Heading to work this morning, with the sun in a bright cloudless sky, the temperature unusually cool for the middle of August (23 degrees C, or about 73 degrees F for my American readers) and a cool breeze blowing about, I got hit with deja vu. Then it struck me: this is what the weather is usually like when it’s time to go back to school.
It’s funny how that feeling came up; I haven’t been in school since the end of 1994, when I wrote my last final exam ever. It was for my fourth-year databases course, and to commemorate the end of an era, I wore a suit to the exam, after which I joined my database prof, the late Dr. McLeod, at Crazy Go Nuts University’s Grad Club for some Glenfiddich.
I toasted the Good Doctor with John Belushi’s line from Animal House: “Christ! Seven years of college…down the drain!” [52 KB .WAV sound file]
Good times.
Do you still get school-related deja vu? Or anxiety dreams? (Very occasionally, I still have the nightmare where I’m being hit with a surprise exam or realize that I’d never even heard of the assignment due today.) Or are you still in school? Comment away!
4 replies on “That Feeling of Deja Vu”
I’m spending even longer at Crazy Go Nuts U than you! I failed out of electrical engineering (twice) and then got a computer science degree instead. Now I’m finishing my EE degree – too many years to count without crying!
Tho I have been out of school for many a decade sometimes in September on a warm sunny day I have a feeling of being back in class gazing out the window at the leaves in their fullness of colourwhile the teacher drones on.
Every so often, when I’m sleeping in, I will burst awake suddenly thinking “my god! I’m late for class!” Then it hits me that it is: a) the weekend, b) the middle of the summer, and c) two years since I finished college.
Sometimes I think I’m accelerating towards early senility.
Every August I get that feeling, like I should be getting ready for something and I get excited for no reason. School really marked the seasons; fall was the start of school , now 14 years later fall is just some leaves changing, the weather getting colder and me bitching about raking and the oncoming snow.
Fall used to mean change and exciting things, it’s still change but it’s more of a routine now.