I have just finished my first (half) week of classes. And wow. I have a lot of work to do.

That’s the part of moving out here for my exchange year that, thus far, I have managed to ignore. The ignoring it part has been pretty easy. You know the feeling; it’s the same one that you get at the end of every summer as you return to school, when you pick up your pen and think, wait, how do I use this thing again? It’s the brain turning slowly to reality TV mush feeling. That one. In the midst of that feeling, I’d managed to almost totally ignore what it means that I have to actually… work this year.

Ugh, work… I’m taking five classes this semester where I’m used to just three, though the reading per class is significantly less. I still feel like… how can I begin to keep up with this? It’s a lot. There is a lot to do.

On the other side of things, a week in, I feel like I’m getting the hang of living on campus. When I’m walking around I mostly know where I am now (and, okay, I still check a map before I set off anywhere, but that’s just me bowing to the very real fact of my awful navigational skills and seeking the help I need). I’ve been to the Village four or five times, and I’ve clocked where the libraries are and how to get things photocopied (though printing still eludes me, but I’ll get there). It’s a slow-going slide into familiarity and there are still ten things a day that jar me from thinking okay, I’ve got this into thinking wait what just like that, but the days are busy and I feel good about keeping them that way.

Before I came out here, people kept asking if I was nervous and I kept saying no. I wasn’t lying; it honestly didn’t occur to me to be nervous. In my imagination, this was only ever an amazing opportunity in my life, and being nervous would have suggested that it wasn’t a great thing I was planning to do. I couldn’t, and still can’t, see where the bad aspects of this exchange year are. Not that I don’t think parts of it won’t be hard. I’m sure parts will be very hard. Some parts already are, like my courseload and the fact that I have to remember to say ‘zucchini’ instead of ‘courgette’ (not particularly hard, right? But I’m an actual idiot).

But, in the scheme of things, what’s to be nervous about? If things are hard, I’ll deal with it then. Hopefully I’ll learn something from it. I’m not going to be nervous about something I can only imagine as wonderful and exciting and all of those good things that unreal futures are. So, I’ll keep going. Tomorrow I will learn the printing-on-campus ropes, and I might even figure out the banks out here. And maybe I’ll learn something.