The First Week

A week.

I've been in San Jose for a week, plus or minus a few hours. It feels like I've been here for years, or at least months. I know where everything is, the weather, the schedule, the people, everything. It's really weird, almost scary.

Summer, summer summer...BAM...college. No transition whatsoever. At 1130 last Saturday I was in Pleasanton, at 1300 I was in San Jose. But I didn't even notice. High school student to college student in seconds. I had no emotion, at all. Leaving home, leaving parents, no emotion. New friends, exciting new place, no emotion. I guess I'm really adaptive...I've always thought you need to roll with the changes, but the total apathy of the fact that my life is 100% different is something I did not expect.

Anyway, THIS PLACE IS AWESOME. I can get out my longboard and ride around in the summer heat at 3 in the morning. I can play loud music until 10, when the RA kicks in the door. I can do homework whenever, 24-7, party until midnight and work until 4. I can wake up whenever the heck I want. ULTIMATE FREEDOM.

But I don't abuse it. I'm very pleased to discover that the morals and goals I set a long time ago have not faltered at all. Some of them have even strengthened. I have turned in all of my work, and have a 4.0 GPA (which is a good start, but doesn't say much since it's still the first week.) In the one week I've been here, I have not had a single drop of alcohol, a single cigarette, or a single puff of hookah. Why are hookahs so popular, I don't get it. Because they're legal and not quite as harmful, I guess. I'll have a few bottles now and then, but I've pretty much determined that I'll usually be the DD, rather than getting flat-out hammered and waking up in the middle of the quad with two fat chicks on top of me (TRUE STORY by the way, from one of the RAs.) I'm happy with my status so I'll keep it status quo.

And HERE is a run-through of my new life thus far:

~

*DORM ROOM:
My room is outstanding. I'm on the top floor of the seven floor CVC building (which is entirely Freshman.) I have a huge desk with two drawers and a file cabinet, four enormous drawers under the bed, a full armoire, and a full closet. There are eight closets total, two for each of the four rooms. Two bathrooms, four sinks, two showers, and a lounge. Broken down, thats eight of us, two to each room and sink, four to each shower / toilet.

The bed is extraordinarily comfortable, air conditioning is great. Windows open most of the way, and don't have screens which makes it possible to throw water balloons out of, which some kids have already been busted. I have a view of the quad and the CVB building, which is 15 stories and houses the upperclassmen.

The lounge for our suite is a hotspot. We have four blacklights with posters of Bob Marely, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, snowboarders, Subaru WRXs, and whatever. Super Nintendo, N64, and 32" TV. The TV will be a 50" plasma pretty soon, and we're upgrading to an Xbox. We have two turntables, a mixer, iPod hookup, and a 5 speaker / 2 woofer system, which is FUCKING LOUD. They turned it all the way up last week and the RA from the third floor kept running around until he found out where it was coming from and yelled at us. We have an enormous refrigerator, which barely fits the size constraints. Finally are the red string lights in the window, which can easily be seen from anywhere in the quad.

We have tons of people filing through here. We hit 23 max, and our limit is 24. Our room number is 724, and our rep on campus is that we're 24-7 (get it?) Everything is in regulation, but we made sure to push everything in the limit. Nobody has been drinking in here due to the 2-strikes-expulsion rule, but they come up here after they get drunk, so it's a party room anyway. Pretty dope. Apparently the kids last year also called it 24-7 but were totally out of control--you can tell by the dents in the walls--they said they had 54 people in the room (well over twice the limit,) and I don't have the faintest idea how they fit that many people in here without having some standing in the toilets.

Anyway, room is dope.

~

*ROOMMATES:
Roommates are cool. My roommate is Andrew, who is from Truckee. We have some things in common, like to ski/board, want to play drums/guitar, like Rock.

Actually it's really odd how everything worked out. Every single one of the eight of the us likes the same general kind of music, like the same kind of sports, etc. I'm the only one that doesn't really drink much. All of us are from the Bay Area except Andrew and I think Rob, who is from Sacramento. We usually agree on everything from sports to politics. Most are engineering majors.

Names are Andrew, Blake, Rob, Adam, John, Aaron, and Nick.

