new things!

it's amazing how many new things you can notice just by walking across campus for the first time in a few weeks. since i really only spend time in the mechanical department, i generally only make it to the very tip of tech campus, so i pass the library every day, but that's about it. today is pay day, however, which called for a walk to The New Sub (it has some fancy title of course, i think named after a new mexico senator, but it will be a few college generations before the students call it anything but The New Sub). so i walked out the south door of weir, and check it out:

new thing #1: the construction on cramer is done.

this is a big deal, because it means the construction crew is done using the larger part of the parking lot. there are about forty "new" spaces now. yay! of course, this would have been a lot more useful to me if i still lived far enough from campus to drive, or if i still had class in those buildings, but it means that another fence is gone. yes, i walked between weir and cramer for the first time in years, and it was surreal.

new thing #2: construction on something else has started.

reinforcing carmen's theory that if they take down one fence they put up at least two more. i didn't look around for the second one, since i can't figure out what the first one is for. it seems that a long strip of land around The New Sub needs a nice orange fence to surround it. so i escaped the cramer fence only to have to walk around another one. oh well.

new thing #3: leering weirdos galore!

okay, so it's not exactly NEW, but it was a whole group of new ones.

on the way up the steps to TNS, i heard a group of guys talking loudly. you know the kind... people who try to be overheard because they think what they're saying is so cool that it will draw people to them. i was surprised that i didn't recognize any of them. not that i'm miss popularity or anything, but this is a small school and i usually recognize at least one person in a large group like that.

then i noticed that they were looking at me weird... aggressively, sort of high-and-mightily. well, most of them were. the rest were trying to see who i was without looking like they cared enough to actually turn their heads. both actions seemed familiar, like... like... freshmen. it was creepy. i was just thinking about how the summer students were a weird pack of mutants when i walked into TNS and everything made sense.

lots of kids walking around with their parents. ah. summer orientation day.

this explains the several suit-and-tie professors i saw today, and why i can't find dr. ghosh anywhere. he's probably in the gym, helping the poor little kids pick out their weeder courses.

don't get me wrong, i have nothing against freshmen. i haven't forgotten that i once was a freshman. but orientation is funny. all the kids wear the coolest t-shirt they own and project this attitude of who they really want to be in college, and it's hilarious. the leery aggressive ones try to make as many friends as fast as possible, trying to get a head-start on their freshman popularity. they force themselves to be more outgoing than they actually are. it's a painful thing to watch. the snobby up-downers are either more selective or more shy, and are therefore a little less frightening but equally entertaining. they force themselves to be cooler than they actually are. every year there's a few cool ones that actually calm down and act like themselves, but for the most part it's the freaked out little weirdos.

it's too bad i didn't know today was orientation day earlier. last year pablo and i got a lot of free doughnuts and plenty of laughs pretending we were froshies. it was great.