Stephen Goes To College

Adapted from Actual Events by Stephen Rintoul

One sunny morning in August, I decided to go to college. I crammed every possession I could claim into a Toyota Camry and drove for several hours until I came upon a small, private college called Rhodes. Intrigued, I entered the gates of the gothic campus. Excessively peppy girls in green shirts with "ask me!" printed on them pointed me to Glassell the Castle, the largest all-male dormitory east of the Mississippi. After moving all my worldly possessions from the trunk of the car to the Castle, I did all sorts of "you're in college now" activities, such as getting a mailroom key, claiming my room key and getting a nifty student ID (for getting into cheap movies).

By the next day, I was all alone in a foreign land, surrounded by people I barely knew. Being the fearless person I am, though, I took little notice of how terrifying his situation was, and simply kept on going. I tried to meet new people and remember their names, but failed repeatedly in the latter attempt. I refused to lose hope, though, adopting the "I'm sorry, but I will learn your name someday" attitude. During the course of the official Orientation, I watched bad improv, reorganized his computer, sent letters home to people I know and love, ate food of varying quality (served by an establishment named after a rodent), visited American Indian ruins, went to a rock concert, and complained about the heat.

After being officially welcomed to the school one hundred seventeen different times, classes began, and I started to settle into a routine. I signed up for five classes, which I am currently enjoying. College is a different animal than high school. There's more free time, but there's more work to do outside of class, as well. It's easy to look at your schedule and say "jeez, I have hours of free time!" But as soon as you do that, you're lost, because you should have been doing work during those hours. I challenge myself each day to not return to my dorm room until the end of the day. Even if I have a ton of time between classes, I use it to go to the library and work instead of going to my room. It makes me feel more productive to do work in the library. And there are enough computers there that I can do pretty much anything I can do in my room from the library if I have my USB flash disk with me.

And I'm getting to know people, too. The people here like me, in general, once they get to know me.

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't.

One thing I've noticed is that a much higher percentage of people here understand my binary shirt than in high school. This amuses and pleases me.