Lost in Sacramento and other pitfalls

I began my fifth first day of the year in college at 5:30 a.m. Earlier than my normal 6 a.m., but I had to deliver my girlfriend to the high school she was student-teaching at in an unfamiliar part of Sacramento. A noble cause that will net me boyfriend points, but also the first mistake of the day. Nay, the first mistake of the week.

Getting my girlfriend to school was easy. Getting back to Sacramento State's campus proved a greater challenge.

"It'll be easy," she said. "Stop worrying, you'll get there fine," she said. "It'll take 20 minutes," she said.

I got lost twice. Being directionally challenged, I took not only wrong roads, but entirely wrong highways. My girlfriend said I should be back to campus in about 20 minutes, but it took a call to my student newspaper's editor-in-chief and an hour to get back. I was able to make it to my first class with quite literally two minutes to spare.

But the day was not done. I still had to help out with production night at the State Hornet, the aforementioned newspaper. My last class got out at 4:15 p.m. I didn't leave campus until 9:30 p.m.

With the first day at an end, I had hoped that my bad luck was at an end. Wrong again.

Tuesday's classes went well enough, save for finding out that I will have to read a book each week. The real trouble came when the editors under my care had to upload their stories to the Hornet website. The editors caught on quickly, which was good, but the uploading itself proved glitchy and uncooperative. Being that the online news editor had classes, I uploaded his section for him. It took six hours. For reference, when I was opinion editor last semester, it would take me between 30 minutes and an hour to do it each week.

Two days of bad luck. One would think that after having done this four times already, I'd be prepared for the inevitable rush of things not going my way on the first week of classes. Sadly, I don't seem to learn. Thankfully, this will be the last time I have to live through what I like to call "Hell Week."

Also thankfully, my luck changed. Wednesday was an ideal day, and nothing went wrong. I even got home before the sun went down, was able to hang out with friends, and relax.

But that was the eye of the storm.

Thursday morning, I was given the task of doing something no one had figured out since the Hornet started using computers: Connect to the server from home while on a PC.

Instead of whining and moaning about how terrible my week had been and trying to pass it off on someone else, I hoped that my luck would turn around and I'd figure it out. The universe must think it has a sense of humor, because I regained my stride and figured it out.

While I would love to end this column with a profound lesson I've learned, say something along the lines of "life is a roller coaster, deal with it" or "experience does not always make you prepared," but the only lesson I've really learned is that having a staff parking permit helps immensely when one arrives at campus with 10 minutes before class starts.