College

Dude, I only have three more weeks until I move in to the dorms at UNI for marching band camp! How in the world did this sneak up like this?? I have one more week of freedom (ish- Mother keeps taking me shopping for things I might need for my dorm room) then a two-week family vacation. That's going to be fun. We get to visit OS1 and her daughters. (1 and 3-years-old) They're so cute! It's hard to visit them often when they live in Tennessee where my Army Man brother-in-law is stationed currently. After that, we're going to Washington D.C. to expand on the trip our school gives us when we're in 7th grade. We're going to be staying with an old family friend who will also act as our tour guide. It sounds like great fun. We get home on the 13. The 15th is my day to move in to UNI and it's the first day of band camp. That's ridiculously close!!!

Sure, UNI should be fun. I'll make new friends, learn new things, prepare for a career, do social things, but it'll be extremely different from my life here. First of all, no in-home day care in college. I really don't think I'll miss that part. Secondly, no siblings at UNI. Not sure if I'll miss them or not. Chances are it'll be a mix of both. Thirdly, I'll have quite a bit of unstructured free time in between and after classes. I'll probably get a job, but I'll also have a ton of homework. I really hope I don't end up with too much homework....That would kinda suck. No, that would really suck.

My roommate seems pretty cool, so there shouldn't be any problems there. She apparently went on a road trip for most of June. She and her sister traveled through thirteen states before ending up back here in Iowa. She sounds pretty nice. I hope we get along well when we live together.

Living in Campbell Hall is going to be interesting. Our room is apparently right down the hall from the laundry rooms. I don't know if this is going to be a good thing or a bad thing. It's on the first floor, so it's not like I have to run up and down stairs all day or anything. Our room does have a sink in it, though the showers and bathrooms are somewhere down the hall. Our dorm is not the special one with air conditioning, so all we have to cool ourselves during the end of August is a giant window and any fans we bring. At least the school year is mostly cold.

When I leave, I don't know if I'll end up with a car with me. I don't know if I'll need it, and it's not actually mine to have. I have it in exchange for running errands for my parents. Not having a car would limit how often I came home, but there are always going to be people heading home on the weekends. Chances are I wouldn't have to look to hard to find someone going near my home to ask them if they can give me a ride. With or without a car, I would definitely have to come home for Christmas Break (not that I don't want to). Campbell Hall is not one of the few that are open in between the fall and spring semesters, so I wouldn't be able to stay in my room for that period of time. Good thing I was planning on going home anyway. That's somewhere around the 16th of December....