Musings on My Inadequacies as an English Major

About three months ago I decided to take the plunge. I decided I was going to go back to school. Let's put this in some context. I graduated almost five years ago with a degree in Marketing. Why, you may ask, do I want to go back to school for an English degree of all things? The thing is: I really really hated my major by the time second semester of Senior year rolled around. At that point it was too late to change: I'd declared my intent to graduate, I'd rubbed it in my brother's face that I was graduating the same time as him and he was two years older than me. So there I was. Just graduated with no idea what I really wanted to do. I started working in food service and was so good at my job that I seriously considered restaurant management as a career path; however, I get way too stressed out for that to work for me. Back to square one.

Square one just happened to be my original life plan: to be a writer. In all honesty, an English degree is not really going to make me more qualified to do be an author, but I like to have some sort of plan. And I love school. (Right now, in fact, I am happily pretending that I'm an undergrad again hanging out on the top floor of the library not doing homework, just like I used to do) So I enrolled in a 300-level lit course. No big deal, right? I've taken 300-level courses before, how hard can it be?

Apparently, a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I have spent the better part of two days working on my take-home midterm which boils down to two mini-papers about two pages apiece. And I think I've made some really intelligent and good points. But man. I do not know how to write papers anymore. My prose has gotten extremely lazy in the last five years and I feel like I sound like an idiot. Which I'm sure I don't. But maybe I do.

Am I really cut out for this?

If I don't get a good grade in this class I think it might destroy me.

Things

I was in a car accident a week ago. That was fun. And by fun I mean not fun at all. It was about 4:15 in the morning (because that's the insanely early time that I have to go to work) and it was icy. Well, I was getting ready to pull off the interstate, hit a patch of ice and tried for about a quarter mile to gain control of my car. End result: spun around across all five lanes of traffic and slammed the back end into the median. I was incredibly lucky for two reasons. 1) I was not going that fast and 2) because it was so early there were no other cars around and so I didn't hit anyone else in the process. My car was totaled and I had some pretty unpleasant whiplash and back spasms for the next several days. Did I mention that this wasn't fun?

I dyed my hair again. It's basically the same color as before but since it had faded so much there is a huge difference.

I start class tomorrow. I have books and e-mail and tomorrow I will have an ID (they told me I had to wait 24-hours for my name change to go into effect in the ID system). I have a rough plan of what I want to do about my education. I have goals!

I got a second job. At [redacted]. I've worked it out with Bread Co to maintain a 30-plus hour week but only work four days so that I can work here one day and one evening a week. It'll be nice to have a job I enjoy again. I have hung out here probably five times in the last week, it is just that cool.

That's pretty much it.