"Er… hi. My name's Will, I'm from Siegfried, originally from Ohio, I like to read, I like to write and I'm crazy. In other words, I'm considering PLS."

I've lost track of how many times I've said that phrase, or some variant of it, over my admittedly short time here under the Dome. What I do know, though, is that each time I said that, I supposedly made a new acquaintance. The thing is, my brain has the memory retention capability of an amoeba or some other one-celled icky thing they yell at us about in biology.

So if your name's Katie, not to pick on Katie Staden, but anyways, you're probably listed somewhere in my broken mental Rolodex as "that one girl whose name starts with a K." Obviously, this leads to problems when dealing with more than one person whose name begins with K, like Katie, Katie and Katie. (Are there other names that start with a K?) Since I don't think the University will limit enrollment to 26 people anytime soon, I guess I'm a lost cause on that front.

Maybe the key is trying to memorize AIM screen names. That'll work just great. I can go around calling everyone stuff like "fightingirish327283963434" and "sprklygurl823592" all the time. What are those people who make themselves "firstnamelastname" just because they can trying to do, confuse me?

Then there's the people who apparently know me from somewhere or other, maybe from "that one class/meeting/dinner/party/other activity," assuming of course that I remember that exact same instant in time when we both regurgitated our "vital information" as if it were toxic and would devour our insides if we didn't spill it. I'm beginning to think that's the real reason behind acid reflux. At any rate, it's really pretty rare to remember all that stuff, let alone call it up on demand.

So if you're going to class, at a party, wherever — and the best friend of the roommate of the person who dated the person you sat next to in freshman year composition shows up, don't be astonished when they don't jump up and down screaming your name at first sight. Well, if they do, I would run. But otherwise, give `em a break, and let them slide by with an "ah, uh, hey, howyadoing?" at first before breaking a chair over their head and reintroducing yourself. Maybe I'm just vainly hoping that by the time I'm a junior or something, people won't expect me to know the names of all 10,000 or so people here, but hey, a naïve freshman can dream, right?

I hope so, because I need to get to study group with irishleprechaun28395832.

• Names in a mental Rolodex