New People

Here are some of the people I've met who I have or likely will become friends with.

Julia is my roommate. She's an engineering major from Dayton, and it would have been hard to find a better roommate. She's adorable and we have a lot in common. We're both geeky, goofy, artsy, environmentally conscious Christians. We also have similar sleeping habits, which is nice when you're living with someone.

Justin was in my orientation group. He's from somewhere in Indiana, and he hasn't chosen a major yet. Whenever we got bored at the free-for-all scheduled social events during orientation we ended up talking to each other. He loves free stuff whether he'll ever use it or not. By the end of the week he had acquired fifteen cups, three water bottles (including the engineering one...even though he's not in engineering), three backpack bag things, and much more.

Aurash was also in my orientation group, and he's also an engineering major. He's from Texas and his parents are from India, but he has no accent whatsoever as far as I can tell. He wears Threadless shirts - a good way for anyone to instantly improve my impression of them. We also share music tastes and played in orchestra in high school.

Kevin went to high school with Justin who introduced us when we were sitting around at our night of fun and frivolity at the sports/recreation facility (co-rec or RSC). He is yet another engineering major from Indiana. He's sweet and nerdy and has some sort of slight to moderate physical disability that I couldn't identify. If all goes according to my plans, when I join the orchestra in the spring and he'll be there in the oboe section.

Margaret is a public horticulture major I met at the ag picnic. She seems sweet and hopes to operate a botanical garden someday. Since she's in the landscaping/horticulture department, we'll probably have some classes together.

When I met Margaret I met the guy who is the only other LAHD (landscape horticulture and design) student I found during the entire week... but I forgot his name. He was originally going to come here on a football scholarship, but then he blew out his knee and permanently ended his football career. He looked into horticulture and forestry, chose LAHD, and likes it so much that he doesn't regret that he had to give up football to find it.

I actually met Michael earlier in the week when I went to an interest session about the honors programs. When I first saw him, for some reason I sensed a "pretentious jerk vibe," but that proved to be a hasty and inaccurate judgment. He's majoring in horticultural science, so we had a nice discussion about aeroponics while we waited to go hiking on the honors retreat. We continued to talk along the way and made jokes about the designer who didn't make the canyon trail handicap accessible. He might be in the orchestra as well, so I'll be seeing a lot of him in the future.

I also met Kayleigh at the honors interest session. She's majoring in biochemistry in the college of ag. I knew the minute I saw her that we would likely become friends, but that it might take some effort for us to get to know each other. On the honors retreat we got off to a good start working on a jigsaw puzzle together.

Elizabeth and I literally ran into each other finding seats during the opening ceremonies of the honors retreat. Later we ended up sitting next to each other at dinner, and we discovered that we have a lot in common. We both like horses but not the all-too-often snobby people that ride and show english, we want to do volunteer work with the environment, we enjoy being outside, we like taking pictures, and we're awkward around people. Since the retreat we've eaten together twice, and we're bound to continue to interact. Her major is engineering, and she's from the Chicago area.

Allyson became my Facebook friend back in January, but we didn't meet each other until the honors retreat. She's from Indianapolis and is majoring in food science with a minor in dance. Since we're both in UHP and ag honors, we'll be seeing a lot of each other. She's friendly and just a bit sarcastic, and I love sarcasm in moderation.

Kilian was helping Kayleigh and Mary (she's next) with the jigsaw puzzle when I met him on the honors retreat. He's in engineering - hopefully aerospace, so he likes to call himself a future rocket scientist. Since he's in UHP and the orchestra (violin I think?) and will be attending the call-outs for the outing club and the medieval club, I predict that we will have plenty of opportunities to continue becoming friends.

Mary was the other girl who helped with the puzzles. She's going into pre-vet if I remember correctly, and that's pretty much all I know about her right now. She's very shy, but nice.

Dr. Chris is the person in charge of the UHP. He's a retired entomology professor who never misses an opportunity to encourage us to consider entomology. I instantly took a liking to him because he reminds me so much of Uncle Reggie. He's an enthusiastic, intelligent, friendly, old man of Chinese heritage. I hope to talk to him about entomology. Maybe he knows more about millipedes.

Whenever we go to a meal, Julia and I look for a lonely person and sit with them, and that's how I met the next two people. Wa is an exchange student from China who is here to study psychology education to become a professor back in China. She was so adorable! She's struggling with English and very nervous about it, so she asked us the words for a lot of thing at the table and then wrote them down in a little journal.

Just a few minutes ago we got back from lunch with Jeff. He's from Indiana and he's majoring in economics and will hopefully go on to law school afterward. It was awkward at first because it took us a while to find anything we had in common, but then we discovered that all three of us did theater in high school. The ice was finally broken and we had a nice little conversation about theater in our tiny high schools. I might try to find him later for the opening convocation I'm supposed to attend about our summer reading. Julia has an engineering honors thing, but Jeff and I are both scheduled for the same convocation and it would be nice not to go by myself.