I don't think I've ever had an introverted rant on Rinkworks... So I guess this is a good place to start. I've been thinking a lot about the future lately. Mostly the immediate future. College. Darn near here. My first day of classes is later than most, September 5, but I'm already starting to get nervous and sweaty at the thought. In a week and four days I move away from people I've lived with my entire life... On my own. Mostly anyway.

There is a stack of boxes in my room. They aren't full yet, just kept in the paranoid fear that the store might run out of ones I can steal in the off to college rush... But still... The last time I had to pack up and move away I was seven years old. I thought that was hard. Heh.

Am I the only one to start worrying about college a month before it starts? I've been in touch with some of my friends, and other people who are going to college, and they seem so calm. They all cried at graduation, which didn't seem so bad to me, but they seem to be unfazed by this beginning which is scaring me witless. I don't know if I'm supposed to be buying my books now, or if I'm supposed to wait until after classes start. I'm just starting to notice that my "small amount" of clothes might be hard to fit in a shared dorm closet. And then there's all the people who I'm going to meet at this huge new school, who I won't know anything at all about. I'm afraid that I won't be prepared, or that I will be too prepared and freak people out with my anal retentiveness. Am I the only one who feels like college is an important step, and that if I make a mistake that I could have life long problems? Sigh.

Being on my own freaks me most of all though. Managing my own money. taking care of myself... I've been saving all summer for course books. Is $750 enough for six classes? Aahhh :). And now I am responsible for my own health 100%. Before I could blame my mother if I wasn't absolutely healthy. After all, she made dinner, bought the groceries, controlled the money. I had no say... Or I could blame my lack of money for the fact that I never got out. Now I'm still broke, but in the middle of a city. I've heard that it's much easier to do things in a city. Can I take advantage of those things, or will my couch potatoey slugness prove too hard a habit to break? Heh. Responsibility and adulthood, greatest terrors of my life.

My mother keeps telling me not to worry, that everything will sort itself out. Does life ever sort itself out? Not that I've noticed. Could not my mother's "Wait and see" attitude be one of the reasons we live in an apartment with a leaky ceiling(not roof, ceiling btw) and have to depend on the hospitality of the state to get by? Or was she just not optimistic enough? I don't know. Certainly I don't have the answers with my whopping seventeen years of experience.

What is college really like? That's a question I'd like the answer too. Is it easier than it sounds? Harder? Are the people nice? Is it inevitable that you will hate your roommate? I've heard on television so many times that the majority of entering college students drop out because they can't take it... I so don't want to be part of that statistic. What can I do to prepare? Am I preparing now? I don't know.

There is my angst. Wow. That took a lot less time to say than I thought... Ranting really does help, too. Thanks to anyone who actually read through that... Heh. Any advice or humorous anecdotes would probably be appreciated by me. I'm always looking for good advice from people whose opinions I value, and that would be most of you :)

Melanie