Day 97

Yesterday during my meeting with my advisor, she asked if Richard and I were settling into life in Baton Rouge (side note, here’s some grammatical clarification about “into” vs “in to”), and I told her that we are liking it, but neither of us has ever lived in a city this large. She smiled and said she went to college in Beijing. I don’t consider myself a small town girl, and I like to think I am reasonably aware of how big the world is (as well as how small it is), but the truth is that I went to a small university and have never been immersed in a community of this size. There is so much to learn besides what I will be taught in my classes. 

When we started telling people where we were moving, just about everyone replied with a comment to the effect of “Get ready for the traffic!” so we were prepared for the worst. We live in a great neighborhood that is fairly quiet while staying reasonably close to LSU and Richard’s job, so we have mostly been able to avoid the traffic on the interstate, but there’s not really a way around the fact that we live in an area with a more concentrated population now. 

Today, I had a small town girl moment and learned a lesson the hard way. I work on the edge of campus, so I am not located super close to places like the student union or the buildings where I will have class. This afternoon, I had my orientation for the Graduate School, and it was supposed to last through the end of my working day at a location about a mile from my office. Since I figured I would leave to go home straight from work, I thought I would be able to drive across campus and park by my orientation spot in the same amount of time, maybe less. 

Wrong. Fake news.

After failing to locate a parking space in a lot, I paid a few dollars to park in a deck, then I had a 10-15 minute walk to orientation anyway. Lesson learned. I have a pair of old running shoes stashed in my office, so I’ll be making regular fashion statements in a dress and athletic shoes from now on. 

Something that made today great: I took a pretty sweet nap after work.