I skipped class last night.

Seriously. For the first time since intro to sociology* my freshman year, I skipped a class simply because I didn't feel like going.

I have skipped class since freshman year, but there has always been a good reason, e.g. sickness, visiting a grad school, being stuck in Denison. Also, I have, on occasion, during three hour classes (mainly statistics this summer), skipped out at the break. But that has been the extent of my truancy.

Last night I just decided that I didn't want to go to my Religion class. I debated the possibilities: I could go; I could go and leave at the break; I could go and get some reading done for Thursday's stratification class; I could go and sit in the back and make fun of the instructor. And then this magical, new possibility dawned upon me: I could just not go. I could go home and do nothing. Or something. Anything, really. Just skip class.

So I did.

And it was fun. I went home and did nothing different than I would normally do on a free evening. I caught up on emails, read some news, got some homework done. But there was something special about the whole time because it was stolen time. I felt exciting. I was skipping class. I don't remember skipping sociology four years ago being this exciting. Perhaps that was because most of the time that I was skipping I was actually asleep (it was a morning class, and I would often decide the night before that going was pointless and set my alarm clock back accordingly).

*Interestingly, I hated this class. Not only was it somewhat early in the morning, but I, at the time, found it amazingly pointless. I wish I could re-take it now and see if it actually was kind of stupid or if I was so a) tired or b) lacking in a sociological imagination that I couldn't see the value in it. Honestly, I suspect it was the former. I did not like the instructor, quite apart from the course content (and it takes a lot for me to actually not like someone). Thank goodness for the randomness of registering in a Race, Gender, and Class course that spring! Otherwise I would probably have written sociology off as supremely idiotic. This experience (both the bad intro class and the good race, gender, class class) are part of the reason that I am so excited about teaching an intro to soc class one day.