School days!

I am a student! I started classes at the National Personal Trainer Institute this week, and it’s like college all over again except that:

• Half of my time in class is spent working out.
• Everything I’m learning is useful.
• My classmates are a bit less intellectual.

Every Mon.-Thurs., we have two hours of hands-on training, followed by two hours of anatomy and physiology in the classroom. I didn’t realize how refreshing it would be to learn something so completely different and new. It also seems ridiculous that I’ve gone through 17 years of education and until now, didn’t really know how my own body works (yet I could tell you all about the Ottoman Empire in 1530 – thanks, Northwestern).

As for my classmates, among them are Eric, a former sniper and cyclist who recently got run over by a semi; Don, a 20-year-old baby-daddy who’s on his third attempt to graduate; Keri, a displaced Miami-an who “missed orientation because Saturdays are reserved for vodka;” and Pamela, a Pilates instructor who nearly evacuated the classroom Wednesday with her childbirth-like hip abduction demonstration Clearly, I am a dull individual compared to the rest of the future trainers.

But the school is great. I already feel like I know twice as much as I did when I started, and I can’t wait to put everything to use. There are only two problems:

• Going to personal trainer school while injured is like being an alcoholic in bartending school.
• It’s costing me $11 to get to and from school every day (two train rides and two bus rides) and I have no regular income.

Yes, I am still dealing with the stupid knee injury. And no, I have not (yet) made millions as a freelance writer. So as much as I enjoy doing deadlifts with the cast of Real World: NPTI, right now I need to find a way to get fixed and get paid.