Back on The Hill!

FEWF, I think I’m finally settled into the swing of things on campus. Well, that’s not true considering I’m still running around a hundred miles a minute and still completely frenzied, BUT I’m settled enough to make a post 🙂

Coming back to Holy Cross has been incredible but difficult at the same time. Just as adjusting to the educational system was hard coming to Oxford, it’s equally as difficult adjusting back. Being in a classroom setting with fourteen other students? Definitely a small class- especially compared to other universities across the states- but when you’re used to one-on-one, it’s overwhelming. All of a sudden I care about what my peers think of me again. I care about sounding smart or worry about being wrong. Which is weird considering how nerve-wracking it was to answer every question thrown my way in an Oxford tutorial. But for some reason, I felt comfortable one-on-one with tutors– and I’ve always felt comfortable with my HC professors as well. I feel like they’re trained for you to make dumb comments every once in awhile. But when my professor asks a question in class and someone else’s hand shoots up… I don’t even know what to do with myself. The whole thing has been bizarre. Taking four classes again instead of two is another adjustment as well. I’m used to delving really deeply into one discipline each week through a huge amount of reading and then writing a paper. Now I’m back to scattered assignments, reading, etc. across multiple disciplines. AH!

It’s getting easier, though, and I will say Oxford did prep me well in terms of independent work. None of my classes this Fall start before 2 o’clock. Freshman year that would’ve meant be sleeping in late, doing laundry, roaming around, eating a long lunch, etc. Now that means waking up at 9 and cranking through as much work as possible. That’s part in due to the fact that I have more work than I did freshman year and I really don’t have a choice with all the things on my schedule. But I’m definitely more disciplined. But let’s hope that lasts!

Also exciting about this year is the fact that I live in an APARTMENT! I live in Williams Hall on lower campus with my direct roomie, Marjorie, as well as Katie and Christine and we are having so much fun. Here’s us having a roomie bonding dinner at where else but Red Robbin. And yes, half the room is vegetarian.

Left to right: Marge, Katie, Christine, and me. Such hooligans.

Our room is the first one you see when you walk towards the front door of Williams so we happen to get a lot of banging and breathing on our window– this can be really fun when it’s your friend orrrr it can be really creepy when it’s a random drunk guy. We have a kitchen, bathroom, shower, family room area, and private double rooms. This is like the lap of luxury, people. When my parents moved me in, my dad actually said, “This is gonna be better than any of your first NY apartments out of college, so enjoy it, squirt.” And I have been enjoying it– especially using cooking as a new mode of procrastination. I’m officially obsessed with cooking which is only aided by my addiction to Pinterest. Like this recipe I got off Pinterest – it could feed a small army. And because I had an hour and a half before class yesterday I cooked the entire thing (instead of, oh I don’t know, catching up on other work) – check it out:

What am I doing with my life?! COOKING. I’ve been a cooking fiend but I might as well be because the semester’s only gonna get more stressful. And now I have enough Cajun Chicken Pasta to last me a lifetime. When I’m not cooking up a storm (people, come by and seriously eat my food. HELP ME) I’ll be writing for the newspaper, The Crusader; writing my thesis (more about that to come…);  writing articles for the awesome Lovelyish.com where I have a remote Fall internship (YAY!); volunteering through SPUD (Student Programs for Urban Development) at Elm Park Elementary School where I’ll be tutoring kids and at Girl’s Choice where I’ll be tutoring and mentoring underprivileged teenage girls; being an RPE (Relationship Peer Educator) on campus and putting on different programming for freshmen; and MORE. So it’ll be a crazy semester but I’m really looking forward to it.

It’s good to be a Crusader again. 🙂

Till next time.

Liz xx

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2012 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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