Senior Year, Take Two

Rewind through four years of having a full-time job and making a living.  Rewind back through having a two-bedroom condo in a nice part of town, enjoying an expendable income, feeling somewhat settled. Rewind through a quarter of a Ph d that wasn’t meant to be.  Rewind through two years of grad school in English, through the thesis research and writing, the seminars, the happy hour dinners, the cohort bitchfests, the earliest nerve-wracking days of wondering whether you’re gonna measure up.

And that’s where you’ll find me now.  At the age of 30.  Starting again in a new field with a new degree and a new path.

I’ve started over.  Dumped out my life like all the junk in a big ol’ handbag.  I sorted through the contents, dusted off and kept the essentials, threw out the accumulated gum wrappers, expired coupons, crushed packages of saltines, and started anew.  (Note: this is an analogy: don’t actually look in my purse, ‘cause it’s a mess.)

What I didn’t expect was to be an undergraduate again. See, my program has a bonus year for folks who need leveler coursework, so a group of us get to take undergrad classes to catch up to the rest of the MAs.

So I’ve rewinded even further.  Straight into undergrad.  In fact, on the first day of classes, I was walking with some of my cohort members and got solicited to rush a sorority.  (Note: I think this has something to do with my classmates being pretty and blonde.) I learned that instead of seminars, I’d have quizzes and homework and group projects.  I’d be making flashcards. I was eligible to stay in the dorms and have a meal plan.

I was annoyed that the cost of starting over was being thrown back in the chaos of senior year of college.  In my experience, this was the year when the university has lost its promise as a “bustling marketplace of ideas.” When you start to see with your icky, pukey-colored glasses the business of the university and your implicit role in contributing to “the machine,” as Mario Savio put it. When you just want out and into the all-too-overhyped “real world,” even if you aren’t sure what you’ll do in it.  My memories of my senior year of college (my fifth year, I might add) involve feeling confined, antsy, worried, and plain over it.

This is my new beginning? 

But what I’ve learned is that being a second time undergrad—even for only for a shot time—is a neat opportunity.

Ever say to yourself, “If I knew then what I know now”?  That is what this year has come to be about. I can put into practice all the things I wished I’d done as an undergrad but was too short-sighted and inexperienced to understand.

As in/like:

• Less thinking about grades and more thinking. 
• Less figuring out the answer and more figuring out the questions. 
• Using fellow students as collaborators, not competitors. 
• Using professors as resources, not rungs. 
• Realizing professors are people.
• Asking good questions.
• Asking dumb questions.
• Asking questions.
• Taking advantage of the library, the student buss pass, the cheap gym, the free birth control.
• Doing the reading.
• Studying on a Friday night.
• Partying on a Tuesday night.
• Knowing that the journey is the destination, and other trite but true shit.

I may have rewound straight past all the “progress” I’d made, straight back through my adulthood. I may be a senior citizen, as far as my classmates are concerned.  But I’m here, doing my second senior year at 30 years old.  Wiser, and without the senioritis.  'Cause what's the rush?