Last night, I was like, “Mmm, maybe I should log online and see what times my classes are.” I’m finally switching from work mode to school mode. I had a hard time envisioning or contemplating my life as a student while working 40 hours a week in career progress mode, so sometime late Sunday night after completing my final work week, I was like “OK…here goes.”

My classes are in the morning, back to back, with labs on altering days.

My Bio class starts out with the professor going. “Good morning to everybody, Good Morning, Good Morning, Good Morning.” And then on to say something to the effect of “Congrats on being here. 36,000 people apply, 2,300 get in.” And that DID make me feel good. He said “For many of you, this is your first college class.”  I smiled. For me it’s easily my 45th.  I got this college thing down pat. Nothing surprised me about class except the shocking lack of laptop computers. I sat down in class and excitedly pulled out my laptop, then glanced around and noticed “One of these things is not like the other”, and sheepishly put it away. I guess that’s one of the many differences between science class and business classes. 

I’m going to try bringing my laptop one more time. I’ll sit nearer to the back and take notes without distracting anyone. I think it’s a complete myth that all the best students sit up front, anyway. As if 20 feet will make the difference between an A and  B.

I was pleasantly surprised in the Bio class that I was very aware of all the topics he brought up for discussion on modern Biology such as  the First Synthetic Genome (The first Organism with no parents) and the Superbug.  Both these stories broke earlier this summer. The Superbug story about antibiotic resistant bacteria was sent to me by a coworker in an email with the subject line “Please fix this.”

My Chem class was all about the syllabus, but I had to take an assessment test on Introductory Chemistry to assess my knowledge level.  Pretty low stress as no permanent points are assigned, but it’s going to be quite apparent to the teacher that I’ve forgotten all the Chemistry I never learned.