Back to School

My son and I start school on the same day. He’s seven and pretty laissez-faire about the whole thing. Me? I’m a wreck; thank you for asking. First of all, it’s been a while since I was in school (if your definition of “a while” is sixteen years, then we’re in business. Then if you add the four years in college that I didn’t take any math classes because I went to an “arts” school, well, you figure it out.) I was perfectly fine until my sister asked if I would be bringing a spiral notebook and pen to my first night of classes for note taking. Well, yeah, duh, what else would I—oh, right, a laptop. Wups.

So now I’m in panic mode. What else will I learn the hard way? That they’ve done away with desks? That graduate school is now conducted on yoga mats and professors twitter their lessons to a room full of students wearing ear buds? Will I be the only person facing the teacher and do they still raise hands? I’m only half joking.

To add insult to injury, I am concurrently studying to take the GRE test. You’re thinking to yourself, “But you must have taken the GRE ages ago, didn’t you?” Now, why would someone-- whom on her graduation day, threw her mortarboard into the air with the greatest abandon because she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she would never step foot in a classroom again as long as she lived-- have taken the GRE test? Well, I’m taking it now.

Why? Because I need to pass it in order to transfer my pre-admit earned credits towards my masters degree. Why? Because I need a masters degree to get the job that will jump start the first day of the rest of my life in my brand new career. Why? Because I can’t return to my former career because I was out of that particular industry for too long and there’s no going back there, trust me. Why? Because I chose to stay home and raise my son and now I’m divorced and missed the career juggernaut that was my supposed destiny and—let’s be honest—alimony is a much shorter stick than it used to be in the good ole days and the judge told me to git back to work. It’s as clichéd a story as the day is long. And now it’s my reality. Say, “Cheese.” Here’s your new student ID.

At graduate school orientation, my fellow incoming classmates and I were treated to four hours of back-to-back seminars on everything from how to use the library (things have, um, changed) to campus health services (cool. free stuff.) The campus shrink did a little twenty-five minute stand-up routine on how to relieve the pressures of balancing one’s current adult life with the coming demands of our scholastic workload. I listened, smugly, thinking that this was one area that I had nailed down. Time management? Bring it. Multi-tasking? Feh. I can multi-task with both hands tied behind my back.

Then she asked the auditorium full of three hundred or so students-- dragooned to be there on one of the last gorgeous, sunny Saturdays of the summer-- for a show of hands as to how many students graduated in June. Thirty or so hands went up. Then she asked, “How many people haven’t been to school in two to four years?” More hands. “And now,” she continued, slowing down, her voice laced with a circus side-show drum roll, “how many of you haven’t been to school in five to eight years?” My smugness let out a whimper.

I watched as people swiveled around in their seats to catch glimpses of the poor saps who hadn’t used vast portions of their algebra-computing, paper-writing, homework-doing, pop-quiz-taking minds in eons. But no one looked at me because she’d stopped at eight years and so I never got to raise my hand. I thought of hopping up onto my chair, waving and shouting, “Hey, Lady! Keep going!” but decided against it.

When I returned home, deflated, crestfallen and certain there was no way I was going to get through this, there was already an email in my inbox from the graduate school head of campus activities. Seems I’d been invited to try out for the cheerleading team. Excellent. Things were looking up.