The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

Yep, there are exactly two months left until I fly off to start the next chapter of my life in Washington, DC. It’s bewildering how this summer is moving so fast and so slow at the same time–it’s already been seventeen days since my graduation from high school. Here’s a taste at what I’ve had the fun of doing for over these past two weeks.

Only three days after I graduated, I spent Monday, June 1st on a day trip to Sacramento, where the State Conference Committee on the Budget held a public hearing on cuts affecting education; folks from the California State PTA were asking members to come and support the PTA’s positions on the budget cuts, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to work with the state leaders one last time. That trip and my testimony at the hearing earned me two seconds on television and top quote in an Education Coalition press release. Not bad.

But almost immediately after graduation got out of the way, in came looking towards the future. In the form of a number of things that I had to complete for American University. First off, I received phone calls warning me that if I didn’t get off my bottom and register for New Student Orientation and Welcome Week, I’d be facing some late fees. Well, after clearing up a little confusion surrounding the fact that I can’t attend a mid-summer orientation session (because, um, getting to D.C. is somewhat of an expensive proposition), I got myself registered for AU’s “Freshman Service Experience” Welcome Week program. From what I understand, FSE is a three-day thing that hooks you up with local community service opportunities in Washington, D.C., which sounds quite fun and engaging to me. (And besides, even if I had wanted to sign up for the other program, called “Discover DC,” it was already full.) So that’ll be spanning August 17-20.

Then when I got my AU e-mail account setup (kudos to AU for using Google Apps–nice), I found out just how much e-mail I had been missing out on. Most urgent was that I had to fill out a Freshman Guide, which primarily was information for my academic advisor to help him figure out my class schedule. Except that it turned out to be as confusing as anything! Well, okay, confusing isn’t the best word: let’s go with bewildering. After going through some basic personal info, it then led me to a page to pick General Education requirements. Essentially, during my four years at AU, I will have to complete ten courses for General Education credit. These ten courses are divided into five areas of liberal arts focus. And for the two courses in each area, there is one that I do initially, and another that requires one of the initial courses as a prerequisite. And just to make it the most confusing, for each area, courses are broken down into two clusters, and the secondary course has to come from the same cluster as the initial course in order for that prerequisite to be met. Okay, that’s their General Education system. Certainly more confusing than, say, Brown University’s general ed requirements (hint: they don’t have any), but it’s still a good system. Except that here am I, little ole Douglas Bell, fresh out of high school, with barely an idea in the world what college life is going to be like, and they were basically asking me to select my preferences for each of these ten areas right then, oh, and make it your top three choices for everything. I essentially had to pick out thirty classes for myself based on nothing more than a very light subjective glance at what “seemed interesting!”

As soon as I got through that daunting task, the next screen wanted me to build my schedule! The instructions suggested that “Your schedule should be a mixture of AU requirements (General Education, Math, and College Writing), classes that might apply to a possible major, and electives.” Well, let’s see. I don’t have a major, I’m going as undeclared, and the suggestion for undeclared majors is to take three or four general education classes, and maybe an elective. Plus, all freshman needed the math requirement, plus take LIT100 and 101 for the College Writing credit, except that I had also gotten info from the Honors department on Honors classes that I had to take. But how was I supposed to know right then what seemed interesting? And they wanted me to take scheduling times into account? Help!

I ended up calling them the next morning, and they made a little more sense of things to me. Thanks to my AP Calculus score, my math requirement was fulfilled. Since I was in Honors, I would be taking LIT131 (Honors English), and would also sign up for a no-credit seminar class called Honors 101 that would meet on Wednesday afternoons. As for the rest, don’t worry about the times, they said. So unsure of what to do, I just filled in the rest of my schedule with general education classes that I had selected on the previous screen of the Freshman Guide. Nevertheless, even after getting through that headache-inducing thing, I still sent an e-mail to my academic advisor expressing my worries. Fortunately, he was very reassuring, saying that my proposed schedule was fine, even showing me the timeslots (which look pretty good), and also saying that “about a third of the entering class is undecided and the joke is that the other two-thirds will change their major anyway!” So, phew. But boy, that wasn’t exactly the best way to get started with summer!

Other fun stuff? You bet. Primarily due to that pesky fact that despite the great experience awaiting me in Washington, DC, this is the first time in twelve years that I ain’t gettin’ an education for free. So I got a nice $5,500 in federal student aid loans ($3,500 of that subsidized, meaning I don’t have to pay it off until six months after graduating, and $2,000 of that unsubsidized, meaning that I could hold off until after graduating but it would have accumulated a hefty amount of interest in that time, so start making the payments to be smart). After figuring out where the money will go (which is directly into my tuition account at AU), I had to go online and sign a “master promissory note,” which essentially amounted to bunch of online paperwork, that fortunately didn’t involve any physical paper (because there was way too much legalese to read in there). My parents also had to do the same for their Federal PLUS loan that will help pay for the Expected Family Contribution.

Finally, today marked the latest big day in the AU-bound path, in that this morning I got details on my campus housing for the fall. Unless AU makes any changes (which they say that they could before summer is over), I’ll be in the Anderson Hall with a roommate who hails from New York City. (I won’t say his name publicly until I’ve had a chance to get to know him.) Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to getting to know him over the next year, and am glad that I’ll know someone with experience living in weather below 40 degrees!

Finally, this morning, I went to the DMV and took my written test to get a provisional license. Now that I’m over 17 1/2, I can do so without having to take a ridiculously-expensive driver’s ed class and driver’s training course, now I can just read the handbook and train with my parents, provided that I don’t take the driving test until I’m 18. I did get dinged on seven of the 46 questions, but fortunately, seven is the maximum number of mistakes allowed, so I barely passed, and have my learner’s permit!

So that’s what it’s been over the past two weeks. Now I’ve got two months left. Who knows what’s still in store…