~

*CAMPUS
This campus is absolutely incredible. It is fairly small, 6 blocks by four blocks. It's entirely flat, which is amazing for boarding, biking, or skating. Four of us bought longboards on Tuesday, so I think everybody in here has a board now. We are about a mile and a half from Walmart, couple of blocks from 7-11, and some other stores. We are smack in the center of Downtown San Jose. Three blocks from Cesar Chaves park, where the famous Fairmont hotel is located and they hold free concerts and such. The Tech Museum is across the street from the park. HP Pavilion is about a mile away as well, bordering the Business District.

The classes take me about 10 minutes max to get to, especially on the board. Might be a little longer when it starts raining. Everything is easy to get to, long straight pathways. Complete opposite of UC Santa Cruz, which is like a damn maze in the trees.

The cool thing is that we're urban, but we have problems that only come with urban areas. For example, at any given time, there are at least three hobos with shopping carts out hunting for whatever it is that they hunt for. If I ever go out after dusk I carry a fatty bottle of pepper gel, which burns like no other. We've had a bunch of people get jumped around here, to the South and East. That is where the kind-of-ghetto residential area is, North and West is all business and is pretty clean. After about a mile of going south through a housing area, it is all industrial, which is where our football stadium is (the SJ Earthquakes play there as well.)

~

*FOOD:
Oh my God, this place is like a 4 star restaurant. You can eat three times a day, just walk in and swipe your ID, and then it's ALL YOU CAN EAT. There's a Mexican place, Asian, American, and Italian, and they change up the dishes every couple of days. Huge drink bar area with 8 types of juice, including Guava (pinch me), sodas, Cappuccino and Coffee / Hot Chocolate, milk, ICEE things, and some sparkling juice things like Apple Cider and whatever. In the morning they have like a million types of cereal, omelets, breakfast burritos...words cannot describe this place.

There are also several restaurants on campus where the ID card can be used like debit-- Subway, Starbucks, and Burger King to name a few. We also have some little convenience stores to use the ID cards at, so I can buy protein shakes before I work out for three hours. With all of this free food I'm taking in as many calories as possible, and then working it all off. I'm going for a full diet on the food pyramid, with emphasis on meat. We have a pool, track, and a full gym so I intend to gain the Freshman 15 while everybody else is afraid of it. Except my F15 is going to be all muscle...I'm aiming for 30 extra pounds by the end of the year. I'm tired of being skinny and really white. I'm going to be buff and really white.

~

*FACILITIES:
Really good facilities. There is a full kitchen and huge TV in the floor lounge down the hall, so I can go bake a cake and eat the whole thing. The laundry room is on the first floor, but the God damn machines don't have locks so you have to sit and play with your dick for two hours while the dryer is running.

In the building next door there are pool tables and foosball tables, and a full computer lab where I can steal paper. The internet blows like a hurricane, so I'm going to have to go pay 250 bucks for the high-speed upgrade. The entire campus is wireless, except for the dorms. Eric and I bought a Linksys and are trying to put up a shared secure network, but the Linksys is fighting me tooth and nail. Seriously, it refuses to work. I asked it nicely and it spit at me, so I threw it at the wall. Then it put me in a headlock and...nevermind. The wireless isn't working yet.

The athletic facilities are in good shape. Like I mentioned earlier, there's a huge pool with lanes and a diving section, a full gym, racquetball and basketball courts, four ice rinks, a pool room, ping-pong room, and a bowling alley. Yes, a bowling alley. The ice rinks are where I will be taking my hockey class, which is going to rock my socks off. They are owned by San Jose State and are on the same block as our football stadium (athletic complex is a mile away from the main campus,) but are operated by the San Jose Sharks organization. The Sharks practice on our rinks, pretty sick.

I think that's it for facilities, except our labs which I haven't even been in yet, but are supposedly top-notch (SJSU is consistently rated one of the top engineering schools in the country.)

