The exciting adventures of Benjamin O'Neil

So let's see; The year started rainily. I remember having to go across to Taliaferro to get my key and stuff in the rain, so that kind of sucked, but it wasn't so far, so it wasn't really that bad. I ended up getting along really well with my roommate, Señor Ryan Lintalman, right off the bat. While I would've survived without him, I think he really made my year a lot better than it would've been otherwise. I think Ryan will get his own section later on in this post since he deserves one.
Continuing with the summary, I met two of my first friends, Katie and Jenn, by chance when they knocked on my door while walking up and down the hallway. Ryan was actually out with some girl, borrowing my bathing suit since he didn't have his own, so it was just the three of us. Apparently they felt somewhat sad for me since I was sitting alone in my room, but I remember talking to people on the internet, so I certainly wasn't lonely. I'm definitely really glad that they stopped in though; they're two people that I don't know that I would've really been friends with in high school (would've hung with different crowds, I think) but they're both awesome people.
After that, class started and it really wasn't as much of a shock as I was expecting. I guess Jefferson had turned out to be good for something; if nothing else I was very prepared for the work loud that I was about to receive. I enjoyed all my classes first semester, and really looked forward to going to them all the time. Which was a big change from high school, and I think it is weird to a lot of people that I was completely different, in both regards (to those that knew me before and those that knew me since, when they find out about the other they don't really believe it.)
Katie and Ryan started dating like the 7th day we were there, so I think that really helped cement our relationship with Katie and Jenn. In retrospect, it was a very odd relationship, just because they are both really different people. I'm really glad they get along though; otherwise it would be very awkward. The funny thing is that Katie's been with Keith since, whereas Ryan's been interested in at least two different girls (I, for one, find this amusing; maybe others not so much) They both seemed to handle the ending pretty well, so like I said, not too awkward.
I went and visited Jeremy the first weekend in September, and that was a good time. It was good to see both him and Ross Goodwin, who probably is the greatest person on the face of the earth. I think it might have helped Jeremy out a lot, just in terms of doing fun stuff, since he had a hard time at the beginning of the year. I was definitely glad to go out there.
The next big event was Daniel and Molly's wedding, which I was really excited for. It meant getting to see all of my family, whom I like a lot. It definitely had all the makings for a perfect weekend: my family was going to be together, I was missing school on Friday, Martha was even flying in from Duke as my date. At the time, it was a pretty good weekend. However, it ended up that I messed things up and the worse part was that I didn't even realize it until my brother told me. I felt awful about it and still feel really bad about it. He said I had been selfish because he had invited me to hang out with him the night before (since I was a groomsman) and had rejected him to go hang out with Martha instead. There's really no worse feeling than being chewed out by someone you really respect in your life, and realizing that there really was no excuse for what you did. It was made even worse by the fact that this was their wedding; this is something that's only going to happen once, and I think I ruined it. I don't really regret things, but if there was ever something to regret, it's this. He said he had his peace with it, but I don't really know that he does. I do think that the conversation that I had with Sherry (which was occurring when I was with Martha, since they were staying in the same room) was very insightful and I'm glad I had it, but it definitely pales in comparison to the simple thing that I was asked to do.
Jeremy came up and visited me the next weekend, and we had more good times. I don't really remember the specifics of that weekend, other than the fact that he was driven by someone who enjoyed Metal Gear Solid, and we ate at one of the taverns for breakfast that morning. I think things are starting to blur together, which is exactly why I'm writing this now.
Fall Break was two weekends after, and that was at the perfect time; I came home and caught up on sleep and just relaxed. The train ride home was really funny, since about 75% of the people on the train were students. I actually ended up sitting next to David Gordon and watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. Interesting becuase he would end up showing back up in my life second semester...
The last weekend in October Martha came up for the weekend. It was definitely a very enjoyable weekend and good to see her, if only for a short time. However, this unfortunately became the starting point for bigger problems in our relationship. I always feel bad for Jeremy because I think he bore the brunt of my complaining about things, as did Ryan. They should get like Purple Hearts or something. Ryan was very accomodating in that if I said I wasn't feeling great and wanted to go to sleep I could. I am very appreciative of that and general support made things better. I think that things were made worse by the fact that i was very unsure of what I wanted. Part of me wanted to just keep the relationship going, probably mostly out of the fact that it was something familiar, but other parts of me saw that there were problems that just weren't able to be fixed. This struggle made things harder, as I kept going back and forth about things. Things were really up in the air from that point until February, and that's actually made things worse than they probably would've been otherwise. Martha and I still talked, but we had ended the relationship. I think that made things awkward and we weren't really sure where we were. More on that later...
November flew past pretty quickly, and Jeremy came to pick me and Ryan up to take us back home for Thanksgiving (Ryan was going to visit relatives in Sterling) We saw 2046 the night before we left, and it was a very interesting movie. We agreed that it would've made more sense if we had seen "In the Mood for Love" before, but it was still a good movie regardless. Thanksgiving break was mostly spent just seeing family (Daniel and Molly came; they didn't seem too mad at me, but then again who could tell?) and hanging around the house. I headed back to Williamsburg to finish up my first semester of college.
The last week of class was pretty much a waste, and then I had three exams right off the bat. I wrote my first actual philosophy paper (on Marxism) the last week of class (that was actually the only productive thing that occurred that week.) I studied really hard for my Linear Algebra exam and did really well, studied pretty hard for Multivariable Calculus and did well, and not so much studying for Japanese and apparently did fine. I came home for a week to see Sherry since she was up for early Christmas, and it was nice to be home and relaxing, even if I still had to go back for my Econ exam. I ended up playing Kingdom Hearts, a game that I thoroughly enjoyed, at least enough to import the second one; more on that later. I didn't study as much as I should have for Econ, but I ended up with a decent grade in the class, so that was okay. I was then home for the holidays, so to say. And I had survived my first semester of my freshman year of college.

I think that's all I can write for right now; I'll write about second semester later, maybe tomorrow. We'll see what's going on. I think the story ends up okay, but you'll just have to wait for the conclusion!