Grassy Seats

Of all of the things to annoy me about West GA, it would be the fact that I can't sit on any of the "lawns". Not unless I want to get friendly with the ants. Now, I don't mind ants. I'm an outdoorsy person; I don't mind the dirt; I don't mind the creepy-crawlers in the grass. But I also don't want to sit amongst the anthills. I have never seen so many anthills in on square foot of grass ever. I don't understand what calls them all together.

I'm all for leaving the bugs alone and not killing them off with some inhumane spray. But here's my thing: If you're going to have a designated area for students to sit and work, then you need to keep it up and critter-free.

That's one thing Valdosta does right.

And sure, I'm cynical on Valdosta because I don't really like the segregated culture, but I love the front lawn. It's beautiful, even on a crappy day like today.

Quite frankly, just being able to sit here on this huge lawn with my back against some palm tree makes up a good part of why I came to visit.


This trip basically serves four purposes:

1. Visiting Desiree.
2. Sitting on an ant-free lawn.
3. Bugging my old friends.
4. Deciding whether or not I could tolerate it for another term.

For those of you who don't know, I've since had the realization of what I want to do with my life: Teach in London. I'd like to teach theatre, but ultimately, since I'm aiming for the fifth grade range, I'll probably just be teaching the basic elementary / primary school stuff and then do theatre either in the community or through the sister programs with the middle / secondary and high schools. Which is perfectly fine with me. It only means I'll need to do my education degree over there.

Doing that, though, is proving to be much more difficult than it should be. Originally, I was told any public college in the state of GA was on the same partner school program--meaning one could attend any of those international school on said list and get the same benefits anywhere across the state. West GA, however, is apparently not a part of that list--which of course I didn't know until I asked the study abroad people at West GA last month.

So now, I will have to transfer again for a term before I can go back to Roehampton in London.

Why not just go to the partner school that West GA is attached to? Because that school, the University of Hertfordshire is forty minutes by train outside London. I am not going to ride the train forty minutes into London each way every day when I could live inside Greater London (with a train ride of ten minutes to Waterloo at Central London) by going to Roehampton. No.

University of Roehampton                                                  University of Hertfordshire

The circle here is the border of Greater London. Roehampton
can be seen to the Southwest of Central London (yellow)
while Hertfordshire is off the map (Northeast).

 

(I'm sassing it right now, but it just doesn't make sense for me to have to ride nearly an hour to get to Waterloo every day when I don't have to. Besides, I want Roehampton. I've been to Roehampton, I'm familiar with the town, and it's right around that area that I want to live as an adult anyway. The whole point of me going over there is to live in London. I don't want to have to commute.)

But seriously, all sass aside, I don't know how I feel about using Valdosta as a stepping-stone. I know how Dez feels about it, especially after abandoning her the first time. (Not that my transferring to West GA didn't have a lot to do with that.) But also, according to Dez, a lot of the friend groups have already broken apart. Like the Emerging Leaders kids. Apparently, she doesn't see much of them anymore. Which to some degree, I understand. We are college kids all trying to find our own paths in the world. But Emerging Leaders was also A) designed to give us a ring of friends and B) an "elite" group. I would've expected them to have at least some sort of class or get-together each semester. I would have preferred it that way.

Originally, it sounded like I would be finishing my Theatre degree at West GA and then transfer here come like sixth year--in which case all my friends would have graduated anyway. But now, when it sounds like I'll be dropping the theatre major all together and coming straight away, I guess I was kind of hoping I could sink back in with the EL kids and get my footing again. It's a little depressing.

EL kids (from top, then left to right):
Austin, me, Ian, Jordan, and Desiree.

Desiree and me, August 2013.

(Besides, I was kind of hoping to get a chance to talk to Ms. Beasley and Mr. Peacock again. They did so much for me that first term. I owe them at the very least a thank you.)

(Plus, I was really hoping to see Will. Which saying like this is totally going to jinx.)

One good thing, though, I did seem to get along okay with at least one of Desiree's Littles. I don't know if it was just because Courtney wasn't feeling well that we didn't mesh, or what, but I really enjoyed Mollee. So I guess I don't have to worry too much about making new friends.

But that's the other really hard thing. It was easy bouncing schools when I was a freshman. Now, especially after being at one school for a year, it's going to be really hard to leave the friends I made there. Even if I'm not super close to them all, I'm still used to them being around.

The other side to that is if I wait, I'll probably miss out on one of the best friendships I could ever find--in Beanie. I've posted about her before. She's one of the girls who studied abroad at Roehampton with me, and we became pretty close. I absolutely love her, but I also know by putting her in the equation, I'm setting myself up to make a decision based on someone else--a habit I'm trying to break myself of.

So this trip actually holds much more weight than just reminiscing with my old roommate. Which is another reason why I'm kind of okay with it being rainy and gross. If I can miss Valdosta with the weather like this, I just might be able to stomach a term long enough to get my butt back to England.

                              — KGratiaM