Thank you for reading my first chapter and giving me such great reviews.
Well, this is my next chapter. I hope you enjoy it---as much as I did writing it---and, if you have anything to say, please review. Any questions, comments, criticisms you may have you are welcome to post, it would really get me inspired to write the next chapter.
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"Yes Mom, I'm fine…. uh huh…it's real big…yes, just like in the picture…ya, I promise I'll call…uh huh…all right…bye," I say, closing the phone hurriedly. Just Mom. Worried to death. It hasn't even been a day since I've been here and already she's calling to see how I'm doing. She was calling on my cell, by the way, which I got as a birthday present. It works long distance.
There is a kind of excited atmosphere running around my dorm as I look around, and, a certain amount of pride wells up in the pit of my stomach as I take it all in. In just an hour I managed to settle in, my clothes already neatly folded into their petite drawers, my makeup laid out carefully on the desk with the mirror, my bed all done up nice---I don't know what came over me, truly, I don't, my dorm must be pumped with happy gas or something equally cheery---complete some forms at the main office, get my hair straightened, put fresh make-up on, and talk to my mom. I feel refreshed. It's a new start, with new people and a new place. All I have to work on is switching my weirdo dial to low, instead of explosively high.
Just then, a girl clad with a various assortment of bags and holding a mountainous amount of books enters through the dorm door. A second later, I hear a loud bang as everything she is holding slips from her hands. Some clothes escape through her bags and wind up lying on the floor, and, papers that slipped through her folders now decorate the dorm carpet, along with some books. Watching the scene unfold in front of me, I work up the energy to get up from very comfortable position on the couch to go and help her pick up her things. I start by piling up her books and then move on to collect her papers.
"Thank…thank you," she stutters, embarrassed. "What a great way to start term. Gosh, I am such a klutz," she chuckles, stooping down to pick up the clothes lying on the floor.
"Don't worry about it," I assure her, putting the papers on her bed, which is on the left side of the room, by the way. I took the right, next to the window. The one with the little seat.
"I'm Dana, your roommate," she says, offering up her free hand.
"Suze," I reply, taking her hand. Well, most people call me that. "Well," I say after a few seconds, looking around, "other than the wall peeling, the carpet being threadbare, and the desks decomposing, the dorm is not too hideous," I declare. "Add to it the fact that the window opens, that makes this a very good dorm," I add.
Dana looks around, as if to give approval to the description that I had just given her. "Yeah, only you forgot the very creative graffiti drawn on the beds," she says, mockingly. Then, taking her pile of clothes, she moves to sit on the bed next to me. So that is how, in the next hour, I ended up helping Dana fold up all of her clothes, put all her papers back into their appropriate folder, and arrange all of her things up on to the table.
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I'm majoring in sociology and psychology, with a minor in English and criminology. I look at it this way: since I already hold an informal career in helping people, I might as well do it professionally, and, gaining a little more knowledge about how to do it efficiently would really help me, you know. Why criminology, you might ask, well, I need to know a little something about how the law works. That is, so I could break it without getting caught. Not that I'm a criminal. Really, I'm not. It's just that sometimes I need to break the law to help out my invisible friends, and I can't exactly, well, say that so-and-so's dead mother had asked me to do her a favor which eventually lead to me breaking the law.
Well, with my career choice set, I head off to my first class early Monday morning. Ok, it's not that early. It's at eleven. So I lied. Yeah, I'm not really a morning person, and I would have taken a later time, but it was either that or at eight, so the choice was obvious. My first class is English, but I don't think I'll be able to really concentrate since I've still got jet lag, but I guess that's ok since this is my minor. Plus it's English, and I'm sure I still haven't forgotten how to speak it. Yeah, I know it has nothing to do with that, but still, it shouldn't be too hard, right?
It takes me a few minutes to find the campus (even though I live right beside it) and, another few minutes to find my so-called "classroom", which, really, is just a little bit bigger than my whole school back in California. It's a bit overwhelming, and there must be a few thousand people in the class, too. I take the row somewhere in the middle, since I don't really want the teacher to catch me sleeping, but I also don't want to have to get hearing aids to be able to hear her either. At the moment, she's organizing a bunch of papers on her desk, and, a second later she starts shuffling her things around and lifting up the books on the table. She's looking for something, her glasses? Nope, the microphone. She puts the microphone on, and, unexpectedly, we are all greeted by really bad feedback. Some of the kids up at the front put their hands up over their ears, looking pained. Thank god I decided not to sit there.
