The responsibilities of being a new student these past few months has been increased by the fact that I turned 18, got a job, and well, am considered an adult by my parents. While I’m a commuter and still get to enjoy the joy of homemade food, I still found myself having to adjust to all the responsibility.
It felt weird, it still does- instead of having my mom make my dentist appointments for me and my dad always driving me to the bank, it’s up to me to get all that kind of thing handled. I had to learn my dentist’s work hours, make the trek to the Village to deposit money and even made my own tax-free savings account. All by myself. It feels rather nice, though now with the dawn of a new semester coming upon me, I have a brand new daunting-as-always list of “adult tasks” I have to accomplish- paying tuition fees and selling my textbooks and letting my boss know my new work hours. Adult tasks=managing my own money, most of the time. I’m still trying to get the hang of it, but I think I’m slowly but surely getting there.
Besides these adult tasks are still the typical student tasks, the biggest one being cleaning up for Term 2. This entails things such as:
- Deciding which textbooks to keep, and which to sell
- Putting up ads in the usual sites (saveonbook, craigslist, textbookexchange) for the latter books
- Buying more mini-binders for classes because I realized I had too few last term
- Restocking on looseleaf, pencils, finding that sharpener I lost all term
- Keeping notebooks for recently finished courses (setting aside a place to put them in), or throwing them all into a bonfire as a cathartic ritual of sorts
- Deciding to keep certain papers I’m proud of into a specific place, to look back to when I need encouragement
- Cleaning my room, especially the shelf where I dump all my school stuff onto
- Getting over the courses I know you could’ve done better in, and vowing to be awesomer this upcoming term even though I have more courses and the usual overinvolvement thing going on
- Setting up appointments to visit GoGlobal and Arts Academic Advising
I did all this the day before, and I must say it’s a great start to the New Year. I took the initiative to be organized and start with this clean slate, with a somehow more optimistic outlook (despite the fact that I have to be at the bus stop by 6:50am to get to my 9:30am class on time tomorrow, woo). There’s so much non-academic things to look forward to as well: attending SLC, volunteering at and promoting Arts Week, and volunteering at UBCMUN- all in two weeks! \o/
PLUS, I’ve come up with a list of new features for the blog. This might also mean my resurrection in Twitter and a new layout and all that goodness.
– Jennine
P.S. AREN’T THE CANUCKS DOING AWESOMELY??????????? :DV
Yeah, go Arts Week! And SLC! And UBCMUN! All good choices.
After so long of being a Canucks fan, the Canucks are actually owning… the year I don’t have time to watch the games D:
OOOO Arts Week, SLC—doing it too. :D
yay for being overtly involved in extra-currics as commuter students!
BUTTTTTTT (major but), what is UBC MUN!?
I’m volunteering at UBC MUN too!
Did I miss you at the volunteer training session?
See you this weekend! And at SLC too!
It’s such a change isn’t it? You’re lucky you get to take things slow and have a fall back plan. Cooking for myself and not being able to go home except for Christmas and summer is quite stressful. All of those responsibilities you mentioned seem like no problem when put in the right context, so good luck to you in your adjustment :)