Orientation is almost over.

How I feel about starting college. This is what I've been trying to figure out for the past few days. I'll think that I understand how I'm going to approach this, but then my feelings alter radically and I'm confused again. I suppose this is why I try not to operate by my emotions. More on that below.

I went along on auto-pilot for most of Thursday and Friday, taking in all the information and stimuli passively, waiting to process it later. Like now, maybe. I think my first strong reaction came Friday afternoon. Trying to do as much as possible as quickly as possible, I scheduled a job interview an hour after a placement exam. I visited the proctor a half-hour before to see if I could take the test early, but she declined. Still, I was confident I could finish a test involving my major in no time. As I scanned the questions though, I realized it would take longer than an hour. At least, for the conscientious, responsible students.

As for me, I rushed through the multiple choice, silently bemoaning the poorly written excerpts. Speed-reading awkward prose hurt my head. But the essay derailed me. Prompted to write a 500+ word essay on an experience in which I "discovered I knew less about an idea or issue than I thought I knew" or some such thing, I froze. When did I ever find that I knew less about something after becoming acquainted with it? I scribbled out five paragraphs on a relationship that turned drastically, and it almost could have worked. Until, of course, I wrote a synopsis instead of a thesis. Had I written, "People are not always what they seem. A person can actually be something completely different from what they project," I could have saved it. But I blanked on the definition of "thesis" and wrote a terrible summary of my essay instead.

I was so distracted by the impending interview, though, I didn't kick myself until afterward. Rushing out of the exam room, I dashed across campus, striding long-legged on wedged heels, feeling slightly pretentious in the head scarf and jewelry my mom insisted I wear. The interview was super low-key, and the job, a campus media internship, sounded so perfect. But they haven't responded back to me yet.

Deflated after the frantic zig-zagging, I left the media office, slipping off the shoes that had quickly blistered my feet, tender from an entire summer ensconced in tennis shoes and socks. The pain of my newly raw skin increased as the realization dawned on me: I had truly screwed up my English placement exam.