what, i have to invent a new countdown since classes started?

It's the second day of classes and I haven't yet lost the elusive, precious delusion perpetrated by Feelings of Personal or Professional Competence.

I win!

I am taking classes of the levels 300, 200, and yes, even 100. Some of them are gen eds (yes, I am That Person, who put off the easy stuff and to my regret is in the back row making cynical comments and generally causing trouble for people actually interested in European history in the 1700s! Woe!) and I find people saying to me "Are you new? I haven't seen you around."

My response is "That's 'cause I could be your grandma!" And when they look confused, I explain that I am a super senior, and so far ahead of their time that if they were on horseback I would be driving a Mustang.

And then I think to myself, "I am going to kick your academic ass." Because, you know, I have waaaaay more practice at college than anyone else. Well, except maybe this older student in my printmaking class. And the professors themselves. And a few super seniors with whom I have assiduously bonded.

See, that's a joke to cover some of my insecurities, and avoid facing the fact that some of these juniors are probably better artists than I will ever be. Denial and repression, thank you Dan, for those words of wisdom.

I have also acquired The Sickness. So in another way I completely lose at the first week of classes. But it's OK -- no fever, no throwing up, so mostly there's nothing very much wrong with me.

Oh yeah, and shouldn't I have graduated a few months ago and be mired in the quagmass of career aspirations and cold, hard reality knocking against my poorly-heated apartment door, like the majority of recent college graduates? (Poorly-heated because I wouldn't be able to afford the oil to heat it considering that I would still be hunting desperately for a job and cursing the genes that make me congenitally unsuitable for careers like engineering.)

I introspect too much. And also, I clearly have some repressed snark from sitting in classrooms for just two days. What will happen after a whole semester?

It will be an explosion the likes of which has not been seen since Hiroshima. Except, you know, it will be an explosion of snark and not an explosion of anything that kills people.