For anyone who's keeping track, my DC job came to an end yesterday and I'm now back in NY for a bit until back to school sometime towards the end of the month. So comments about the subway really will be about the Subway and not the Metro, and probably no more restaurant haikus.

A lot of action on the Princeton Review message boards regarding thoughts about professors -- for whatever reason, Harvard students seem to dominate this thing, but this applies to anyone really. It all seems sort of unnecessary -- you have no choice, you get who you get, and you'll survive. Everyone in your section is in the same boat you are, and anything anyone tells you isn't anything you won't figure out on the first day of class anyway. "She's boring" usually becomes pretty clear pretty quickly, "He's socratic" certainly makes itself known pretty much immediately, "She's brilliant" should be pretty easy to spot on day one.... So it's not like it's really earth-shattering to find out anything about your professors in advance. That said, I'm being kind of disingenuous here, because I've been happy to share anything I've heard or experienced regarding certain professors with anyone who's e-mailed me. But it's not like anything I have to say is particularly extraordinary or anything that doesn't become obvious ten minutes into the first day of class.

It's interesting, actually -- that first impression a professor makes is really important; seems to me that it sets the tone for the rest of the semester, I think. Seem brilliant, and your students will think you are, even if you're maybe not, and for a while probably give you the benefit of the doubt. Scare people on day one and maybe they'll think you're strict for a while, even if you're usually not. Call on some students at random on the first day, and maybe some of them will even do the reading! Amazing!

[Excuse me while I abruptly change the subject. Apologies for a less-than-graceful transition.]

At some point in the next couple of weeks, before I go back to school, I need to buy an "interview suit." My only suit right now is black, and isn't really even a suit. It's a jacket and pants that are both black and made by the same company out of the same material. So it passes for a suit. But they say black suits aren't right. I need a gray suit, I guess. Maybe navy blue, but I don't like navy blue, so I'm going to go with gray. I need shoes too. The only "dress shoes" I have right now are made by Nike. I'm totally serious. It seems strange to me that I seem to have missed the whole suit-buying stage of becoming an adult, but I never really needed one that was more serious than what I could piece together from the random jackets and pants I've got, that all sort of match. Ties and shirts I've got more than enough. But I don't think it's smart for me to fake a suit for interviews. I have to actually buy one. And probably not the cheapest one I can find, although I'd kind of like to. Maybe I can get on that new show on Bravo and they can tell me what kind of suit to buy that will look good and not make me feel like a little kid stealing his dad's clothes. I haven't actually seen that show, but I hear it's funny. Wearing a suit, instead of making me feel like I'm an adult, makes me feel like I'm completely out of place. But I guess any setting where I'm supposed to feel like an adult I feel kind of out of place -- I feel like I relate well to adults, but I'm not "one of them" yet. At work, I can be someone's colleague, and function fine in that capacity, but I still have no problem with them telling me what to do and being bossy, because I'm just a kid. They're adults. Although perhaps the willingness to be ordered around would make me a fine law firm associate....