On Dorm Rooms
What does one pack for college? I move in August 28th and am totally unaware of what I should bring with me. "Totally unaware" might be a bit strong. I know that I am bringing this computer, hopefully the scanner, my sketchbook, bike, rotary phone, and camera1. I have never lived in a dorm before and I mostly use my room just to sleep and store things. The places I do spend the majority of my time in will soon be very far away and rather than a house in which to lounge I will have a room. I might spend no time in that room or all of it, I do not know, I have never been a college student.
My roommate, in the meantime, wants to know what I will be bringing. What do I tell him? He wants to know if I am bringing a fridge so if I find one cheap at a yard sale then that is one item accounted for. Other than that most everything is mine and will be used only by me. Are there things that dorm rooms need that both of us will use? Nobody in my family has gone to college before and I have not shared a room since I was five.
The dorm room, I suppose, is the least of my worries. I am currently one class short for the upcoming semester. The reason? Intro to Computer Science was full. While I am officially undecided on the matter of my major, Computer Science is a rather large competitor in that running (English is the other big one with German, Art, and Physics coming in close behind). I want to take at least one CS course a semester but the INtro class is a prerequisite for all the other classes. I have, however, communicated with the head of the CS department and he has agreed to waive me into the C++ class (the next step up from intro). Unfortunately, since he is at the school in Connecticut and I am in New Hampshire I need to wait until I move in to get him to sign whatever I need to get into that class.
In preparation for this I have been attempting to fill in any holes in my knowledge. This consists mostly of ghosting along Harvard's CS50 class by using the ever-fantastic Academic Earth to watch lectures and the CS50 website (one Harvard class has its own website! With a .net url! Harvard is so much fancier than my school) for resources and problem sets. I very much hope this is what college is like because watching those lectures is fun. After twelve years of what is quite possibly the most boring way to learn, I desperately want something more engaging.
1 I never post anything on here. So I got a camera, a real camera, a Nikon D5000 to be precise. I had a party when I grauated so that relatives would come and give me cash gifts and I could buy a camera with them. I always had an interest in photography, but it has only been this past year that I really started loving it and calling it a hobby. Senior year photography class was one of the best classes that I ever took, thanks to Rochella Simard, the new photography teacher and grade A photographer.