Kevin GisiI cut through Wilson Park on the way to my first college class in 16 years. As I shuffled along the orange gravel, babies sunbathed and tossed a Frisbee. A towheaded baby apologized after the orb nearly ricocheted off my receding hairline.
Coming straight from work, I walked up State Street in my flat-front khakis and green polo. A black Nike backpack drooped from my narrow shoulders.
I navigated to the basement of the Campus School building. I found my classroom and claimed an empty seat. Beige tables and plastic chairs partitioned the room. Chain-link fence guarded the windows. Porous ceiling tiles dangled perilously.
Babies waited quietly, flip-flops clinking softly against their heels. Finally a mop-top baby in baggy cargo shorts interjected.
“Is this the library-type class?” he asked, pausing at the doorjamb.
I’m taking LMED 312: Reference and Bibliography this semester as a special student. I also enrolled in LMED 100: How to Use the Library, which starts next month.
I already have a bachelor’s degree. As an undergraduate, I subsidized my tuition by working at a campus library and have remained interested in the field. When I discovered that UW-Eau Claire offered a library science minor, I enrolled in a couple classes.
Three weeks into the fall semester, I have struggled to adjust to UW-Eau Claire.
I’m still in sticker shock. Four credits cost $1,100. When I was a baby, my first fee statement was $667 for 15 credits. I am enjoying free rides on the city bus with my Blugold Card, though.
I am also adapting to UW-Eau Claire’s coddling. I graduated from the University of Minnesota, an impersonal labyrinth of intellectualism. At the U, professors researched while teachers’ assistants taught classes. By classes, I really mean small villages. Freshman year, my Psych 1001 class had 1,000 underclassmen but no professor.
So I was startled to count 15 classmates in LMED 312. Where are the other 985 babies? An authoritative woman at the front of the class seemed to know an awful lot about the subject matter too. Oh. She is a professor.
At the first class, I expected the professor to distribute syllabi. Instead she projected the syllabus onto a screen. Course objectives and homework assignments were available on something called D2L. Cornering a baby after class, I babbled a long explanation about how I was a special student and this was my first time at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and I hadn’t taken a college course in 16 years and asked her to please tell me what D2L was.
I fumbled around the UW-Eau Claire Web site and found D2L. I printed out the homework assignment. I glanced at it. It seemed awfully practical. Again, this was foreign to me. The product of a research university, I wasn’t familiar with gaining skills I might actually use. I didn’t want to learn how to work at a library. I wanted to write a 20-page thesis on how a decline in library workers affected Baltic colonists in sub-Sahara Africa from 1918 to 1921.
Not that it mattered. The first night after class I shoved the assignment in my backpack and plopped on the couch. I cracked open a Grain Belt and slipped in a Netflix movie.
When I finally delved into the homework, corroded cranial cogs strained to understand the lesson. It took me several hours to finish the assignment. However, I eventually grasped the material and even gave a presentation in class.
I could drop the class and forget I was ever a Blugold, but I’m committed to finishing the semester. I bought a laptop and downloaded the next assignment. I’m going to start it too – just as soon as I finish this Netflix movie.
