Orientation: Day 2

     I woke up Friday morning at 6:15 (voluntarily, fifteen minutes before my alarm went off) because I'm always paranoid that I'm gonna oversleep when there's no one to make sure I get up. Anyway, I rolled out of bed and got dressed and ready and by 7AM my roommate was up but by then breakfast had started so I just said bye and went down to breakfast alone. I got some granola and yogurt and scouted out a lonely table to sit at by my lonesome. But after a few minutes the rest of the group came down and we ate breakfast together (minus the two guys and James) and then we met James outside J&H and sat in our circle and James was like "Sorry for not responding to your texts" (some people had been texting in the group message the night before and that morning asking whether we needed to pack up our stuff and take it out of the dorms) and then he was like "I just woke up like ten minutes ago" and then proceeded to tell us about this all-night-long psychedelic dream he had that involved Santa, space-time continuums, made-up cartoon characters, and Daniel Radcliffe.
     After our little pow wow of James Weirdness (I say this lovingly) we went to a study abroad session, which was long but vaguely interesting.

     For lunch, we ate at Morgan Hall and James and I were the first to get our lunches and I was just looking around for the rest of our group and James like loud-whispered "The secret room" to me while walking in the opposite direction so I awkwardly followed him to the "secret room" which was just like a separate section of the cafeteria that looked like maybe it was for staff or something and I was like "This is okay?" (secretly hoping that I had misunderstood and only he was allowed to sit there and I could just kind of slip back out...) and he was like "Nah that's why we're doing it" and I was like "Oh okay" and then he was like "Yeah it's fine." But I didn't want to be alone with James in the secret room because I'd unwittingly put my stuff down next to him instead of across from him or like at the other end of the table (like a normal, smart person) so I was like "I'm going to the bathroom. I'll be back." I really did have to pee, but I also didn't want to have a one-on-one convo with James. Luckily I saw a girl from our group in the bathroom and she mentioned the secret room and I was like "Oh thank goodness I'm not alone" in my head so I went back out and there were like four other trays at the table but no one was actually in the room yet so I sat down and started eating and this conversation ensued:

James: "Where did you say you were from?"

Me: "Hagerstown, Maryland. It's like an hour and a half from Baltimore."

James: "Oh okay I remember that now."

Me: "Yeah it's totally country."

James: "Oh it's that part of Maryland."

Me: "Yeah, Western Maryland."

James: "I have cousins from Annapolis."

Me: "Oh okay. That's like...two hours away."

Silence. Eating noises.

     Then everyone came in and Aaron made some comment about how every time he took a bite of his salad he smelled something fishy and we all laughed (Aaron was kind of a butthole but said the most random, funny things sometimes) but even after we'd all stopped James kept laughing silently and weirdly for like a minute straight and then all he said was that when he saw Aaron on campus he had to show him some WKUK video that he couldn't show us then because it was inappropriate. I don't even want to know. Then after a while James was like "I'm gonna go outside and listen to some music if anyone wants to come" but most of us except Aaron and one other girl stayed and talked for a bit and finished lunch before meeting James and the others back outside. One girl was like "If he's just going to go sit on the grass and listen to music...I'm gonna get dessert." Harsh but...hard to argue with dessert. We all made fun of James so much. It wasn't even that we didn't like him or anything...it was more like he was that weird older brother who you didn't understand at all but he's just so unabashedly himself you can't help but find it slightly endearing...and then make fun of him constantly.

     After lunch, when we were all sitting on the grass outside Morgan Hall and James was playing his obscure hipster music someone got on the topic of Sufjan Stevens and James was like "That was a stage of my life" and someone suggested playing a Sufjan Stevens song but James was like "I can't, it's too sad." And at first I was like "What's sad about Sufjan Stevens?" And then I thought about the song "Chicago" and the line about sitting in the van with his friends and how all things go and in my head I was like "Okay I see the sadness in that song at this juncture in my life..." James had the most random music taste ever. One minute we'd be listening to "All Star" ("Hey now you're a rock star") then Bob Marley ("One love one heart let's get together and feel all right") then the Beatles ("I get by with a little help from my friends, I get high with a little help from my friends") then instrumental indie rock no one had ever heard of with names like "Note Killer". When these College of Liberal Arts kids started talking about music I kept my mouth shut because they were spewing band names that I had never even heard of and in my head I was like "For the first time in my life, I'm sure I'd be so mainstream to like Vance Joy and the Lumineers and Beirut...so I'm just going to pretend like I have no idea what music is."

