A different kind of 4:20...

My first day of graduate school began at 4:20 a.m., if you count when my first alarm went off. 4:45a.m. is the time that I forced both feet on the floor. I was smart enough to prepare a lot of things before I went to bed the night before, but I still somehow got onto I-20 much later than I had intended. I was a little less nervous heading to Athens than I did when I took the Latin Proficiency Exam, but nervous none the less. The drive was tedious.  The Arctic Monkeys and The Stills kept me from getting too dangerously distracted.

          

      I got to the UGA campus with exactly 46 minutes to spare.  The bookstore wasn’t too hard to locate. In fact, I was delighted how easy it was with the “CAMPUS BOOKSTORE” on the outside. Sometimes the world throws you one. In my pre-class mind, the bookstore was crowded and people were rude and no one would help me find my books. In the real world, there were probably a maximum of 10 people in the entire store, which makes the bookstore at Ole Miss look like a lemonade stand.  The textbooks were on the 2^nd level. I was greeted by a very pleasant bookstore nerd who helped me find my book and guided me then to the register.

           

     I hiked up the sidewalks towards Park Hall. I made it to the front door just before the humidity induced an asthma attack. The room for Archaeology of Caesar’s Gaul was already occupied by other grad students/Latin teachers. I recognized some from the Georgia Junior Classical League State Convention this past April but by their expressions when they saw me, I doubt the memory was mutual. I found a seat in the back, not necessarily to hide from the professor but it was my closest landing zone.

           

      After about 10 minutes of sitting there quietly, half looking through my new textbook, half eaves dropping on the people in the front of the room, a guy set his stuff down in the seat next to me. I looked up at him briefly and thought he looked incredibly familiar. I chewed on it for a minute, and realized that he had gone to Ole Miss and was one of the few other true classics majors in my classes.

          

      The professor, who I later classified as a happy mix of Molly and Ajootian and detests being called ma’am, didn’t even begin lecturing before giving us our first assignment...which was group work. I dread group work like the plague. Sitting there waiting for her to let us choose ours made me empathize with my own kids and also realize the importance of pre-choosing groups for them.  Luckily, my Ole Miss comrade remembered me so he and I and two other people from the class made our group.

      Our very first homework assignment was to find specific descriptions of Gauls in Caesar's De Bello Gallico. Each group was assigned a different book. Ours was Book VI. 

It would have been a decent class except for the fact that an English class kicked us out. I would have stayed  longer in Athens if I wasn't paying by the hour for parking. I headed back home, worked out, ate something, then did my homework at the Greenjackets game. I read better in chaos, less distractions.  

My first day of graduate school ended at 10pm.