Day Four - 08/22/09

Today was the first day that there wasn't anything planned until the evening for welcome week. I think they expected that most kids would be drinking themselves silly on friday and be too tired to do anything until late at night. Went to a job interview in the morning off campus. I walked to the building about three blocks away and i showed my id to the man at the desk. He waved me in and I walked straight over to the elevators. He asked me if I was working there and I said no. He proceeded to become very agitated and to tell me that I needed to sign in and that if I'd never been in a building before that I should tell the security what my business was. He asked me if I knew where I was going. I didn't so I said no. He again proceeded to reprimand me on my lack of understanding and tell me to ask where to go from now on. He was a very muscular (and honestly very scary) black man and I continued to apologize as the doors closed on the elevator and I sighed out some relief. I went to the interview and as soon as I came downstairs he was peaches and cream. He asked me how it went and I said it went ok and he said Thats good! You just gotta stay positive, they'll probably call you on monday. And then he gave me a big smile. I felt like I was in a weird coming of age movie, you know, that scene where there is a guy who is only a douche because its a rite of passage to be treated like crap. As soon as he didn't have to be rude, he was the nicest guy. It was strange.

The school set up a welcome back concert and there were tons of people there. It was a really fun event but a way different crowd from what I'm used to in the northwest. At our concerts we cheer like crazy and appreciate the artist all through the set. We try to see if we can get the artist to be taken aback by how much we love them. I was at a concert where it happened once, that band will be coming back to portland more often because of that one night. But LA kids are fairly lame when it comes to concerts apparently. We barely cheered and when i did, people looked at me like i was an idiot. By the end people were crowd surfing and moshing like crazy. It was really fun. I'm beginning to appreciate the amazing power of USC in this town. We are the biggest and richest school in town. Its like we're the USA of the town. All the events come to us because we're such a big audience and if they won't come to us, we have to funding to pay them to come. We are a force to be reckoned with. Its fun to be a part of that.