HATE is easy…love takes COURAGE

Alright people, back to the task at hand.  This is a law student blog, or a blawg, or a diary, or something of that sort.  And, regardless of the classification, we’re here to talk about law school related things, right? Right.  [Of course, the miscellaneous adventures are included to document the hilarity along the way.]

So:

Monday and Tuesday were spent driving around Austin trying to find an apartment.  Long story short, I’m still apartment-less, but I have a prospective roommate so it’s not all a lost cause.  And, we [mom and I] did get a lot more familiar with things which was helpful, considering how clueless we were when we set out.  Now I know what afternoon traffic is like on 1-35, that Amy’s has good ice cream, and what people mean when they say “Keep Austin Weird” (and why we have shirts in CS that say, “Keep College Station Normal”).  Austin is definitely special.  From only 2 days there, I got the quirky vibe that Austin gives and saw how many different faces that one city has.  Certain parts of Austin are fabulous.  Others are much less so.  There’s the hippytrendynoncommercial shops, and then there’s your Target and your Wal-Mart, and then your higher-end boutiques and shops.  Anything you could want one city to have, it’s there.  The problem – like many cities, I’m sure – is getting there.

Austin has a really extensive metro/bus system and an extensive UT shuttle system.  All the bus-hopping, however, got complicated enough to push me to suck it up and buy a parking permit.  A moment of silence for my wallet, please.  …  Had I started looking for a place to live way earlier, I could have afforded to be more picky about living somewhere near a university shuttle stop.  But, beggars can’t be choosers and all that jazz.  At this point, I need a place to live, pickings are slim, and I can’t afford to be whining about where the bus stops are and are not.  Next year things might be different, but I need to deal with what I have now, right? Hopefully over the next year I’ll be able to experiment with the buses and see where they go. It’d be awesome to take them downtown to a museum or a show or something.  Though, the odds of me being able to afford a museum or a show are slim.  ::cue reality check::

That brings us to the moolah – and lack thereof.  FinAid may finally be sorted out.  We met with the formerly scary financial aid lady only to find out that she’s just loud and scatterbrained.  She was really pleasant and willing to talk to us and she even said she’d find the name of an apartment complex to look at [which reminds me I was supposed to call her today ::headdesk::].  It just goes to show how people can be completely different in person than they are on the phone/email/mail and why it’s important to keep an open mind.  The lack thereof [re: moolah] comes in when we’re talking about rent.  Living in Austin can get waaaay pricey, depending on where you’re looking at.  I’m still hoping for something that will let me have enough food to eat and maybe grab a movie every once in a while.  Though, we must remember my delusional optimism.  ::sigh::

I’ll be making the trek up to Austin again soon, probably later in the week, with the prospective roommate and mom to meet up with the apartment locator and see what we can find.  The apartment locator, John, is great by the way.  If you’re in Austin and apartment less, or clueless, or both [like me], definitely give him a call.  His best quality: he’s incredibly patient.  He was polite and helpful the entire time and more than willing to work with us while we were there.  That’s why we’re going to meet up with him again later this week.  Seriously, let him help you.  I’m sure other people have moved to Austin without the help of apartment locators or realtors, and hats off to them for being able to do it.  Me? Well, it’s definitely a big help to have someone who knows the city and the market.  Just sayin’. RETRACTED AND LINKED REMOVED 7/18/09: My mom called John on Wednesday to schedule an appointment with him for Friday [today] at noon.  He explained to her that he had become frustrated with us during our first visit on Monday and Tuesday because it was clear that my prospective roommate at the time [I have a new one] were not on the same page.  My mom explained our situation, and asked that he put together some properties, email them to her so she could do some research and then send him a final list of properties that we were seriously interested in.  He agreed.  This was in an effort to save time during our next trip to Austin.  It was Friday morning, and my mom had still not received phone call or an email from John.  We left for Austin and arrived around 11 am.  At 11:30, my mother called John to confirm our noon appointment.  He stated that he had scheduled us for noon tomorrow. [Suuuure.]  She stated she never received an email from him and he asked if she was sure she hadn’t received the links he’d sent.  She said yes, and he told her that he must have written down her email address incorrectly.  [Of course.]  He asked if we could meet at 2:30 somewhere near the university.  Two-thirty came and my mom called John and received his voice mail.  We stopped to eat lunch and at 3pm had still not received a call back from him.  We went to see another apartment locator [Cole Bebee] and he was actually very genuine and did his best to find some things that were reasonable in price, fit what we were looking for, and still relatively nice.  We’ve scheduled a meeting with a third apartment locator tomorrow, and we’re going to check out a few places on our own as well.  Overall, we found John’s behavior much less than professional and I wanted to retract the nice things I said about him.  I’d hate for any of you to go to Austin and be given the runaround just because of something I said.  Even if he is working on commission and doubted that we were serious about leasing, he still should have paid a professional courtesy and told us that he did not wish to work with us; instead he chose to lie and let us waste our time.  We were lucky that we caught on quickly, otherwise the entire day would have been wasted.  ::end rant::

::Hopefully:: I will have the living situation sorted out by Sunday.  To-Do list is now:

1. Find a place to live that allows me to afford food
2. Call the girl who will take over my lease in Waco and get her info
3. Call the apts in Waco and fork over the money/sign the appropriate form necessary to get out of the lease
4. Call and double check the fin aid stuff has gone through
5. BREATHE

I can definitely say I haven’t been this drained in a while.  Not even in recent undergrad memory.  Maybe if I go back to my engineering major memories I can come close.  I’m at the point where I’m saying, “This law school thing better be worth it.”  I’ve even gone so far as to wish I’d stuck it out in engineering [HA] or been a teacher [hey, I wanted to be a teacher for 7 years].  And I’m still 5 weeks away from orientation.  ::sigh::  Being out of undergrad, thus far, is definitely not all it was marketed as.  I’m sure once I get into the swing of things, find a place to live, and start school, I’ll feel differently.  I’ll probably do a lot of griping about class, but that’ll be my prerogative as a student, so it’s all good.  And, I keep telling myself that I’m really lucky that I got into UT at all and that I’m a Texas resident.  Out of state tuition would have made it a definite no-go.  I try to remember the positive things and look at situations in a happy light.  Just gotta take things one step at a time.

Life’s tough.

::puts on helmet::

Here I go.