Back to School Boogey.

That's right, it's the most wonderful time of the year, school is back in and everyone is excited. The university reeks of freshman's hopes and dreams and it's infectious. I can't help but think that I'm going to study more, eat less and actually exercise, even though I know somewhere deep in my subconscious that all of this will be abandoned when the projects start to roll in.

See, I'm an art major, nothing is more important to me than my studio classes and I have this bad habit of working on them to the exclusion of all my other classes. I know I do this, and yet I can't seem to stop myself from choosing contour drawing over reading about the ancient Maya, no matter how fascinating they may be.

As I progress through my university career I'm starting to be more observant at this time of year however. The first year I was blinded by my unwavering optimism, which was quickly crushed under the heel of my Archeology 1000 professor. The time around I was still pretty optimistic, but cautiously so. That dissipated after about two weeks of gruelling projects and confusing loan paperwork. Now I'm older and (hopefully) a little wiser, and I can actually take a look around me at the other people at my university and what I see freaks me out just a little bit.

For one thing, I must have missed the moment in time when it became okay for girls to stop wearing pants. I took a look around the bus loop one day and was actually scared that there would be a strong breeze, at least half a dozen girls were standing around in over-sized t-shirts and tights and not much else. Their mommies would be so proud. I take comfort in the knowledge that come about midterms most of them will give up on trying to look like super models every day and start sporting sweatpants.

Also, when did dreadlocks become popular? I've seen more people sporting dreads the first week of this semester than I've seen in the rest of my life combined! I had been thinking about dreading my hair at the start of next summer, but I'm seriously reconsidering that now.

Something fun for all you smokers out there to try - if you have a P.E. building with a smoker's area somewhere kind of near the doors, go have a smoke there at least once a day. The looks you get from all the preppy wanna-bes is amusing. Immature? Yeah, but undeniably entertaining.

So, in closing, good luck to all you returning or new students out there and remember, it's NEVER as big of a deal as you think it is.

Cheers!