We're back!

Published on 01/14/2002 Daily Egyptian (SIUC)

The signs of spring have arrived. The Wal-Mart parking lot is fuller than it was even at the height of the Christmas shopping season, Dominoes took 50 minutes to deliver dinner Friday night, and there are Follet and 710 bags littering my little study area. Another semester begins.

I'm starting this semester with the best of intentions - I have plenty of time set aside for reading and studying, and I have planned to get all of my assignments done early. My editor will be happy to hear that one; deadlines for a newspaper are tougher than any imposed in a class. Editors are generally less understanding or sympathetic than any professor, too.

So I have nearly $300 worth of books stacked up (which I expect to sell back for a total of $17.45 at the end of the semester) and I've even flipped through a couple of them. My resolve is high, and this promises to be my best semester yet.

Yeah, right. Gimme two weeks. One of the kids will get sick, or my son's principal will call, and I'll miss my first class. It will be for legitimate reasons, of course, but it will be the beginning of a short slide down a slippery slope. Missing the first class is the hardest, but the missing the second is easier, the third even easier, and next thing you now, you're more likely to get the notes from a friend than from the professor. It's a common affliction.

Ever notice how tough parking is early in the semester? Classrooms and lecture halls are filled and seats can be hard to find. By the third or fourth week of the semester, parking is easier and you have a wide choice of seats. Except on the day of a unit test or mid term. On those days people you never saw before show up for class.

I've signed up for an 8 a.m. class. Those are the worst, ranking just below that 3:35 p.m. class. I have no trouble getting up for that early class - I have kids heading off to school. The hard part for me is getting them ready for school and getting myself out the door. While a cup of coffee and a cigarette constitutes a balanced breakfast for me, they need and want something a little more substantial. My son is a morning person only four days out of 10. The other six days he wakes up so grumpy he makes me look like a genuine ray of sunshine. He growls, but he rarely bites. He's only 11, but maybe I need to get him started on morning coffee. It works for me.

My daughter usually wakes and gets herself ready a little more efficiently. She has to - the bus picks her up about 7:15 a.m., and if she misses it she pays my gas for a ride to school.

All together, there are six of us in my happy little household getting ready for various destinations in the morning, all vying for a shot at one of two bathrooms. One of those includes my teenage niece. She spends almost as much time in the bathroom as she does on the phone. Just washing her face is multi-step processor, involving the contents of at least three different bottles. That doesn't include getting her hair just right.

So it begins. I hope to see you in class today or tomorrow. Say hi, but maybe it's best not to make new friends until the second week in February. By then you should know who you'll have a chance of seeing again, and who is going to fade out of sight by spring break.