I Really Want To Go Back To School

Like a persistent ailment that always seems to pop up when you least expect it, I find myself stewing in a small depression brought about by virtually nothing at all. For the past few months, I’ve gotten whiffs of sadness, only to have them float away by the end of the day. The smell is lasting longer, this time.

Last night, I finally finished the book I’ve been reading, Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides [author of The Virgin Suicides]. I first read the book back during my spring semester of junior year. Like so many other articles, excerpts and books I’ve read at school, I never invested my whole into this novel. When you have 5 or 6 classes, all of which want you to read the equivalent of the Bible and the back of a box of Fruit Loops, you tend to push things together in order to get them done.

So I re-read Middlesex. And not in the let’s just get this done way, either. As I put down the book after reading it’s closing paragraphs, the first thought I had was then slaughtered by the second. I thought of how great the conversation was going to be with my classmates regarding this book. What did they pick up that I hadn’t? What metaphors caught their eyes? How did they see the ending versus how I did?

Then it hit me. I will never have one of those class discussions again. The class I read this book in was, by far and away, one of the best courses I’ve ever taken in college. Politics of Genes and Horomones, taught by professor Mary Elizabeth Strunk. Going to that class was never a chore, and we always ended up exceeding our time frame by several frantic comments and observations.

Having suffered the blow of not getting another opinion on what is possibly the newest American epic [seriously...I'm trying to hint to you all that maybe you should go to the store and buy this], I went downstairs and tooled around online. That’s when the second blow hit.

One of my co-RAs from last year was online. She let me know that today is the day she moves back to Syracuse for RA training. I was floored. RA training already?!

Despite my last experiences with being an RA, I still have a tender place in my heart for it. The job consumed 3 years of my life. It’s hard not to have some decent memories when I look back. So when I hear its time for people to go back to school and resume training, its like some nostalgic arrow has gone straight through my chest.

Preparing bulletin boards. Making door decorations. Planning out floor programs. This all leads to the eventual beginning of classes, extra-curriculars, campus events and the like. So, for four years I’ve gotten myself psyched up around this time. And in the fifth year, for the first time, I have to settle myself down.