Because up until then, I still thought that things would actually be different this time

Twice a week, I park my car in the parking lot of a lovely neighborhood park and ride a big yellow school bus to class at the community college with the teeny tiny parking lot. So even though I come prepared every time with my official parking lot permit proudly hanging on my rearview mirror, I still get to take the big yellow school bus, just like the one I rode to kindergarten. Except that back then, I never noticed the big metal box bolted to the front of the bus that says “BODILY FLUIDS CLEAN UP KIT. BIO-HAZARD”

This week, I encountered another familiar vehicle. That’s right, I came flying into grad school on my old friend, the Bullshit Bike. Even though I came prepared, having read, studied and taken notes on every single word of every single page of material for a READING QUIZ.

Let me repeat that. A reading quiz. Closed-book, closed- notes. In graduate school.

So as I stared down at this quiz, light-headed and staggering from its decidedly undergraduate stench, I had no choice but to get right back on my undergraduate BS bike. And I have to say, not only did I not forget how to ride, but I also discovered that BSing about the four specific variables of an optimal communications budget according to Dr. One of 50 Different Marketing Scholars mentioned somewhere in the 300 pages worth of reading that I actually read and studied? Feels just like BSing about the medieval plainchants of the 15th century about which I never read or studied. The only difference I noticed about this familiar old vehicle is the big metal box bolted to my head that says “SHATTERED IDEALISTIC NOTIONS CLEAN UP KIT. ACADEMIC HAZARD.”