Despite the fact that the instructor (teacher? professor? I’ve been a first-name-basis kind of gal since I was an undergrad, so I never know the proper terminology to use there) and I are essentially peers–we have similar tastes in stories and television and share a mutual friend, and we’re about the same age–I revert to a lil ol’ student for two hours and 50 minutes every Tuesday evening.

And with that comes the sort of things I completely forgot go along with being a student.

• For one, free days off = awesome. Yes, I’m taking this class for fun, and yes, I am actually having fun. But to have a previously dedicated space of time open up out of the blue? It’s just delightful. (Though the reason, a person I like coming down with the fall plague everyone seems to get during the season change, is less than delightful.)
• Students get more days off than administrators. For Thanksgiving, my office gets Thursday and Friday off. For students? It’s nearly the whole dang week (Tuesday to Friday).
• That guy (or girl) who looks down his (or her) nose at you. I think every class has one, someone who’ll inform you that you’re an idiot when you voice an opinion that is contrary to the consensus of the class. The snark of social media in a face-to-face setting.
• The ick-factor of working in groups. As an overachiever since I was 9 months old, few group members are going to be as engaged as the likes of me. The one time we’ve broken into small group discussion, it resulted in me talking a lot, asking questions, trying to get the other two young women to say a) answer a question with more than four words in b) a decibel loud enough to be audible to the human ear.
• How strange it feels as you near the end of the semester. One of the best things about working for a college is getting back on the academic calendar–I’ve always loved having the year broken up into fall, spring, and summer semesters–and that feeling is exacerbated by being in class.

Four classes to go. Man, that was fast.