Homework Flashbacks

Someone at my work is going into law school, and her orientation started last week. Her first classes are tomorrow.

So, since she's stepping down from full-time to part-time, we've been trying to fete her a bit - or at least do those little "final time" things to make her feel that she's been appreciated and will be missed.

Okay. That sounds bad. I mean... She has been appreciated and she will be missed. But she's one of those people who occasionally suck all the positive energy out of a room, so there are aspects of working with her that I do not appreciate and will not miss. Even so, she is one of the few people I can have over-the-computer-monitor conversations with in the office (the other person in my line of sight wears headphones, so you can't really toss one-liners back and forth), so I'll miss that about her.

Today we ordered Jimmy John's and sat in the office of the newest employee in the company (whose supervisor has been out all week, and so I've been kind of half-training her in on a job I haven't done in about a year - yeah... it's been a challenge some days, and it took me two days to edit a twelve-page [yes, 12-page] manuscript because of it), and chatted about whatever - including school.

She's talking about how worried she is about how much of a time suck this is going to be. And I'm remembering what it was like to be in grad school and how we were constantly supposed to be reading a novel in a week (or less), and every instructor assumed that you had 40 hours to dedicate to his or her class each week. And I gotta admit that I do *not* envy her.

Of course, I've got homework at the moment, too. I'm in book club, and have about a third of a novel to read before Monday night. Oh, and I'm expecting some freelancing in the next day or two. And I have some novel excerpts that I'm scoring for a competition which I had planned to have finished and sent off about 3 weeks ago, and which are now coming very close to their deadline. (To the reader of this blog who asked me to work on them: I *promise* that they'll be there before the deadline!)

I guess it all makes some sense, though. It's that time of year when school supplies are in all the stores. Yellow buses are starting to do practice runs. And parents' faces are showing equal parts relief and anxiety over the impending changes.

I wonder if I could write off a box of crayons as a work-related expense? If I got one with a built-in sharpener, maybe I could call it office equipment...