~

*CLASSES:
My classes are amazingly awesome. I am currently taking PreCalculus (Math 19) and workshop (Math 19W), English 1A, Mechanical / Aerospace Engineering 15, Communications 20 (a public speaking class), and Ice Hockey, for a total of 16 credits. The reason I'm an engineer in PreCalc is because I last took that class Junior year, and didn't understand everything because Mrs. James was an imbecile. Nice person, but did not get the point across.

The PreCalc professor is an Indian lady named Mrs. Bodas. She should have taken the comedian route rather than becoming a teacher, she's hilarious. The assistant that runs the lab class is also Indian, and speaks with a heavy accent at a thousand words per second.

The hockey class is basically going to be 2.5 hour open ice sessions every week, which is going to be totally radical. Dude. Not sure who the "professor" for that class is quite yet.

I haven't had the English or Comm classes yet because I just signed up for them (I've rearranged my schedule more times in the past 7 days than I've been able to keep track of.) For Engineering we have no homework outside of 8 1-page writeups, no book, no tests, and no final. The teacher is a Spanish guy named Barez, who also has a sense of humor. You have no idea how rare it is to find an Engineering professor, or anybody in Engineering, with a sense of humor. For that class we will taking a number of field trips and have a bunch of guest speakers come in. This is why I am at San Jose State for engineering, and why we are so well known for it. We have hundreds, if not thousands of business connections in the industry, since we are in Silicon Valley. And in any business, engineering in particular, it isn't just what you know, it's who you know. The first day of class, this is what he said:

"No longer can you graduate with a 4.0 GPA and say "Hey General Electric, come and hire me, Ford, come and hire me." It doesn't work like that anymore. You need connections, the field is all about connections now, it's called networking. And that is what we are going to do, build resumes, create connections, find internships."

He is exactly right, and this is why I will have a job, let alone a high-paying job, before anybody else who is majoring in engineering, especially aerospace engineering. We have a field trip to NASA Ames in two weeks.

~

*WEATHER:
It has been warm 24-7 since I got here. Very pleasant at night, mid to upper seventies. During the day it has been in the upper nineties, which is abnormally hot for San Jose, and not very fun. We have air conditioning, but one of the dorm buildings does not. On average the weather here is mild, 5-10 degrees cooler than Pleasanton when it's hot but a few degrees warmer in the winter, because of fog cover.

~

*GIRLS:
There are a lot of girls here, you could've assumed that. Most of them have already been in our dorm. Actually that's probably an unfair exaggeration, but our room is definitely popular. Nothing yet from me, because I am still too shy and picky, as you may know. I'm hoping I'll be able to open up a bit, without turning into a drunk raving asshole that rapes every fuckable object at the Frat parties. Because that's just not me.

~

*PRANKS:
I haven't really done anything interesting yet, especially to Eric who will retaliate with full force. I'm planning though, oh yes I am, and whatever hacks I pull off are going to be of M.I.T. caliber. If you don't know what that means, M.I.T. kids are geniuses who have too much time on their hands, so they manage to pull off prank stunts that aren't destructive, but people remember them because they're so outrageously clever. For example, disassembling an entire server rack in an engineering lab and rebuilding and wiring it back at the Frat house and putting it online. Or deconstructing an entire police car and putting it back together on top of a building. We will see.

~

*SKIING:
I had to add this, because one of the reasons I am in San Jose is because I ski. I'm not even kidding, if I had to go to school in southern California, I would crack. NO SNOW. ANYWHERE. It's the same here, for now. Everybody in my suite snowboards, which is better than nothing, I guess. There are snow-related posters on the walls, ski and board magazines everywhere, and I'm about to lose it because it's not even September.

When winter comes, I will be skiing. Lots. Anybody who wants to hit the slopes, let me know and I'll be glad to give you a ride up in the Scion, so you can help me pay for gas a little bit, keep me awake, and admire my interior lighting.

~

All in all, a good first week. Topped off by the fact that we just beat UC Davis 13-10 in the first football game of the year. People are out screaming and partying in the quad, horns honking everywhere. I feel like I'm back in New York.

I hope you've all enjoyed the first taste of your college experiences, or will once you begin. Keep in touch.



✌ & ♥

kdawg

Current Mood: Chill

Listening To: "Writing to Reach You" by Travis