"In the Schrute family, we believe in the five-fingered intervention: awareness, education, control, acceptance and punching."
I got a student ID today.
We moved to Illinois so Dave could go to school, and I had planned to get a job, because, you know, what else was I going to do? Well, it turned out that cornfield-based university towns in central Illinois are sort of short on jobs. About the time I got sick of sending out resumes, I remembered that just because I had quit my job and moved twice in six months because of my husband didn't mean that I couldn't do things that
I wanted to do.
And what did I want to do? Go to graduate school to become a librarian.
Because you know what the best part of grad school in France was? The BNF (and other libraries and pure research). Remember when I
waxed rhapsodic about the Death Star? Not that I made this decision because of my affection for French libraries, although I do miss the glory of the BNF...
However, I'd missed application deadlines for the fall (story of my life, missing application deadlines - that's why I moved to France five years ago), so I still have to apply. And that's a bit nerve-wracking, because it turns out the library and information science program here? It's the best in the country. To up the odds of getting in (and to start the program as quickly as possible) I'm taking a couple of classes this fall. Because I haven't been accepted yet, though, I don't exactly feel like a real student. Kind of like my program in France, I guess; it always felt a bit...odd.
Anyway, so today was the official move-in day on campus, which meant the population in town essentially quadrupled, and as I don't like people, I was dreading going to campus to get the ID card that I had to have before next week. The thing is, though, that it actually made me feel like a student in a really good way. Something about pushing through the INSANELY PACKED campus bookstore reminded me just how much I
like school. And I'm really looking forward to the couple of classes I'm taking (because, really, who
wouldn't be thrilled with "The History of the Book"?). I've felt fairly out of place lately, honestly - it's not like I'm *doing* anything here, you know? - but being surrounded by a bunch of students and their helicopter parents who were trying to figure out exactly which text they needed was apparently just the swarm of humanity I needed.
On a side note, I don't know that I've been in a crowd like that since I was in Paris, and I couldn't help but notice that despite the ninety-degree weather and mass of bodies packed into the relatively small space, it didn't smell bad. It was almost a bit disorienting. Ahh, la France.
So, yeah. Just call me Marian.
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