back to school.

Well, here we go again.

After my unceremonious exit from the sorry-ass school where I was going for my teaching degree, I basically took six months off from school. I was too burned-out, and frankly too cheesed at the sorry state of education in this state, to scratch together the motivation for a quick transfer to another school.

I guess I could have written the whole thing off altogether, but I'm twenty grand in hock to the bank for student loans, and if I don't finish this four-year degree, we'll be making the equivalent of an extra car payment every month for quite a few years without anything to show for it in return. Besides, I've left too much stuff unfinished in my life already; back to school it is.

I enrolled at ETSU in one of their distance-learning degrees, a generalized "Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies", with concentrations in English and PoliSci. They let me transfer most of my credits from my two previous schools, and I can finish this thing up in two more semesters, plus the summer.

I'll have to squeeze the classwork into an already busy day, but that's what I'll have to do if I don't want to waste a bucket of hundred-dollar bills. It remains to be seen whether a four-year degree is really more than a waste of money, representing a cash outlay that could have been used to pay off the mortgage--or that could have been left with the bank to begin with--but a B.S. never exactly hurt anyone except by writing the checks for the aforementioned loans.

Classes start Monday, tuition is paid for the summer, and I guess I can cut that sleep back to four hours a night. What's that saying from Conan the Barbarian again?

"Time enough to rest in the grave."