Saturday, September 14, 2002
 

The party last night was ok. I ended up going, along with many others, to a bar afterwards, where I spent nearly 4 hours talking to the person who warned me against coming here. I'd been avoiding him like mad, even though he's really nice, and indeed, the first thing he said to me was "I told you so" (followed by "you look miserable"). He did try hard to be encouraging, while also stating the facts (eg, what I've already said- that this program doesn't know how to handle first-years with BAs), but if anything, I'm more depressed than before. You'd think that as bad as Illinois was, I would be here thinking I made the right decision, but I'm not. If I'm going to be miserable, I should have done it at Illinois, where at least I might get a job when and if I finish. Instead, I'm up at 8 AM after five hours of sleep, getting ready to head out to do work I don't want to do for classes I don't enjoy. All I can ever think is what if I'd gone in philosophy instead, what if I'd gone to Illinois, maybe I should have taken a year off, maybe I should just quit now and get a job. As the department head here says, "if you love literature, get a day job and read after work, because you're not going to read it here." Good Friday the 13th, huh. The only consolation is that all the other first-years are as miserable as I am.

In the meantime, I have to go get groceries, because I just had M&Ms for breakfast and will have to do the same for lunch if I don't get some real food. Then it's off to the library so I can write the paper on the book I haven't read and don't have to read in order to write the paper. I think I'll be spending much of today in the library.

Elvisette philosophized at 9:11 AM