Jessica Lynn

When I’m going some place for the first time the one thing that makes me most nervous is getting lost. It’s annoying that I over prepare myself to go somewhere but my paranoia is probably the reason I’ve never seriously gotten lost. Anyways… the point is that I got to school really early this morning and I had about 45 minutes to kill before class. Seeing as there’s a Starbucks literally on every corner surrounding North Hall (where my class today was) I stopped in one and got a coffee. One of the things I love about the city is that no one thinks you’re a lunatic if you’re sitting anywhere by yourself. I sat down, wrote down some events in my planner, and read a little of my book. At this point I was reminded of an episode of Sex and the City where Carrie talks about how single people in New York are looked at as lepers and blah blah blah. But throughout the episode she claims that it’s extremely awkward to sit down somewhere by yourself because people look at you strangely which I found completely untrue. Not only was this untrue but it was kind of the opposite. It was more rare to see people traveling together this morning. It’s quite possible that this was only the case because it was 9:00 AM on a Friday and people were going to work. But even still. But again, this is not the point I’m trying to make…

At around 9:25 I decided to go look for my class (at this point I’m panicking because not only am I afraid to get lost but I hate being late as well and getting lost would assuredly make me late!) and as I was putting my books away a woman who was standing up waiting for a seat saw me getting ready to leave and mouthed “are you leaving?” I said yes and she came over and put her things on the table. As I was leaving she, in the most sincere tone, said “thank you so much, have a great day.” And for some reason it made me feel really good. And even though the weather was miserable and I was wet and freezing, I was smiling. And the rest of my day really was great. Not that it wasn’t before I ran into that woman, but something about how genuine she was to a complete stranger made me feel really nice. Because I was in such a great mood after that, I was extremely friendly with the people I talked to after that (a rare occurence for me when I’ve been up since 6 AM). It was kind of like a pay-it-forward situation. Moral of the story: be nice to strangers, it makes them feel good :).

After Starbucks I went into North Hall and found my class right away (I had mapped it out while I was having my coffee hahaha). My professor walked in speaking Arabic and I was horrified. For a second I thought he was speaking English with an extremely heavy accent and I almost had a heart attack. I hate math as it is, and if I was going to be taught by someone I couldn’t understand it would have been all over for me. His name is E.T … not really but that’s what he wants us to call him. He was cracking jokes and I think his class might actually be enjoyable.

We did some basic algebra and he let us leave around 11 AM. I didn’t feel like jumping right back on the subway so I went into Border’s and bought the coolest Wizard of Oz calendar! I hung out there for a while and then decided to head back. Grabbed some Subway in Penn and then I left. So day one was completed effortlessly. Monday should be a little bit more complicated seeing as I have four classes but that’s okay. Bring it on.

Also, I was too lazy to re-read this and check for spelling/grammatical errors so if there are any just ignore them :).