I decided to attend grad school after these many years about two weeks before...
Hurricane Irene landed.
Vermont... got rocked by Hurricane Irene. The resulting structural and financial damage we took at our household gave me pause if I should even attempt such a venture like full-time grad school this year, especially while I teach and coach. After waiting for many years for one reason or another, I made the decision to dive in and attend orientation last weekend.
It seemed to get more strange from there.
Once I arrived at orientation I discovered that, in the flurry of activity over the last few weeks, I spaced that that classes actually STARTED that Friday night, and continued for most of the day Saturday.
Five hours of sleep in... about two weeks... mentally fatigued... no place to stay... virtually no money with me... I'd have to cancel a slew of appointments... 9 hours of classes...
Set course and engage.
Quick kudos to Joe Heslin and Kathy Urffer. Joe hooked me up with a place to stay Friday night, which turned out to be a room in Kathy's house.
Just when I thought things couldn't get any more strange... late that Friday night the stomach flu landed on me. After an unsteady 2-3 hours of sleepI set a steady diet of ginger ale and a nap in the 'chill room' in between classes to charge up a bit and before you could translate the Oxford dictionary into Latin... I was headed home.
Driving back through Vermont and seeing all the flood damage, completely exhausted, stomach flu nagging, traces of nine hours of classes playing bumper cars in my head... I figured the best remedy was to crank The Doors to help me keep awake.
It worked.
Made it home safe and sound and set promptly into 15 hours of sleep. Followed up with a bowl of cereal and then five more hours of sleep.
The classes themselves on the opening weekend... I had a great time. Despite the weird medley to start, it was great to meet everyone and engage in some good conversation. I like the flow of the place, the class crew, the course leaders, and the folks working there. It's got a good feel to it.
Not the best way to start grad school but... I'm in at long last.
I'm going to use this blog to post some reflective work on the whole experience and for some of the classes along the way.
To make these threads easier to find, I'll use the gradschool label (tag) for these posts and likely some others more specific to the classes themselves.
Engage...