18

In high school, I thought 18 was a magical number. Since I have a summer birthday and am very young for my grade, turning 18 meant that I was a month away from college. 18 meant that I was an "adult." Both of these things were a little scary, but intriguing and exciting at the same time. December 18th is my best friend's birthday. Although 18 turned out to be a year extremely different from anything I could imagine, it turned out to be just as exciting (both good and bad) as I had thought it might be. So with such good feelings about the number 18, I had no problems with deciding to take 18 hours this semester. One week in, I can say this much: maybe I made a huge mistake. Maybe I thought I could handle 18 hours and I will fail miserably. But maybe I can do it. Maybe I'll have to stay up late a lot, maybe I'll become even more dependent on caffeine to get me through the days (and nights), but maybe I'll come out of it successfully. Either way, I can already see myself changing. In high school, I did barely what I needed to get by. Extra credit was not my type of thing, and neither was studying for tests. Clearly I did not slack off too much, since I did get into a good school. But I was completely unprepared. So I did what I had always done - barely enough. This semester things have changed. I'm actually caught up on the reading... even a little ahead! And although I get so overwhelmed when I look at all my course work at once, when I take it step by step... it almost seems... achievable. My classes:

Symbolic Logic I ~ So the LSAT has 2 logic sections on it. Since Trinity does not have a pre-law major (only a pre-law focus in the political science department), you take classes from all over the board. Such is the life of a liberal arts college. But anyway, taking a logic class is supposed to improve LSAT scores and hey, who could say no to that? I was a little scared at first. I mean, this is really mostly a class for computer science and math majors. But I'm actually kind of good at it - it's a lot of puzzle work, sort of.

Classical Political Thought ~ Basically, I'm tired of reading about Socrates questioning everything. However, it will be interesting to see how his views play out into the future... aka now.

African Experience ~ Super interesting course about african history and what modern africa is up to. I don't know very much about Africa, so I'm excited to learn.

The Individual in World Politics ~ Never in my life have I felt like I was where I belonged AND like I was way out of my league at the same time. But this class should be really interesting. I'm reading a book for it about world health, and I'm researching President Sarkozy (the president of France)

American Literature: New Realism-Moderns ~ This class goes by so fast. Hemingway is pretty depressing (so far we have covered a really sad break up and some deaths) but I don't get bored. It's so interesting.

French Civilization ~ I would love to be fluent in French (I'm getting there...) and hopefully this class will help. Although the professor sometimes goes on mini-rants, it does offer comic relief at the end of my longest days (4 classes on tuesdays and thursdays!!)

So we'll see how they go. And how I go. Hopefully I can do this. No... I WILL do this!!!