First day of the last year of college

Maybe it's because I only have two semesters left, but I was feeling very social and nostalgic today instead of my usual first day cautious/awkwardness that keeps me from speaking to anyone or raising my hand for the first few weeks of class. I feel as though time at USD is slipping away and I'm desperately trying to wring every last drop of educational experience out of it that I can. All of a sudden I want to check in with every great professor I've ever had just to talk about life and the cool things that completely rocked my world from their classes. I spent a good hour running around campus logging every professor's office hours into my calender so I would make sure to catch up with them at some point before the semester gets too crazy.

By the way, this is real, I really am this excited about school all the time, welcome to my brain. I nearly keel over in the bookstore when I see rows and shelves of all the possible things I could be learning. Sometimes I buy textbooks assigned to other classes just because they look cool (shifty glance to book on modern architecture bought last semester because I couldn't leave the aisle without putting it in my basket). That's enough of my obsessive textbook behavior, here are my classes for this semester:

ACCT 408-- Auditing
ARTH 394-- Whitman to Warhol: Democratic Cult
ARTV 101-- Introduction to Drawing
DSCI 303-- Operations Management
MUSC 424-- Art in the Soundscape
THRS 314-- Buddhist Faith & Practices

Today I had Drawing, Art in the Soundscape, and Buddhist Faith & Practices. Awesome.

My drawing professor is pretty cool. I tried to take this course last fall, but I had to drop it because I just didn't have enough time to complete the homework. The professor has these great wrinkles and bags under his eyes that make him seem like he's thinking really hard about something, or has thought really hard about pretty much everything. He was a philosophy major, so it really works out. I want to have great wrinkles some day. I know having wrinkles is really out of fashion right now, especially for women, but I really want some good ones some day. Maybe it is because I really like old people (thanks grandparents), but I have always liked wrinkles and I think they say a lot about the person you are. Because wrinkles form from the way you use your face. Consequently, I hope that my wrinkles will be mostly smiling ones, and maybe some very pensive ones as well. Here is a picture I took in the Philippines of a man with great wrinkles.

Do you see what I mean?

Anyway, that's enough about wrinkles. After drawing I had a 4 hour break, so I went to yoga before Art in the Soundscape. That class is kind of intimidating. The reason I'm taking it is because the professor is a genius (seriously, I'm pretty sure) and Paco wanted me to because he is taking it too. I'm not sure what to think about it yet...I'm sure I will have a lot more to say after I do some of the readings.

Last class of the day was Buddhist Faith and Practice which I am taking because it is taught be a Buddhist nun (like a monk). She is bald, and old, and wears a maroon robe every day. She has written a ton of material on Buddhism and is supposed to be a very strict teacher (of course she is strict, she lived in India and had to beg for her food to live). I read an interview of her in a textbook for my world religions class and in it she said that while she was studying to become a nun in India, she lived in a mud hut that she built with her hands and during the monsoon season it would get completely wiped out and she would have to rebuild it by hand every time. That being said, she was a very happy, bubbly person, not stoic and serious like her shaved head and robe suggest. At the end of class we tried meditating for a bit which I'm kind of used to from yoga, but I'm eager to see what she has to say about it.

It is kind of difficult to meditate. You have to sit with a straight back (I sat cross-legged on the floor), hands clasped, eyes almost all the way closed, and you have to just focus on your breathing and the moment. You can't fall asleep, you have to be "mindful" of things. So here are some thoughts that popped into my head while mediating today:
-my glasses feel very heavy on the bridge of my nose, maybe I should have taken them off first
-my shoe is poking my foot, maybe I should have taken them off also
-right now I'm very close to the ground, but the ground I'm on is really in the air because we are on the third floor, so actually I'm very far away from the ground and it's like I'm floating two stories from the ground while meditating
-maybe this is how it feels to ride on a magic carpet
-maybe I am not supposed to think about these kinds of things while meditating
-I'm glad I ate before class because otherwise my stomach might growl and everyone is being silent right now

So I'm probably not very good at meditating yet, but points for trying.