Lucky socks = check.
By this week, most friends are at their respective colleges–Berkeley, VC, UCLA, the like–and enjoying their first three-day weekend. I am still enjoying a 22-day weekend. September 23rd, I leave for orientation; October 1st, classes start.
My assumption is that school starts so late because Pasadena gets so HOT. When I first visited, the pre-pre-frosh visit that seems an eternity ago, it got to be 109 degrees (F) by lunchtime. Whenever I visit JPL in Pasadena, the temperatures are similarly spectacular. I saw them putting air conditioning in the Houses, though, so hopefully they’ll be quite liveable. And there’s always the tunnels.
On the other hand, prefrosh weekend was freezing and pourinabout g (to this socal native). There is nothing less fun than stumbling ’round an unfamiliar campus with your parents, a day late and with a dripping wet map. Plus, once I found people, I felt so awkward and nervous that I didn’t talk much except the weather. I suppose that’s how things start for me.
I will write, sometime in the next month, about how that experience redeemed itself and eventually got me to Caltech, but for the moment I am staring fondly at my socks and trying to remember the little I actually learned about chemistry.
Caltech, here I come.
