Chapter Twenty-Three: A Second First Day (~jinghan)
At 8:09 I wake up. At 8:15 I fall asleep again. At 8:30 my alarm wakes me up again.
I had a dream. I dreamt that I had heard my text message tone. I flip open my phone. I had indeed heard my text message tone. I start thumbing some words, but decide it is too early in the morning and mindlessly delete the message.
It seems to early in the morning to be on the train. Too early to be making my way to the tram stop. I have taken this tram ride countless times, but there’s a strange unfamiliarity to the trip today. I try to read, but instead I glance around nervously hoping to catch sight of someone I know. No luck.
I make my way to my first lecture. Everything still has a haze of unfamiliarity. All the people around me are still strangers. It’s starting to feel like the first day of first semester all over again. The red-headed boy in front of me cranes his head around as if expecting to see someone he knows. He’s just around stranger.
“Kyle Theatre” says the sign above the door. Already anxious, my heart skips a beat. But then I look again and realise that it is merely the work of some vandal, and I haven’t been transported to another dimension where my memory of the location of the Lyle Theatre has been dislocated. I silently express my relief.
A girl sitting outside waiting for the doors to be opened looks at me for a moment, just the passing of an eye. I’m reminded of the first few classes of first semester, talking to the people waiting around outside, wondering if I’ll recognise someone a second time, let alone remember their name. The girl looks somewhat familiar, and yet not quite like anyone I think I know. My fears of a alternate dimension where everything is familiar but not recognisable nudge the back of my mind. For what ever reason, I position myself awkwardly on the corner of the seat next to the girl and make a good pretence of reading. But really I’m wondering where all the people I met in first semester are, glancing up so often that I never really read a whole sentence.
Finally! I see someone I know. Relief crosses our faces at the same time. And all of a sudden there are people I know everywhere I turn. Nervous anticipation is lost in conversation. People who I know from physics are in my maths class, it seems like a miraculous coincidence, even though it is quite natural that we all need to do this subject. Just seeing people I know is enough to make me calm and happy.
“The lecturer looks like a grumpy one,” my friend whisper’s in my ear.
He proves otherwise the moment he starts talking. The subject introductions are thankfully shorter this semester. (Textbook bla bla bla. Assessments bla bla bla. Lectopia bla bla bla.) I am less surprised when the lecturer hints at how much work we need to do. (Quote: If you do not do any maths for three consecutive days you will be destroyed.) And I know exactly what I need to take note of when all the theory starts pelting down on us.
Sure it’s another first day of semester. But my god am I thankful not to have to go through the fumbling and clumsiness of first semester all over again. This can only get better as the semesters go by right?
By my second class, all the strange unfamiliarity of the morning has already become monotonous routine.