My new tube of toothpaste, my laundry bag, my German grammar books—just a few of the many items I forgot when I moved back into Lincoln yesterday. Nothing major—at least nothing that I’ve realized yet. I brought a lot more stuff back down than I took home for break. Sure, Christmas might be to blame, but I don’t remember getting enough hoodies to bring a huge gym bag to its breaking point.

It’s freezing outside, and yesterday, a few of my suitemates and I made a trip to the bookstore on High Street to pick up our class materials. I paid $140 for CS&E materials and $100 for a psychology book I just found out today is only optional. No sweat—I’ll just return it. I have to pick up a $120 econ book anyway.

We have a new addition to our suite this quarter: my chia pet. I got him for Christmas and just finished spreading his seeds a few minutes ago. I’m not sure I did it right, but I guess only time will tell. We’re still thinking up names for him. So far we’ve got Frederick, Milton, Chuck, Thomas, Natalie (I guess we’re not sure he’s really a he), and Bradley. We wrote “Name our chia pet!� on a dry-erase board and left it outside our door with a marker. Any passersby are free to add suggestions.

I’m liking my classes a bit better this quarter than I did last quarter. Psych H100 seems pretty interesting. Plus I get to participate in faculty research. Yeah, yeah—I get to be a guinea pig. He also assumed we’d all be up late watching the game Monday night, so he told us he didn’t expect us to come to class Tuesday morning. I love this. I’ll probably still go—I’m a geek like that—but I’ll probably be the only one. My intermediate microeconomics professor has a Chinese accent, something every college student has to get used to eventually. And, apparently, econ at this level is pretty much just math, even if using equations to model human behavior is unrealistic in my opinion.

When I got to math 153 and the TA started to go through “review,� I was lost. All of this material was not “review� for me; it was entirely new. Funny thing is, I took math 161 last quarter—a higher level calculus II course—and we didn’t touch polar coordinates or these types of summations. So I was a bit surprised that this should be “review� in calculus III at this lower level. I’ll probably drop this class anyway—I’ve already talked to someone about starting independent study in German to replace this useless math class.

I got my first assignment of the quarter for Fisher Ink and I’m pretty excited: I’m writing about the writers’ strike and its impact on business. Now, for me, this is a good topic. I’m glad I’m finally doing an actual story for Fisher Ink—last issue (my first article), I was only given a course spotlight article. The rough draft is due Wednesday, so I’ve got to get started researching and scheduling interviews with relevant faculty members (as soon as I find out who they are). There’s also a freelancers meeting for The Lantern next week. It’s looking like I’ll get the opportunity to write for them again, too.

A friend and I took a walk to Target today. I still needed a winter coat and gloves to survive this 15-degree weather. I learned to never shop on an empty stomach—you’ll end up spending over $100. (Fortunately, I did get the coat and gloves, too.)

Tomorrow I have Econ H271 and CS&E 200…and math—I haven’t dropped it yet. I’m looking forward to the econ class. It’s in the Honors & Scholars House. Where exactly in that house? I have no idea. But I think it’s pretty cool.