in and asked me what was going on! haha
• eating dinner at Commons with everyone: Erica, Tatini, and Simone; Matt (our GA); sometimes Ben and Chris from across the hall
• when the washing machine left my clothes soaking wet so that after 2 runs through the dryer, they still had to be hung up on the clothes rack for awhile to dry
• late-night bus trip with John to the art store Pearl on South Street cuz I needed gray paper last minute for drawing class
• Keelan wearing someone's high heels at the Penn Band Semiformal (hilarious!!)
• staying up till about 5:15am finishing my jazz history final paper on Praful (latest I'd stayed up up to that point, I think)
  
• Rodin ski trip to Camelback with John: discovering maybe I'm only good enough to ski double green circles (apparently those Montage black diamonds were nothing much, haha), falling once and losing a ski, falling again via crashing into someone and getting impressive bruises on both knees, getting run over by a lift (hahaha), the bus breaking down (or did it hit another vehicle?) when we were almost back... good times :D
• discovering that rainboots are fashionable (never would have guessed!)
• fell madly in "like" just after it was too late (as usual), spent a couple months or so pining away reading over saved online conversations and listening to supposedly emo music, finally got angry enough to let go, and slowly redeveloped a friendship
• experienced my first kiss
• nudged two friends into converting to DMD (my major)
• savored the glory of having only one class on Fridays (first semester), and the icing on the cake: it was not till 1pm!
• played Outdoor Overture AGAIN - after having the solo part in high school concert band, I found out what the third part is like thanks to the wind ensemble...
• came home for fall break and visited my high school marching band, where I was smothered by hugs from my clarinets - it felt so amazing :)
• carved the beginning of my downhill curve in calculus: math 104 was okay, but math 114 started getting harder... (maybe it was the professor's approach to teaching, but still.) I started thinking maybe I don't like math so much anymore?
  
• confused my shoulder for my elbow one day in said math 114 class (hahahahha Grace...)
• began experiencing the great ups and downs of being in a relationship
• wrote perhaps the most inefficient program I've written so far in my life: every time I wanted to write a line to a file, I opened/closed a FileWriter. Let me tell you, it was SLOW. And absolutely hilarious - after I figured out what was going on, hahaha.
• woke up 15 minutes before my jazz history class, put on the first clothes I found, walked as fast as I could to Fisher Bennett, and climbed 4 flights of stairs to get to the room - and still arrived while people were moseying on in with their coffee/breakfast
• got caught in pouring rain after a band field rehearsal... walked back to Platt with Jenn and Keelan and got drenched since my umbrella was back in Platt, then had to stand dripping in the lobby while my forgotten Penn Card was fetched for me from downstairs. Returned to my room and hung up my pants to dry for like 3 days lol.
• sat between Dan and Evan while the two of them doodled and wrote little notes back and forth on my 260 notebook - so much for paying attention in class that day, hahaha
• making the "ADD in DMD" Facebook group with Michelle...during DDF...haha
• watching Nirav and Luke play guitar just inside the quad entrance till like 3am
  
• ..more to come?