I have to go back.

I found five dollars in my wallet yesterday, and for some reason, my mind made the connection from five dollars to Caffe Vita’s questionable service ethos to a broken coffee date with my Kyle from my fiction course two years ago. I swallowed my jitters, and few e-mails later, I found myself with a plan for today.

It was nice to sit there and actually talk with someone who has invested themselves in the world of academia. Kyle talked about his philosophy courses and preparing writing samples for his MFA applications, and I talked about the hurdles I faced with trying to figure out how to finish my education. He caught me up on what our professor was doing now and told me about how he got banned from the Gamespot forums (for criticizing the trailer for Heavy Rain, strangely enough).

We circled around downtown Oly, hitting up Archibald Sisters, The Danger Room, and Orca Books. As we were waiting at a crosswalk near Caffe Vita (I wanted to check out a friend’s showcase), Kyle stared past the cars and the storefronts. “You have to go back,” he said.

And even though everything he said before and after that was just as true, that moment stuck out to me, so tomorrow, I’m going to make phone calls. I’ll even make an appointment with an advisor at Evergreen. I’m not even going to bother with finishing my AA and just transfer whatever I can and go all out. Because he’s right — that’s what needs to be done. I don’t want to put it off, and academia really is where I belong. The classrooms, lecture halls, libraries… they’re the only places where I feel most at ease, even more so than my own home.

So, yes. It’s time to get that degree.