Preparations

Saturday morning, I had woken up at 7.. perhaps the earliest in who knows when. At 8:30, I would be at Ventura College, getting ready to take some math and English assessments as well as going to orientation and counseling. The tests themselves were on a SAT/ACT level of difficulty; definitely not the AP test level of insane difficulty I had come to dread.

For the English test, I received a 90/105, which placed me in English 1A. As for Math.. since I took the Level 4 test, the highest (and pre-calculus level) one there.. although I should've taken the Level 3 as I had scored 19/40, which allows me to take the second-tier of math classes overall. Coincidentally, I could've gotten a great score on the Level 3 and the highest available classes available to me would be the second-tier selection. A 26+/40 on the L4 nets you the top-level class of Calculus/Analytical Geometry, which is quite possibly harder than beans.
Don't do it if you prefer to live.

So... after several hours of trying to fit together a tentative schedule of classes for the summer and fall, I went home. However, my dad couldn't pick me up -- he was painting a room in our house. "Take the bus." So I went for a bus... and then found out NO BUS FOR MY ROUTE ON SATURDAYS. HECK YES!!
HECK NO!!

I should've/could've/whatever'd called my dad right then and there and explained to him the situation as he would most certainly have come to get me, however, I decided on something to the tune of... walking 11 miles from campus all the way home. A 25 minute auto-ride now resulting in a 4.5 hour walk. It was exhausting.. but I did it.
JUST to say that I did it.

This combined with my Hollywood experience help me know what it is like to be a hobo.
(Read: No, not really.)

A bone in my left leg still hurts a bit.
**

Here's my upcoming class schedule:

Summer Session 1 (May 19 - June 11)
College Algebra [3 units]

Summer Session 2 (June 16 - July 23)
Racial and Ethnic Group Relations [3 units] -- Online Class!!

Fall Session
English 1A [5 units] -- Online Class!!
Intro to Chicano Studies [3 units]
Elements of Physical Geography [3 units]
+ lab [1 unit]

In actuality, it was stupid of me to take the Level 4 math test. I was totally lost on most of it, including stuff that I would've had down just last year. If I've learned anything about academics in the past four+ years of school, it's that ONE SHOULD NOT BITE OFF MORE THAN CAN BE CHEWED, otherwise, you'll choke and have a hard time moving on. Which leads me to units.. 12 is the minimum number of units taken during the normal school year (Fall, Winter, Spring) for one to be considered a full-time student. If you had some sort of difficulty with school, you should go with that amount of units. If you feel more confident and were generally trouble-free, then around 15 sounds about right. It gets hard... and even moreso at 18, which you should really only undertake if you've got studying down to an exact science.

I knew a guy at UCSB who took 21 units and felt like taking more classes. He was no slouch though.. Well, he was specially selected from India to come there if that says anything. (He once spoke of a particular Indian university that only accepted 1 out of 1000 applicants. It's completely blonklers over there; refer to HUGE population.) All the competition in his country prepared him for the rigors of hardcore studying, but I suppose it's nothing we native to this country can't undertake ourselves. One can start by knowing how to study effectively and realistically. (Yeah, how's about it, Peter?)

It's challenging.. and I'm not even there yet, but it's so worth it.

Some interesting computer-y news to come soon.