Lagniappe semester
Right now I am about three weeks into what is being called the Lagniappe semester. "Lagniappe" means gratuity or small present, and as a way of giving back to us students who paid a semester's tuition to Tulane in the fall, the school has offered us a tuition-free six- or seven-week semester. It started about a week and a half after spring semester wound down and finishes at the end of June. This is my first experience in any type of summer school, and it has been a bit of a surprise how fast all the classes move when they're condensed into a shortened semester. Anyway, it has kept us a little busier with work than we normally are down here.
Outside the increased workload, I have had one more new experience lately. I finally moved off campus. I got a place with three friends, and we have been working to make it ready for living. We quickly acquired our most important furnishing, a little neon-yellow reflective man to remind any motorists in our living room to drive slowly. Being a group of people who could be generally characterized as lazy and disorganized, we soon realized that although a few of us had taken steps to procure beds, we really didn't have any other furniture for the house outside of the bar and perilous spiral staircase that came built into the house.
First we found a nice desk in one of the rooms, which solved one person's workspace issues, and then we went shopping in the way only college kids ever do. When we first wandered over to the broken gate of our dump, we noticed that there was all kinds of great stuff on our new sidewalk. After thinking for several minutes, we realized that since almost everyone who lived in our little complex had moved out the day before, this stuff must have just been left for dead. Our living room couch was in front of the house two doors down. While sifting through the rejected housewares of previous tenants, we encountered a fellow scavenger, a strange but friendly eastern European cyclist who seemed enthused by his discovery of a cardboard tube that held mysteries I can only dream of.
After we explained our situation (that we were just moving in and trolling for home furnishings that did not carry venereal diseases or have anything living inside them), our newfound ally imparted to us the location of a veritable plethora of semidecent discards that we would have to see to believe. We thanked the man and bade him farewell. The location turned out to be one block ahead in the direction we happened to find ourselves already pointing, so we decided it was worth checking out. Our spy report did not disappoint. We were able to salvage multiple desks, computer speakers, a lamp for the living room, and even a strange table that had the word phat spray-painted on it that now supports our TV.
Sure, we may still need to go somewhere classier—like Wal-Mart—to fill in the items that eluded us in our initial "shopping spree." But we did acquire some necessary things, so I think it had to be considered a moral victory. Anyway, we are slowly learning how to survive in the wild. And now we have that much more money to spend on the truly important things, which we intend to drink shortly.
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