So, at long last, I am a graduate student.

The enterprise had rather a rocky start, fairly literally, on Monday morning when I tripped on an uneven paving stone on my way from the train station in Uppsala. Before I had time to realize what was happening, I found myself in a faceplant on the sidewalk. Mercifully, nothing was bleeding or broken, but I did come away with an impressive number of actual bruises to go along with the hit to my pride. Throughout the rest of the day and evening, my left hand and wrist were hurting enough that I feared I might have to find a doctor, and my right knee and the left side of my face weren’t doing much better. As luck would have it, I was feeling quite improved the next morning, but I do have a nice black eye that is still in the getting-worse-before-it-gets-better stage, and my hand and knee need a few more days yet before they’re back to normal. Olof says he’s going to tell people that I took fisticuffs with the rough bunch of the history department.

I don’t want to dwell too much on that bit, though, as it’s not even close to the biggest part of what I took away from my first few days back to school. It took me all of about five minutes in the classroom to understand that I was back where I belonged and that this was going to be a very, very good thing. I have always said that more than being a good student, I am good at being a student. Everything about it just suits me to a T.

I’m taking two classes right now: Introduction to Early Modern Studies and War, Power, and Resistance. It’s too early yet to say much about either, but my initial impressions, both of the professors and of the course outlines, are very positive. I also feel good about the student group — there are ten of us, mostly Swedes, an Estonian, a German, and my own hybrid self. There are three women and seven men, and I am by quite a large margin the oldest of the group. I don’t feel as out of place as I feared I might, however, probably mostly because history master’s students are by and large not the wildest, craziest, and coolest kids of the lot. Also, even though they’re young, there is a considerable difference between mid-twenties grad students and eighteen-year-old college freshmen (and thank God for that, ’cause I’ve seen plenty of the latter type in the past few days, and I wouldn’t want to go back to that for anything).

Here on the homefront, Olof’s doing a great job keeping things in order. Probably my biggest regret about the situation is that I’m missing all of these days he’s home from work. I’m more than a little jealous of all the time the kids are spending with him. They’re so happy about the arrangement that I think they hardly noticed I wasn’t here, which, really, is the best I could hope for, especially as either way, I’m off again tomorrow morning.