Elevations Connection: Supply Shopping Woes

This post pertains to pages 10, 11, and 12. Feel free to leave comments regarding those pages here at the bottom of this post.

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I've had a few bad habits in college. Slacking on supplies was one of them. I mean, when you're on a budget you'd try to minimize your costs, right? Okay so maybe my priorities were skewed in my first college year. It didn't help that my first college lacked an on-site store for the good part of freshman year.

While it wasn't as bad as needing to get a book from an obscure store somewhere in San Francisco, the recommended supply stores weren't necessarily direct. It was January of 2013. I was taking model drawing and graphic design in the hopes of becoming an animator. What I got was a laundry list of assorted graphite/ink/charcoal, papers, and specific sketchbooks. All of these could be found conveniently in one go at a University Art store.... of which there were only two branches in the area: One in Palo Alto and another in central-western San Jose.

The latter, while closer to home, was a good hour away from class (and given my transit dependency..... inconvenient). I had an extended break between classes, so theoretically Palo Alto was possible in little over an hour. Theoretically. The actual process involved timing myself for the right 30-minute mark to catch a light rail to Mountain View, hopefully at the right hour mark to catch a northbound Caltrain, travel for 20 minutes north, walk several blocks in (classy, posh, uppity, snobby) downtown Palo Alto just trying to find the cramped little store, and drop $80+ dollars on materials that I will inevitably fall disorganized with, and reverse the process on the return trip with a much heavier bag. Total time: 3 hours. Glad I did have such an extended break. This being said, I think it might have perpetuated a sense of laziness with each new supply needing purchase and, at the time, completely overlooking Amazon as an option.

The school did eventually open up a supply store much later in the year. Even then, the hours and supplies within were severely limited as if to cash in on desperation. While I have gotten a little more responsible over time with prioritizing the need to get necessities taken care of, the motivation to, well, actually walk out and buy stuff that isn't within an easy walking distance has severely dwindled. 

I'm just glad I don't have to deal with spending a substantial amount of time let alone waiting in long lines to deal with last-minute school supplies. I mean, I have all the dead tree product and ink sticks that I need! For Terry, though, this would be the least of his worries.

Development Trivia: The original script called for Terry to be invited to a party and then haphazardly driven there by Andrew, (the coyote who appeared in pages 8-11). This was revised to getting a necessary book per recommendation of a few early alpha readers and friends so as to be something more relatable, of which I agree.