Some of you may have picked up that I take a class on Thursday nights at the local college. It’s a great class and, though it’s pretty long and thus exhausting, I do think that I’m making some good contacts and learning some interesting aspects of communication theory. But as you might expect, there is an certain aspect of this class that completely irritates the hell out of me – the person who I sit next to seems to be constantly sick!

It’s ridiculous! This woman sits there with a variety of crumpled up tissues and “snnngt!’s” all throughout the class! Then she coughs and hacks up a lung every once in a while. And after all of that, she lets out these long, exhausted breaths – think of the sound that, “Uuuuuhhhhhhhhh…” would make. It’s gross!

What the hell is wrong with some people? Look, I understand having to “suck in” the snot if there is no tissue around, but if you’re going to be sitting in a classroom (that is a SMALL classroom, by the way) you don’t have that option any more! You’re invading everyone else’s learning environment by constantly sucking in your goobers instead of blowing them out! And then to sit there and cough along with it? Really?!

Here we are in the midst of a nationwide discussion on whether or not we are going to be hammered by swine flu and part of that conversation is how college students need to be particularly aware of their health since the swine flu attacks younger people more harshly than older folks. And this woman comes to a class on a college campus hacking and wheezing and coughing up a lung? Seriously?!

Anyway, this unnecessary complication probably bothers me more than it does the other students in the class because she and I essentially share the same desk space so I’m right in the combat zone. It’s gross and it makes me want to vomit. The moral of the story is that you should not come to class if you are sick – stay home and e-mail the professor for the work, damn it.

Now, while there are some things about being a student that I dislike, I have to admit that I really do enjoy being a student again. Some might think that this is sort of weird, but when you consider that I’ve spent 25 or 26 of my 28 years on this planet as a student it’s not really so outlandish that I would respond well to the classroom atmosphere, is it?

One of the things that I really don’t like about the course that I’m taking is that it is a two hour and forty-five minute session. Granted, the class is only once a week and we have a fifteen minute break somewhere in the middle of the session, but it’s still a long time to sit in what is a relatively small room with eighteen or nineteen other people.

However, the content of the course is great. It’s focused around communication at the executive/professional level and the professor who teaches the course has provided us with some great reading material. As much as I really need to relax during the week because of the million and one other things that I have going on in my life, I do get some odd enjoyment out of reading the material and participating in class.

I’m a sucker for being a student, I guess. I should just stop the BS and go get a Ph.D already…

First, I constantly think that I’m doing myself a disservice by not moving my website company to a full time profession. With over thirty clients and the ability to have another thirty within a six month period (if I wanted them), I can certainly build myself a very respectable portfolio. The problem is that I created my company to be the anti-website company in that I don’t charge thousands and thousands of dollars for initial site designs. Those large design dollars are what sustain many small website companies. Plus, I also set up my company so that it wouldn’t gouge customers on monthly fees. Other companies charge $25 per month for hosting expenses – I charge between $5 and $7. See what I mean?

Whenever I think about pushing the website company to a full time job, I always remember that I have such drastic student loan debt that it’s not quite realistic for me to drop my full time job to pursue this entrepreneurial opportunity. Even still, though, the idea is always sitting in the back of my mind…

And next to that idea is the idea that I should start a grant writing company. I love to write (can you tell?) and I’ve been successful on each grant that I’ve ever submitted. By the way, those grants have totaled more than $1,000,000 for the companies for which I’ve written them. Not too bad, really. And the grants that I’ve successfully completed range from private foundations to large government grants.

So the second idea that constantly floats around my head is to get serious about opening up a second small business that focuses on grant writing. I think that it is a profession that I would be very good at in both the short and long term.

And finally, the third idea that is always floating around my head is to just open up a full service communications consulting firm. In this scenario, I could wrap the website company, grant writing, and a variety of other concepts into one business and offer a full suite of services to potential clients. One of my college professors put that idea in my head six or seven years ago and I haven’t been able to shake it out yet. Of all of the ideas presented above, I think that this one has the most potential to become a reality one day.

The barriers that I constantly run into when I think about the third idea are, of course, financial in nature. Again, I would need to line up at least ten or so clients and have them signed to at least one year contracts (preferably three year contracts) at a significant dollar amount in order to have the capacity to pay for everything I need to pay for in the first year of business (taxes and my salary included, of course).

I think I could do it.