Well, yesterday was my orientation for the fall semester at the U. It wasn't bad, even though it ran from 8:30 to nearly 4; although I already knew most of what they were telling us, there were enough new and/or interesting bits of information to keep me from being horribly bored. I also got to meet with my other advisor, and am now registered for two classes, because the Disability Services guy thinks I should start slow to make sure I can handle the increased workload of University since I could only take three classes at a time in community college.
The campus tour was interesting: apparently they'd given the orientation people some training on how to deal with mobility devices, but failed to point out accessible routes around campus. And given that campus is more than 150 years old and build on a fault line in the foothills of an extensive mountain range, the accessible routes can be pretty hard to find. Twice my sister had to carry my walker over stairs while I used the handrail to get down. The woman taking us on the tour was very apologetic; as she said, you don't really think about where the ramps are until you actually need to use them. As I was the only person out of several hundred who was using a mobility device, I could definitely see why she wasn't prepared for it.
All in all, though, it went amazingly well. No one questioned my walker, or my sunglasses, or the fact that I was stimming through most of the presentations because the lighting was weird and I was in a big echoing room full of hundreds of people listening to microphone feedback. The e-mail said that guests were not allowed, but no one said a word about me having my sister there as advocate/mobility helper/comfort object, and she even got lunch. I think I'm going to like this college.
There were only a couple of bad parts: for one, I'm still not sure if I'll need to take a placement test for my Japanese class. It let me register without a problem, but I might take the test just in case there's a problem later, and that's stressing me out because I have no idea where it would be or how long it would take or what material it would cover. Blah. There's no reason I wouldn't be able to keep up in 3040, but my brain is notoriously bad at recognizing that I'm actually good at Japanese.
The other bad part: it's spring, which means we're alternating between freezing wind, thunderstorms, and temperatures over 90F. Friday was a 90F day, which meant that while we weren't getting rained on during the tour, it was soon so hot that I could barely move. (I don't do well above 70F, and prefer temperatures around 50F.) That, combined with the excessive amount of walking/talking to people/big echoing rooms, as well as the fact that my sleep schedule is shot to heck and I've spent this entire week hanging out with people, meant that I was pretty much useless by the time we made it home.
(And then my dad refused to make dinner and gave some BS excuse about having to make food sometimes when he's tired, so we should ignore our exhaustion and make him dinner even though he'd just been sitting at his computer all day, which meant I had nothing to eat but crackers. And then I couldn't find some paperwork I needed, and dad was stressing me out about money and telling me that I should be able to A. find a job that I can actually do for only two months or B. find a way to work from home using either skills I don't have or skills that the rest of the family also has and can't make money from. And then I had a meltdown from all the added stress on top of the earlier stuff, and my mom, who is usually very understanding, told me I was having a childish tantrum, because sobbing is totally a good way to get people to listen to me at 25, right? *sarcasm* Hopefully today will go better, but I'm really not looking forward to church tomorrow. >< )
