The day before..

Classes start tomorrow so I’ll finally be able to start writing about the experience of going back to school instead of all the experiences leading up to it. I have to admit I’m pretty anxious about the whole thing. Even though I have been to college before, there is a HUGE difference between Guilford and ECU. The biggest class I had at Guilford was about 35 students and most only had 18-24. This semester two of my classes at ECU will have over 125 students. That’s a big change!

For this reason I thought it would be prudent to do some research in advance of Day One. I watched the first season of Greek – one of the great under-appreciated TV shows of the past decade. I watched Revenge of the Nerds for the 56^th time. That’s an approximation but I’d bet a lot of money it’s fairly close. I watched Old School, Animal House, Stomp the Yard, and Back to School. Here's what I learned: if I am going to truly enjoy the college experience I either need to join a fraternity or have a really rich dad. Unfortunately my dad is not rich and I have no interest in fraternities so there’s a good chance this is going to suck.

The other obvious source of anxiety going into tomorrow is the age difference between me and the other students. Odds are that there will be a couple of other people over 30 in the room but it’s not a definite. I assume if I see another older student, angelic music will play and time will slow down while ours eyes meet across the room.

I think my biggest problem will be that I still think of myself as being young. I dress pretty much exactly the way I did 15 years ago. Most of my friends in Greenville are younger than me and it’s never an issue. Regardless of their ages my friends are generally in the same stage of life that I am – settled down but not boring. I assume that everyone under the age of 22 acts like I did when I was that age, which is to say they act like assholes. I guess we’ll see.

Ultimately the nervousness stems from the unknown. Will I perform as well as I want to? How hard is this going to be? And the big one: Are these kids going to be mean to me dammit??? This time next week everything will already start to become routine and the uncertainty will diminish. Routines aren’t really bad, especially for someone like me. I do want to have a little bit of fun while I’m at it though. Maybe I can become personal assistant to Van Wilder. He wasn’t in a frat and he might like my gray hair.