this year was my second best in college, mostly due to being on the fencing team, which let me expel my — excess — energies. i also declared my majors, Anthropology and Film & Television, and got firmly into the swing of my classes. First semester I got a pity D in my Classical Greek 103 class mostly because I was one of three undergraduates in a class of graduate theology students, thus the professor structured the class toward them and did not realize it until it was too late for myself and another undergrad. The third undergrad had taken Greek in High School and was the best in class at translating the Iliad.
I took an existentialist philosophy class, and really got into that for awhile. I saw myself as an existentialist of the Albert Camus school, except instead of being automatic in my life of absurdity, i laughed along with it.Thus, when the campus sprinklers would turn on and spray me, i could do nothing more than shake a rueful head. some things (the sprinklers for instance) never change.
i still lived in section 4B, and it was great to have a group of freshmen in the section. We told them to do things and they did them. hehe. I also made a good friend out of Jeremy May, a new guy in 4B but a senior, who lived at the end of the hall. Through, him I also became friends with Steve Luke who spent inordinate amounts of time in my room playing Playstation (46 hours in one week that we kept track of).
Rooming with Mike was pretty darn good, apart from his taste in music which i thought rather tasteless. Our room was the common room for much of the section and it would not surprise either of us to come back from classes and find someone else in the room doing something (usually steve).
the football season was much better than the previous year, we were 9–2 and went to the Fiesta Bowl, a debacle where we were beaten to death by Beavers from Oregon State. On the fencing end of my sports life, i was working my tail off, coming in early and doing drills, begging for lessons, etc. I began to improve slowly, and my big break came when my captain Jan had to be in Cuba for a fencing tournament the same weekend of one of our tourneys at Northwestern. Thus, I got to travel, I did relatively well for my first collegiate fencing experience and by the end of the year I had managed to win enough bouts to monogram, a feat I was told was impressive for first year walkons. (PUFF PUFF EGO PUFF PUFF)
my love life sucked, but i also wasn’t trying that hard. I was sexiled for a 17 hour stretch one evening/night/morning by my roommate who let his girlfriend “accidentally” sleep past visiting hours and then told her she would have to spend the night. I spent the night on a couch in the section lounge. I then wrote about this in Harlem’s Hitlist, the vulgar section newsletter i wrote for the section in place of the incredibly sporadic ‘Roos News. This newsletter, quite harmless really, picked on particular people in the section each week, but the person picked on was always in good humor about it. except the RA, he took it upon himself, and also the rector, who happened to read my most offensive version to tell me to cease and desist, i instead took it underground and distributed it via email. i cannot be stopped.
I finally managed to get into the introductory film course, second semester of my sophomore year, after jumping through flaming hoops and wading through piranha infested waters. i had declared as a major yet they (the department) still would not give me a spot. I eventually got a spot through the general registration period, but because of the Film department’s extreme helpfulness, I was two semesters behind and therefore I was never able to take Advanced Film Production or Pro Video Production.
Thus endeth the year of the half-wise.