1. Shower Early: Either that, or take a distinct liking the feel of bracing cold water in the morning in the girls' dorm. Also, wear flipflops and watch your bathing supplies like a mother hawk complete with talons. And by early, we are talking around five or five thirty in the morning. Do it at four, and the girls getting in a three will have already taken the hot water. Do it at six, and you're lucky to even find a stall not in use.

2. If You Have a Spare Moment, Read: The classes aren't that difficult, they're just run by lunatics in this asylum. Always keep a book on you, at all times, and if you are in doubt of whether you should be doing something else, read. You'll keep up with the work, the teachers will like you, and you will keep out of the trouble that seems to run rampantly through this school like a hatter mad with his own mercury.

3. Be Okay With the Gay: Face it. It's a proportional value. The prettier the boy is, the more likely he is interested only in other pretty boys. It's like working with college theater in the summer. The leading men chased the leading men. The leading women slept with the techs. And the not so leading women just... slept around. They spread the homosexual tension in here so thick, I keep expecting Noho to announce it has annexed us.

I'm making it through my initial classes, which is harder than it sounds. Schedules, formal classes, and batty classmates make the world interesting I suppose, but it also causes one to consider the Ramones as the only possible solution to the world. Or, at least, blasting it at 5 AM in the girls dorm, as a little wake up present for certain people's alarms.

I think Dad was honestly shocked when I gave him the brochure, honestly. He didn't think that I would want to go to high school. No, no, I just want to stay at home, learning more and more about the global economic politics and rapid destabilization of the current paradigm. Yeah. Real interesting stuff, Dad.

But I got accepted, and it's not even that far from home. Baby steps. Having had a real class with other kids since kindergarten, and I'm going to a boarding school. You know, some girls would think of this as a prison sentence, but for me, it's getting out of one. About time. I can almost drive a car, and I'm not going to be some Arabella, locked up in a library until I'm old enough to know better, but still a quixote.

Oh, I'm terrified, but I'm getting my freedom. Even if it's a boarding school, it's not here, and it's not Florence. I am so happy it's not Florence. Not as bad as Greenfield, but it's pretty close. No movie theatre, no theatre period, and the public library is only open on Wednesdays. Dad's taken me to places worse that Florence, sure, but even I can get a little tired of just walking around in the woods, taking a look at all the old places out here. The Internet, try as it might, is no substitute for a social life.

Dad was shocked when I gave him the brochure, sure... but I think I was kinda more shocked when he said okay. Now, I just gotta pack and get ready to go to Eupheme. Let's just hope the butterflies don't grow teeth and start biting.