Oy. What a day. I don't even know where to start. It was Nipissing UpClose today, which is a day where kids in high school can come, visit the school and do all sorts of Nip stuff, like meet profs from whichever department, tour around the school, eat free lunch...they had about 50 students come out last year for the October one, so they figured it would be roughly twice that for this year, with the double cohort. (In Ontario this year, two years of kids will be finishing high school at the same time, as this is the last year for grade thirteen). They ended up having closer to 250 kids register, and over 500 people showed up today (including parents etc).
So it was busy. I got to take the business students around, which made me feel like a huge tool (I know very little about our business programs), and then I took a huge group of people on a tour of the school, which went okay. I missed one whole wing of the school, but I think I answered a lot of questions--my voice was pretty much gone, anyway.
I also got to hang out a little bit with some of the other people who work in the Registrar's Office, which was neat--we have exchange students from India and St. Vincent (Barbados) working with us, and they're really fun.
It really got me thinking about how I ended up at Nipissing, which (like most things in my life) was a series of seemingly random events. In my grade twelve year, I took the advanced math course and hated it. Our teacher was one of those brilliant scholars who shouldn't be allowed within twenty metres of a school. So, when the universities would come to the school to make presentations, we would sign up for them to legally skip math. One of these was a Nipissing presentation. I'd never heard of the school before, but the liaison officer was someone who clearly had a deep affection for Nipissing, and he sold the school really well. Nip is reknowned for its Bachelor of Education (teacher's college) program as well, and so my discovery of Nip coincided with my decision to pursue teaching as a career. When I visited the campus, I fell in love with it...the scholarships and the single rooms in residence certainly didn't hurt either.
I'm happy here--now all I need is a good kick in the pants to make me unjaded and in love with English again and I will be on my way to being productive.
Anyhow, when I got home, Arwyn and Mathman and me decided to go out for pizza, and then we ended up going to secondhand bookstores, which is a very bad thing. I have a problem controlling myself: I can't not buy books. I bought plays this time, and Miller's "Canticle for Leibowitz"
We then returned home to 'nerd it up' and watch Star Wars while putting the finishing touches on our Hallowe'en costumes. I am super excited for Hallowe'en, still. The house of geek will reign supreme, oh yes. I decided to write out some background for my character, since there aren't too many Twi'lek Jedi (only 3 that I can think of). She's kind of neat. It does delve dangerously close to fanfic, but that's alright. I may post the story of Ryla Profunda later on.
My body just aches--I haven't stood for a whole day in a long, long time.