One week

By this time next week, I'll be in Bloomington again, preparing for yet another semester or college. I'm ready to go back and see my friends, work with Alice, and begin classes (because I'm a nerd and I actually like classes. I know.). However, the nerves are also kicking in (auditions, new beginnings, all of those things), making me not excited about going back to school. I'm looking forward to living off campus and not having to deal with all of the dorm junk; people yelling in the halls at ungodly hours, the boring floor meetings about nothing, having my own room, and no more bunk beds. So, have I been packing?...not really. It'll get done. =)

But I am nervous about living off campus. Even though I know this is a good step for me, I still question myself, wondering if this is the right thing, or if I should have waited a year. At the end of first semester, I reapplied for housing, which is recommended to all students, even those who plan on living off campus. I requested a single room and was told that I probably would not get one, due to the many requests for single rooms and a larger than usual incoming freshman class. But with the house, I'll have my own room (yay!!!!). But the many "I just don't see how this is going to work" comments really have increased the nervousness about this, especially from a certain person, who constantly asks who is going to clean the house (that would be us, duh), if we have a maid service (heck freaking no), if this is a co-op (no, we're renters, just like an apartment), that I can't possibly manage living with 10 people (um, I lived with 50 people on my dorm floor last year, and 1200 people in the dorm, so I think 10 is fine) and that I won't be able to manage it. Yeah, that makes me feel soooo much better.

OK, how about some non-college-freak-out?

Finally finished War and Peace. The ending was, well, slightly boring, as Part 1 of the Epilogue was really the end of the storyline. Part 2 basically consists of Tolstoy's opinion of historians, the definition of power, and what true greatness is. It was interesting, but it was a bit of a letdown after the powerful and fulfilling last pages of Part 1. My friend Mary told me that reading War and Peace this summer would be "freaking awesome", and of course, she was right. Although I still like Dostoevsky overall, I can't say I've disliked anything I've read of Tolstoy. Dostoevsky's philosophical, political, and social ideas are embedded directly into the plot (i.e. Ivan Karamazov's "The Grand Inquisitor", or the Extraordinary Man discussion in Crime and Punishment), something Tolstoy does some of the time. He does this perfectly in The Death of Ivan Ilych, Anna Karenina's Levin, Prince Andrey's death scene, and Anna Karenina herself. However, like Part 2 of War and Peace, he many times could simply write "insert my idea" and verge away from the plot, often proving to be distracting. But I love them both, and War and Peace just blew my mind.