First Days

Ah the first day of school. I still have vague memories of my first day of kindergarten at Central Road Elementary, actually. I believe my cousins from New York were visiting at that time and decided to tag along. I also recall that a kid by the name of Nicholas Logsdon decided to call me "Uh-Dill" instead of "Ah-Dill," since the latter was too hard for him to pronounce, especially the "d" sound. Funny how things turn out like that...

My first day of junior high was one of lament; I wanted to go to Plum Grove Junior High, not stupid Carl Sandburg, since all of my friends went to Plum Grove. Instead, I was stuck with a bunch of idiots at Carl Sandburg...like those two idiots named Steve Kocian and Lindsay Hutchins. Boy, did I hate them...

The first day of high school was surrounded with confusion. Twice I sat in the wrong class for about ten minutes before realizing my error and I recall fawning over a certain female specimen as I did for much of my high school career. Otherwise, I spent most of my time drowning in the massive crowd of people at William Fremd High School.

And of course, my first day of class at Augustana was nothing short of memorable. Finally, after thirteen years of schooling with roughly the same crowd of people, I finally had a clean slate and was at a place 175 miles where the name "Adil" didn't carry a very specific connotation. Upon beginning my first ever college course, "Origins of Feminism in the Ancient World," with a professor who looked like a vegan lesbian, my first words to her were:

"Wanna hear a joke?"
"Sure!"
"Women's rights!"

This incident reminds of how humanity, no matter how advanced their society will reach, always uses their knowledge in order to kill people more efficiently. Alfred Nobel invents dynamite for use in mining operations, yet humans use its explosive potential for harming others. The same goes for Einstein learning the massive energy potential of splitting atoms, where man chose to create a weapon of immeasurable destruction. Just as humanity is doomed to forever degenerate to commiting mass fratricide, I am doomed to forever deface my image as quickly as possible.

Anyways, after the class collectively gasped in awe that I actually said what I did, the teacher sternly looked at me.

"Wanna hear an even funnier joke?"

For that fraction of a moment between the setup and the punchline, I was truly scared. I had gone too far this time--my safety net of "Oh, it's just Adil being Adil" wasn't there to save me. And then she said it.

"A sensitive man!"

As she exploded in a fit of laughter that sounded something like the Wicked Witch of the West, I sighed in relief that I would be okay. But after that, when people heard the name "Adil," they knew exactly what that entailed.

I was too tired to think as I ate some cottage cheese and a piece of toast with some hummus smeared on top of it this morning at 4:30AM and I was in too much of a rush to get ready this morning. But when I stepped onto the platform at Fullerton station off of the Purple Line Express train, I came to a realization: I was presented with yet another clean slate.

Fortunately, I was dressed in my pink shirt, white pants, black vest and eyepatch, so I guess that was a subtle way of telling everyone who I was. But I didn' t do anything crazier than that. I had some ideas, but ultimately, I feel that if I lay low now, people won't know who Batman is when he shows up later this year.

As I neared the heart of campus, my greatest fear was realized. There was such a high concentration of douchebags all over the place that I could feel my vagina getting cleaner (or infected, depending on your standpoint) as I walked around. Augustana had its fair share of douchebags and douchebaguettes (the female form, as Dana and I coined last night), but this was crazy. Imagine it like Pokemon. Augustana was Red/Blue/Yellow, where there were only 151 in a relatively small world. DePaul is like Diamond/Pearl, where there's 493 spread all over a gigantic region. Hey, at least it's better than being surrounded by fobs!

Moving on...my first class was Japanese. Like any first-timer, I couldn't find the building for the life of me, even after the girl at the help desk described it as looking "like a giant cheese grater." And when I did find the building, the entire block was surrounded by a fence with a tiny opening on the opposite side from where I was. I was only about five minutes late, though. We didn't do much aside from simply practice basic greetings ("Hajime mashite!"), introductions ("Mohyuddin desu!") and the usual, "Pleased to meet you!" ("Douzo yoroshiku!). Nothing too hard, but I get the feeling that this class will be almost as bad as Organic Chemistry once it picks up. I suppose it's fortunate that my sensei seems like a very nice person. I'm a bit surprised that she's white, though.

Since I had about an hour and a half to burn between Japanese and OChem, I sat in the student center and read. However, I didn't want to be late for this class, so I started my quest to locate the classroom rather early. I ended up making a complete fool of myself upon asking an upperclassman for directions. I fumbled for my schedule in my pocket after getting lost in a building and pointed out where I needed to go. The kid looked at me with a "What are you, stupid?" expression and pointed to the classroom right behind me. Yeah...

The first day of OChem wasn't bad; it was nothing more than basic review of the most basic concepts in Chemistry. Stuff like how everything is made of atoms and atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons! I was surprised to see that the kids around me were taking notes so furiously. My professor does seem like a cool guy, though--he seems like a thirty year old hipster who rocks out to Ben Gibbard, which is completely fine by me.

Immediately afterwards was Intro to Philosophy. Being an idiot as usual, I walked about a two blocks in the wrong direction before realizing that the building is literally next door to where my OChem class was. Whoops... Anyways, the first image I got from the professor was pretty positive, since she seemed like she could be either the mom or simply an older version of a friend of mine named Allison. I really can't describe it (nor can I really describe Allison), but take my word for it. We spent most of the class just introducing ourselves and admitting how none of us really wanted to take the class as we're all just fulfilling a requirement. I've always wondered how the professors feel about that...

Afterwards, I decided to explore the campus for a bit, but my right foot was killing me, so I went for a swim for about an hour. It didn't do too much to alleviate my foot pain, so I ended up going home right as I got out. It's not like I had anything to do on campus anyways...

It was a pretty boring day, to be honest, but I suppose it's all I could have expected. Maybe Batman, Big Boss, Mario or Link should make an appearance earlier than planned to rile things up?