Classes start

I started classes on Thursday of last week. I'm already in love with my professors and really looking forward to the class material, despite having to wake up at 6:45am! My child psychopathology teacher (also a practicing clinical psychologist) offers positions for his stellar students to mentor some of his youth clients. Excited at the prospect of working in the field, I immediately emailed him and we have an interview set up for Tuesday. Wish me luck!

I'm making some good connections with fellow students. I happened to run into a boy who attended Mesa, my community college, and took the same intensive research class as me a few years ago. Since we both had the same training and teacher recommendations, we are most likely going to take the advanced research methods course together. I thought networking would be a little harder on the large University campus, but so far it's going really well.

The amount of reading is going to take some getting used to. The material is really dense (mostly scientific journal articles) and there's a lot of it. Most of it is interesting so far but there really is a lot to learn in such a short amount of time.
The beautiful plants and animals I stumble upon when walking from class to class helps ease my stress!
My favorite place to study- the reading porches on the 4th floor of the newly remodeled McHenry library. Homework is a lot more fun when you can smell redwoods.
My best friend Erica, our slug mascot, and I at the OPERS festival- basically a HUGE "club rush" with a Santa Cruz twist- local growers brought their food for us to eat! Stations were set up across the field with fresh tomatoes, baked bread, chicken sausage, juicy fruit, and deli wraps.
There are a lot of opportunities for recreational and academic activities. I am going to become part of Psi Chi, the national honors society for psychology students, and hopefully attend some stargazing/hiking/backpacking trips offered by the school throughout the quarter.
Yes, I still have time to have fun. Last night my friend Aviva and I went to the "midnight movie" downtown and saw "Fight Club", one of my favorite movies.

This one is for my Mom- she told me to hug some trees for her!

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