At the housing staff training

It's 3 days into the housing staff training, and I'm going through it
with mixed emotions. I felt a little out of place as the training
started off as if I joined the training 3 days late. I'm a new staff
and every activity we have is as if we're assumed to be familiar with
the things that they talk about. On the other hand, its not intensive
at all, and when I think about the student council training I went
through in high school, this is a breeze. But I don't exactly feel
like I'm going through a 'training' per se. But it's good to be
talking and getting to know the staff that I'll be working with for
at least the next year. Some are really nice people, and hopefully,
that's how the relationship will remain from now on.

It sucks to be here, I could be working at RubberNetwork instead. The
training's pace is pretty slow, but I can't really complain, since
it's part of the requirement, and it was me who signed up and
accepted the job. I sometimes feel like we could take out certain
elements and compress the training into just a few days, like how I
learned to focus on the 'value-adding process' of the system in 'The
Toyota Way,' but everything has its own reasons. Having 270 students
going through training is a massive thing, but I feel that, once I go
through one of these trainings, I really shouldn't have to go through
another one again.

I didn't expect that I'll be missing weekends for training until
school starts. That was shocking, as this means I will not have a
break to recover from the summer before fall semester. I'm afraid I
might burn out midway through in the semester, and that's not good as
I'm going to be taking a lot of classes. The worst thing about
missing the weekend was that I was really excited about going to this
football (soccer) pub that Sandesh found nearby in Atlanta, and I was
all set to catch the opening week of the English Premiership with a
match of Arsenal versus Newcastle, but it now seems I can't go. I've
told Scott about it, but it's a small price to pay, as we'll
definitely be hanging in the pub as many weekends as we can from now
on. It's just perfect, finally, a place we can hang around watching
soccer, and Scott getting drunk.

The job of being a community advisor is not going to be as
straightforward as I thought. But then, I'm willing to put my effort
into it. I know I had a great Freshman year, all thanks to Scott, and
I think everyone who comes in should have a good time, not a horrid
time. And it's me who wanted to be a housing staff, and I accepted
the offer, I can't bitch about what I have to do. Well, at least it's
not intensive that drains you out.

My new room looks great. I've attached the posters of Leon,
Motorcycle Diaries, City of God and Snatch on my wall, and I'm
waiting for the Audrey Hepburn one. And maybe I'll get another movie
poster to complete the setup. I've bunked the two beds, so that even
if I have guests, they can sleep over, and the desks put together
like the letter L, so when you step into my room, it looks like an
office. It's neat, a lot of space to work with, and it feels pretty
big. I can blast the music whenever I want and just close to door if
it annoys people.

I finally caught 'Me and You and Everyone We Know' over the weekend,
and I really liked the film. There was something very natural about
the film and I always like it, especially when it portrays lives that
people go through as accurately as possible. I think the 'poop back
and forth' (really, don't ask) is probably the funniest line ever
coming out of any independent films I've seen. That really brightened
up the movie.

Over the course of the last few days, I've also managed to watch
'Mysterious Skin' and 'The United States of Leland.' Both were
provocative films, but I loved it. 'Skin' was somewhat similar to
'Bad Education' and 'Leland' asked many interesting questions in the
end that still keeps spinning in my mind. We tried watching 'La Femme
Nikita' but it was a Russian (if not, definitely Eastern European)
dub and the subtitles were not matching, so we decided to give it up
and try to download another version.

I guess I'm ending it here for now, got some paperwork I should take
care of before it all starts piling up.