I’ve had a pretty eventful first week/week and a half in Madison. It’s honestly felt like I’ve been back in Madison for longer than I actually have. Although a lot of the “events” just involve hanging out with the roommates at the apartment, watching funny videos, joking around, or jamming out on the keyboard/ukulele. Although classes have properly started up now, I’m enjoying the fact that I can take things a bit slower and take in moments like these. Besides my working at the Math Learning Center (which has just started up again and has yet to ramp up in terms of preparation time), I crafted my schedule so that I could enjoy a bit more time this semester. I ended up getting all the classes I wanted after I got off the waitlist for social dancing, so my schedule is as follows:

Plus 7 hours of tutoring work across Tue/Wed/Thu. Overall, I’ve been enjoying my classes (still need to get more in the groove with software security and I’m not the biggest fan of my math class), and I’ve especially enjoyed the acting class and the two sessions I’ve had of social dance.

It’s been an interesting feeling coming back to this context with which I’m so familiar while there’s the new CS building (Morgridge Hall, which was quite cool to explore) and I’m in a new place (although my roommates were here all of last semester). I’m not sure if I expressed this already on the blog, but while I was in Sevilla, in some sense it felt like I had already graduated. I had all my gen eds done, went through this whole process to get my passport and then my visa and then prepare for studying abroad, and then I started doing something so different from everything else in my college career. I was glad to have one more year, but I felt disconnected from the college experience I knew of before. And now that I’m in Madison once again, it’s nice to be back, but it feels different now that I’m a senior. I see freshmen and think about what it was like to be a freshman. I’ve actually met a decent few through my acting class, and some of them are pretty cool! It’s a reminder both that time keeps moving on and that I’ve grown and experienced a lot in my time as a college student.

I’m still getting back into the routine of certain things, like going to the gym or my work as a tutor. But being here definitely feels right again. I do miss family, but I’ve been able to hang out and bond with my roommates more than ever before and it hasn’t even been two weeks. It’s tough that I can’t experience this time with my friends who’ve graduated already or are studying abroad, but I’m very grateful to have all my roommates around for the spring. Excited to continue making memories.

Highlights

As always, here’s some photos from the past week:

• Got all my magnets from abroad!

• The new CS building is awesome, I went there on the first day of classes to study and I’ll likely be going there a good amount this semester.

• A classic dinner here, pasta and milk lol

• A pretty tough would you rather from a video I watched with my roommates… (how bad would your search history have to be for you to choose the second option?)

• A basement workshop room in Music Hall… the building was empty so exploration was due.

• They finally started selling chicken nuggets at smarget (small target) after 3.5 years of being here… I’m glad at least that I have access to them now.

Signoff

Like the second entry in the fall, I came out with this one much later (2/16) than I wrote it originally. I’ll come out with another entry this week. As always, thanks for reading, and leave me your thoughts through my contacts!

P.S. forgot to mention but it’s in the title – my birthday happened! It was fun to celebrate it with friends, we ended up keeping it pretty chill but it was nice to enjoy it :) it felt like I was 21 for a while (a lot happened to be fair), so it made sense. Excited for what 22 has to bring!