Benjamin Clark

Hrmm... where to start? There's so much to talk about, and only an hour for lunch. Let's tackle the obvious: I visited Bloomington last week. Those of you that I have listed as friends got the distinct pleasure of hearing my phone posts (and reading the transcriptions), but I'll summarize here for you more-anonymous readers.

I left early on Wednesday and raced the sun to Alabama. Turns out, I never actually got to see the sun, because the entire trip was rain or overcast. I kind of 'zoned out' somewhere on I-65 in central Alabama, but otherwise the trip was me singing along to my iPod's suite of 90s grunge rock mixed with the occasional Ben Folds. I arrived in Indiana around 5pm, about two hours earlier than I thought I would. It took me another hour and a half to travel up through Columbus, IN, and across through Brown County to get to Bloomington. I ended up spending the evening chilling with Carrie and Pat before retiring around 10:30 (EST).

Thursday morning I went apartment 'hunting,' although I admit I only stopped in at two places, and drove by a couple others. The first place I stopped at was Meadow Park, and they were offering a no-deposit, discounted-rent deal because I'm a grad student. I couldn't really say no, and the apartments are nice enough to live in, so Friday afternoon (breaking continuity) I went in and signed a lease. (It should be noted that the other apartment complexes were nicer, but also at least $80 more a month. Another one was over $100 more.) I took pictures of the model apartment, which will be posted to my Flickr photostream eventually.

Thursday afternoon I met up with Abi for lunch at Panera Bread. (I found out later that I could have used their free wireless network. Bummer.) We have been exchanging e-mails since February or March, and it was very nice to finally put a person to the text. We spent an hour or so in PB and then I split to look at more apartments.

I had set up a meeting with Susan Herring at 3:30, and her BROG group arrived sometime around 5:30. We all had sushi, did our introductions, and all that social stuff that you all know I'm just aces with. ;) I also got some great advice on course taking, minors, majors, financial stuff, all the things that I was a little unclear on.

I left sometime around 8:30, I think, because I remembered that Carrie had wanted to show me around the town -- go into supermarkets, stores, whatnot -- but by the time I arrived at Pat's house, it was too late to do any of that.

Friday morning I met with the program director at SLIS and he pretty much gave me the same info that I got the night before. I did start to feel a little overwhelmed by all the choices ... not so much making choices (although I am a Libra), but just the sheer number of possible routes to the degree. I have to pick a minor, major area, research topics, etc., etc., and, oh yeah, they should all kind of fit into a larger study paradigm.

I took a moment after that meeting to walk around the campus to clear my head. I had doubts on whether I was ready to hit the ground running at the same pace as everyone else. The various challenges I would face coming into a new program at a new place started to feel quite debilitating. FSU's College of Information has always been more laid back, or at least I've always treated it as such. As a result, (switching to present tense) I feel very unprepared for the intensity of this program -- but perhaps in a good way, I suppose, because when they boot camp me it won't take too long to break me down. Also, I think it'll be worth more to me at the end to know that I actually had to "try" for once in my life.

But apparently I got over myself rather quickly, because not soon after the meeting I drove over to sign a lease at Meadow Park. I was hoping to make it back to campus by 1:30 -- I was invited to a lunch 'get together' with the program director and other Ph.D students -- but I was filling out paperwork for the better part of two hours. It took a lot longer than I thought. My credit rating wasn't up to their standards, so that took a little time to sort out (I ended up having to pay a deposit after all), and then it started pouring rain, so I didn't want to speed things up and get drenched.

Around 4pm, I got back to Carrie's apartment and took a nap. I hadn't really slept all that well the previous two nights (a loud, possibly drunk, neighbor shouting at all hours of the night combined with sleeping on a couch), so it wasn't too hard for me to fall asleep. I had also accomplished my goals for the trip by that point, so I could let my guard down and just relax. I found my way over to Pat's house around 6:30 for a party/dinner thing. It was a great way to end my trip.

Saturday morning I left around 7:45 (EST). I got to Seymour (exit 50 on I-65 Indiana), grabbed some Burger King breakfast "food" and filled my tank. (I ended up getting over 300 miles off of that tank, btw, which is a first for my truck.) The rest of the drive was extremely uneventful. I ended up in Tallahassee around 9 (EDT).

And that's that, really. Now I'm going to go grab some lunch at the hot dog stand outside, and then come back to do some real work this afternoon. Now that I've got an apartment, and I'm getting geared up for the move, it's starting to sink in that I only have a dozen or so weeks left and a *lot* of programming projects to finish. :(