Another First Week Gone

It’s always good to have the first week of classes out of the way. People have had a chance to ogle you at least once, so you’re not quite as strange going in the next time. You’ve (hopefully) established your seat in the class—except that the people in my accounting classes evidently didn’t realize that I had Established. No matter…I didn’t like where I sat in either one of them the first day.

I’ve made some contacts in my accounting classes, which is always a good thing, and I recognize some people and other people (probably lots of people) recognize me. I sat down next to a girl in my accounting class today that to my knowledge I’d never seen before. She turned to me and said, “Are you Sharon?” I confirmed that I was and asked her how she knew me. She said that she took the same accounting class and teacher this summer that I did but took it in the hour following my class. Dr. L had a discussion board where people could get help from him and other classmates during the course of the day if they were working on homework. Evidently (I had forgotten all about it), I answered a good portion of her questions for her over the summer. She said she’d go to class and say, “I don’t know who she is, but Sharon saved me again last night.” It was heartwarming to receive the positive feedback.

My Mondays will consist of me leaving work around 12:15 for my financial accounting class in the afternoon, followed by a two hour and twenty minute break. I will then take my only night class—a management class about the Legal Environment of Business. (In that class, our teacher had us go around and give some information on ourselves. It was really weird to be surrounded by Juniors and Seniors. It doesn’t seem real that I’m one of them.) Wednesdays will be identical, except my night class won’t meet.

Tuesdays and Thursdays I will have classes starting at 8:00. The first class is a statistics class that has me intimidated all to bits. I still don’t have a clue exactly what we’ll be doing in that class. It’s that old Fear of the Unknown.

After statistics, I’ll take another management class about organization and management. (The instructor in that class is a total hoot. Today in class he mentioned a song sung by Michael Jackson, which led him off into a side spiel about Michael J’s moonwalk and how he always wanted to be able to do the moonwalk. He proceeded to do a horrible imitation of the moonwalk. “When Michael does it, it looks cool; when I do it, it looks like a fat man walking weird,” he said. He’ll be a lot of fun.)

After the management class, I’ll go to the top floor for my managerial accounting class, which will last until 12:30. On Tuesdays, I’ll rush back to the office to try to squeeze a few hours of work in; on Thursdays, I’ll take the remainder of the day off to try to get homework done so I can work all day on Friday.

I can already tell that it’s going to be a challenging semester! Accounting homework will be very intense. The legal management class shouldn’t be too bad homework-wise, but the organization management class will involve some projects and some public speaking that are bound to make me uncomfortable. And as I said before, I’m still clueless about statistics.

My work hours are now at a new all-time low. I don’t think that I’ve worked this few hours since shortly after I graduated from the eighth grade. My tiny side business as payroll processor and accounting consultant is far more significant in the scheme of things than I ever hoped that it would be—and not because I’m earning more at it either!! The knowledge that I can’t out-earn my expenses right now lurks in the shadows, but I keep telling myself that this too shall pass.