As of the beginning of September, I moved back out of my parents' basement and returned to Halifax. This is a good thing. I love my parents, and it's not like they're strict or even tried to control my life in any way at all, but after being independent for several years, moving back in with them was kind of brutal. So I'm glad to be back out on my own.
Most of friends graduated with me last year, and have moved away to jobs/further education in other parts of the province/country/world, including both of my roommates. And all of the friends who did stick around kept the same living arrangements as they had before, which left me kind of stuck for housing options. I considered living completely on my own, and that was always the back-up plan, but I'm scared that if I lived alone I would just become a complete hermit, and never leave home except to go to class, and talk to myself all the time, and fall out of touch with all of my friends, and just generally not be in a good state of mental health. So instead I moved into a house where all the rooms are rented out separately, meaning that I now live with three total strangers. Well, I guess they're not entirely strangers any more, since we've lived together for a few weeks, but it's still weird. They're all really nice, but it still seems odd to be living with them. Living with strangers is just a completely different way of life than living with friends (or parents).
I love the house, though. It's bigger than my old apartment, and it's above ground instead of in a basement, so having enormous windows in my room feels like such a luxury and I love it. Also there's a nice backyard with a deck, and the "furnished downstairs" includes a PIANO in the dining room, which is really exciting. Plus it's closer to campus than my old place, which is nice (and will be even nicer once winter hits, I'm sure).
Of course, the reason I'm back in Halifax at all is because I've just started law school, which is also weird. I can't even decide yet whether or not I like it. It's just all so completely different than anything I've studied before that it's hard to get my head wrapped around it. On the bright side, I was sort of expecting the profs to be strict and stern but they're totally just regular profs, and the other students aren't as competitive and snobby as I was afraid they would be, so that's all good.
Other than that, at the end of summer my friends and I went on our annual backwoods camping trip, which was excellent, and we went for five days instead of just three like we usually do, so it was extra-excellent. This past weekend I went rock-climbing for the first time, which was fun but also difficult and somewhat frustrating. I would really like to go again, because by the time I felt like I was starting to figure out the strategy and technique side of it, I was getting too physically tired to actually do it. Also this weekend I went to the Word on the Street Festival and appreciated all the books and all the book/writing/literacy related organizations and all the people being interested in and excited about books, and I picked up a copy of Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which I'm really excited to start reading.
I think that is everything important (and a bunch of things that aren't).
I hare the fear of living entirely alone - it would be waaaaay too easy to just work, eat, sleep, surf the interwebs, and not see many people.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious how law school is completely different than anything you've ever studied; I mean, obviously it's a different subject, but is it a lot more memorization?
Partly more memorization, and partly just a completely different way of thinking. Basically most of the homework is reading a case and figuring out 1. what the facts are, 2. what the relevant laws are, 3. how the facts line up with the laws and then 4. what the main issue/deciding factor is that makes this case important. It's just a very particular, structured way of thinking and it's strange to get used to making my brain work in those patterns.
ReplyDeletePlus in my previous education in philosophy/literature/history we were usually looking more at the broad movements of thought and the major events, and in law we need to focus on such minute details, so that's a little harder too.