Another thing I’m going to have to put up with as I return to school is that there’s gonna be all those people there. I hate that.

In the time since I last attended school I’ve done a pretty good job of whittling down the number of people I have to be subjected to on a daily basis. I mean sure, I have to put up speaking to people I don’t want to speak to at work, or even just random people on the street who think I might want to communicate with them (like this one probably-drunk guy just last Sunday night who decided I wanted to hear the story about how he got asked to leave a Tim Hortons for smoking), but on the whole I’d say I’ve had to put up with less of that than I will in the coming year.

As I return to school, I’ll be surrounded by people who, probably, will be used to talking with people who don’t have “Why don’t you stop talking” repeating in their heads throughout the whole conversation. b.Some of these people will probably want to speak to me. Heck, I’ll probably actively have to start conversations with people for whatever stupid reasons school will give me for doing that. And, from what I can tell with my encounters with them, the younger generation doesn’t seem like the type cherish succinctness and brevity the way I do.

And it will be the younger generation I am dealing with. I am going to be, like, over a decade older than many of the other students taking first year classes. While this is okay in as much as it means I have a perfectly valid excuse for not relating to them and all their references to young people things (the first time I did university, I had no convenient excuse for my not relating), it also serves to complicate the relations I will have out of necessity. I am already incapable of having a forced conversation without constant awareness that I don’t want to, and the added awareness of the age difference isn’t going to help that.

Anyway, to look for the upside, some of these people will probably not be terrible and boring. I may even encounter people that I can enjoy speaking to (it has happened a handful of times in the past). What’s more, hopefully the fact that a lot of my co-students will be young persons who, for all I know, will be more interested in drinking and reality television will make me look smarter by comparison when it comes to schoolin’. Could happen.

Okay, so we’re probably around a month away from when I start school. Obviously the money thing is my biggest concern at the moment, but what about the other things I’m nervous about? I think I’ll talk about some of those this week.

First up: Daytime.

I have made sure that the earliest of my classes is scheduled at 11:30, so at least I don’t have to wake up with the sun like some chumps out there, but even that is pretty early for someone who has spent the better part of a decade living in the nighttime. And while I’ve got the excuse of working nights to explain why I was never up in the day, it is also a true fact that I prefer the night. It’s nice and quiet and I don’t have to put up with that terrible bright ball that is so intent on blinding me. I’m going to miss nights.

And what’s more, I’ll still be working two nights a week. That means I probably won’t be able to settle into a nice schedule. Not since the unhappy year of 2006 have I had to switch back and forth between days and nights on a regular basis. It was not at all pleasant then, so the fact that I will have to do it again now is not something I can look forward to. It could be rough. It’s not gonna be good for my morale.

The best way to deal with this is to look for upsides, so here is my upside for today: Five nights a week, I’m not going to be working. Sure, I’ll probably have homework or whatever, but apart from that I’ll actually be able to see some nights (even if I have to go to bed sooner), whereas most of my years of working nights meant that, while I was awake in the hours I like, I spent them doing this I didn’t. So who knows? This one could go either way.