A few details

Alright, as promised. A real blog post, a real update.
I’ve gotten to grow up a lot since summer. I found out three weeks before school started that I didn’t get a housing spot at Clemson. My parents patted me on the back and said “it will be ok” and William and I drove up so I could find an apartment. This really was a big deal. Not living on campus, truly having to manage finances (which, I have hit a speed bump here and there but I think I have done a pretty good job). There was no way I thought I would do something like that without my parents. I had to figure out what I could afford all by myself (student loan money) and find an apartment. I’m so thankful that I had William to go with me. We did a lot of calling his mom back and forth her reminding us of other questions to ask and such. But I still couldn’t believe that I was apartment hunting without my parents there with me, that I was big enough to make that decision and sign a lease w/o their approval or there holding my hand. Right now, I kind of enjoy having bills to pay. I only have 2, rent and the electric bill that gets split among my roommates and myself. But it makes me feel grown up. I didn’t have much luck finding a job last semester and right now job hunting is kind of on the back burner. William shares his allowance with me every month, which I know isn’t very grown up, but I have become pretty good and only spending of it what I need to and saving the rest. I wasn’t sure where money for books was going to come from for this semester but I saved allowance, birthday and Christmas money and I worked some over winter break and somehow I saved enough. I was pretty proud of myself. I love having my own bedroom and being able to have a place to really call mine as opposed to a dorm. It is nice knowing that I won’t have to move all of my stuff until after I’m married. Right now I am living with two pretty great girls and am looking forward to Jessica moving in with us this summer. However, sometimes they do make me feel like a mom. I am forever going behind them turning out lights, getting the mail, making sure everything is turned off after they cook. I mediate disagreements, hug them when they need it. You know, that mom stuff. I even made a chore chart at one point. There are some things that I don’t say or do just out of the principle that I’m not their mother. Like it drives me crazy that the wet dirty dish rags are always left laying at the bottom of the sink (sorry mama, I know this always bugged you and now I understand why….EW!) Our fridge is full of things that need to be thrown out, someone really needs to take out the trash ( I may end up just doing that one today). I really look forward to having my own place with William after we are married so I can actually scold someone when they use metal forks and spoons in my new pots and pans. At one point this semester, we thought a 17 year old girl was going to be moving in with us, a senior in high school. I just wanted to cry, all I could think is “I don’t want another baby.” But like I said, all in all, Court and Chels are great. I love when we eat meals together, they are wonderful for venting to and with. There are some nights where we all just sit on someone’s bed and talk. They are both such sweet and wonderful women and they defiantly make my life interesting. It feels like a family.

School at Clemson: IS AMAZING! I love it here and couldn’t be happier. At Winthrop I was constantly involved in what seemed like everything, just trying to find a place and be part of something but I never felt like I really was. Here, I’m doing nothing but school and I feel like I belong here. Being at the same school as William is pretty cool.  We are busy during most of the week with classes and homework so we only really see one another for meals but we have most weekends together and it is defiantly better than being at two different schools. Looking back, I have no idea how we did that for two years.

Clemson is about 3 hours from WU and 4 hours from home. This being said, there are a great deal of people that I miss. Many are friends from WU. Katy is going to school in Savannah now so we are even farther apart. We keep up via facebook, texts, phone calls and skype dates. I turned 21 in November and she In January. So she called me on skype and we had a glass of wine together for her birthday. My friend Alec is another person I miss. He was at Clemson and I was so increditably excited about going to school with him again. But he is at home this year and is now anxiously waiting to leave for the air force. I got to see him a good bit while I was home for winter break and we still talk nearly every day. I really miss Jennifer, but I won’t go into that. It is great being at the same school with Bethica (Beth and Jessica) and a lot of other people that I went to high school with. Having them here is like having pieces of home. I live about 45 min away from one of my brothers and it is great getting to baby sit the boys every now and then. I loved that William and I could go to Noah’s first birthday party last month. I miss my sorority sisters. I love being able to keep up with them on facebook.

I’m not totally sure what it is about Clemson that I love so much. I’ve been trying to figure that out since before I got here. At the same time, I can only list a few trivial reasons why I didn’t like Winthrop. I didn’t like how small it was, I don’t know why I didn’t like that though. It just always felt stuffy and uptight, I always felt like I was trapped on that little campus and I never had a reason to leave. That is one thing that has been great about living off campus here. At first I was scared that living off campus would make college feel like high school. A place where I went to class and then left. I didn’t want to experience Clemson like that. I wanted to be a part of the campus, I wanted to make this my home. I kept a meal plan and have to go to school for most of my meals. I don’t have a printer at home, so I have to plan ahead when I will need something. Both of these things seem like small choices but they give me more of a reason to spend time on campus then just for class. Having a meal plan makes me get to campus early for breakfast and go back to campus for dinner. I even have to be here on the weekends, unless I want to eat soup, goldfish or ramen, a few staples that I keep in my apartment. It also lets me eat meals with friends and William and takes the worry about grocery money or time to make dinner off my shoulders. I would rarely eat a healthy meal if I had to just cook for myself every day because cooking for one seems rather pointless. I love that the school is big, but not huge. I love how much Clemson care’s about their students. At WU, don’t get me wrong, I knew they cared but I always felt like they were trying to sell everything. There seemed to me much more talk than action. At Clemson, there is a lot of action and most of the talk is just letting us know “Hey! We are paying people to provide these services for our students, you should really think about using them…please!!” Winthrop always felt like “Hey, look world! Look how great we are! We do _______ for our students!!” and then you show up and go “oh. This isn’t as great as I thought it would be.” I realize that might not make much sense to most people reading, so to state it all more clearly, I felt like Winthrop was more concerned with having a prestigious image then being an actual school, home and community. All things they were really pushing for, but everything felt forced, like they really just wanted you to go see a tutor so they could take a picture of you doing so and use it during orientation to say “hey! We care about our students!”

I often feel like Phoebe Terese from the Magic School Bus because I find myself saying the phrase “at my old school…” a lot. Almost every time I tell someone that I went to Winthrop, I hear “oh! I know someone who went there for a year!” I always laugh because I know a lot of people who “went there for a year…” I was there for two. When I was working as a peer mentor, we heard a lot about retention and I think that is because so many people do “go to Winthrop for a year.” Now, clearly, Winthrop is a good school academically and it is the right fit for many people. I know a lot of people that love it and have stayed, but, it just wasn’t the best fit for me. I was so shocked when I started here at Clemson in August because there were signs everywhere that said “Welcome Back!” – the “back” part was such a strange thing to me and really stood out. For some reason that I can’t really justify, seeing “Welcome Back” made me think of Hogwarts (again, I don’t really know why). But just seeing that “back” was so significant because “Welcome” is like a nice way of saying, you’re rather new, make yourself at home but “Welcome back” is like, hey, you’ve been here and made yourself at home before, feel free to do it again. I’m at a place where I can always come back to, they want me back, everyone comes back. Like I said, I love it here.

And now it is time for me to go to my last class of the day. So, I will bid thee farewell and I promise I will start writing more. I really really will. This is something I do for myself and if I’m not taking enough time to write then I’m not taking enough time for myself. I promise I’ll get better.