"It's a school night, y'all."

It hasn't been a "school night" for me in a really long time.  The lead up to the first day of classes (tomorrow!) has been filled with adventure and stress and travel and ridiculousness.  Since arriving in Westchester County on August 20th, I have:

• trained for and began an on-campus job
• moved my belongings not once, not twice, but 3 times
• met all of my fellow graduate students, both first and second years
• broken my key in the lock of my new place
• slept in the office of my on-campus job
• interviewed all my professors for the upcoming year

Getting locked out of my house was the most stressful event of these, obviously, exacerbated by the fact that my cell phone was dead, it was 3am, and I had been traveling since 7:30pm the night before.  Registration was beginning in 5 hours and I had no way of contacting anyone.  I now keep my broken key on my key ring as a reminder that I am capable of handling myself - even in the most ridiculous, unlucky, frustrating situations, even while sleep-deprived.


One of the revolutionary things about the education philosophy of Sarah Lawrence is that the student is solely responsible for their course of study.  There is a certain number of credits you must take, but it is your choice what classes you take.  This means that registration is an entire week here, and during that week you decide what classes you might be interested in, and then you go interview each professor individually to see if the class (and the professor) is a good fit for you.  Then once classes start, there is a drop/add period for the following 3 weeks, in case your initial impression was wrong.

At the moment, I am enrolled in 12 classes.  Yeah, double digits.  So I'm grateful for the drop/add period, in the event I've bitten off more than I can chew.  There are as follows:

1. Contemporary Dance I
2. Dance/Music Improvisation
3. Contemporary Collaborative Performance
4. History of Musical Theatre
5. Acting Poetic Realism
6. Graduate Lab
7. Playwriting for Solo Performance
8. Devise/Direct/Perform
9. Puppetry: Marionettes
10. Alexander Technique
11. Design Elements

It's been a while since I've been this excited.    :)