So I enrolled at university yesterday. As a result, I’m feeling hip and cool enough to start all my sentences with “so”.

So I walk in to Winthrop Hall at the University of Western Australia and I want to say I was transported back to my first year of university in the mid-1980s but in fact I felt like someone’s mum (well I guess I am; my oldest is freaking the fuck out at the prospect of possibly sharing a campus with me next year and to be honest I don’t blame her).

So there’s me and all the other (extremely young) students-to-be, sitting in chairs waiting to be taken through Step One (of eight!) of enrollment  playing with our iPads. I was cruising the ‘Net, checking out the holiday snaps of someone I barely know on Facebook as you do but the young people were getting frustrated; couldn’t get online with the free UWA wi-fi link. One guy asked me “So how did you get into the free wi-fi?” “What? Oh, I’ve got 3G…sorry”, I replied. Poor darlings: No working wi-fi, no 3G. They had to just sit there like something out of 1985.

So there I was: Old….but rich. Rich enough to have an iPad with 3G. I was living the dream.

So I get to the front of the queue. By this stage I am in about Stage Three or Four of enrollment.  Each stage took us to a different part of the campus. I even got to see inside the Maths Building. A flushed-with-the-beauty-of-youth girl rushed up to me with handfuls of flyers, handing me each one with a little spiel. At one point she started to hand one to me and then hesitated, looking confused/embarrassed. “Are you a mature-aged student?” she asked. It was like asking someone if they are pregnant as you watch the head crown out of the mother’s body. “Ahh yes, I think I might be!” I said brightly.

[I’m over the So. So is so ten minutes ago.]

A little later, perhaps it was around Stage Six of the enrollment process – they are all blurred now – a handsome young fellow thrust a flyer at me and asked me if I was familiar with the Uni Guild, “you know,” he said, “sundowners and stuff?” From [alcohol-damaged] memory, that was the part of uni back in the day that involved an enormous amount of drinking and staying up late. The sweet chap had obviously been instructed to offer this social opportunity to everyone so I tried to make his day a little easier saying “Yeah I was familiar with it about 30 years ago” Did I want the flyer? “Ahh no that’s okay.” Really? Really.

Stage Seven saw me handing over my now-renewed student card for ID to the computer girl and I got this reaction:

“WHOA! Your student number starts with a ONE! Ohmygod, I have seriously never seen that before. A one…wow! When were you here? Woah!”

But I am saving the best for last and possibly only other Western Australians will truly appreciate this.

Exhausted and nearly brain-dead after going through all those stages of enrollment, I stopped by the university cafe for caffeine. Friends, I paid $1.90 for a coffee. Granted it was a little dampened by the fact I had to show ID (for the opposite reason one usually breaks out ID), but I grinned all the way to the car with my ONE DOLLAR AND NINETY CENT coffee. Best coffee I have ever tasted. I’ll try to sneak a few of you in, maybe we can get some fake ID’s made up…