Acclimation

It's been three days in D.C. and things have not been good. In the first twenty-four hours I've already lost my water bottle and polaroid camera. I'm extremely stressed and frustrated right now, and painfully aware of how negative I'm being. I feel bad for bothering Diana and Anisha with my text spam, and when my friend Soli called I started ranting without even as much as a, "How are you," because I felt like exploding. I'm irrationally scared when no one's responding to texts, knowing full well that they're busy, and I'm upset at myself for being so negative.

I didn't start off on the right foot coming in to DC. Last Friday night I was going to go to sleep early after visiting my friend Dana to use her wifi to check in to my flight, but then a whole bunch of new notifications and issues arose. I ended up sleeping far later than expected which led to me sleeping through my alarm and being late for my flight. I was supposed to arrive Saturday at 5pm, but ended up getting here on Sunday at 1am. As such, I didn't have any bedding, and after showering to get the ickiness of the airport off of me, I had wet hair too. I kept waking up every two hours because I was uncomfortable and cold.

The next morning was a bit better. I was able to go shopping with my roommate to get the dorm set up, but I ended up spending a lot of money. I immediately realized how expensive it was to be here: I'm paying rent for my old apartment, new apartment, and the dorm here. Plus living expenses and transit expenses, and overall it's going to be a very costly summer. Luckily I have a scholarship which will help out immensely with the financial burden, but it does require a political science or public policy internship, which it turns out, my internship is not. I thought it would be a "Programming and Outreach" internship, referring to the operation of a non-profit, but it turns out it's more of managing a summer camp (not that there's anything wrong with that kind of work, but I was really hoping to learn something new from my experience in DC). I asked my supervisor about this concern, and she said that there were no opportunities for networking or connecting with the education policy community. I'm currently looking for another internship that I could do, which is additionally stressful.

Furthermore, the weather in DC itself is not something I'm used to. In Berkeley in the fall when the weather changes, I get mildly sick as I'm adjusting to changes in humidity and pressure. Here, going from California to DC in five hours, that adjustment is a hundred times more severe. I'm ridiculously congested on top of being physically sore from moving all of my stuff between apartments and hauling luggage to DC. I'm having a difficult time acclimating to this environment — physically, socially, and emotionally.

I'm stressed and frustrated and I don't know what to do or who to talk to about it. But that's ok. I can always rant here where no one is forced to partake in my misery. I just wish I had done this earlier so I wouldn't have freaked out to actual people who I am now worried are annoyed at me. Hopefully in the coming days that will be sorted out too. I just miss having close and consistent conversations with people. Luckily, it hasn't been all bad. I was able to decorate my apartment a bit with a washi tape bear decal based on the ASUC logo. I was able to straighten out the subletter situation at my old apartment and the rent situation with my new apartment, so I'm no longer as stressed about those things. I'm genuinely excited to be in DC and I'm enjoying it despite the setbacks so far. I imagine that things will get better soon. ◊