Life Things: Back To School

On Sunday, Auntee, Dad, and I took my sister back to NIU for her sophomore year. We took Auntee's recently purchased van up there. Samone took less stuff up there than she did last year, so everything fit pretty easily. One thing I liked about going back to DeKalb in Auntee's van is the DVD player she has in it. Samone and I watched most of the movie King's Ransom on the way there. I don't think I'll actually write a review of this movie, but I'll just say that it was so-so. It had some laughs and the cast is great, but it was just missing something.

We got to NIU pretty quickly considering and it didn't take long for Monie to check into her dorm. Although her college experience has been pretty different from mine, there are surprisingly similar things between our dorm experiences. When I was at NU, I stayed in the same dorm for both my freshman and sophomore years. In fact, I was on the same floor both years too, although I was in a different hallway. Samone will be living in the same dorm she lived in her freshman year and she will be living on the same floor she did last year. Her new room is only two doors down from her old room. There are a couple notable differences in how our second year dorm experiences happened. Luck of the draw got me back in the same dorm and same floor my sophomore year while she chose to stay where she is.

Even though it was Sunday and classes started the next day, there were a lot of people around the campus. By coming after the official move-in day on Thursday, we avoided the crowds of people all trying to move in at once. It took about four trips or so, but the four of us were able to bring everything up to Samone's room. This year, she has a new roommate who is a freshman. While the girl was cordial, I don't think Samone and her will become friends in the way she and her freshman year roommate did.

We set a lot of stuff up. I helped Samone set up her computer. One very nice thing they did in her dorm was to change the DSL connection to Ethernet. This meant that she didn't have to worry about the whole modem and router thing like she did last year. However, the school also added a new login requirement for her to access the Internet. This became a problem when, after installing the software, it didn't let her log onto the net. It turned out that her password expired. She tried to change it before she left home, but the school's system won't let you change the password unless it's expired. She had to call the ResTech department twice, once to make sure that the password was the problem and again to get a temporary password. After quite a while, her computer was all set up.

We left from her dorm and went to McDonalds to get something to eat. After that, we returned to her dorm and helped her set up her TV and VCR/DVD. Once we finished that (the school also moved the cable connection), Dad, Auntee, and I had to leave. Monie went to the van with us (she had to sign some stuff) and we said our goodbyes. I watched the rest of King's Ransom in the van and started watching some of the 21 (!) deleted scenes. I was really tired since I worked earlier that day (and I had no sleep) and I started to doze off a bit as the deleted scenes played. Auntee, apparently getting sick of hearing the movie, asked me if I was finished watching the movie. Since I was halfway falling asleep anyway, I stopped it and she turned on the radio.

Now that Monie's back in school, I wonder if what a cousin of mine said to me will be true for her. A distant cousin of mine who went to NU told me in the one conversation we had while she was there (during my freshman year) that sophomore year is the year where I would find my group of friends. That statement of hers ended up being very true. In fact, most of the people from NU that I keep in touch with today are people I met during my sophomore year. It remains to be seen whether or not our cousin's statement will end up being true for her.