Here before we knew it

School starts tomorrow! Tomorrow! Yes, even though it’s a Wednesday (personally, I think the UW should get a new secretary or something).

I don’t know about you, but I am as ready as I could possibly be. I have a Husky Card. I have new glasses which look a lot like my old ones but minus the medical tape around the bridge. I know when my classes… wait… ok, now I know when my classes start tomorrow. Am I missing anything? Oh yeah, school supplies.

I haven’t bought books yet, as doing so today would have been like being strapped to a sled made of screaming sorority girls rocketing downhill into a dynamite-filled cash register… that got away from me, but the point is that the bookstore is busy before classes start. Obviously. Usually I hold off until Friday or so, when the hysterics have calmed down a bit and I don’t have to spend an hour in line. Failing that, I just don’t buy my books. It’s a more viable solution than you might think – worked for both Oceanography 101 and Astronomy 101. Man, no wonder I’m not graduating in four years.

As for other school supplies, I’m resolving right now to not buy any. Ever again. I have a pen, and there’s more than enough paper lying around this joint to cover me for the rest of the year. A while ago I realized that the spiral notebooks I bought every quarter were going mostly to waste. I wasn’t filling them up over a quarter, but still considered them “used” and went out to replace them every new term. Wasteful! Nowadays I have a single spiral notebook, into which I take all my notes, from all my classes, from every quarter, until nothing else fits. Segregating by subject is for losers. I can get away with this because I don’t take many notes to begin with, but it’s still sometimes confusing to be reviewing notes on short fiction, then have to skip over two pages of data structures before picking up the plot.

So glasses, check; books and supplies, check; schedule, check; I feel like I’m missing something important. Oh yeah: smug sense of superiority, check. See you on campus.