Start out strong, finish stronger.

Everyone else has gone back to school and started their classes (save Carleton, but they're St. Olaf's rival so do we really count them?). I'm finally registered for classes, and most of my textbooks have been secured. There's the $200 textbook I'm renting from the attractive upperclassman downstairs for $30 - this deal has more than one perk to it - and my other textbooks are in the mail/sitting on my mess of a desk/will be bought when the bookstore opens tomorrow morning.

It is done.

I find it strange that tonight is my "last night of summer," as the JC's pointed out. It doesn't feel like summer; I've been in my dorm for almost a week, therefore "summer" has been over for quite a while.

Tomorrow I actually start classes, which means this whole college thing is real. Mind you my first classes of my college career are Psych 125 (first-level psych required for a bunch of things, plus it's interesting), and Modern I (first-level dance class with an awesome prof). Now that is college.

I also skipped a mini workshop on how to sleep and drink caffeine and get good grades and be a good college kid to take a nap today (ironic). The tornado sirens sounded during this nap, and I like to call that karma. That also sounds like college to me.

Here's a ringing endorsement for AP Comp over AP Lit: my AP comp score is the equivalent of testing out of first-year writing, aka YAY. And this school doesn't even consider AP Lit scores, no matter how high they are. Thank you, Cardona!

I just looked up and realized what a mess my desk is, and classes haven't even started. So instead of sitting here munching on cheese-its my eleven-year-old sister sent me, the occasional pack of Scooby Doo fruit snacks that don't taste quite right, and listening to the frantic typing of a roomie who forgot to check her email - and in this case, write a paper that was requested in that email - I'm going to be a good kid and clean my desk. Start out strong, finish stronger.

And for all you highschoolers that are realizing what a bitch MoPro/whatever they call it now is how stressed you will be how much your back is going to hurt what a great year you're going to have, just know you got this. There is another side to the madness, and it isn't half bad.

Start out strong, finish stronger.