Life is good

Though I've spent several weeks at college, I feel like I've been here for much longer. My days have been packed with events, and I always look forward to bedtime. The most outstanding factor in my experience so far has definitely been the academic challenge of Centre's education. Many of my friends from high school who attend other large public universities have told me that college is easier than high school. When I hear that, I laugh. I have four hours of homework a night on a light day.

Though the workload is heavy, I don't really mind. I've come to find that I've stopped viewing school as a chore and more as a means of growth. I want to major in religion, so I especially enjoy my "Philosophy of Religion" course. It has forced me to truly examine my beliefs, but in doing that I've been able to strengthen them. When we cover a concept that I want to try to disprove or that I disagree with, my professor has no problem with staying after class to debate. I also enjoy my Latin, government, and humanities courses.

I've also had the opportunity to take private guitar lessons with an instructor here at Centre. I play "classical guitar," and I took lessons for several years until my sophomore year of high school. After a couple of years of just picking around, I decided to take up formal study again at college. I'm definitely rusty, but I can tell that I'm working back to my previous skill level. School, music, eating, and sleeping--I have enough items on my schedule, but that's just the beginning of what I've been doing.

Physical fitness is important to me, so I've been doing my best to work out as much as I can. I played on an intramural soccer team, even though I've never played soccer before. Before the season was over, I found that I have very little foot-eye coordination. I'm going to stick to football from now on. I've also been going to Sutcliffe, our on-campus fitness center. I lift weights there as often as I can, and I play pick-up basketball games fairly frequently.

Thankfully, I've been able to find a group of friends that I already feel at home with. Most of them live on my hall, so I'm around them all the time. We go to parties together, take trips to Wal-Mart, and go to movies. All in all, we just look out for each other.

In general, I'm pretty happy with the way things are going here. I can definitely look forward to spending the next four years here in Danville. I'm reasonably close to my family (about 3 hours), and I have fun here. Life is good.