I'm glad to hear that you're getting into a variety of activities and projects.  

If some of that downloading time was a matter of repeat downloads of the same thing to different computers, let's make sure you have access to the "Installers" share on the school fileserver, which can save some time with that.  And if you don't have a USB flash drive (or don't care to use your personal one for this job), let Erik or me know and we'll get one to you.  [I know sometimes the repetitive downloads can't be helped, say if the installer is mostly a downloader.  But I'm just speaking in generalities here...]

Some of our schools have done poetry-related projects.  Here's one example:  http://cuip.net/~atolbert/ .  I'll look forward to seeing more about how the project at Murray is progressing!

  ==mitch
(former English major)