School Daze, or My Brain is Imploding

Wednesday was the first day of school.  I didn't have class until 5pm, so I didn't plan to get up early, but I still woke up a couple hours before I'm used to.  This ended up working to my advantage, because I checked my university e-mail, and discovered that I had a reading assignment for my Tuesday class that I needed to do before class started.  Which is kind of unfair, I think, having a reading assignment before you've actually had your first class, but, welcome to grad school!  This development was unwelcome, mainly because a.) it meant I had to buy the books for the class, which meant b.) I had to transfer money from my bank account to my OneCard, because c.) the university STILL hasn't finished my fees assessment so I can get my student loan, which covers the cost of books.  So the money that my father had generously loaned me to help with my car payment (thanks, Daddy!), with a little left over, would now JUUUUUST cover my car payment, because I needed the little left over for books.  The sooner I find a millionaire to marry, the better...>sigh<....

So, I transferred the money, got all pretty again (not that I have a choice, my hair has reached a "Do it every day or else" phase of growing out, argh), and headed up to school early, because any sane person knows that the best day for buying your books?  Is not the first day of school.  Not even close.  In fact, I would go so far as to boldly state that the first day of school is, in fact, the exact opposite of the best day to buy your books.  But I also knew that the first week would not be much, if any, better, so I decided to rip off the metaphorical band-aid and just get it over with.

It was....bad.  Worse than I remembered from BYU, although, truth be told, I don't know that I ever went to get books the first day of school.  But, I made it relatively unscathed to the EDSE section, found the two books I needed right away (I'm hoping the loan gets sorted out before I need the other two), and then made my way over to the lines to wait.  And wait.  And....wait for iiiiiit!....wait.  For some odd reason, the song "Hotel California" kept running through my head, but I attempted to ignore it.  And, at long last, I made it to a cashier.  He rang up my books, and I handed him my OneCard, and he...looked at it, made "Buh?" face at me, then confirmed that I wanted to use it to pay....which I found odd, because a OneCard functions like a Signature Card at BYU, meaning you put money in your account, and can use it anywhere on campus like a debit card.  It's one of the major selling points of the OneCard, a point I'd seen advertised ALL OVER THE DANG PLACE, so I'm not really sure why I got the "Why did she give me her ID card?" look, but he ran it through, and I left with my books...and decided to wander around the upper level of the bookstore, which can be very dangerous to my wallet.  And, oh my gosh, if I'd had the money for it, I would have bought half the place out.  I thought the BYU bookstore had a good amount of useless but fun gewgaws and doodads, but the U of A store has, like, three or four times as much, all crammed together, so on one side I'm looking at the adorable piggy banks (I tried to find piggy keychains, to replace my broken one, but they didn't have them), and on the other side: shotglasses, champagne glasses, beer glasses, beer mugs, coffee mugs, and flasks!  All with the U of A logo on them!  Okay, so that wasn't really a major perk for me, but I did kind of giggle remembering the 'toothpick holders' that comprise the entirety of BYU logo-ed drinkware.  They DID have some nifty Native American (or, more likely, "Native American") jewelry that I kind of want, like, a lot.  And some nifty looking cuff watches, and cute pens and pencils, and sweatshirts I'd look awful in because they're green and yellow, and not even a green I can wear (I can never wear yellow), and, and....butter dishes shaped like the Butterdome.  I WANTS ONE.  But, it can wait.

So after wasting time in the store, I walked over to the ed building for class, realized I had some time to kill, found myself a seat in the hall, and buried my nose in The Power of Six, until it was time to go to class. 

Class....scared the crap out of me.  It's a required class on Research Methods, which is supposed to help master's and doctoral students organize, design, and write their research projects or proposals.  About half of the students in the class had already completed 1-2 years of their grad studies, and there were only three of us who were just starting our programs that day.  I was relieved that one of the other students, at least, looked as lost as I felt.  Class started out innocuously enough - everyone introduced themselves, where they were from, and their area of interest or research.  Then we had to write the end to the phrase "Research is..." and "Education research is..." and I started jotting down responses...and then she sneak attacked with "What is your research question?"  My brain went, "Uhhh....buuhhhh....wahhh...Why lady talk no sense?"  I momentarily lost brain function, but once my sight, hearing, and cognitive processes re-started, I managed to jot down an uncoherent, garbled response that I then tried to explain to my tablemates as something I could maybe look at, potentially, as a possible research question, Y'know, in the future?  Of course, I didn't really understand one of my tablemate's research questions either, and he admitted that he is not really sure where to go with it, and I kind of felt like telling him to maybe just focus on the technology aspect of it, and drop the other half, but that's mainly because I kind of get an irritated twitch going when I hear the words "Ecological justice" or "Economic justice" or "Social justice".  That being said, I will end up having to bite my tongue with quite a few of my classmates, because they had some aspect of "________ justice" included in their research questions.

While the rest of the class was a little less scary than the first 45 minutes, I am definitely having to make a conscious effort to re-wire my brain back to academic language and thinking.  This is difficult, mainly because I have little to no patience with academic language in the first place, and because I have spent the last five years reading a steady diet of children's fiction, with a little grown-up fiction thrown in, but never anything more difficult than, say, Michael Crichton, and my neurons are resisting the change.  However, after having read the first five chapters of my Research Methods book, I have been relieved to find it direct and easy to understand.  I just hope none of my other books get too heavy, because my head hurts already and I've only had one class.  Too much more of this, and it might ACTUALLY implode.