Back to School

I graduated College with a B.A. a loooong time ago and didn't look back.  I enjoyed my four years in College but was really happy to get my life back and move on from the poor College student lifestyle.  Without any specific career goals in mind and an unwillingness to take on any more student loans then I already had Grad school wasn't something I wanted to pursue.  The loans are long since paid off but I'm still not interested.  So why do I find myself looking at a College campus map to find my class room and the bookstore where a teenager informs me that I need to leave my purse at the door and then I drop $115 bucks on a giant used book?  It's so weird.  Back in the day when I was a student who wore jeans, tennis shoes and a UCSD sweat shirt to class every day we didn't have online registration.  I don't even know if my College had a website back then 'cause I didn't even have a computer.  You had to wait in really long lines for a really long time to pay all of your fees in person and we registered by phone.  I used a word processor to write my papers and Wikipedia didn't exist.  Now I can register, pay fees, drop classes, and order books online.  Do people still go to the Library to do research?  Is it biologically possible that my mind has turned to mush after all of these years?  Times have changed and so have I. 

Life just feels busy enough as it is and I truly value my free time outside of work to relax and take care of business.  It was hard enough for me to add the gym back into my life let alone school.  At my job we get a pay bump if we earn 12 units of college credit.  I've known this but have been too lazy and unmotivated to do anything about it.  We even get reimbursed for it so I really should've done it a long time ago.  I'm not trying to push it so I'm only taking 2 classes this semester and then I'll take two the next.  I've chosen classes that I have a real interest in so that hopefully I won't hate it.  I'm taking an Introductory Paralegal course and planning to take Nutrition which doesn't start until October.  Only the Paralegal course requires me to physically attend and the other will be online.  It sure makes my day long working from 8:00-5:00 pm then going to class from 6:30 to 9:50pm.  I went to my first class and got my first homework assignment Tuesday night and I'm already tired.  At least I wasn't the oldest one in the class.

I think it'll be good for me to do this.  It feels productive.  If it means less couch and TV time then that's probably a good thing but I definitely see it cutting into my gym time.  It's just one night a week so I need to stop being a wimp and deal with it.  Plenty of people have been working full time and going to school full time for years.  Some of them even have kids to juggle.  My very own husband is taking a full time course load online.  Surely I can handle 6 measly units at Community College.  That's what I'm telling myself anyways and I hope I'm right.