ain't no rest for the wicked...

I realized today I’ve only been back in Florida for 3 weeks, but it almost seems like I never even left. (No offense to my NYC or Raleigh friends… you know what I mean) As I waited on campus for my bus to show up, it was impossible not to notice that it’s like 2 degrees away from traditional perfect UF football weather today. Of course, this prompted a flood of thoughts, which made me realize I hadn’t written a blog post in a while due to the insanity of the past 2 weeks…

That being said, the crazy past 2 weeks have been phenomenal. I’m really enjoying my 3 classes and have a fantastic trio teaching them.  My cohort is pretty damn awesome, and so are the 2^nd years. My assistantship is absolutely amazing, as is everyone in my office. It’s great to be back at UF, but also kind of surreal seeing it from this different point of view since I kind of run things now. (ok, I don’t really run much of anything yet, but I have my own office, keys to the AAC(!!), and I’ll be advising students starting in October for Spring advance registration and cannot wait!) If there was any doubt in my mind about whether I made the right choice turning down the Ph.D. at Wisconsin, it is long gone (though that also would have been a great opportunity- don’t get me wrong- but I can’t imagine another situation being more fitting than this). Everything definitely happens for a reason!

I’ll admit, there was a brief anxiety flare when I realized I was out of practice with the whole balancing working, classes and being social thing, but now I'm good. It just threw me to actually have to read for classes… I’ve always been one of those intuitive end of the spectrum students that never has to study and just innately gets logical concepts. Emphasis on the logical. Sciences (logic-based), things with rules (like writing and learning languages), or anything that involves drawing conclusions from observations (like psych) I can do in my sleep. Give me history or anything that just involves memorization without application like that and I’m not so good. I knew grad school actually required a little reading (sense the sarcasm), but reading for classes if I wanted to and not because I had to to understand in undergrad had me a little off. That and my 5 years away from classes. The plethora of free time I've had this past year and a half is shot. In the words of my life mentee: welcome back to college from semi-retirement. ps- For those of you upset because I haven’t returned calls or said hi in a while, this should explain why.

This week, I planned my slow days better so I can celebrate my 2 self-made holidays—First Day of Gator Football and First Day of Packer Football—and still get all my reading done, with an added trip to Orlando to visit my bff and 1 of my favorite people on the planet, and managing teams in 4 fantasy drafts. Busy week ahead, but yay for football!