Grad school week 1: the prelude

Classes start Monday. I'm ready.

I've done pretty much everything I want to do to the apartment. I've bought and arranged furniture (not enough to fill the place, but enough for my needs), hung pictures and even carted in enough cinder blocks to jack the futon up to a reasonable level for sitting. It made me feel way too old when I had to struggle to get up from the thing.

I met most of my future classmates on Friday. Our master's group is called a "cohort," which sounds vaguely sinister to me, but I guess I'll get used to it. It seems like a friendly, intelligent bunch of people so it should be fun working with them. More ladies than guys too, which is OK with me.

My only uncertainty right now is transportation. When I was searching apartment complexes online, I Mapquested the routes to campus from each one to make sure I picked one within biking distance. Thus, my apartment is quite close to school. Unfortunately, Mapquest didn't not reveal to me that most of the short trek is uphill, at about a 35 degree angle. It's steep. I tried it today as a dry run and had to get off and walk the bike about halfway up (it's a cruiser bike, not a mountain bike, so it's only got one gear. Who knew I'd have a mountain between me and my school?). The return trip to the apartment is much easier (as long as my brakes don't go out).

It still only took 20 minutes to get to the journalism building, so I guess the bike option remains in play. Maybe if I keep at it, I'll be able to make it up the whole hill someday. And I'll have freakishly huge thighs too. It seems like we're in for several weeks of 90-degree weather, though, so biking to school may mean arriving very damp and not so sweet-smelling. That would have been OK as an undergrad, but I think grad students are supposed to strive for a bit more professionalism. Right?

There's also a shuttle bus that I could take for free ("free" as long as you've paid the astronomical tuition and fees to obtain a student ID). But it seems to appear only sporadically on my side of town. And it would be kind of frustrating to stand there waiting for a half-hour for a bus when the campus is literally within sight.

The third option appears to be driving, which is something I wanted to avoid. It wouldn't take much gas, but there's wear and tear on the car and the big thing is parking. I'd have to pay a few hundred dollars for a permit and I'm not sure I'm prepared to do that. Even if I do, it's not like open spots are always easy to find. It helps to be handicapped, but even then I might end up parking halfway between my apartment and my classroom, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to pay for that.

For now I think I'm going to ride/walk my bike. Of course, when winter comes it will probably be the bus. Which will give my thighs time to get back to normal.