Mailbox

This morning, when I finally managed to crawl out of bed and check the mail, I found that I had recieved yet another in a series of letters and packets from my chosen grad. school detailing both the enrollment procedures and the forms I'll need to fill out over the next few months. Later, as I walked to school, I read through the letters and course descriptions of some of the upcoming classes. To excerpt from the letters:

Dear (Zhaf),

Welcome to the University of (Grad School). I am very pleased that you will be joining us as a scholar, and, soon, as a teacher. You will be recieving more information pertaining to your graduate work when you arrive this fall, but I want to let you know about a few important things now . . . We will send you a draft of the conference schedule as soon as it is ready, but please check your department mailbox in (BLDG), the English department office, as soon as you arrive on campus, so you'll have up-to-date information about the conference and other required meetings during conference week . . . I am asking that you read one text, Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction (second edition), before you come to the first class. Depending on your experience, it will serve as an introduction to or review of current theoretical approaches to literature, albeit from Eagleton's bias of Marxist criticism.

All of this sounds exciting, including the more mundane elements like the fact that I'll have my own mailbox within the English department. (My own department mailbox! I never had one of those before.) It is also a little surreal to realize that, yes, I will be a scholar and, hopefully, a teacher in just a few short years. Life takes some interesting turns - and while this is all part of the goals I want in life, I don't think I could ever have imagined it happening in just this way.