I think that I may be starting to carve out a bit of niche for myself here, in my new environment. It is feeling a bit like the slow erosion of a stone when water is dropped one drip at a time in the same spot. It seems like an innocuous, irrationally slow process at first, but eventually and underscoring it all you know that same dripping of water will eventually make a hole right through the stone. But I like that, I think. I definitely like the imagery. I am in no hurry for this, I have decided. I have enough to do with school that I am often busy and I have my sister here at home (and all of you wonderful people out there in Iowa City and cyberspace) to keep me company when I'm lonely. I needn't press the whole social issue here. It will come. I am good enough, I am smart enough, and, goddammit, people will like me.

I do have a friend in my classes. We sit next to each other, are lab partners, eat lunch together often and will study together outside of school hours probably starting this week. We fit pretty well and just happened to fall to one another because she comes directly before me in the alphabetry of our class. She is left handed, liberal, and not at all religious or god-y. See, even on paper she sounds good, eh? ::smile::
I love chemistry, she appreciates it, but just doesn't get it in a way that allows her to love it. I am going to help her with some problems for Physiological Chemistry, just a refresher on how to easily set them up to drive them to solution.

The next two weeks will hopefully bring a bit of outside-of-class hanging out with a colleague or two, for this will bring forth connections on some level other than school or something else fairly superficial.
But, as I said, I am willing to let this flow and not force things. Three years is plenty of time to get to know 100 people, or at least those that seem worth the time.

Sitting here, strangely content, knowing that even if sleep does not come readily I shall be rested.