I'm a Maverick

Well, it's official. August 26th I will begin my graduate studies in English at The University of Texas at Arlington.

I took this past Tuesday off of work to visit UTA campus and apartment hunt. To my surprise UTA placed itself right in the middle of a major road, why I'm not sure. Driving to campus there is a 6 lane road running right through campus, it's not as if it's just close to campus, or on the side of campus, but dead smack in the middle where they had to build a bridge across the road for students to get to their next class. I can't even begin to imagine all the horrible potential accidents just waiting to happen with this major road in the middle of campus.

Young drivers, talking on cell phones, text messaging, studying while driving, eating/drinking while driving is worrisome but place heavy foot and bike traffic around these bad drivers, that's a recipe for disaster. Makes me nervous to walk or ride around campus. Even worse at night i'm sure.

I signed up for 6 credit hours for the semester which I hope wont be too difficult or too easy. Luckily I have an amazing flexible job that allows me to work from anywhere in the world with an internet connection, and pretty much at any time I want. Gotta say LOVE LOVE LOVE this job!! Anyway, the two classes I signed up for are on Thursday afternoons and evening. 2-450 and 6-850pm. I know you're saying wow, that's 6 hours of class in one day, yeah well wait until you hear the rest... both classes, are in the same classroom. Meaning I am sitting in one classroom for 6 hours on every Thursday from August 26 to December 12th.

I think it wont be to bad. I just pray the classroom is comfortable enough for me to feel good to learn in. I'm picky about my classrooms. It's hard to explain. Next time you visit the UNT campus check out the Auditorium building Room 201. That's my favorite room on the entire UNT campus.

After setting up my classes, I went apartment hunting, which I hate to do.

Visited two apartment complexes, one was cheap, decent efficiency for $410/ month, the utilities sucked but I could have dealt, the reason I said no was because of the current residents. I did not feel it was a safe area for my as a female to live alone. Next I visited a "student housing" apartment, not meaning UTA considers it campus housing but you have to be a student to live there. The 600sqft effiency.. $861/month!!
Sorry! Cant afford that one!

I would really like to find a loft, 1bd/1bth, or efficiency for no more than $500/month, preferably with all bills paid, I dont mean caps where they're included in the rent, but seriously all bills paid or most bills paid. I know there are places out there where I dont have to pay for gas/trash/water and electric. Trash and gas should be paid for by the complex, I can deal with water and electric but I know there's places out there where the tenants dont pay for water. period. The complex pays for it. And it doesn't have to be real close to campus I'm only going once a week, so I can drive there. But I dont want it to be more than 15-20 minutes away.

We'll see what I can find.

But now I have 5 months left to do anything and everything I want before I'm tied down for the next three years to Mary Wollstonecraft and other Literature and my Thesis paper. I plan to do a lot of hiking, camping and floating the river during the rest of my time.