With the first week of class come and gone, there's a an air of both apprehension and excitement buzzing around campus. Maybe you're in the group that is really looking forward to the new school year—great professors, you know plenty of people taking the same class as you are, and you can hang out with the friends that you couldn't always see over the summer. Yes, this year will fun.
Or maybe you're on the other side of the spectrum. Just the thought of waking up early every day to attend a possibly mind-numbingly dull class sounds dreadful. This fall, it might seem like an absolute struggle to crawl out of bed in the morning. Your professors might be the intimidating type who are unafraid to call you out to the rest of the class if you didn't read last night's required chapters. Maybe you had friends that graduated last year and you're missing their company terribly knowing that they won't be with you this year. Or you are already dreading the inevitable midterm season because you know for a fact that your new classes are going to be rough. Oh boy.
As someone who is returning back to campus from a full-time internship after about nine months, I think I might fall in the middle of that range. I shoved all my thoughts about this fall semester to the very depths of my mind while I busied myself with work during my internship. So now that I am back in the class, a part of me wishes I had prepared myself a little better.
I like to think of myself as the kind of person who deals with problems as they pop up. I barely took a glance at my fall semester schedule after I enrolled in courses in the spring, and I practically ignored that it existed during the summer. By the time I finished my internship and had to prepare for the fall, I was as excited as much as I was anxious. Now that I'm here, I can't help but feel somewhat unenthusiastic.
On my first day, I walked into the classroom of my very first class of the year not knowing what the class even was, just for the heck of it. I figured that if everything is going to be a surprise, then might as well make the most of it. I'll find out what class I'm in when I read the syllabus, no biggie.
You might be shaking your head at my deliberate negligence. I also lightly berated myself for not taking the steps to be more prepared. I don't normally do this either, and probably won't try it again the spring, but I think that this way, I can go into the classroom with a blank slate. I tend to overwhelm myself pretty quickly, usually because of preconceptions that I make up about the classes I take and the assignments that I have to do. It's only the first week so I can get back into the swing of things eventually—I'm still in it to win it, just let me get some vigor back into my step first.
But that could just be me trying to justify my own carelessness since I just entered my fourth year of university. Yeah, that's probably it.
Really, the only thing that caught me off guard was looking at my receipts after paying for textbooks. As someone whose internship happen to be unpaid, that's what really hurt. Oof.
