The last time I posted, I was antsy over the lack of roommate information; it's been solved by me getting placed into one of the first-year dorms, Dascomb Hall. It's not the newly-built, fancy dorms - we have cinderblock walls and carpet that looks like my high school history classroom's - but we do have a dining hall downstairs. Dascomb is also conveniently close to all of my classes, so I'll overlook the patched doors and dingy kitchens.
I asked to be placed into a first-year dorm because many people I had met over the course of the college-hunting process had extolled their virtues - meet people who are in the same situation as you! Easy friendships! Hall pride! I also asked to be placed into the "World Cultures" area of the dorm. I managed to get in, so I'm sharing dorm space with several international students from China, Taiwan, and other countries, as well as internationally-minded Americans. This has resulted in some theoretical hall activities - next week, we have our first hall thingy, a dumpling-making party - but for the most part, the hall is pretty quiet and people haven't been super-actively making friends. I suppose this is also a function of us being on the very end of the hall, beyond the stairs, so you can't just wander by on your way to the restroom/the floor kitchen/the laundry room.
My roommate, another girl from the Pacific Northwest, and I have sort of come to the mutual conclusion that we're decent roommates - i.e., we don't blast loud music when the other is trying to study; if one of our friends/family members Skypes, the other will either put in headphones or leave the room; we share milk for our morning bowls of sugar cereal - but aren't exactly "friends". We're pretty different people, because she's a sports player and is pretty gregarious, but we're respectful of the other and I don't see any major problems coming up over the course of the year.
As dorm rooms go, I consider us to be fairly lucky: we're on the second floor of the dorm, right next to the staircase. Our room is one of the corner rooms, so we have two windows (fantastic for the first few days when it was 90+) and a view of the main commons in front of the library. We also have an entire wall of storage, so there was actually enough room for me to store my sewing machine and sewing box under my bed and have room to spare for my stockpile of winter sweaters. I would make curtains to replace the ineffective, impossible-to-lower blinds, but we're not allowed to have window coverings other than what the college gives us. I'm sure there's a good reason for this... but I can't see it. I would dearly love to be able to get dressed without having to sit in the blind spot on the head of my bed.
On the way of friends, though, placement into the World Cultures wing led me to meet a fantastic fellow ex-IBer and lover of all things nerdy. We've been eating together quite a bit (cafeterias are cafeterias no matter what grade you're in, and they're intimidating to sit alone in)... I've also made friends with the other first-year in my Japanese class, who is living in Asia House... I really want to live in Asia House next year, so I'm hoping she can put in a good word for me during the application process!
Orientation week turned out to be a little bit different from what I expected. The first few days, involving Moving Day, several presentations and plays about Oberlin life, and concerts were jam-packed and super busy. After those first few days, there wasn't as much scheduled, and so it felt pretty empty on campus while the older students moved in.
We attended both group advising sessions and individual sessions, meeting our academic advisers in the process. I asked for an adviser in the East Asian studies department, and wound up with a fantastic professor who is also my first-year seminar teacher. She's from Seattle, teaches Japanese history and languages, and is the campus coordinator-type person for the Associated Kyoto Program, which I'm planning on applying for junior year. The first time I went and talked to her, we spent more time discussing my hobbies (kimono!) and my big-picture plan for college than actually planning out classes - mostly because I knew what classes I wanted to get into and didn't really need assistance getting my first-semester schedule together. I'm planning on asking her if she'd be willing to be my adviser for the rest of my time here. I don't know how others' advisers are, but the advising department did an amazing job matching me with someone.
I got my schedule ironed out - a Japanese history course, my first-year seminar on the Tale of Genji, a Japanese language course, and an introductory economics class. I didn't plan on having such a humanities/Japan-focused first semester, but I managed to get into all of my first-choice classes. This, apparently, is pretty rare for a first-year, but I'm definitely not complaining. There's a lot of reading to do, but the readings are manageable.
One of the main reasons I applied to Oberlin was the well-known ExCo, or Experimental College, division. These classes are taught by students, and run the gamut from Korean and various academic courses to Fencing and Calvin & Hobbes. I applied for exactly one ExCo, called SexCo, that's run by the Sexual Information Center. The course is required for anyone who wants to work at the SIC (and I do) - but it's also notoriously difficult to get into because it's a course about sex, how our society views sex, and gender. This year, they received 200 applications or so, and I managed to get in, which made me so, so, so happy. I have my first session this Wednesday.
There's been several culinary adventures in the last two weeks, like the mock chicken a la king in the dining hall that congealed to the plate during one lunchtime and the perpetually-underdone legumes. I didn't come into college expecting food like I get at home (I'm spoiled by foodie parents and access to the International District), so aside from the gluey soy-and-mushroom thing and slightly crunchy chickpeas, I've been reasonably satisfied with food here. To clarify: I'm not a vegetarian. I enjoy chicken, bacon, and steak. However, I've been eating very little meat out here, which is partially out of a sense of trepidation due to bad experiences with cafeteria hamburgers elsewhere and partially because much of the vegetarian food is actually pretty decent. The dining hall where I eat lunch a good portion of the time, Dascomb, does this not-at-all-accurate-but-still-delicious "stir fry" station with veggies and rice and tofu. One of my "New College Resolutions" was to eat more healthy food, ironically enough,* and I do feel that I've been succeeding. There's access to quite a bit of vegetable-type stuff and reasonably healthy things along with unlimited ice cream and cake. Fruit is a little bit sketchier, so my roommate and I have taken to purchasing apples, bananas, and so on to keep in the room.
Meal plans are expensive, though, so I opted to go on 14-meals-per-week and eat breakfasts in my room. This is working out to roughly a half-gallon of milk a week and a constant rotation of cold cereals, which isn't too bad. I'm sure I'll get sick of it in about two weeks and start using my coffee pot to make instant oatmeal, but for now the cornflakes-and-yogurt option is going okay. From what I can tell, the dining hall breakfasts are pretty much the same every morning... fruit, cereal, sausage or vegan sausage, eggs. Sometimes they apparently have pancakes or waffles, and they've got bagels and stuff. I don't feel like I'm missing anything by not eating CDS breakfasts.
There's a lot more to talk about, in more detail here, so I'm going to start marking "Blog-writing" into my schedule the same way I do homework; in theory, this will make updates more regular.
*My other New College Resolution was to make good use of the fancy gym facilities, the pretty campus, and the flat land to get in shape. So far, my running shoes haven't seen the outside of my closet.
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