Breakfast with Amber

February 2021: It Might Be Freezing, But I Have Splatoon 3 to Keep Me Warm

And with that, I'm back on campus. Well, I moved on campus in January, but I was too busy talking about Disney World. Since it was still COVID times, there were still plenty of restrictions. For one thing, they were only putting one person in each room. That meant I had no roommate. This was optimal. I did, however, have a suitemate whom I'd share the bathroom with. Her name was Alyssa, and I didn't talk to her once except for the time I accidentally locked myself out on my balcony.

I was placed in Myrtle McFarlin Residence Hall, which is a name you'll be hearing a lot for the rest of the book. I was in room 110, which, as you might be able to guess, is on the first floor, and there's something you need to know about Myrtle McFarlin Residence Hall, more specifically the first and third floors. The lights are those energy-saving motion-activated lights that automatically turn off about every 30 minutes. It didn't matter what you were doing. In the middle of a Zoom meeting? Lights are off. Trying to read? Lights are off. Going to take a shower? The lights will be off when you come out.

This can't possibly be safe. At night, I'd have to stumble across the room to turn the lights on. Sometimes, standing up or moving back in my chair was enough to turn them on, but then there were the times I had to manually push the button, and then there were the times I had to manually push the button multiple times.

Enough about the lights. There are other things I could be telling you about such as the mask mandates or the glass panels put up in Mabee where those one-seater booths used to be or the survey we had to take every morning to ensure that we could go into public each day even though almost every day, it was like "Have you tested positive for COVID?" "No." "Have you been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID?" "No." "Have you experienced any of the following symptoms?" "No."

Almost every day.

Anyway, as it was still COVID times, four out of my five classes were virtual. The one that wasn't was The American Novel, which was a hybrid class, so while I was glad to be able to get out of the dorm three times a week, we still had to deal with people's internet connectivity before we could actually get to teaching. It was taught by Dr. Soto, one of the higher-ups in the English department, in what would be his last semester at Trinity. The idea was that we would read eight different novels from different points in America's history from Mark Twain to Nimona by Noelle Stevenson, now a hit Netflix series! (If it weren't for him, I would have had no idea Ballister Blackheart used to be in a relationship with Pretty-Guy McWhiteboy or whatever his name was. That detail just flew past me.)

This was also when I took my second semester of Japanese 2. For my four virtual class, I'd take my supplies and my laptop somewhere else on campus. For Japanese, I'd go to Heidi Lounge. It was a lot of the same stuff as last semester, so I won't spend too much time talking about this one.

Third was the New Testament. I wasn't expecting to take a religion class, but it was actually a lot of fun, especially since it was being taught by Dr. Hernandez. He always tried to inject humor into his lectures. Some of the highlights were when he taught us about the "wizard battle" in the book of Acts, his idea for a quiz called Charles Manson vs. Gospel of Thomas, and the final project, where he told us to create a presentation on any contemporary commentary on the New Testament, and I picked the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse meme. For this class, I'd sit at one of the study tables in CSI.

Fourth was Intro to Acting, taught by Dr. Joseph. I was originally going to go to Coates Student Center for this class, but after one class, I decided I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of a bunch of other people with my performances, so I stayed in my room. This was also the class where I found out I could edit PDFs, so I started leaving funny notes in the margins of my scripts even though they were scans of paper scripts. Technology is amazing.