All the salt in the world couldn't melt that ice

As I begin yet another quarter at DU, I am faced with a particular bitterness that I cannot overcome, despite my general improvement in mood.  I'm sick of taking classes and with all I'm doing this term, I have no idea when I'm going to have any time to work on my dissertation or anything else for that matter.  So far my classes seem doable; I have one I'm excited about but not excited about the prospect of working in a room of undergraduates - it's just plain awkward at this point because the space between us is not only age but education and I never know how to negotiate that territory.  Oh, and one of my students is in this course, which I also don't know what I should do about - it seems like conflict of interest but I can't say for certain.  I've also been a teacher for so long now that being in a room of - literally - kids makes me want to be in charge and I have to resist that urge.  Strange.  The other course seems better perhaps because it's at least a graduate seminar and it's something I haven't studied, but again there's the issue of disconnect for me.  I've been on student sabbatical (research hours) so far this year and now I'm back in a room full of people I don't know and honestly don't really care to at this point.  I look around the room and there is only one person from my year with whom I've ever only had a cool relationship, and the rest are mostly first-years.  I'm disappointed that so many of them appear to be thus far the same old pretentious stand-bys that I'm accustomed to.  I had hopes after my own year of people that such a tide was waning but perhaps not.  Sigh.

I feel bitter when I see certain people around the halls who have made my life of late quite nightmarish where the program is concerned and I feel like I need a serious attitude adjustment or I need to drop out.  I refuse to be that person who hates everything - you know the one - and yet I feel like rolling my eyes at nearly every classroom comment that isn't mine.  One of the tenets of Palahniuk's Lullaby is that "people still think that knowledge is power" and I have to say this resonates with me today; I also have a good friend who once warned me that the more you know about your world - the more education you receive - the unhappier you are in it.  I never believed this and I guess on a larger level I still don't, but damn; there are days like today when I wish so desperately that I could be a soccer mom who didn't go to college, has a man who pays for everything, cleans house, and organizes PTAs and play dates.  I don't demean anyone, by the way, who lives this life nor do I condemn them as being less intelligent, but days like these I hate that I know I'm too smart and too hyperactive to ever find that life fulfilling in any meaningful way.  I hate that I know I have to finish this degree or I'll never get where I want to be in my own life; I hate that I can speak the entire "to be or not to be" passage of Hamlet, all of the "tomorrow" speech in Macbeth, that I have millions of words in my head that need stories and essays to live in, and most of all I hate that I know all of these things.  Whoever said ignorance is bliss had the right idea.