On why I am not looking forward to classes starting...

This isn't just your old "Oh but I love summer, boo school" sort of dread (though it kind of is because lazy days by the pool are awesome). First off, I'm a creature of habit so having to switch from my summer to school routine is simply unpleasant. I've had this nice working-out, surfing the net, reading, cooking, evening shifts at the library groove going for the past month which I've really quite enjoyed but will no longer be plausible.

Second, I'm not looking forward to the stress that school and assignments bring, to myself and my peers. In general I feel like I've calmed down considerably since my middle school days where I studied and worried about grades non-stop. "Well that doesn't sound very responsible of you, since you are in grad school after all" some of you may be thinking. It's a work smarter not harder philosophy baby. If I've done a project or taken a test and turned it in, there's no use worrying about it anymore. I'm not saying this to discredit the worries/concerns of my peers (I certainly have other things that I will needlessly obsess over), it's just that when other people stress out, I pick up on that energy and then I start to stress out. And I've just enjoyed having such a nice, relatively stress free summer; it's probably added years back on to my life!

And then there's this underlying thread of competition that seems to run through grad school in general. It kinda sucks. Granted, I could just be imagining something that isn't there, but I'm pretty sure this is encountered everywhere, including in the workplace. How do you deal with it? You could take the bait and attempt to one-up every person that you met by listing all of your accomplishments. If you're like me you could crack jokes (recall the "stand up and introduce yourself" episode from last year in which I said I spent the summer waiting tables, hence my people-person abilities). Jokes aside, I might have to take up meditation or something though because school starts in a week! Who has 2 thumbs and is not ready for classes to start?!

Grumpy hamster is not ready for classes to start either...