School is still more fun

Job life has settled into being the normal mode, and so going to class yesterday made me sick to my stomach. I got over being nervous, and I feel I was the only person who laughed at the professor's joke about having 283 e-mails to answer when she had returned from a delightful tech-free fortnight over the holiday break.

Am I wrong to feel more as a peer than a student? I acknowledge she is my mentor, for that's the reason I'm paying $900, but the joy of taking notes in a classroom as opposed to city council conference room or last night's crowded Mutual Musicians Foundation space is quite apparent.

School is still more fun that working, even though it's its own kind of job. Parents were right, school is better than work. I don't like, though, being all lined up closely with other people in desks; I long for the gallery-style rooms of the medical or law school, the wide tables curving around the wired space; there are cord portals and Internet connections through the laminate.

Anyway, I'm an inveterate note-taker anyhow, and it was a skill I developed at my earliest academic stage. It's probably why my shoulders prefer to hunch and that I have to constantly remind myself to sit up properly.

Writing everything down is the only way I can stay awake or pay attention. I wish for a digital recorder sometimes, but then one has to repeat the whole experience to transcribe…although, I suppose there is good software to do this automatically by now. Of course, the advantage is that while listening, I could form judgments more quickly or ponder macro themes. It's always quite useful to be able to stare into the eyes of the speaker and to note the tell-tale non-verbal cues of dishonesty.

This is why I am not in the science part of any college of arts and sciences. I probably should be getting a business degree, but I think that in the next 50 years, both an M.B.A. and an M.A. in art history will be equally obsolete.

I spent $138 on two books, and I am too afraid to fight for free parking, so I spent the equivalent of the KCP&L bill on a parking pass as well. Maybe it will make me go to their gym again? I'm sure I want to be surrounded by people whose bodies are a decade younger.