Well, I'm two days into my Journalism degree at RMIT and here are my thoughts. How is it possible that, before, I could drift along and two weeks could go by without me really noticing it? And yet, the last two days took aaages to get through. We've only just ticked over into Wednesday for god's sake! I don't know what it is. I have a good timetable, only three days a week, with a maximum of three classes on any given day, so it should be breezy. Well, it is. Nothing particularly taxing is going on. It's just weird that the time doesn't pass. Time hangs around. On the bus home today I was thinking, "Fuck. It's only Tuesday". I can't remember what happened on Sunday it seems so long ago. Anyway, it seems that everyone in my course just left school. I'm OLD. They're nice and friendly and inclusive and all. And I've somehow managed to become part of a posse. I don't know how that happened, but they keep saying hello and sticking around. And then we move off to a lecture in a pack. Like this morning. I was sitting in the courtyard happily reading my freshly purchased NME, when I heard "Elanor" and it's one of the girls from the posse I'm in. So she joins the table. And then two others come along. And then, as the minutes pass, there are more and more until we become a veritable 'gaggle'. And I realised that I was the beginning of it [though probably not the star attraction]. What's up with that? I think they all took some class at the end of school that taught them to always greet and smile etc, because breaking the ice is most of the battle won, or something, and once that's done, to hang on for dear life. Stupid class. I'm sure it won't last beyond the first few weeks. Except that it probably will, considering that there are only 45 people in the course and we pretty much do the same thing for three years. The thing is, even though they're real nice and all, I can't find one that I really want to spend time with. Maybe that's because it's only day two and I don't know them. I just wish that the time would pass so that it could sort itself out. I'm sure we're all just being polite. I don't enjoy it because I keep reverting to my default social persona, and I don't like my default social persona. I wish I could change it, because it's so bland. But it's default. And I keep having to provide backstory, which I hate, because then they have the right to expect that my excess age and 'life experience' has kitted me out with verbal and social whizbangery, only to be presented with the dull horror of my default social persona. But they're still around. Perhaps not for long. You see, today I became a freak. It happened like this. Just after sitting down for the introductory tute of one of my classes [otherwise known as "The First Impressions Tute"] I was struck by a sudden onset blood nose and had to leave with a hanky crumpled to my face. It was a real bleeder too. I was in the bathroom for fully twenty minutes and the thing was flowing. Anyway, when I finally had it staunched, I returned to class, calmly apologised and explained that I had had a blood nose. No big deal. But no. "Are you alright? Are you sure? Oh, we've got to do something about the heat in this room", etc. To which I replied that no, it wasn't the heat, it was just that I'd been laid up with a bad cold all weekend, and had a ferocious cough and I'd had a blood nose the night before anyway [which wasn't as bloody, but a blood nose nonetheless]. Lady, I'm just sick is all. [Wait, do I have leukaemia?] So, class moves on, but every so often lovely tutor goes "Elanor, are you alright?", reviving attention just when it might have flagged. She seems like a good tutor though. And she was trying very hard to remember people's names. She knows mine now. And so do my classmates, probably. I'm the freak that bleeds. The OLD freak that bleeds. The OLD feak that bleeds and who cannot find anything good to talk about to entertain the young set with which she now runs. That's me.

I know what I'll do. I'll buy more clothes.