It's November again!
Goodness, it feels like it was only yesterday that Sara and I were sitting in my study typing away furiously on our computers the weekend after Thanksgiving, occasionally stopping for some turkey leftovers. I remember the moment so clearly, I finished first and then Sara. I remember feeling stunned and proud and slightly revolted at the same time.

I just had just finished my first novel. My first 50,000 word novel. It was 116 pages worth of crap, but it was my crap.

So here I am again, November is once again upon me and I am about 1,000 words behind my daily wordcount. I broke 12k last night. I need to break 15k tonight to get back on track. I highly doubt that that is going to happen, though. I have a midterm at 7 tonight for my class "All About Evil." If you can't guess, its about evil... in German literature. So I'm sitting here in the campus center in the purple lounge on the second floor (it's my latest hiding spot from the world... first it was 3rd floor Neilson Library... but they still haven't replaced the lights in the back corner) defining terms such as "Strum und Drang" and "master morality vs. slave morality." It's thrilling.

I am loving it here, though. For the uphill battle it was to get here, I really did find a school where I fit in perfectly. Yes, yes, I know that there are no men here... and I don't give a damn.

I'm coming to understand, though, what is referred to as "the smith bubble." Smith isn't anything like the real world. Northampton isn't anything like the real world. Diversity here, in terms of race, sexuality and gender, is respected. Within my first moments in my house community, the group of us scared first years were asked which pronouns we preferred. This might make you think that Smith is only made up of queer and gender-queer people, but its not. There are people from all over here and its a learning experience just to get to know them and hear their stories. I have a friend in my German class who is a native-speaker from Zurich. There is a 60 year old woman in my Geoscience class. What we lack in gender diversity, we make up in other kinds of diversity. Last week was Celebration, which is an event that started after homophobic actions in the quad. It starts as a candle light vigil and then transforms into something amazing and amusing about loving without boundaries, complete with song and dance and lots of naked women. Nakedness is just a thing here. It happens quite frequently.

I live on the quiet side of campus, Green Street. We are stereotyped as the bookworms, and for those who know me, they can understand that it is a stereotype I proudly fulfill. Apparently my house had the highest GPA on campus last semester. It doesn't mean that we don't have fun though... I mean, we don't drink but we watch Disney movies, go down into Northampton, we explore campus and have illegal parties ( more than 9 people) in my dorm room. Lately though, it's just been me and my roomie chilling in our room watching CSI marathons together. She's chill, I'm chill... we get along great.

And now that I've been a decent amount of time procrastinating by writing this... I'm off to go make flashcards.