Jamie Goes To School

I started back to school this week, with a fresh lunch pail, and my name bus number pinned on my jacket.

Yes, it's true. I am a grad student.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about college, especially in the first week, is the one student you find in each class who simply cannot bear to have your time together go by without hearing their own nasal voice drone on about some topic only tangentially related to the lecture at hand, because they are such a giving person that they just know that the whole class would benefit from their slight tidbit of useless knowledge, often gleaned from a dubious internet source, or the ever-reliable, "something I read somewhere."

Oftentimes, they have no particular point to make, but just want everyone to hear them and know that they are smart. In fact, they need for you to think that they are smart. Their entire existence depends on the people that they don't even know finding them intelligent. What kind of self-esteem is that?

Perhaps with the plethora of handouts we received at orientation, something from the campus counseling center should have been included, with an ominous title, like, "If You Think You Don't Need Counseling, This Flyer Is For You!"

So, I've made it through the first week of classes, and now have aproximately 9,000 pages to read over the weekend. They certainly don't suffer the fool.

But, it's rather exciting to be a student again. Soon you will see me at 3 a.m. at the IHOP ashing into my half-eaten pancakes and typing away furiously on a paper because, "I do my best work under pressure." It's terribly romantic to put myself in the same league as the students who started the French Revolution and others at the cultural zeitgeist. Discounts at the movies and major attractions certainly don't hurt either.