First Campus Visit

School starts in three weeks.  Last week I logged into the site to see if the teacher had posted an official list of which books we would need to purchase for the class.  Also, just to see if she had added any material, anything to personalize the site, anything at all, really.



Well, nothing on the class' site had changed, except the number of students enrolled in the class.  It had jumped from something like 20, to 35!  Naturally, I panicked.  Now, I'm okay in large classroom settings (even an auditorium  where I can sit anywhere and take notes and not have to interact with everyone, just the people around me.  But in a language class, that's not really an option.  You can't learn a language by sitting and taking notes.  Trust me, I'm not exactly a stranger at learning languages, just Russian.

In my panic, I texted my husband.  His response was, "Do you want to visit the campus today?" A few reasons for that.  One, I've been there before, but don't remember it, and it's on the side of the river that I don't like driving; in fact, I usually either refuse to drive over there, or make my husband drive.  Basically, get me calmed down about driving to the school so I wouldn't panic on my first day of class.  Now please, don't get the impression I panic a lot, I don't, I'm just sooo nervous about this.  And me "panicking" is just me going "oh crap" and then going "okay, well, I'll deal with it somehow." I have yet to have to breath into a paper bag...

The other reasons were more simple, see if the bookstore was open, and if so, purchase my books.  One less thing for me to worry about later.  I'm actually ahead of the game, I have two books that might work from the first time I took Russian 101.  From what I've seen of the books so far, she'll want me to have an Oxford Russian-English Dictionary and I already have one, I just have the full sized one and she only requires like the "basic" one, so I'm hoping my full size one will work.  I also have an English Grammar for Students of Russian book that I'm hoping hasn't changed too much or at all, but we'll see.  Also need fill out some paperwork to get my name changed from my maiden name to my married name as well as to get some credits transferred over from another school.

Now about the trip to campus - that didn't go as well as we had hoped.  It's supposed to be a pretty basic route, and it is, but it's been a few years since my husband was up in that area, and campus location had changed a little.  So...we kind of went in a circle to get there.  And then the bookstore was closed already...He did show me an easy way to get home, hopefully I'll remember that.  In case I don't, we're going back up on Wednesday.  That visit should go better.  My husband knows the area like the back of his hand, but he can only get somewhere if he knows where he's going.

For now I'm left crossing my eyes when I'm reading Cyrillic, hoping that all goes well on Wednesday, counting down the days until classes start and  cringing at the thought of maybe being in a class with 18 year olds and having them just roll on by me.  But hey, at least I know I can roll my "r."
~