Hello August, Please Be Good To Me

Chapter 29: GO Knights

I'm the last one to wake up in the morning. Thanks to my alarm. It's orientation day, and I'm still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes at seven in the morning. Check in starts at eight and goes to nine, but my dad is never one to be late. Neither am I, but I don't pride myself on being as early as my dad is a stickler for. PawPaw is up, cooking some sausages and cheese grits when I come out of my room. "Want some?" he asks me, and I shake my head. "No, they're feeding us there," and I go to get a towel and washcloth so I can take a quick shower.

The hot water wakes me up somewhat, and by the time I finish, dry, and change, I'm ready to go. I pull my new UCF hoodie over my head, even though the high for today is ninety degrees, and flip on the TV to Cartoon Network. I hear the jingle of keys and instantly know it's my dad coming around the corner. The coffee pot starts up, and I know he's moved to the kitchen to make his hot drink before we leave this morning. When I realize that I'm just watching a slew of infomercials back to back, my dad is ready to go, and flick the TV out and follow him. In the car I rewrap the gaze on my wrist. Thanks to Google I know it's just a sprain, but the tight pinch I feel whenever I accidentally move it makes me wish the healing process would move faster.

My dad looks down at my cradling and shakes his head. "No matter where we go, you always manage to hurt yourself." I annoyed I shoot back, "At least it's self-contained, and you don't see me complaining. I'm the one with the sprained wrist." I look out the window, and plug in my headphones, picking a song to listen to on my phone that'll make me less irritable. Soon the university is in my sights and I sit up to get a better look at it. It hits me in the gut hard. In two months this is where I'll be for the next four years. Something similar to fear flames up in my stomach, and I bite my lip to combat my uneasiness with physical pain. Instead I remember my wrist, and give that a light shake. I wince, and make sure my dad wasn't looking. I don't want to hear whatever question comes out of his mouth. Mostly because I don't know how I would go about answering it. My dad suddenly has to make a quick stop to avoid getting clipped when this green Buick cuts across us, trying to beat the red light. My folder for orientation slides in the back seat and I hear the rustle of papers as it hits the floor. With my good hand, I reach back for the folder before refilling it and placing everything neatly on my lap.

My transcript, among other things is in there and the last thing I need is to lose it. I frown at my dad, thinking "karma" when we pass the car of someone with a Disney World bumper sticker. I stare out the window and let the familiarity of the multiple strip buildings and various food stops, stop lights, street lamps, and more lull me into a calm state. The moment we park in parking garage A, and step out, day one is a blur of information, ice breakers, and the intense Florida heat...err humidity.

Not until my first acquaintance, Christina-Nicole, or Nicole as she pleads me to call her, do I realize that I wasn't expecting to make any friends at all. In fact, right after the parents and students were stuck with name tags separated from each other, I bumped into two kids who did the same Information Technology and Communications (ITC) program I did back in high school. But it was more than clear when they slighted me, and I kept to myself after that, feeling the friendly bones in my body crackle and dissolve. In the middle of our tour of the campus, I kept one ear to our sophomore guide and both eyes to my phone where I took turns texting Mariana and Justin. "I like your case," a girl with round almond eyes and a white, pineapple and watermelon crop top said, pointing to my blinged and shimmery Minnie Mouse case. Like a magnet, I was instantly drawn to her. "I'm Nicole," she said brightly, pointing to her name tag. I smiled back and pointed to mine. "I'm Lyric," and for the first time it occurred to me that college might not be so bad. Knock on wood. We exchanged numbers, Instagram handles, and Snapchat names, but when it was time for the various colleges to split, Nicole went to Engineering (plus more), while I trailed behind the students headed toward the student union with the Undeclared aka who-the-hell-knows-what-major group.

It bothers me how much pressure I feel to choose something. I take a look at the different colleges again on my orientation schedule, because my newest group is about to split again.

Arts & Humanities.............................................................

Business Administration...............................................

Education & Human Performance.............................................

Engineering & Computer Science/Optics & Photonics.................................

Health & Public Affairs......................................................

Hospitality Management...........................................................

Interdisciplinary Studies...................................................................

Medicine (Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences)....................................

Nursing..................................................................................

Sciences.....................................................................................

One of the advisers knows that I have an interest in architecture and pushes me to go to where the arts and humanities students are...I know what I like but make a career out of that? I can't seem to get my heart or mind to commit, and when lunch rolls around, more talking and information overload, and then dinner, I find my dad. Representing his alma mater, he absently swings his Florida State cap backwards on his head, texting me still, though I'm less than five feet away. "Oh, hey there!" my dad exclaims when he finally sees me.

He excitedly tells me about how boring all the presentations, and speakers, and etc., and I listen and laugh and smile when each sentence calls for one of those actions, and when he asks me about my time finally, I look around and see that the line for dinner has finally shrunken. "I'll tell you later, I gotta go eat," I say, and head to the tables set up with food.