My Life Story (Part 6): Settling in to Illinois

So from the last post, you guys learned that I was basically living by myself in da hood, with one friend.  The first college "event" for UIUC was our convocation, which is about...  actually I couldn't tell you LOL.  Funny story.  I was leaving my dorm to head out, and based on what I heard, there was gonna be a bus that takes me to the convocation.  Naturally, I thought, "oh, there will be a shuttling

bus with a convocation sign.  EASY."  I walk outside to the bus stop, and to my delight, the bus was already there.  As I was walking towards it, I noticed the bus name thing said "22N Illini" on it.  WHAT THE @#$% DOES THAT MEAN?!  Plus there was some scary looking guy in the window waving at me (in the picture on the left).  LOL, why is that guy in that picture on google?  Anyways, I immediately turned around and walked back to my room haha.  For those of you who don't know, I'm not the type of person who likes to do stuff on my own, so I was already iffy about attending this convocation. 


One thing was/is for sure: the UIUC bus systems was and is very, very inefficient.  Plus their website is www.cumtd.com.  Something about that url just seems really unassuring... hmm, wonder what that might be... Not only do their bus systems suck, but many dorms do not have AC as well.  The summers are scorching, and I would oftentimes sweat in my room from doing nothing.  It was nastyyyy :( 

Anyways, back to the story.  The one friend I knew had a friend attending this school who went to the same high school as him, so us three basically hung out every day, since we didn't know many other people.  For the story's sake, I'll refer to my original friend as Friend A and his high school friend as Friend B.  Friend A lived in the same residence hall as me and lived in a double.  Friend B lived on the other side of the campus, lived in a triple, but was in a room the size of a double.  Friend A naturally started hanging with his roommate more; however, Friend B only hung out with us.  Since she was in an inconveniently sized room already, she would oftentimes just stay in my room since I did not have a roommate.  Actually, she practically became my roommate for a while lol.  Do not interpret this wrong... we were just friends.  I mean, why would I lie to you guys about stuff on my blog anyways?  I've been open about everything else LOL. 

Friend B and I became really good friends in a short period of time, considering the situation, and she became pretty reliant on me for many things.  (I'm starting to ask myself why I even set up this Friend A and Friend B thing when I'm basically only talking about Friend B.  But I'm too lazy to go back and edit it xP)  There must be a point to this story, though, right?  Yeah, this friend was also a victim to one of my very character flaws.  Her constant need of relying on me eventually started becoming an annoyance to me, and over time, I pushed her away, oftentimes saying things along the lines of "I need my own time."  Eventually, she stopped staying over, and I effectively lost the only new friend I had and basically the only one I talked to.  We never really talked much afterwards, so I have no idea what her take/view/feelings on the situation were.  On the bright side, she's now engaged and happy, and I wish her nothing but the best for her future. 

Me studying in my White form

So, what did I do with all my free time then since I had no friends?  I actually studied and did all my homework on my own.  Even for MPs (machine problems) where almost everyone had partners, I decided to do on my own.  I've always been on who has thought that I'd rather rely on myself than take the chance on relying on others.  Plus the fact that I had no friends didn't help either haha xD  I was quite the studious person my freshman year first semester... not saying I wasn't all the other semesters haha xD


I believe I was taking 5 classes that semester: VBA for Excel, Microeconomics, Linear Algebra, Rhetoric 105, and Speech Comm.  Fun classes.  So besides going to ALL my classes... actually there's a funny story about that.  So for my microeconomics class, I had the worst professor of all time.  He was actually on probation for failing too many students.  His name is "Gottheil" for those of you are curious/know of him.  The guy's a rich old bastard who doesn't know how to teach, and constantly makes a clicking sound with his tongue. 

Anyways, for the class, there are 5 pop quizzes, each worth 1% of our grade.  I missed 5 classes in total that semester, all of them being in this class because it was a 9 AM class.  Of those 5 classes I missed, 4 of them had pop quizzes.  FML LOL.  So I just decided to google the syllabus for that year to see if it still existed.  Yeah, his exam grade breakdowns... quite unfair.  And he was an unfair grader as well.  I believe the class average for the midterm was a failing grade LOL.  I remember getting a 58 on that one... heheh.  So statistically speaking, I already lost 11.34 out of 100 points for my final grade.  Then add on the 4 from missing pop quizzes, and that's 15.34 points lost already haha.  Luckily the class was curved, but I still didn't do too hot in that class xD

Oh yeah, I was talking about what I did in my free time.  My hatred of Gottheil made me go on another rant.  So in between going to classes and eating... oh, forgot to mention my residence hall had no dining hall cause it was under construction.  It wouldn't be finished until the next school year.  So in between going to classes, eating, and doing work, I would go to the gym (CRCE) to play ball.  Playing basketball in college was when I first realized how good people could be and how important size was.  In more ways than one LOL sorry had to say that.  I wasn't able to dominate like I did in my high school days.  Actually, I had trouble getting the ball a few times because I would play with random people since I knew nobody.  I struggled and only scored a few times a game, and I ended up becoming more of a role player than a "carry."  In hindsight, my offensive game got worse in college, but all my other skills got better.  And I never got dunked on.  Thought I should put that out there xP

EZ Bucket

EZ 3 Ball

Admirin' my shooting form? ;)  JK LOL.  Eventually, I met a few friends from basketball, and a few more from the few clubs Friend B signed us up for.  Two of the clubs whose events I started occasionally going to were the Asian American Association (AAA) and the Taiwanese American Students Club (TASC).  Yup, the inner Asian began brewing again.  But I'll leave those stories for the next post.  Sorry today's post was more boring due to the ranting.  Perhaps the next one will be more interesting?  There's only one way to find out =)  :P ace