a little fish out of water....

They say the typical feelings of being a frosh include being intimitdated and overwhelmed. I'm not sure there's been enough people around to experience the first feeling. However, being at orientation has been somewhat overwhelming. It's interesting though, I don't really have much to do during the day, yet at the end of the day, I'm dead tired and not completely tired at the same time. It's rather confusing...and maybe it's the prospect of having to sleep on a hard tile floor, not really being able to sleep that keeps me up.
So you're prolly wondering why in the hay I'm I up at the unearthly hours of 9 if I dont really have that much to do at orientation. This morning was preadvising and I was quite blessed to have my meeting at the hour of 8. Therefore I've been up since 7:45...even before Ann and her roomate. Something I've realized about myself that it's the initially getting up that kills me during the school year. Once the shock has surpassed, I'm able to stay up pretty well until about 3pm. The difference with being here (once again I must say it's the tile floor) I am able to wake up early, though very tired and sleepy, I get over it pretty quickly. Hopefully that will be the case next year.
I attended the welcome program last night, and I have to say that I've never been in such a tiny population of asians in crowd of mostly African Americans. Of the 100 or so people that showed up, there were three orientals and about an equivalent number of south asians. We had a really awesome discussion about the diversity values of UT and other ethnic issues like affirmative action and whatever else we face on college campus. I learned lot about the types of programs UT values and how they deal with them; as well as some on going traditions that have not been considered traditions just because the leaders of organizations that put these events on are students of minority decent. I feel that it's really important to know where the school stands on cultural issues as well as awareness. I mean of course it's a person's choice to decide whether they feel they want to learn more about the different cultures on campus, but I think it's a sad thing that cultural diversity isn't as readily promoted as the other things the university exposes orientees to. I might just feeling this way about cultural issues because I am a minority, but it would definitely be nice to see more openess in that area. Not to say that everyone and their dog on campus are indifferent or uneducated about cultures, cuz hey after being at orientation for a few days, UT seems like a cool place to be and there's definitely no regrets of coming here in the fall.

Anyhow, enough of my random ramblings...i must get going to some manditory something or other....i'll probably update again today since i have SO much time. have a great day!