     Someone decided that we needed a group pic when we were sitting on the lawn listening to James' obscure music and then one of the girls jokingly suggested we all peep out from a tree and James thought it was a great idea so we did it...it's the most awkward, cheesy picture ever. After that James "showed us around campus" which meant he took us to the humanities building and we sat in a classroom with a 180 degree city view and James sat at the front in the teacher's chair and fell out of it holding his tea and sloshed it everywhere. It was a little bit hilarious.

     Then James took us to the "secret garden".  By the time we got there I was all sweaty because we had to "double time it" in order to make it to the athletics program on time-ish. None of us really cared about athletics though so James was like "It's okay if we're late. They're just gonna tell you to come to the football games." Anyway we got to the "secret garden" (which one girl pointed out wasn't very secret since he brought all of his orientation kids to it) and it wasn't very big and it was super overgrown but there was a cool mural and a haiku written on the wall: "May yo seasons be long with endless green streets and permanent summer legs." I don't know why I liked the poem so much but I did, especially the "permanent summer legs" part. So even though the garden was nothing spectacular it was still worth seeing, for the poetry.

     We were a couple minutes late to the athletics presentation (even though we "booked it") but it was fine. Of course instead of getting inspired to join the Cherry Crusade or any Temple sports I just got today's song rec from one of their inspirational football videos (woo, we beat Penn State!).

     After the athletics thing we finally had academic advising/scheduling. It was here that I heard the most glorious news: I was exempt from taking any more science, math, or history classes...for the rest of my life. Instead I'm taking "Shakespeare in the Movies", "Race and Poverty in the Americas", "Youth Culture", Spanish Basics II, and a required honors English class. I'm in love with my schedule at this point. Pure love. After scheduling it was time for us to go to the New Owl Send Off...but we were late and missed it (thanks James) so instead we just headed back to J&H and packed up our stuff. I wound up walking back and forth across campus because in between when I last checked my phone my mom had changed the location of her vehicle...sigh. And then I thought I was being helpful by telling a kid where the bell tower was but I got the name of the street wrong (I told him it was Liacouras Walk but it was Polett Walk) so I kind of secretly hope I never see him again. He probably missed his train because of me. I am a complete and utter mess.
     Then after I got home, DL picked me up and then we picked Morgan up at Lowe's where she'd been picking out a stove for four hours and we went to Friendly's and were completely dysfunctional the entire dinner. I just totally lost all of my social graces in front of MF and DL. It was like I'd been trying so hard for two days straight to be normal and nice and conversational and polite and then I was like "Screw this, this is awful, I'm just going to be weird and messy and human." After spending the evening with DL and MF eating 9PM salads and ice creams and taking random stops to Weis to peruse the aisles and buy cardboard-stale-leftover-Cheez-It-dust chips (cough cough MF) and driving in DL's car, I came home and started thinking about the kids I'd met at orientation and how it had felt like we had a lot in common at the time but compared to two people whom I've known more than half my life...well those people were absolute strangers whom I had nothing in common with. And it made me realize that we kind of do what we have to do to survive. We form temporary, meaningless friendships so that we don't have to sit alone or walk alone or stay silent for 48 hours straight but once we're back in our comfort zone...those interactions are no longer necessary and instead we get to hang out with the people we actually want to hang out with, people it's easy to hang out with. Let me tell you, most of the time it is a chore for an introvert like myself to have prolonged conversations with strangers. So being able to just talk about the most random, stupid stuff with DL and MF tonight was like a Friendly's Hunka Chunka PB Fudge sundae in itself. Although I'm glad I got to actually eat the Hunka Chunka PB Fudge sundae...and not DL and MF.
     UGHHHHHH I just realized I was editing this post in two separate tabs and closed the tab that had the first half of my edits. You've gotta be kidding me. lakdjoaewno;mlamlsdkjg It is 1:30 AM and I need to be packing (again. I'm so sick of this) and sleeping and alkdgjtoaweim;sldgkjsd;ja Gosh dang it.

Day 972 Song Recommendation: "Stole the Show" by Kygo feat. Parson James. Thanks TU football propaganda video for the song rec!
-SE Wagner