First Day of School

As a child, I always looked forward to the first day of school. Simply making the annual trip to buy school supplies the week or so beforehand was enough to send me over the edge with excitement.

Well, it's that time of year again. I'm can't say I'm beside myself with anticipation, but I am looking forward to returning to class on Monday.

I've got a full schedule this quarter: French, Biochemistry (a pre-vet weedout class, I've been told), Animal Nutrition, and Animal Breeding and Genetics. While the latter two are focused on industrial applications, I'm sure I'll learn valuable things.

Because of my interest in spending a year outside of the US during vet school and perhaps even an international internship after vet school, I intend to keep up with the French. Being reasonably fluent in another language will help me with these goals. I took a placement exam earlier this summer and tested out at the third-year level. However, I felt my conversational skills are far weaker than my grammar and vocabulary so I am starting a three-quarter second-year sequence for the language.

Textbooks are rather pricey, as science texts have always been, but I buy used ones if I can, as I always have done. I am perfectly willing to search through dozens of used books until I find one that looks least used. Sort of sad, really, because that means its prior owner didn't use it--didn't do readings or homework, didn't flip back and forth through chapters to study for an exam, didn't regularly cart it around in a backpack. A textbook that has been used to learn and explore looks pretty beat by the end of 10 or 12 weeks. Plus I write in books. Always have. All kinds of books. (While I like ebooks, I find not being able to jot notes and thoughts in the margins to be a bit frustrating.)

Going to university is quite expensive and it didn't make sense to me 30 years ago and doesn't make sense to me now that someone would waste time and money (somebody's money, not likely to be their own, and everybody else's time) by not going to class or even trying to learn something. But I suppose that even when I was 20 I was already a curmudgeon.

The campus this summer was rather underpopulated. I've been down there a couple of times in the past week or so to get my textbooks and supplies (how exciting! school supplies!) and the influx of thousands of painfully young men and women is a bit overwhelming.

But I'm ready. I've got notebooks for each class. I've got plenty of lead for my beloved mechanical pencils. I printed color coded schedules. I also downloaded my schedule to my various Apple devices. I printed a campus map highlighting the buildings that I need to be in this quarter. I even broke down and bought a student parking pass (they were offering a year-long deal if purchased online). I had my bike tuned up. I even bought two pairs of pants (new school clothes!) to wear instead of jeans (they are really jeans but they are colored). Laugh at me all you want. I am ready for the first day of school.