First day at Pierce

This was done to humans a few years ago, remember? not to this scale though

Well, this is my first day here - and probably the only Friday I'll be here for at least five months. Even with a 20 hour class load, I have nothing on Fridays. Today is a student orientation day I'm attending partly because I wanted to test the transportation system out, and partly because, well, I need it, I've never been here before and I haven't been a student at a "real" college in a very long time.

Express bus ride here was comfortable, uneventful and on time. Pickup and dropoff points both involve 20 minute walks but that's fine, on this end I go through all of the equestrian and large animal areas to walk in, which is pretty and relaxing. Big plus is there is no transfer involved, I don;'t have to sit around anywhere waiting for a transfer. Be a real bother if it's raining though.

Campus itself is nice, though run down. Might be because it's neglected during the short sessions, but I also see signs of real deterioration in various places. Not a bother to me though.

The campus has a small "cyber cafe" where I am right now. 5 internet terminals with web only access, which serves my needs. Most of my LJ posting and reading will probably be from here as I tend to do mostly SL when I'm home.

Due to the fact they gave me a late class sign up date (30 day window, I got day 27) I'm on standby for more than half of my classes, but it's entirely possible that no-shows and changes will get me into most of them. I need them all, in conjunction with my VMI transfer credit, to catch up with the first year students and graduate when I want to. Won't know until next week how that will actually pan out.

Orientation day complete

Apparently my VMI diploma is good for more than I thought it was, despite it being 26 years old. It's now confirmed I CAN do this in three semesters.

What surprised me when I first got here is that there were two guys who looked like Ben & Jerry handing out anti war protest literature. They looked old enough I was tempted to ask if they had been standing in the same place doing the same thing in 1967. I told them I was for the war, but against the troops. They looked confused.

Different stuff transferred than what I thought, but I wound up with a similar amount of overall credit. As it now stands my first semester will be 17 credit hours, provided I get into all the standby classes. General education classes are pretty much covered except for one health class. I'll try and fit into that slot that opened up when I dropped the algebra class I don't need.

They also want me to take a computer science class but I can probably show them the transcript from UOP and get out of that. Its possible I can do this in three semesters without having to go to summer and winter short sessions as I had planned.

Sitting here waiting for a cafe terminal to open up taught me a good bit about what the average 20 year old looks at on the internet. I was surprised at how popular myspace.com seems to be. All the rage, from the looks of it. Lots of music sites, and girls looked at clothing store stuff.