There’s something at once exhilarating and sad about returning to school for yet another semester.

Exhilarating because you’re that much closer to graduating. Sad because you’re that much closer to graduating, getting a real job and working until you retire. Not to mention dying.

Well, let’s not think that far ahead just yet. For now, it’s enough to be reminded that you’re getting old. Every semester, every minute, every second.

And nothing’s bound to age you faster than sitting through 12 hours of lectures a week and squinting at a textbook for two hours a night.

Here are some warning signs that the college experience may be aging you a little too fast:

1.) When you pick up the newspaper, you immediately read every story on the front page from start to finish. Any normal person reads the comics and the editorials and gives the rest a quick once-over. Yes, even journalism majors.

2.) You’re so excited about your classes that you don’t even cringe as you pay $4,350 apiece for your textbooks. (Seriously, you’d think the ink was made out of plutonium or something.)

3.) You not only know who Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes are, you can coherently discuss their theories without stumbling over words like “”paradigm.”” If you’re a women’s studies major, add Judith Butler to the list.

4.) You start thinking puns are funny. This may prepare you for a career as a science teacher, but it won’t endear you to your students.

5.) You own more than one biography of a U.S. president. The thought that Robert Caro might not live to finish the last volume in his epic biography of Lyndon Johnson (over two decades in the writing) distresses you more than the thought of one of your relatives dying.

6.) When asked to name a favorite snack, you unhesitatingly reply “”toast.”” (Honestly, though, it is rather good.)

7.) You have been known to complain that cartoons aren’t as good as they were, say, in the 1940s. In some circles, the fact that you know that cartoons even existed in the 1940s would be enough to qualify you.

8.) When someone asks you to meet them somewhere in the late afternoon, you say, “”Well, I’d really like to avoid 5 o’clock traffic.”” Don’t worry about this until you start falling asleep at the wheel.

9.) You find yourself feeling nostalgic for some cultural artifact of the 1980s more than twice a week. Twice a week is normal; anything more, and you’re no longer a human, you’re VH1.

10.) The thought of leaving college makes you melancholy enough to consider graduate school.

If you identified with three or fewer of these signs, you’re in decent shape. A score between four and seven is troubling; you might consider dropping a class or two. A score of eight or nine is grounds for expulsion from any self-respecting fraternity.

If you answered yes to all 10 questions, you’re a hopeless case and you might as well resign yourself to a lifetime of writing columns like this.