"Welcome," she screeches, with a hint of feedback. The kids up at the front close their ears again. They wait apprehensively, afraid to let go of their ears. "I am Mrs. Johnson, and I will be you English professor," she continues, some more feedback. "In this course, I will be training you in theory, criticism, literature, and writing," she says firmly, her face crumpled up into a ball, her lips stern and unwavering.
"We will examine numerous items, some of which will include the feminist theory and poetic styles. We'll also review the proper writing of a thesis essay and take it to a whole new level, beyond the amateurish style you were taught in high school," Mrs. Johnson recites in monotone.
And on and on it went, for an hour and a half, while she went on to describe, feedback included, what we were going to be studying and how we were going to do it. After Mrs. Johnson's lecture, though, I was free until two, when I was going to be taking Sociology. So I just hung back in my dorm. Dana was going to be back at one thirty. She left for her Biology class at twelve. Yes, biology. I know. She's taking all the sciences, by the way, and a math, which she's majoring in no less. No wonder all the bags and the books and the folders. I found out she also got a scholarship. Yeah. She doesn't know I know, though. While she was in the shower, I was going through her things. No, not for evil purposes. I was looking for her makeup kit, wanting to borrow her lipstick, when I found out she owned none, poor girl, but I did find the sheet of paper informing her that she is eligible to receive a scholarship of, hear this, $20 000. Oh, yeah. When she came back I tried to act like I hadn't seen anything. Good job me. Give myself a pat on the back.
I was finishing my English homework, the one Mrs. Prune Johnson was itching to give us in order repay us for being young and wanting to go to University, when Dana came back.
"Hello," she chortles as she enters, dropping her bag and flopping down on the couch next to me. "How was English?"
"Bitching, half the kids were asleep by the end, and if some though it was even slightly interesting at the beginning, they certainly didn't feel so by the end. I was semi-conscious all the way through it. How was bio?" I ask, only semi-interested, though this question triggered a surprisingly major discussion about helper T cells and how the receptor proteins attached to their membranes can help the cells recognize invaders, and, how it can do something else that I didn't quite hear because I sort of tuned out. I left at ten-to-two for my sociology class, relieved, as I was saved from hearing another major discussion about how "the immune system responds in destroying invaders", as Dana put it.
Sociology was my last class for the day. It was taught by Mr. Borcowitz, a man with a tightly bound face, as though it was held together by sticky glue, a thin mouth that frowned when he smiled, or rather, smirked---he doesn't smile, I don't think---and beady little eyes that, when they managed to find me, held my gaze like a laser beam. To be totally honest, he didn't like me right of the bat.
As soon as he began his lesson, he asked me for my name, and, shortly after, began to ask me questions, completely aware, I'm sure, that we have not learned an ounce of what he was asking me. I, dumfounded, rang off all I could think of, only to be met by his stern criticisms about how students like me, the lazy ones, need to start paying more attention in classes and give full efforts to our studies, otherwise we were wasting our time and money. I was laughed out of class, as, getting fed up, I started a heated argument with him, and, accidentally blurted out that I thought he was a complete moron. Not something you want to let slip about your professor. On the first day of class no less. I was so screwed. Why can't I ever keep my mouth shut?
So, after that performance, I walked back to my dorm in a daze, wondering what I did wrong. I was so out of it that I was completely unaware of where I was going, until I crashed into something heavy. At first I though it was the wall, but then I looked up, and, no, I'm not that lucky, it was some guy, straight black hair, tough looking. He muttered something that sounded like sorry. I was so flustered that I didn't say anything. I just kept on walking. Back to my dorm, where it was safe and far away from people. Well, not really far, but it did provide a sort of barrier against them. So, now I am sitting, no, sulking, on the couch, reminiscing about how I screwed up on my first day of class. Stupid bum, that Mr. Borcowitz, he is. I'll show him. He is so not getting away with making me look stupid.