One down, nine to go!

As of tomorrow, I will have completed (and passed!) my first graduate course. Although in my mind it feels like it was only last year that I was a poor university student living in a basement that tended to flood or drinking liters of coffee to make it through the day.
Wait.  I did drink a liter of coffee yesterday. But university was the start of that nasty habit...
And now, I am one course down on my road to master of the universe. Or Master of Edward Cullen.

Although walking onto the university campus last Monday to start the intensive two week course gave me the deluded sense that I really hadn't aged and that it has not been that long since I left, some things have changed:

1. I have a job. So I have money. Which means I can afford to buy myself things like lunch and coffee and be awesome like that.
2. I have kids and a mortgage. So I actually have negative money. Which means I pack my lunch and fill my bag with instant coffee and steal creamer, sugar and utensils from the cafeteria. Maybe saltines, too.
3. I used to be able to read on the bus, so I would review my notes and whatnot. Now? If I want to read, I have to visit some sort of drug dealer to jack me up on Gravol.  So I spend my time trying not to yarf. Good thing I have my iPHONE! Listening to music while riding the bus is so much easier compared to when I had one of these:

Yeah...And remember how you used to pay like $250 to get the GOOD ones that offered like 10 second skip protection? But on a bus ride, that meant you got to listen to music in 10 second clips. Yesssss.
4. As an undergrad, I was used to being on the top of the brainscale in my courses.  Now, in a graduate level course, the perpetually hungover/drunk people are pretty much weeded out. Which means everyone is smart. And motivated. And it's harder to get those coveted 4.0 marks when everyone around you is smart and motivated and not jacked up on gravol and humming Taylor Swift songs because that's all that was loaded on their iPhone that day.  Not that I have ever listened to Taylor Swift or kept dancing like I was 22. What?
5. Wireless internet on campus. Can I get a HELLS YEAH! Mainly because I can watch as many buzz feed GIFs and youtube videos of Taylor Swift and how she gets her lips so bright red as I want. I mean...homework. Research.
6. My grad photo is on the wall.  And I look young. Even I think I look young. Never felt like I looked old until I saw that picture today...

There are the things that never change:

1. The bus smells like East Asian food.  Or curry. Even at 7:30 am.
2.  Coffee is my lifeline to educational success.
3. First thing I have to do when I get to school is find a bathroom.  And I always try to find the cleanest stall farthest away from the door so people won't hear me.
4. What I am really doing in the bathroom is cracking super secret spy codes using my telegraph. That's why I don't want people to hear me.  So stop listening.  Blarp beep DASHHHHHHH boop.
5. The really slow walkers in the hallway that spread out just enough so that you can't go through them or around them, you just have to follow at their painfully slow pace. Or just stop altogether and watch some goats bleet to Taylor Swift.
6. Stress acne. And stress canker sores. And a cold sore. I can't tell you how happy I was when I woke up with a chin implant that I didn't even have to pay for! Awesomesauce. And canker cold sores? They just make playing the recorder more challenging. That's not blood. That's my war wound, yo.

But as of tomorrow, I will be one course closer to my Masters of Edward. And that feels pretty good.

So. With that in mind, dear husband, I would like to thank you for taking two weeks of your holidays to stay home and take care of our spawn while I moved in with my sister and her little Tiger Lily for two weeks to go back to school. And since they were so good for you, I am thinking I'm good to take another course next summer. Gotta get masters grad pics taken before I get liver spots...
Right?
*crickets*