Falling Back

I feel guilty and rightly so. This blog was supposed to keep me on track in my new college life and journey to financial stability, but... more than a year? Where has my time gone? I could say life got busy, but then I'd be lying to myself. My rose colored perspectives on college life weren't all wrong, but they weren't all right either.

I owe this blog a bit more dedication. I also haven't done much with my finances. I'm letting it fall into the background like I said I wouldn't. I owe an update and some rethinking of my situation.

So since my last post in April, I did go to move into my dorm. I had no idea if I'd have a room or not, because they didn't explain how the system worked for me. I was thinking I'd have to find off-campus housing, but they put me in one of the low cost halls in a room by myself. It had perks... good air conditioning, a must have for a very hot summer, but mostly it was a cell. I spent my first month of classes learning the campus and being alone. It was oddly disconnecting. Contrary to popular belief, I didn't have to live on ramen. My meal plan was quite lovely that first semester. It wasn't very eventful, but when my excess funds came in, I was able to get a cheap desktop for myself. I ended up using the rest of it to pay my brother back what I owed him.

I had a job working at the Mass Media department for work study. It wasn't bad, but I don't think work study is all that beneficial for me. Sure, you don't have to pay back the money, but you also don't get it when you need it. I decided to switch to just getting the full loan and get a job on campus.

I did well my first semester. I had my first English class and a Computer Science course. I was taking Trigonometry, because they said I didn't need College Algebra since I apparently had it in high school. I had to drop it. I couldn't keep up. I ended with a 3.5 GPA and that was alright for me.

Fall semester was a little more exciting, though also... a big problem. I was taking five classes, forced to drop one because the work was overwhelming. That made two withdrawn classes already! I hate that. After promising myself I wouldn't flake out... sigh. I did well for a majority. Anthropology and Sociology intro classes I passed with an A and a B. Trigonometry I took during the regular semester and made a C, which considering it's been 6 years since I took a math course, for me that's fantastic. Taking Japanese that semester was a mistake. The first few weeks were fine, but then slowly but surely, it was downhill from there. I ended up failing Japanese, and that brought my GPA down to a 2.6. Still doing well, but what a depressing month that was.

This was also the semester that I moved to a larger, nicer, though more distant dorm. I'm thinking being on main campus is much better for my grades, but it's nicer than my cell. The roommates were a gamer chick, a legally blind lesbian girl and a Scottish exchange student. We shared a kitchen and living room, and each side had two bedrooms with a shared bathroom. I shared the side with gamer chick. She was pretty nice, but after one semester, decided to transfer. It's a shame really. I miss the girl. I can honestly say she was my best roommate. Maybe that was entirely because I hardly saw her ever. Ha!

That was the first semester I started working for the college newspaper. I hate it. I put the paper content on the website every week. It makes me $160 a month, which gets entirely sucked into food, since I reduced my meal plan to a smaller one because the prices on campus are extortionate. $15 for a frozen pizza you could get for $4 at the store. The blind roommate and me started sharing food, so we split the groceries equally. We adopted a blind guy on campus and he helped pay for food in exchange for cooking his and doing his laundry. I had a second job from doing transcribing work for him, which helped me out a lot on expenses. I owe that boy so much... a total lifesaver.

By the end of that semester, I was feeling pretty down because of my grades. I didn't go home for the holidays over winter break, choosing to save the money my parents would have spent coming to get me and just hanging around for spring semester to roll around. It was deserted there. Sitting in my room for more than two weeks after classes had ended, playing around online and eating whatever we had leftover from the last shopping trip, never setting foot outside. If any of this adventure of being my own person wasn't the dream I'd imagined, it was that two weeks. I felt so alone then. You learn to appreciate people when none of them are around.

I was coping by taking up role playing on a chat forum, and I still do it now. It doesn't cost anything, but like that game I used to play, it does sell objects for real money. You don't need them and can get funds without paying for them, so I've done pretty well not spending any money on it. I hope I'm not just lapsing into my old mistakes again...

Part two of my update will is coming up soon. I really want to pick up this blog again, just so I can focus myself on what my goals were supposed to be when I started it. I've been letting it fall back for a year already. I'm losing sight of the goals I set for myself. Let's put me back on track, shall we?