Honestly, my first graduate year was a blast too.
I was 22 and earning an M.A. in economics at The University Of Texas at San Antonio.
I spent most of my days studying and reading in an unmarked graduate office that had not yet been discovered by my fellow students.
For lunch I brought peanut butter and crackers from home and would buy a bottle of Coke from the machine.
I rarely had classes on Friday’s and slept in as late as possible.
Best of all, school was not terribly difficult and I had oodles of free-time to read.
I DON’T THINK I’ve ever been happier than during my first graduate year at Rice: 1958–1959 that would be. Rice was so trusting in those days that graduate students were given keys to the library, though I seemed to be one of the few who took daily or nightly advantage of this privilege. I romanticized my nocturnal ramblings around that comfortable library in All My Friends. I never slept in Fondren, as my character Danny Deck did—I had no need to, since my apartment was right across Rice Boulevard, five minutes away.
-Larry McMurtry, Literary Life (Amazon)