Back to School

I start classes again on Monday. I am ridiculously excited about going back to school. There's something about the promise of it, you know? The new notebooks, the new folders, the new books all being tucked into my little red backpack to be carried off to class.

And, I'm taking classes that I am actually looking forward to taking -- Psychology and Sociology. Like, I'm studying people, y'all! :-) And History, which is usually okay if the teacher is animated enough. (History teachers and Math teachers seem to get really excited about what they teach. It makes me sad for them that most people dread taking their classes.)

The Soc class is being taught by the same guy who taught my Philosophy class, whom I adored. He is this COMPLETE hippy but in a smart way and just fascinating. I am not really sure how I managed to learn so much in his class about Philosophy, but somehow I did. (Not that I retained it, but still...)

I like being in class and being around the students. I like taking notes. I don't like the textbook reading part, because it interferes with my pleasure reading, but I try to make an effort at that too. Luckily, I am a fair enough student that I do okay without having to exert extreme effort into it. But, I also haven't had to do anything MAJOR in my college career as yet, so it's been easy to skate by.

But, like I said -- it's really just the promise of it. There's still some of the sensory memory of being a kid and the promise of a new school year. Fall was just a time for new beginnings -- ironically enough given that the season is about the end of things, eh? There's the promise of the things I'm going to learn and the people I may meet and the challenges that lay ahead.

Unfortunately, because I'm into being in school but I'm at a community college with a lot of young kids who really don't appreciate the opportunity they have in front of them, I wind up feeling isolated a bit of the time. Sometimes I meet a buddy to bond with during class. Sometimes I don't. For example, the Philosophy class I was ostracized because I did consistently get good grades and the class found out about it. The teacher didn't normally announce anyone's grades, but after one test when the class was groaning about how hard it was he said that he even had 2 people get 100's. And wasn't I one of them, Heather? My face was red. He felt bad because everyone looked like they were going to lynch me in the parking lot, and really -- it was never the same after that. (I learned my lesson for all of my classes after that. If I was doing well, I kept it to myself. If I was doing poorly and so was everyone else, I shared. After all this time, really I just want to fit in.)

I really wish that I could make the young kids in the classes understand how lucky they are to be going to school now when they have time and no other obligations, really. It's amazing how lucky they are and how little they appreciate it. I know that it wouldn't matter if I said to them to take advantage of their youth, because truer words were never spoken than, "youth is wasted on the young."

Except for you, Gimpy Cousin -- you're doing well not wasting your youth too much!

Because I'm not young, I'm going to bed!