My Costume

Between the decorations and costumes that my mom sent and the William Shatner Fright Night marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel, I got to pretend that it was Halloween last night. Between the lab report I was up all night doing and the severe lack of festivities to attend, however, I couldn't get too wrapped up in the spirit of the season. The only thing that will soothe me is more pictures of my gorgeous face - as noted by the glamorous photo at your right.

Needless to say, I'm terribly disappointed. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and - with the extreme exception of last year's magnificent gala - I haven't been able to enjoy one for some time now. The way things are looking, I may not be able to enjoy one for some time to come, either. Friends, I don't want to stand for that. There must be Halloweenage, and it must be awesome.

So, I'm going to cheat. From now on, I think I want to pretend that it's always Halloween. Who's going to stop me? Santa Clause? Wrong, chubs! It's always Halloween in Casa de Miguel! As soon as I figure out how to keep my plastic bats from falling from the ceiling, I'm going to make sure I leave them up for the rest of the year. I'm going to listen to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" on a regular basis. I'm going to buy the cheesiest horror movies I can find!

And it's going to be totally sweet.

PhotoShop Is Fun

In speaking with my friend and fellow Physics man, Tim, I discovered something new about the priority registration system. Apparantly, they don't tell you you have it. You just assume and register your classes as early as you can. With the exception of my next computer science course - which evidently requires a mystical course pass beyond simply receiving an "A" in the previous class - everything's registered and ready to go for next semester.

Part of me is excited. The other part of me read the schedule.

I'm comforted in the fact that everyone else seems to be taking the same heavy courseloads. We'll tackle this head-on and suffer our nervous breakdowns together. Our freshmen seminar professor says we'll be the biggest graduating class of Physics majors if we all make it through. He probably tells that to all the classes.

At the same time, I'm incredibly puzzled. Anyone who knew anyone from my high school class knows that - genetically - we're the laziest generation of students to have ever received a diploma. Frankly, I'm amazed some of us even made it to the 12th grade. We now somehow expect to take on who knows how many years of higher learning.

This is going to be interesting.

Then I came to college.

Don't get me wrong, things are still cool. The problem is that things are going to stop being cool fairly quickly. I sat down the other day and sketched out a rough estimate of what I'm going to have to do in the spring. It took about twenty minutes to work out the times and locations that would be consistent with the laws of nature, but I finally got everything put down like I wanted. I smiled, patted myself on the back, and counted the total number of credit hours I'd have - for curiousity's sake, of course.

18.5 hours.

Stop for a moment, and think about that. Eighteen and a half hours of school a week. I might as well be in high school if I'm going to do this much. I mulled over it a while and tried to find something to dump out. The sad truth, however, is that I really don't have a choice. I wanted to be in the honors program, and I'm going to pay for it by throwing in an obligatory Honors Art Appreciation class in what is already a hefty bit of work. I stopped for a moment to consider why it was I joined the honors program in the first place, and came up with an interesting conclusion. I joined because...

• I wanted to live in the Honors dorm.
• I wanted to get a scholarship.
• I wanted to be able to schedule early for classes.