Work Hard, Play Hard

I guess I should take a few moments to talk about the real reason I'm here in Austin- graduate school. I've had most of my classes at least once, and the work is already piling up. I have about 400 pages of reading to do for Tuesday, and several assignments in the works. While this sounds ominous and actually makes my heart beat faster when I think of it (why am I wasting time blogging when I have reading to do..), I am loving every minute. Graduate school is nerd heaven. The reading is (mostly) fascinating, the professors are beyond brilliant, my classmates are seriously bright, and every single three-hour class I have had so far has passed more quickly than some of the less engaging 50 minute classes I had in college. Before class started, the GPSers (my degree is the Masters in Global Policy Studies, a new program) heard warnings from second-year MPAff (Masters in Public Affairs, the larger, older program) students about two professors who have leading roles in our program. They're cruel, rude, difficult, insensitive assholes, we were told. I am taking one of them for 2 of my courses and the other for 2 1-credit courses this semester. And I love both of them. They are brilliant, quick-witted, and challenging. That's fine with me. I'm convinced that no one went to school on the east coast, where every professor I had was an asshole. Dad told me that his students feel one of two ways about him, they either think he's an asshole or the greatest professor they've ever had. The good students love him, the lazy ones don't. Guess which side of that I'm going to try to land on. The warnings ended up doing me a service, since I was scared enough to be twice as prepared as necessary.

I don't have class today and I have a few errands to run, but I need to be in the library at some point. Tomorrow is flag football, UT football, and Austin nightlife. It's a work hard, play hard environment.