Once Upon a Life

It's funny, really. I seem to remember a time when college meant rushing to get to the cafeteria before it closed, meeting with groups in the library and getting yelled at for being just a little too loud, trying not to think too hard about what sharing a bathroom really means, and trying to navigate from one end of campus to the next in the ten minutes between classes. And I remember just how much of that time I spent surrounded by people. They were everywhere.

They were in the dorm lobbies and dining halls and classrooms and parking lots and all those places they really weren't supposed to be...but were anyway. I was never a partier (truly. Look up straight-laced in the dictionary and my picture will be right there), but for four years there was never a part of the school-year where I was ever alone.

Okay. Maybe not that straight-laced.

Grad school is...well...different.

I have plenty of friends here. When you're in small classes like these, desperately fighting deadlines alongside the same faces every day, you connect. It's a survival technique (I'd say it's also a last-ditch attempt to keep your sanity, but we passed that point long, long ago). So the potential for a life is there. The time, however, isn't.

I'd love to go with friends to see a movie or a concert or even just get a drink. (Hell, sometimes I'd even be excited for a shopping trip, and those are usually the bane of my existence). But even though my full-time schedule claims it consists of 9 credit hours instead of the oh-so-overwhelming 18 I took during my undergraduate years, the numbers lie, my friends. Free time has become a thing of the past.

Never mind that I finally have a beautiful, full-sized kitchen (complete with actual dishes!). Dominos, Thai Pavilion, and China Hut have become my new best friends during dinner time. Especially if they deliver. Movies I can see on Netflix, played as a soundtrack while I grade papers or, horror-of-all-horrors, write my own. And drinks...well...I'm assuming that I'll be able to afford those again, some day.

If only he could learn to cook and clean.

To be fair, it's not mindless business. If anything, I'm happier than ever with the direction I'm heading as I get to see myself doing real research...the kind that I hope will make a difference when I get out of taking classes and can devote all my time to teaching them. But there are times when I long for the days when my cat wasn't my only company. Because, as much as I love him, he's got a long way to go in terms of conversation.

All around me, projects are stacking up. My kitchen table spends more time as a bookshelf than an eating place, and my coffee table should probably be considered a natural disaster area. However much I'd like to clean, priority has been given to the two research papers I have due in the next three weeks, as well as a portfolio, a website, a syllabus, and an insane amount of grading. Frankly, having time to sleep is miracle enough.

But maybe, sometime soon, I'm going to have to say screw it and rescue a few of my fellow cohort members for a night of pizza and movies and conversation that doesn't revolve around literature and cats (okay...so not only around literature and cats). Because I love what I'm doing now...but sometimes I miss having college be equal parts learning and socializing.

The communal bathrooms can stay in the past, though. They were overrated from the start.