I cannot believe that I have only been back home for a couple of days and already I want to go back to UT. I guess in a weird way I consider UT my home now. It is part of my normal routine and coming home just messes with that normality in my life. I am happy to see everyone, but it just is not the same. I see things differently now than I used to and am starting to wonder if I even want what I used to. I want to go into journalism, but ever since I got to UT everyone talks of how a person should find that one thing they are passionate about. I am passionate about journalism, and it makes me happy, but what if there is something else out there that I would love even more? I am only eighteen, I could not possible know right now what I want to do with the rest of my life. I have a good idea, but I cannot know for sure. Yet everyone expects me to know what I want. I do not know why everyone is in such a hurry to finish college and have a career. Personally, I just love the process of learning interesting things. I have been waiting forever to go to college just so I could have the opportunity to learn about the literature that they do not teach in high school. Every thing that we are told in high school is so limited and lacking in truth because teachers do not want to be fired for actually having an opinion on something. In my high school, nobody was allowed to think for themselves. It was a typical high school. Academics were mediocre, but football was God. The athletes were looked upon as these heroes who meant so much to the world, when it other students who went on to some of the best colleges around. Athletes fall apart with time, but that is what no one seemed to want to admit. Some people thought all the jocks who went and got drunk on weekends were the coolest people around, but they weren't. In a few years they are just going to look back upon high school as their glory years, when there could be so much ahead of them. I do not really think I learned much in high school. I learned more in three weeks in Europe than I did in high school by just experiencing other people's lives. I had all these romantics notions of Italy and France, but really they are just other places where other people are just trying to make it in the world. I really want to go back there sometime. Germany was so gorgeous, and I thought I would hate it. In the end, it was one of the best places we visited. Most people do not have the opportunity to go there, but I think it prepared me a lot for college. I had to interact with a lot of people that I did not know really well. I also had to sleep on hard twin beds that remarkable remind of the ones in the Jester Dorms. Who would have thought that beds that bad would be an international thing?! It is kind of weird being in a dorm. Instead of having to drive to see my friends, I could just take the elevator to a different floor and see them. We are practically living together. I just hope we do not end up getting really irritated with one another. It just seems that if we spend too much time together things go wrong. We either start to get annoyed with one another and start doing the whole backstabbing thing or the group chemistry is just off. Unfortunately, it can be really easy to do that too and that is when people start to think that they hate each other. Two of my good friends are coming to school here. It really is a good thing too because I am kind of shy at it would be hard for me to meet people otherwise. I can talk and talk once you get me going, but I'm not really good at those first meetings. Things always seem too awkward to me. Then I just feel uncomfortable. I think that is why I usually just surround myself with a few really good friends. It is just easier to deal with people who know you really well than those who will base their thoughts on you from one impression. In time though, I should be able to relax and deal with all these things. I hope, anyway. 

Big Five personality labels — Extraversion: n, Neuroticism: n, Agreeableness: y, Conscientiousness: y, Openness: n