For the past three years, I have taken a course every semester, in either indexing or copyediting. When I am in the middle of an indexing course, I spend a lot of time thinking about how much I love indexing. When I am in the middle of a copyediting course, I spend a similar amount of time thinking about how much I love copyediting. As I look ahead to September and even the following January, it’s never a question of whether I will take another course, it’s always a question of which course to take. With one foot planted firmly in the indexing world and the other in the copyediting world, it’s a struggle to decide which interest gets the next four months of focused study, and which gets placed on the backburner. 

The struggle to decide gives me a newfound appreciation for my undergraduate days when I was in school full time. Having time to handle a full course load meant that I could feed all my intellectual interests at once, instead of trying to squeeze one course at a time into an already tight schedule. On the other hand, the course I am taking are not going anywhere. And only having enough spare time to take one course per semester means that I get to enjoy being a student for years to come.