Do I miss school? It's an interesting question. At this time last year, I was graduating from my personal hell. During that September, I was putting the final touches on a horrifyingly long paper that will spend the rest of its life in a filing cabinet in the Northern Illinois Econ Department Office.

Do I miss it all?

Kinda.

I don't miss the daily lessons in humility. Are you kidding me? Every day felt like a personal classroom journey to expose the nooks and crannies of my vast ignorance to my classmates and professors.

Some of my classmates didn't speak perfect English, but seemed to have mastered the phrase, "damn girl, you stupid," by the time my two years were up. I was happy to help assimilate them to the culture.

I certainly don't miss my shattered self-confidence, but I miss some things. I feel like the small chunk of my brain that's responsible for creative critical thinking has slightly atrophied. Okay, so I've always been an outside the box kind of girl. In school, I always felt so far outside the box that I couldn't even see the box anymore. The box was a mere speck from where my thoughts were heading. Now I feel like I've reeled the box in quite a bit. I can see it. I find that sometimes now...I like to chill inside the box. It's comfy. Inside the box thoughts with some glitter glue (to jazz 'em up) are perfectly accepted and often preferred by others. That's my world.

I miss the indulgence of taking the solution of a problem to its extreme. To think about it in a new way.

I know my brain is building other muscles...more useful muscles, perhaps. But I miss that chunk. School was an opportunity to let the chunk out to play. I miss that.