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This weekend is shaping up to be pretty awesome. I practiced unicycling, auditioned for a capella choirs, and ran around yelling, wielding a piece of rolled up paper covered in duct tape. I'm really getting to like this place, no matter how late I've had to stay up to finish homework.

I'm going to guess that this post should probably have some introductory elements - so hi, I'm Xanda, I'm a freshman living in East dorm on campus, and I'll be keeping a blog of whatever the heck is going on here - which, from my two weeks on campus, tends to be pretty interesting. If you're curious about anything I'm talking about or just want to ask a question about Mudd, post a comment and I'll get to it as soon as I can. I should be posting something like twice a week, time permitting.

Now, to talk about dancing, because this is really interesting me. I've spent a long time being sort of half-interested in learning how to dance - that is, I wanted to be able to but didn't think I could and didn't want to take lessons. By the time I applied to Mudd, I was pretty convinced that dancing was just not going to happen.

And then I got to campus. And EVERYONE HERE DANCES. Okay, perhaps not everyone, but at the 5Cs - the five Claremont Colleges for those unaware of such abbreviations - there are weekly meetings of groups for swing dance, blues dance, salsa dance and probably anything else one could devise as a form of dance.

I was attempting to avoid all the invitations for these, as - like I said before - I don't think I can dance. But last Saturday, a number of people in East said I should just go along with them if I wasn't doing anything else, and we went to Blues Dance. It met outside, and the two people running it taught a few basic moves and then started DJing blues music, and we danced. And, while I did step on a few feet, I got to learn to dance a bit. It was lots of fun, being a follow; occasionally a really good blues dancer would ask me to dance and suddenly I'd be spinning and flying all over the place without really knowing what was going on.

So, tonight, I'm going blues dancing again. And the moral of the story is that, in spite of massive amounts of work and a high concentration of geekiness*, Mudd people can and will do cool stuff.

*I want to clarify - I don't think of geekiness as bad. I have always considered it as dedication to a particular interest, usually focusing around things that not everyone likes or understands. Take, for instance, people who really like solving Rubik's Cubes (as there are plenty of people here who do that). Solving a Rubik's Cube is not an easy thing to do, and it takes some dedication to do it...but it's good dedication. You have to be smart and to be able to concentrate. Succeeding at being a geek seems to me to be a virtue. I'm proud when people refer to me as a geek. Just so it's understood that I mean no harm.