First Tardy of the Year

So on Wednesdays, my first class of the day is Social Welfare Policy from 10-12 in 5 Haviland. Today, I was like half an hour late to class =P

This morning, I was woken up by a call from my mother at around 7:21am. Then 9 minutes later, my cell phone alarm obnoxiously rings by my ear. Last night I had set my alarm for 7:30am this morning because I had to wake up early to finish my Chinese homework. The assignment was to write responses/answer questions to three readings we did for class. (Right now I'm taking Chinese 112 , which is the second semester of 5th year Chinese. The class is pretty intense and challenging, but I enjoy it for the most part and it's quite rewarding in the end. Looking at the syllabus on the first day of Chinese, I did feel a bit overwhelmed and thought, "MAN, I'm soooo gonna get OWNED by this class..." but thankfully, it's been manageable.) Instead of popping up out of bed right away, I decide to snooze for half an hour and grudgingly pull myself out of bed at 8:00am. (I'm also a bit under the weather with a cold so I haven't been feeling too hot these past couple of days =/ )

After brushing my teeth, I get cracking on my Chinese homework. Mannn, who knew that it would take like two hours... I look at the clock and it's like 9:57am and I was STILL working on answering the last question, when I should have already been OUT OF MY APARTMENT like 10 minutes ago, on my way to Haviland Hall, which is also one of the farthest buildings near the North side of campus.

I finally finish typing up my Chinese homework (and remember, this is typing in pinyin, so it takes me double-time than typing in English). I dash to the kitchen and whip myself up a peanut butter sandwich (stomach was starving because I hadn't eaten breakfast), get dressed, leave the apartment, come back to the apartment because I forgot to get some Tylenol for my cold, leave the apartment again, walk in the bitter coldness of a Berkeley winter all the way to Haviland Hall.

By the time I got to the classroom, it was like 10:40am. And the door was locked! I turned the knob so that it made a sound and somebody opened the door to let me in. When I entered, all/most eyes were on me, including that of the Professor who was already lecturing and the GSIs (embarrassing...) The bad thing was that this wasn't even a HUGE lecture class... just a normal classroom of about 50 students. I glanced around quickly and spotted no empty seats so I park my butt on the floor next to a friend (she was actually my freshman year roommate in the dorms). Then she turns to me and quietly whispers, "Frances, there's an empty seat in the corner". I look over and see the empty chair... Niiice, I thought to myself.

Even though I was like 40 minutes late to class, I found out that the professor had only lectured on a total three slides from the Powerpoint (phew!). We then spent the rest of class talking about "The Size, Scope, and Composition of the Welfare State". I even raised my hand near the end and asked a question about Social Security. All in all, it was a pretty okay second class lecture of the semester, minus the part about me being late.