Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

Jay's Kinda Weekly Rant:
As some may have noticed, I haven't exactly been keeping up on my rants. Well, turns out I have a bit of free time, so I figured I would try to get back on track with my rants.

All right, looking at the scoreboard of people who appreciate me, it looks like ecronzero is in the lead with 16 visits to my profile, closely followed by janetweiss9 with 15 visits. Everyone else, [Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's voice]YOU SUCK![/Triumph]

So, what have I been up to? Well, getting back into the routine of college for one thing. Surprisingly, I've been spending very little time in my room, which is very different from last semester. I've been spending most of my time in the apartment of the three guys I'll be living with next year. We've been playing a lot of video games, most recently Dragonball Z Budokai 2 (a decent amount of fun, but not great) and Mario Kart: Double Dash (a lot of fun, but powersliding sucks now). Sometimes, I've been doing stuff like that with them for so long that my roommate actually gets back to the dorm before I do, and he starts worrying about where I am.

Still, he's probably out of the room more than I am, since he's going through the pledging process for his fraternity. Very secretive, very hush-hush. Apparently, the university has a broad definition of hazing that includes simple things like "memorizing." Now, I wouldn't consider the act of memorizing to be hazing, but I suppose that what the fraternity would do if you screw up the memorization could be hazing. Regardless, I'm still almost certain that some of what the fraternity does to the pledges would be actual hazing, but I may never know because the pledges are virtually sworn to secrecy. As long as he doesn't get hurt or come back really drunk every night, then I'm ok with it. And if he does come back drunk, I'll just retreat to my "second home," aka the place I'm living next year.

I'm really liking my classes this semester. When I chose them, I found that I only had to pick one comp. sci. class in order to stay on track with my intended major. Beyond that, I had freedom to pick whatever classes I wanted. Thus, my other three classes are two international relations classes (one is an intro class, the other is on the Middle East) and a European history class (from 1648 to present day). The ironic thing is that the worst one is my comp. sci. class because it's basically a review of what I did last semester. I thought Lehigh was supposed to have a good reputation for comp. sci.? Then again, I also thought Lehigh wasn't a massive party school, so it appears there's a lot about Lehigh about which I was mistaken. Anyway, I still like all my teachers, and I don't really mind any of my classes; it's just that my comp. sci. class is really boring. Here's hoping the comp. sci. classes improve in future semesters.

The main complaint about my classes (and it's a relatively minor one) is the reading: I have ten textbooks (five of them are for one class), of which I have to read from at least six of them each week, and I have to read the New York Times every day (for the same class which has five textbooks). However, this is actually a good thing because it gives me a tangible sense of learning and of progress. Plus, I know it's good for me, as a citizen, to read a newspaper every day, so it's good that I'm getting in this habit early. Unfortunately, I've been pushing off a lot of reading, but I'm catching up on that as I type this (alternating between typing this up and reading). Speaking of which, I should focus on that, so I'm going to stop here. I'd say that was more than an adequate update. Hope everything is going well for all of you out there. Keep in touch.