Redeemer had a sort of a welcoming party for the RUF students today–various Redeemer families brought sandwiches and sides and gave lunch to all the students. I stayed for free lunch (hey, you don’t get that all the time!) and got to meet a lot more people, both Redeemer families and several students. Including one English student getting ready to graduate with his PhD who I hadn’t met on-campus yet, so that was nice. The first few weeks I slipped in and out without meeting too many people (they don’t have a Paul Jaeggi!), but it was really great to be able to sit and eat and chat with people for longer. I’m just not good at conversation where I don’t have anything to do with my hands, or can’t listen in to other conversations as the other people at the table talk.

Now I’m getting ready to head out to a picnic for the English Graduate Students to get to know some of them better. Today is also the first football game of the year, but I didn’t go to it. All the freshmen were really excited about it, though. And when I get back, more reading! Whee. As far as schoolwork goes, I’m fluctuating day by day on whether I can do it all, whether I can do it well, whether I should even be doing this…I still feel uncertain and unprepared compared with all the other graduate students, so I’m just trying to take it one day at a time and do my best on the current task. I can’t think beyond that right now, and the coming weeks, which are going to be more and more filled with ongoing papers and research? Really can’t think about them at all.