My New Room
We’ll, it’s just after three on a hot Stellenbosch Monday afternoon, I’m relaxed and settled into a new flat and behind me lies my first day back at university. Ahead of me lies angry, anguish, fear and tears, but those will come in due time. Right now I’m very comfortable with a full stomach sitting in my new high back black leather chair listening to good music. The only responsibility I have is to read a few pages from my new textbooks. Yay, new textbooks! For the first time in two years I had to go into a SHOP and BUY new textbooks. Last year we either used the books from the first year or pre-ordered everything from the respective departments. University policy changed and we no longer get cheap books (Today’s take nearly cost me about R750 ≈ $125) but I am still the envy of many economic and law students to buy textbooks until it comes out of their ears.
I’ve been wanting to make a post everyday since Thursday, but every time something came up. No, it’s not because of my hectic social schedule; on the contrary, in fact. To recap:
As Thursday progressed, it slowly turned into a rather awful day. I’ve thought about the causes a bit, especially while complaining about it to Nikki (who is sick at the moment, but still bared with me – thanks babe, and get well soon!) and it turned out that it was quite a melange of different reasons. There was the pre-start-of-university anxiety. There was the fear and resentment towards exclusionary friends. There was the resentment of other’s fortune, despite the fact that I believed that I had gotten over that a long time ago and an array of little accidents and mishaps that can conveniently be described as Murphy kicking you when you are down. I have discussed these things and reflected upon them in an e-mail to Nikki, so I’m not going to repeat myself for my own sake; it was just a really bad day that was fed by paranoia and anger.
Thursday evening was “Vensters”: plays put on but the first years’ in the hostels which is part of the yearly Rag festivities. This year was good, most of what we saw was really nice. Vensters now is sponsored by the Municipality of Stellenbosch, which means there are emergency vehicles everywhere. I saw less of them this year than last year and it might have been a little easier to get some alcohol. Other than that it was pretty normal.
Friday morning was the start of the MCM Applied Mathematical Olympiad (that was a point of resentment – I had applied for participation but wasn’t chosen, but I’m over it by now, really). Some of my friends are taking part and, upon receiving news that “it’s difficult”, another friend and I went to pay them a visit. It was a slightly more dismal sight than I had anticipated: it was a Saturday afternoon and they were slumped over computers grasping to find a working strategy or algorithm. I saw some of them again today and they say they have a solution, but they are not terribly enthusiastic about it. Knowing what the problems are, it’s probably a good thing that I wasn’t chosen. I would probably have opted to do the other problem. The competition ends tomorrow morning 03:00 (GMT +02:00) and I wish the participants good luck for this final stretch!
Friday is a blur. I can’t remember what happened. I most likely lazed about for one last time.
Saturday a friend helped me to move the big stuff (bed, desk etc.) with his dad’s bakkie, so I started to move it. We worked at a slower pace than when we could’ve and when we were finished we lazed about town, but it went well. We were quite tired by the end of it and just went home early. Yesterday was the official move and I very slowly packed up my things and loaded the car. It was already dark outside when I set off. This was mostly due to procrastination from my part, but in the end everything went smooth. My cousin and I are getting along quite well. We’re also going to be staying out of each other’s hair, so there shouldn’t be any problems.
So now I’m sitting in my new room: it has four walls (my room at home technically has more), a bed (with an uncomfortable mattress), a desk (which I need to try to adjust, dimension wise), a PC stand (which has a slight wobble) with a PC, my new chair, a lamp that doesn’t work (so now I have to use the lava lamp Nikki gave me), a fan, a nightstand, built-in cupboards and a good supply of cloths and (mostly old) study material. Not much, some might say, but as I am sitting here on my soft throne, it is my kingdom.
I still don’t have that feeling of decadent freedom (I mean that less serious than it sounds) that comes from living in a flat, mostly because I live with my cousin and with him being older, being here first and with his father owning the place, I still feel a bit constrained. Maybe that’s just me being considerate or maybe I’ll loosen up later. Until then, the king commands you go have a drink to celebrate this moment where I blissful in the face of the oncoming storm!
I’ve been wanting to make a post everyday since Thursday, but every time something came up. No, it’s not because of my hectic social schedule; on the contrary, in fact. To recap:
As Thursday progressed, it slowly turned into a rather awful day. I’ve thought about the causes a bit, especially while complaining about it to Nikki (who is sick at the moment, but still bared with me – thanks babe, and get well soon!) and it turned out that it was quite a melange of different reasons. There was the pre-start-of-university anxiety. There was the fear and resentment towards exclusionary friends. There was the resentment of other’s fortune, despite the fact that I believed that I had gotten over that a long time ago and an array of little accidents and mishaps that can conveniently be described as Murphy kicking you when you are down. I have discussed these things and reflected upon them in an e-mail to Nikki, so I’m not going to repeat myself for my own sake; it was just a really bad day that was fed by paranoia and anger.
Thursday evening was “Vensters”: plays put on but the first years’ in the hostels which is part of the yearly Rag festivities. This year was good, most of what we saw was really nice. Vensters now is sponsored by the Municipality of Stellenbosch, which means there are emergency vehicles everywhere. I saw less of them this year than last year and it might have been a little easier to get some alcohol. Other than that it was pretty normal.
Friday morning was the start of the MCM Applied Mathematical Olympiad (that was a point of resentment – I had applied for participation but wasn’t chosen, but I’m over it by now, really). Some of my friends are taking part and, upon receiving news that “it’s difficult”, another friend and I went to pay them a visit. It was a slightly more dismal sight than I had anticipated: it was a Saturday afternoon and they were slumped over computers grasping to find a working strategy or algorithm. I saw some of them again today and they say they have a solution, but they are not terribly enthusiastic about it. Knowing what the problems are, it’s probably a good thing that I wasn’t chosen. I would probably have opted to do the other problem. The competition ends tomorrow morning 03:00 (GMT +02:00) and I wish the participants good luck for this final stretch!
Friday is a blur. I can’t remember what happened. I most likely lazed about for one last time.
Saturday a friend helped me to move the big stuff (bed, desk etc.) with his dad’s bakkie, so I started to move it. We worked at a slower pace than when we could’ve and when we were finished we lazed about town, but it went well. We were quite tired by the end of it and just went home early. Yesterday was the official move and I very slowly packed up my things and loaded the car. It was already dark outside when I set off. This was mostly due to procrastination from my part, but in the end everything went smooth. My cousin and I are getting along quite well. We’re also going to be staying out of each other’s hair, so there shouldn’t be any problems.
So now I’m sitting in my new room: it has four walls (my room at home technically has more), a bed (with an uncomfortable mattress), a desk (which I need to try to adjust, dimension wise), a PC stand (which has a slight wobble) with a PC, my new chair, a lamp that doesn’t work (so now I have to use the lava lamp Nikki gave me), a fan, a nightstand, built-in cupboards and a good supply of cloths and (mostly old) study material. Not much, some might say, but as I am sitting here on my soft throne, it is my kingdom.
I still don’t have that feeling of decadent freedom (I mean that less serious than it sounds) that comes from living in a flat, mostly because I live with my cousin and with him being older, being here first and with his father owning the place, I still feel a bit constrained. Maybe that’s just me being considerate or maybe I’ll loosen up later. Until then, the king commands you go have a drink to celebrate this moment where I blissful in the face of the oncoming storm!
posted by phantom-99w at 15:14
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home