Whooshhhhh

That's correct, everything goes fast around here. It's because they keep us so busy. By the time you're finished doing the stuff you have to do, there's way less time left than you'd expect for doing other stuff. That wouldn't be such a bad thing, but I tend to spread out all the suff that I have to do, and the time between the stuff just gets filled by browsing the internet. I just realized last night that the internet has become my crutch, my TV. It's my default activity; I do it when I have some free time. But realization is the key. Now that I've realized that, it'll change. The internet is for utilitarian purposes only, except once I've done all my work, and even then I'll put preference on real activities. It's become apparent to me that I don't get out as much as most people seem to. We don't get much time for aimless socializing here, and what little time I get, I've been squandering away in my room.
-What's some other stuff? Well, last week I did a sort of experiment. I'd read about the "Paleo Diet", which is where you eat as a forager would eat, on the theory that humans evolved to be best able to use those sorts of foods. Basically, it decries grains, beans, and potatoes as too recent additions to our diet. That's because these foods require cooking to be edible, and cooking wasn't invented until comparatively recent; also, they couldn't have been very widespread until the Agricultural Revolution, about 10 000 years ago. They're inedible before cooking because of chemicals in them with names like "lectins" and such, which, the advocates say, are still residually bad for you even after they've been cooked. (The Ag Rev is seen in these circles as "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race", as even so illustrious a persona as Jared Diamond put it.) Anyhow, I decided I'd scientifically try the Paleo Diet out for a week. It's not like I need to lose weight, but I've heard claims that, if you go on it as a regular person, you'll end up more energized than ever before in your life, now that your body is detoxifying and finally getting exactly what it needs: Meat, eggs, vegetables, and fruits, mostly. Our society is built on grain, though, and it took a lot of creativity to stay paleo at the dining hall. I mostly managed, but I believe the experiment was tainted, because one day there were ginger snaps and another day there was angel food cake, and sometimes the only meat was breaded. I also didn't have any way to objectively measure whether I was feeling better, or rather I hadn't come up with one yet. Now, I'm back off paleo, and trying to observe the contrast, but there's sure a lot of static in the data; for example, I think I've now picked some disease up from Jeremy (who is perpetually sick). The experiment, then, was pretty much inconclusive, though I have a vague feeling that I felt a bit better last week.
-Some prospies (that's prospective students) came over last week as well. Jay and Jeremy got them completely trashed. It's becoming pretty evident to me that my roommates aren't just average when it comes to wanting to drink and party; they do it at absolutely every opportunity. Luckily, the triple we share has sectioned-off rooms, so when it gets to a fever pitch of ridiculousness I just close my door and wait for everything to get closer to normal. Thus, until Jeremy told me I didn't know that they had gotten one prospie so drunk that - he? she? - peed on Jeremy. I don't even know how that happens. And I'm glad about that. Despite it all, I'm doing fine, thanks to the trusty door that can separate me from all the idiocy.
-Aside from classes and that, not much really happened to me last week. That's because classes take up so much time and effort. I suppose they're a valid thing to write about, though. In English, we've been reading Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe, and we're getting into more people of that period. In calculus, we did vectors in 3 dimensions, and now we're getting back to doing derivatives and integrals. In Russian, we're gradually learning how to say less and less simple stuff; we've now learned how to tack endings onto adjectives. What's a tutorial? Well. I guess I'll explain a tutorial. It's a class everyone takes in their first semester here, designed to help you out gaining all the skills you'll need for such a thorough education as you'll get here. It has a topic besides "tutorial"; before coming, we picked our top five choices from a list of thirty or so tutorials. There are ones about climate change, the aesthetics of home, weird music, and Icelandic Sagas. I am in Professor Savarese's tutorial, "Dis Lit: Disability in Literature" - actually the title is a little longer, but I don't remember it. So, we're reading books written by deaf, quadruplegic, blind, or otherwise disabled people. So far we've read just two books, one by a Deaf actor (Bernard Bragg) and one by a quadruplegic woman who is a much better writer than him, because she writes for a living (Nancy Mairs). Also, I suppose, because Bragg's was translated out of sign language, but Mair's has more structure, which is something that wouldn't have been lost in translation. And we're beig taught how to write effectively and read critically. That type of stuff. So, now you know. I'm going to go have lunch.