Well, we’re underway. I’ve been to all six of my classes. Syllabus have been entered into my planner. Notebooks are arranged. Bus and lightrail schedules are locked down. The verdict? It’s going to be a very long, intense and thrilling semester.
The first thing I realize when I come back is that I am not intelligent. Mind you I’m smart when it comes to life, being an adult (usually) and most other things. But when I step inside a classroom the cold reality of the depths and mountains of knowledge that I have to cram into my cranium hits me like a flash flood. It’s a terrible feeling to experience when you’re thirty three years old but lucky for me this isn’t my first rodeo. This happened last semester, the semester before that and it happened on the first day of that first semester back in January of 2014. Every time it happens I experience a little moment of slight panic. You know that panic. For some of us it’s the moment when the plane takes off. Others its when the landing gear screeches onto the tarmac. Heights might do it for you. That little feeling where your stomach drops a little and your mind is jumping up and down screaming, “Fly you fool! Why are you still standing there! Run like the wind out that door and never look back!”
That’s the feeling I get with each new class. Each one is a little more challenging than the next. Each one forces me to buckle back up into my saddle and sally forth into the great frontier of greater education. And that ride is going to be bumpy. Plenty of term papers, group projects, exams, tests, quizzes and classwork will surely test my intestinal fortitude. And that’s OK. I’m up for the challenge.
That doesn’t mean I’ll be turning in my Struggle Bus Pas anytime soon. That thing will be renewed on the daily.
Hourly, even.