(FROM HERE)

Who knew?

Tomorrow marks my second Friday and the completion of my second week at my internship. I've grown leaps and bounds already. Here's what happens when you start your first 9-5:

1. You get painfully tired. So tired that sleeping from 7PM until 7AM won't remedy the problem.
2. You get over it and stop hitting the snooze button. It doesn't help anyway.
3. You are excited by simple things like having your own desk.
   
4. Your back starts to hurt after a couple days.
5. You create bizarre new chair exercises to combat pain and entertain yourself in a small area.
6. You find bizarre things on the internet you would have never seen before (like blogs of Evangelical homeschooling mothers who rant for paragraphs about the evils of public schools and capitalism. And the Aptera, a vehicle I will own one day. )
7. You learn about things you had no interest in but now feel smart knowing (like diesel engine and advancements in environmentally friendly vehicles.)
8. You wonder what exactly people do every day at their desks.
9. You lose the ability to communicate. This ability is regained after a solid five minutes of uninterrupted conversation (with another person. Talking to yourself doesn't count.)
10. You count the hours until bed time (and realize why your dad is in bed by 9 every night.)
11. You appreciate your parents' intolerance toward late hours and laziness.
12. You would rather have a meaningful task to complete than sit idly pretending to work or doing nothing. That was so college.
13. You don't know what to do with your free time.
14. You tell yourself you physically can't look at a computer screen another second but you turn on your laptop the second you get home.
    

The Real World! Ann Arbor!

Apparently I'm an abomination to the world of competent grocery shoppers thriving in suburbs and cities nationwide. I should not be allowed to enter any self-serve nourishment establishment unsupervised lest I harm myself or some organized, focused grocery expert.

Mike took me grocery shopping last night and guffawed at everything I placed warily in my cart. I can't help the fact that my mother should host Top Chef, my dad holds a gold medal for Most Effective Shopper in the World and Jose and Maria take good care of me in the dining hall at school. I have no idea what I should buy or make or eat. I usually just eat what's placed in front of me. Which has been very little this past week.

I get it. This is that thing. The one I've been successfully avoiding for quite some time now. I think they call it "The Real World." I've been living MTV's version for quite some time now (this is the story of six college girls... picked to live together...) My version of the Real World has been fun and games. For the most part. A month ago I would have jumped on Noelle and forced her to accompany me to Late Night for some deliciously unhealthy fried food.

Goodbye mozzarella sticks and chicken wings on demand. Hello 40 hour work week and no one to cook for my tired self when I get home.

Your love is like a HEAT WAVE

I'm dying.

It's not work. It's not the roommates. It's not Ann Arbor. It's this damn heat. I'm going to melt in my sleep. I tried to crack a window in my room only to discover the windows don't actually open. I've been festering away between these four walls, just me and my computer which has been my little space heater.

DAD. IF YOU'RE READING THIS. BRING ME A FAN!

Moving on.

Tomorrow's my first Friday at the internship. Not gonna lie... This 8:30 to 5 business was starting to kill me. But then a strange thing happened. I had my first day where I wasn't exhausted by lunch. That was today. This week has been exciting. I've learned quite a bit and enjoyed all of it. (Even the tech meeting everyone attended for the pizza but didn't actually understand a word of. The two guys next to me were very good drawers.) Sitting in my chair staring at a computer screen all day was difficult at first but my back hurts less and I'm finding I get lost in the work more and more.

The Ride, on the other hand. The Ride is Ann Arbor's public transportation. I tried taking it to work today and it was 20 minutes late. I almost started sprinting to work but thankfully the bus came before I gave up. The 30 minute walk isn't that bad anyway...

My roommates are great. They've been really welcoming. They brought me out to both Red Wings games so I was able to relax with a beer, meet new people, watch some hockey and get back in time for bed.

In fact, the whole sleep situation is bizarre... I was so tired the other night I fell asleep at about 7 PM and slept until 6:30 AM waking once to watch Law and Order then falling back asleep. I don't have much energy by the time I get home. Hopefully I'll adjust so I can be social at least one or two nights a week.

Tomorrow's supposed to be in the 90s. I hope the roommates aren't creeped out by nudity and my overwhelming need to periodically cool off in the kitchen sink.

The MTV Movie Awards were pretty dumb as usual, but this has nothing to do with that so keep reading dad...

Check it:

I made it to Ann Arbor without vomiting or passing out. Mom, dad and Joe helped me move in and get settled with groceries, lunch and a reliable route to work. I have a 30 minute hike cross-campus which will double as my daily work out routine. I don't trust public transportation yet so I will use the only thing I can rely on: myself.

Moving right along, I met three of the four roommates and much to my relief they are normal and outgoing. We are similar in many ways including:

1. we are all girls
2. we all live under the same roof
   
3. we will all be seniors in university
4. we all enjoy the occasional beer
5. we all have a tendency to sleep in late

I'm sure good times lay ahead. The weird thing is that the room I'll occupy for the next two months, while wonderfully comfortable and clean, has pictures of it's permanent resident plastered to the walls. Therefore, you must forgive me if I have the occasional identity crisis or out-of-character moment. I am not schizophrenic. I am just confused.

The three hours of sleep fueling me for the day is starting to wear off and leave instead a throbbing headache and eyelids heavier than the 5-ton boulder resting in the base of my stomach. I'm going to turn out the lights, toss and turn as I try to fall asleep, wake up several times because the ulcers I've acquired on the ride over are burning a hole through my stomach and eventually give up and get dressed before hiking to my doom/salvation. Check back later to find which it is.

Twas the night before move-in...

[Tomorrow (slash in roughly five hours) my life will change drastically.]

As could be expected, I can't sleep. My mind is held captive by thoughts of tomorrow's departure from home when I will be ripped from the comfortable uterus of home-cooked meals and clean laundry. I will be hurled, screaming, into a city of strangers and a 9 to 5 job I hope I'm qualified for.

While my family sleeps soundly, I torture myself with the prospect of failure and rejection. What if the girls I live with hate me and focus all their energy on harassing me in hopes of driving me out of the house? What if I do something wrong at work and cause the company to crumble and my life in PR to cease forever, forcing my post-college hopes toward a sturdy box on a decent street in Boston? What if that mosquito I just slaughtered in the bathroom has a family that will pursue their vendetta against me by biting me to death in my sleep?

This always happens. I stay up all night before embarking on some new adventure trying to predict all the things that could go wrong. Usually the things I expect to go wrong don't and the things that do go wrong I never thought could. Like last year when I was a camp counselor for the summer. I thought I was going to lose a kid in Boston landing myself a lovely spot in prison for several years, pending good behavior. Instead, I made a lot of great friends and had problems saying goodbye. I sure wasn't expecting to encounter the least mentally stable person on campus. But I learned a lot and had a fantastic time doing so. And I don't regret any of it, not even the lowest points. In fact, I don't regret anything in my life enough to lose sleep over. So that's comforting.

Come to think of it, I'm ready to move on. I'm ready for the next challenge in my life. Time to conquer another city I'm completely unfamiliar with. Time to embrace another mysterious endeavor that will unfold when I actually start living it.

To tell you the truth, I'm pretty damn excited and barking on the inside.

BRING IT ON, ANN ARBOR!