This was my first quarter of college. It's been an interesting introduction to college. It's definitely not what I wanted or what I expected, but I've been enjoying it regardless. Honestly, the pandemic is kind of all I can think about when I'm reflecting on this quarter. I'm hoping I'll at least get three years of in person classes, but who knows. Despite that, I'm happy with most of the classes I'm taking and I'm looking forward to next quarter as well. I've decided optimism is the only way to survive this.
I've learned that I really have to take classes that I'm interested in because a bad class over zoom is ten times worse than it would be otherwise. I'm going to prioritize classes that look fun and interesting and I've realized that probably means mainly looking at honors classes. They just have a bit more freedom than regular core classes. Regarding my major, the things I really want to learn for theatre design have to do with hands on building; things that can't be taught online. So my goal for the next year is to work on getting everything else out of the way so that once classes are in person again, I can jump right into the things I really want to do.
More than any class, the most important part of this quarter was meeting my friends. I've always known I was going to have Ruby, but I was a little nervous about making friends when I started college, and with Covid looming over my head, it was understandable that I was pretty scared. With my online classes, I haven't been able to make any friends in my classes but I've been blessed with a small but close group made up of roommates and friends of friends. I'm really grateful for having a small bubble of people I can be in person with during the pandemic.
I'm also so happy that I was able to come up to Seattle even with classes being online. Exploring this city and experiencing the seasons actually change has been one of the best parts of the last few months. It's pretty soon to say this, and I haven't had to go through a winter yet, but I'm happy that I live here now. I really do love this city.
The one thing about Honors that I need to start paying attention to is the experiential learning aspect. I’m considering using my design job to take care of one of the experiential learning requirements, but I’m also anticipating that I'll be designing a lot in the future, so I might wait on that until it's a design in the actual theatre and in person. A lot of what I'm thinking about for the future, depends on things being in person and putting experiences and classes off until then, so I'm really hoping that day comes soon.
Finally, I don't want to be too premature, but I found a study abroad program for august next year that I might use for my second experiential learning. It's about language, identity, and memory in Spain's culture and history. For a linguistics minor who's been learning Spanish on their own for the last two years, it feels like they wrote the class specifically for me. As long as Covid doesn't cancel it, I'd be spending four weeks in Spain studying something I'm really excited about and being able to actually practice Spanish with native speakers in day to day life. So that's something I'm really looking forward to. Gotta stay optimistic!