Envying the Undergrads

This weekend is Parents Weekend here at the college at the U of C. Walking over to get a roll from the Medici Bakery for lunch, several wide-eyed parents nearly walked right into me. I'm still not ever the weird feeling I get from being here where so many kids are actually going through their own college experiences while mine has been over for 2 years already. Theoretically, there are only half as many undergrads as there are grad students here, but everyone I see walking around looks like a college kid. The University of Chicago definitely has its own special brand of college kid too, but they're normal enough. I can't help being intrigued by how they look and what they say, how they interact with each other. A part of me is jealous of them, living in the dorm, dealing with roommates, going to practice, eating in the dining hall. I could do all that again... except maybe live in a dorm, though there are a couple here that look nicer than any place I lived at Amherst.

I think what attracts me the most is the belief that I now know how to do college, so it'd be easy. Applying the same standard rules of thumb you learn in college to grad school doesn't exactly work. For instance, I can't just come back here to my apartment every night, grab a tray in the kitchen, and try to get a look at what they're serving in the grill line (but man, that'd be nice sometimes.) Just once I'd like to go back and relive something a second time, though, to feel like I really knew exactly what to expect and how to do it right.

But I suppose life kind of works like that in a certain way. Once you get older, certain experiences start to resemble others and you realize you can apply certain lessons you learned in the past to situations that pop up in front of you. I guess I'm doing that now with teaching. And if the name of the degree I'm supposed to earn at the end of this year has any truth to it, I should be able to begin next year perhaps not having mastered everything about grad school but at least thinking, "yeah, I know what this is like..."