Easy as (Shepherd's) Pie

Everyone has been asking me the same question this past week: Am I nervous?

No, I'm not. Here's why:

1. I already know how to study. I'm not worried about classes. I love school. I love it so much that I want to do it professionally (be a prof, that is). I know that I will be studying harder than I have probably ever studied in my life, but that's okay. I like doing it.

2. I know how to make friends. This is the third time in my life that I will be moving to a school, and to a city, where I don't know a single person. Fourth school, if you count kindergarten. I'm nice, polite, and I play well with others.

3. You name it, I've lived in it. In my college career, I've lived in dorms, dorms, houses, apartments, flats, suite setups, and sorority sections. I've done single-sex and co-ed (which, by the way, is much better). I've shared kitchens, bathrooms (co-ed and single-sex), bedrooms, and living spaces with anywhere from three to twenty other people. Compared to most, this situation is pretty cushy--my own room, my own bathroom (for the first time in my life!), and kitchen shared with only five other students, all graduate-level.

4. I've been here before. I've already done the British culture-shock thing. I know what brands I like, how to read a tube map, which grocery stores to go to, what the money looks like, and which words and phrases to use and avoid. I'm not saying this is all going to be old hat, and I know that I will spend the first three months bumbling around like a half-wit, but all in all I'm really not concerned.

What I am worried about: Paperwork. Registration and accommodation documents, to be precise. I'm worried I'm going to get over there and have missed some crucial piece of paperwork that will result in me living in a hostel for the first three days and signed up for classes in post-modern prose poetry. Actually, funny story, possibly the most--and only--heated debate my housemates got into last year was about the genre of prose poetry. It was infuriating at the time and hilarious now.

Well, wish me luck--next time I write, I'll be in Bristol!