holy. cow.

Today was my official first day as a graduate student! or an MA1 (first-year Speech Lang. Pathology Masters Clinician)

I'm in way over my head.

I had "orientation" -which was a looooong day consisting of a variety of meetings and presentations that only served to further disorient me.

I am so overwhelmed. How am I going to figure all of this out? As I finally slumped down on the concrete bench to wait for my bus home...this is what I decided:

Its like....I'm a Freshman AGAIN! But only worse. Because not only do I display typical signs and symptoms of freshmanitis:
- feeling completely lost scared and alone, realizing all of my inadequacies and regretting that I am not 1 million times smarter than I am, taking the wrong bus and trying to get out the back doors when they only open the front ones, showing my ID card when unnecessary and not showing it when I need to, the blank stare accompanied by nervous twitching, poor peer interaction as a result of high strung nerves, trying to drive down an obviously one-way street, asking someone exactly what an Illini is, gawking and nodding at professors as they mention meaningless acronymns and some kind of unheard-of online interface....(to name a few)-
BUT now, I'm a Graduate Student! So people expect me (or at least I think they do, so I'm too afraid to ask questions) to KNOW everything already, or to FIGURE it out by myself, since I'm a GROWN-UP, right?

Yikes. I hope Monday is better.