10 tips for my fellow back-to-schoolers:
1. School is, once again, a total madhouse the first two weeks. Be prepared to park far away and walk, which is entirely preferable to slowly tailing someone to their car in the student lot like a predatory shark, only to find yourself battling for their space with a slick-haired dude in a muscle car blasting rap at 8am.
2. There is nothing within a 3 mile radius that you will want to eat. Bring your own snacks unless you can subsist on lattes and a yogurt parfait for 12 hours.
3. Teachers, even the good ones, are totally weird people. Aren't they? Your organic chemistry teacher has a strange accent (truly, impossible to place. North African? Sub-Himalayan?) and even stranger speech patterning ("The electron is not cerTAINly at any location, it is only proBABly there."). You are oddly grateful, as class is in the evening, and straining to understand him helps keep you awake. You can pretend for those three hours that you're going to school in India.
4. Psychology classes always, always feel like you are in fact a participant in a psych experiment without your prior consent or knowledge.
5. Generally, the large groups of male students that congregate over by the science buildings are less intimidating than those that congregate on the main part of campus. If you need somewhere to sit outside and eat your parfait, aim yourself in that direction.
6. Do not wait on that 1/2 mile long line to get into the bookstore. Come back in a few days when it's diminished. You don't need your books the first week anyway.
7. With that said: Highlighters. Pens. #2 Pencils. Erasers. Scantrons. Get them all. They will sell out.
8. "Mature" students: when you walk in on the first day of class, several students will assume you are the teacher until you sit down. I will also assume you are the teacher, even though it has happened to me mere moments before. It's an innocent mistake on all our parts.
9. It's a little overwhelming. Don't worry about that. You'll get back in the swing of things.
10. Snacks. I cannot stress this enough.
