Wednesday, January 19, 2000

I woke up at the deliciously ludicrous hour of 6:00AM this morning, not to do the morning show on WAIH, but to put the station into automation. Since my first class is at 9:00AM on Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays, and also since I knew no one was available to fill in the extra space of air time, I figured that it made no sense for me to broadcast for an hour and then turn on automation.

Usually it takes me about 40 minutes to get ready in the morning (shower, get dressed, brush my mane of hair, etc.). When I'm living on campus, it takes me less than a minute to walk to WAIH's air studio. This leaves me with 20 minutes of show prep time before I have to go on the air. Thus, WAIH's morning begins at 7:00AM. Just to be on the safe side, I like to have a buffer of at 20 minutes between air time and class time (I had an hour last semester).

While it is true that I could have broadcasted this morning for one hour and 40 minutes at most, I didn't see the point. Why go on the air for such a short time when you're just going back to "music in a can" so soon afterwards? Instead, I opted for a quick check on the equipment and the cleanliness of the station, a quick throw into automatic (6-8 hours of pre-recorded programming, suitable for airplay any time of day), and then a leisurely breakfast in the dinning hall.

My first two classes were today. The first is called "Basic Principles of Speech," the second, immediately afterward is "Survey of Human Communication." Both classes seem like they will be okay. The second is much larger than the first, however. When I walked into the lecture hall, I was a bit stunned to find myself in a room the size of a gymnasium. It's a bit unnerving to see yourself surrounded by so many other people for the same course. I knew a fair number of them though, so it was not as if I was isolated in a sea of nameless faces.

My first class, although smaller, was in reality more crowded. There were fewer people, but we were all packed into a small room in chair-desks (as I call the fucking combination of a chair and desk that institutions of "higher education" insist upon cramming students into). I swear that these wooden seats must have been made in the 19th century, for the anorexic group. Both of my neighbors in the class were less than 16 inches away from me - a blatant violation of my personal circle.

After my classes and lunch with The Tall Guy, I bought my books. This year, S.U.N.Y. Potsdam has drained $171.93 from my wallet. Once again, I find myself hoping that it is worth the expense. Once again, time will tell. Of course, if they're going to drain so much money from me, they could at least do something to speed up the line going into the bookstore. I must have stood there for about 40 minutes before finally getting to the books, and finally the counter.