And so it begins . . .

After having a good time on vacation, I finally had my first day of school, the first one I've had in 11 years.  I didn't get really nervous until I pulled into the parking lot by the West building.  I don't handle new social situations well, especially when going in all by myself.  But I clung to the fact that this was school, not an ice cream social, and that my success didn't depend on interacting socially with other people.
 I did linger a moment by the car, taking extra time to make sure the arrangement of supplies in my backpack were just so, hoisting the heavy bag to my shoulders and getting the straps just right.  I had arrived twenty minutes early so that I would have time to locate my classroom.  My stomach started to churn slightly and I felt the tingle of apprehension starting to work its way up my back, but I took a settling breath and started walking up the first sidewalk I saw.

I opened the door and stepped into the longest hallway I had ever seen.  It was easily over 100 yards long and lined with heavy doors.  It almost felt like one of those nightmares where you're running away from something, and the path to your destination keeps growing longer and longer and longer the more you run towards it.  The halls were dotted with students here and there, going to their classes, so I shifted my backpack, put my head down and tried to look like I belonged.  I kept going, checking the nameplates on the doors, looking for B2.  I went by many classrooms marked with "A" and numbered in descending order, looking desperately for when they would change to "B".  I made a couple of turns, poking my head down the shorter hallways leading off to the right and left of the main hallway until I saw nameplates marked with the letter "B".  After another long walk down the hall, I finally found the right place.  The lights were off and I hoped the room would be empty, but there were already two people sitting inside, who both looked at me as though I had lost my mind.  I chose a seat on the second row in the middle of the room (nobody sits on the first row) and pulled out my Kindle to read and pass the time until class started.

At nearly 12:30 on the dot, the professor arrived to start class.  He was an older gentleman with a monk's balding head.  I was dressed casually in khakis and button down shirt with no tie, something I appreciated.  He chatted the class up a bit and passed around the attendance log.  I got out my book and notebook, snagged a pencil from my purple pencil case and got ready to take notes.  To my delight and surprise, he did not read verbatim from the text, but instead chose to lecture in anecdotes and stories about the time period surrounding the Great Compromise.  He was never boring about it and always had an interesting factoid or two to share.  I was a little worried that I couldn't seem to pick out anything to take down as "notes".  I had taken upon myself to make notes out of the first and second chapters while on vacation to be prepared for my first day, but his teaching style wasn't going to be clinical book-teaching.  He reminded me a lot of my German teacher in high school that I loved so much.  He didn't teach us out of the book either, but rather glanced over the information covered in the chapter on which we were working, and spent the rest of the hour giving lecture.  I greatly prefer this style of teaching as it helps the concepts to sink in better for me when accompanied with examples from the book.  Most of my first college professors would just stand at the podium in the front of  their classroom and read straight from the book for the whole hour.  Ugh, that is so not what I'm paying for.

So I'm very much looking forward to the rest of his class, and wonder if I'll get to have him as a professor again.  I hope so.