I am in New England once again after a three year hiatus and all the memories are flooding back. I remembered what was in the food court at South Station because of all the times that I was stuck there trying to get to some random place (anywhere but Concord!). I ordered a coffee and was only slightly jarred when the cashier asked me if I wanted sugar or splendar. I am loving the New England crisp fall ad beautiful leaves and was overjoyed to see old brick houses, and stone walls (or as I tried to explain them, fences made from stone piles… I am obviously not from New England).
I can’t believe that I am saying this, cannot wait to finally be able to fully unpack. I realized on the bus that I have not been in one place for more than 5 consecutive days since early May. This summer I spent three days in an apartment and then four days in the backcountry—constantly unpacking, repacking and digging through a crammed bag for a pair of pants, toothbrush, hand sanitizer and whatnot. Additionally, a lot of the weekends in Oregon were spent traveling. From Oregon I went to Grinnell for 5 days and from there I went home for about five days. Then off to Poughkeepsie for two days and from there to South Hadley, MA for two days and now finally I have made my long journey involving a couple planes, a train and come automobiles (but no boat yet!). Six weeks in one place will be a great rest from this constant movement.
At the moment I am staked out at South Station waiting for my bus to take me to my final destination. I am looking at all the students walking by wondering if one of them is my fellow classmate but to no avail. I have a feeling everyone is there already and I will be the last to arrive. We are supposed to be there by 2:00 and I think I will get by 1:55. I hope SEA semester is ready for the Frances attitude towards life: Don’t worry about it and it will eventually go away. Already I am true t form. I haven’t turned in most of my required forms, haven’t purchased my tickets from Tahiti to the US, or even know what classes I am taking tomorrow and which are reserved for the sea component. I am actually starting to wonder how I got into the program. My friend Kate looked it up and said you had to be really smart to get in. Now I know that I am smart, but I don’t think that my grades are an accurate portrayal of this. Honestly, I have no idea. I haven’t really checked my grades since first semester first year, except for Organic because I wanted to make sure I didn’t fail the class. We shall see how I measure up to the rest of the class.
I am honestly worried that I have found those 10 or so people that can deal with my overly relaxed attitude towards life, which is exceptionally rare in the field of science. Here are some examples:
~I paid my speeding ticket 6 months late because I wanted to see if the government would forget
~I flipped a coin to decide which boarding school to go to
~I applied early decision to Grinnell because I just wanted to get the college process over with and my advisor told me that I would like it. Luckily she was right.
~I got on a random bus when I was trying to get from LGA to Penn station because I figured all buses would eventually end up in Manhattan. I now know that this isn’t true, but I was lucky enough to get on a bust that ended up 2 blocks away from Penn station. I was also lucky enough to randomly get off at that stop. I was also lucky enough to walk two blocks in the right direction when I was looking for a subway station. So basically I was lucky enough to stumble upon Penn Station.
~ I am sure we could ask Jon Davis for more of these fun stories because the amount of times he yelled (politely) at me for my overly relaxed attitude is uncountable by now.
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