Writing 1st person tense question.?

1st person past tense is most common, from what I hear. I was, He was, etc... But can you through in an "I AM" for something that is always true for the main character telling the story?

Here is a random example, don't critique the writing, i am making it up as i go. :)

Example: I didn't want to go. I was perfectly happy to stay in my room wallowing in self pity; college was the last thing on my mind. Didn't matter what I wanted anyway, my dad insisted I get over it and look to the future. Apparently my future would with Brown University if the dean liked me. Fat chance. I am not very comfortable meeting new people.

(What about using "is.) Example, i have been saying was, but then through in an is in the nest sentence and need to know if that works or not.

example: . I WAS not eager to get to the lunch room. The first day in a new school IS tough enough, but lunch break IS always worse.

in your example, switching from 'was' to 'is' does work. This is because in the first sentence, "I" is the subject and talking in the past tense. If you continued with a sentance with the subject of 'I' then you would need to continue in the past tense. However, since you move on to making impersonal generalizations, this makes it alright to switch to the present tense.

I think it would work better if in ur 2nd example, u didn't use it 2 times.
It sounds better 2 me smthg like this:

example: . I WAS not eager to get to the lunch room. The first day in a new school CAN BE tough enough, but lunch break IS always worse.

Just my opinion, though. ;-)

It took me ages to figure out your question, but the answer is YES. If the story is set in the past but you're talking about something that IS always true, that's fine.

if ur talking about the first day in general "is" is fine, but talking about a specific day that already happened, u have to use "was"