18, 28: college is hard.

one day during the middle of last week, i was running out the door at 7:45–i had class at 8–and i was even more harried and wild-eyed than usual; i hadn’t finished the reading for my 8 am seminar, nor had i done the reading for my 12 pm seminar. i’d gotten down the stairs,  shoved all my books, papers, and assorted other crap into the passenger seat of my car, when i realized two things: 1) i was FREEZING because it was 35 degrees out and i’d forgotten to put on a coat, and 2) i had two different shoes on. i was seriously tempted to just carry on my merry way, but i capitulated to my nearly crippling vanity and booked it back up the three flights of stairs to my condo, ran to my closet to get the right shoe, and was back to my car in under two minutes. i was halfway to school when i realized i’d forgotten my coat again. and i was sitting at the conference room table, surrounded by my fellow grad students, panting from running up the stairs with my aforementioned mountain of crap, when i realized that i was only wearing one earring.

and that pretty much sums up my life as a mother/graduate student/freshman writing instructor/zombie.

a couple of things (among many) i’ve learned since going back to school:

1. there are some things that can be explained by the words “because i said so.” this includes the following: why the sky is blue, why we can’t buy a cat, why it’s a bad idea to eat three snickers bars and two packs of string cheese for breakfast, and why girls don’t need penises. this does not include the following: why a rhetorical analysis paper should involve only very limited use of the first person, why critical reading is essential to the teaching of writing, and why irony doesn’t need to be a part of life’s every observation.

2. treats make everything better, and not just for my toddlers; turns out, donuts work as bribes for my children, the freshmen in my class, fellow grad students, and tenured professors alike.

3. sleep is overrated. and i say this mostly because if i were to start thinking about sleep in any other way, i would just drop out of school now. seriously, i sleep never.

4. teaching is so, so, so much better than i could have imagined. when i first started school, i was terrified that i’d be an awful teacher, or even worse, not like teaching (actually, i suppose it’s debatable which of those two is worse, but let’s go with it). thankfully, my fears were totally unjustified. i love teaching like a fat kid loves cake. or like i love cake–tres leches cake, to be specific.

5. byu is awesome. this is something i already knew, but am having the privilege of relearning. the school gets a bad rap from ignorant people for being an insulated haven for conservative whackjobs, and though i’d guess there actually are some conservative whackjobs here, i haven’t met any of them yet. i am consistently humbled by the amount of talent and intelligence that congregates here, from the faculty down to the freshmen, and i feel truly blessed to be a part of such an amazing university. not to say that i don’t sometimes cry in the fetal position (or fall asleep on the floor under my desk in an office shared by like 60 grad instructors) because school is frickin hard–i totally do that. but i’m just glad i get to do that a school as awesome as byu.

*sorry this post took so long to put up. i promise to be better.

— Alexis