SaraEileen.com

As an undergraduate, I remember my first week at school as a blurred series of still frames, mostly of bad pizza and girls in long denim skirts. Piles of brightly colored paper. The city skyline from my window.

As a graduate student (excuse me, postgraduate student in Oz-speak), my first week has been mostly frantic errand running. There’s the bank account, the cell phone, the apartment hunt and subsequent lease signing, the lost wandering through the city at night trying to find a place to buy my dinner. I have barely managed to acknowledge that I’m actually, honest-to-goodness, back in school.

Having leveled up to the fabled land of postgraduate studies, I find myself suddenly a priviledged member of my university. I smirked guiltily to myself as I strolled right past a line of three hundred undergraduate students waiting in the hot sun for their coursebooks and let myself into the copy center via the “priority entry for postgraduates” door. I find myself in swanky classrooms, complete with swiveling chairs and temperature control. Suddenly my classes are all scheduled in the evenings, leaving great luxurious swaths of my time open to sitting in the Australian sun.

At the same time, being a postgraduate student comes with a peculiar sense of distance. I’m constantly, kindly asked, “Are you a first year?” after betraying my ignorance over some easily answered question. Where is the casual employment office? How do I cash a Bank at Post receipt? How do I order a plain black coffee? What do you mean, my apartment doesn’t come with a fridge?

I’ve lived on my own in one of the biggest cities in the world for the past six years, and yet the challenge of going back to school has managed to push me right back to the wavering uncertainty of adolescence. I’m secretly convinced that everything I’ve learned in the last decade has seeped out of some hidden hole in my skull, leaving little trails of quotations and literary facts behind me.

I was sitting in the basement of the Holme Building, one of our three student centers, chatting with a boy I’d only just met. In passing I mentioned I was from New York.

“I love New York!” he cried.

I shrugged, grinned. “I love Sydney,” I answered. He shrugged back at me. We began exchanging the customary questions of new students: what year are you, where are you living, what are you studying? He was a literature buff.

“Awesome,” I said, “me too. What’s your favorite book?”

“It’s not really a book, I guess, more of an epic poem, but my favorite is Paradise Lost.”

I nodded, smiled. “What translation?”

The minute I said it I felt my cheeks flush brilliantly. Dear God, I thought to myself, I did not just say that. It isn’t possible.

“It’s in English,” the boy said slowly.

“Don’t mind me,”I said awkwardly. “Clearly my brain is leaking.” He nodded, raised an eyebrow at me, and soon turned away.

I’m an ass, I thought. Way to make friends, genius.

I sat quietly for a little while until my cheeks were their normal color again, and then slunk off to class. It wouldn’t be the first day of school without the requisite embarrassment, but I can’t help but think the universe was laughing at me.