February 7

Dear Weather,

Please get snowy and stormy again before 6:00 tomorrow evening, so I can decide that it isn’t safe to drive to my class so I can not go to school without feeling guilty.

And if it isn’t too much to ask, could you keep road conditions hazardous through Wednesday morning, enough to make the university close again?  I’m supposed to teach a writing class then, but I don’t want the cancellation to be my fault.

Gratefully Yours,

Someone who really loves to read novels bundled up on the couch with a cup of tea

Well…

Looks like grad school will be the end of the blog (i.e. too tired to write).

Sorry.

A Concrete Use of One’s Education

I have been working on a short story for the past several weeks – a cause for rejoicing in itself, I agree. However, what has pleased me almost more than my recent creative productivity is the fact that I have at last found a use for my four years of college education.

You see, as a fledgling scholar, I am in the habit of saving all of my intellectual product (that is, my scholarly papers and other homework assignments) for future perusal and improvement. However, now that I am a penniless newlywed, I have press-ganged all of the hard copies of my papers for a higher cause. One evening it occurred to me that my entire scholarly corpus was only printed on one side of the page. Since this epiphany, I have been printing my story drafts on the reverse side of analyses of W.S. Merwin and Sherwood Anderson, et. al.

Not only does this provide a delightful opportunity for nostalgia, but when I am frustrated that my fiction is rocky, I can ‘bolster my esteem’ with the following:

69/75. Good resources here. You make a number of general stylistic claims that really need to be illustrated but aren’t, perhaps because you’ve taken a bit too much authority from critical assessments of the work in general.

Or

93. Good job. This provides a very workable intro to EB. I might have wished for a bit more attention to some specific poems.

Or

This paragraph doesn’t seem to hold together very well. It seems to abruptly shift from Poe’s fondness of the puzzle to the psychoanalytic discussion without clearly establishing the connections.

And I feel satisfied that I am at once being green by reusing paper products as well as providing a concrete use of my education. At least I won’t have to buy any paper until well into next year. Also, it pleases me to no end to line through my hours of mental anguish in favor of writing something real on the reverse.

Psalm 20

When I was a freshman in college, my mother sent me off with a small white teddy-bear wearing an embroidered sweater that says: “PSALM 20.  Love, Mom.”  As I was packing up a bookshelf, I came across him perched in a corner, and my eyes went (well, all right, perhaps pridefully) to my diploma displayed above my desk.  Verses four and five of Psalm 20 say

May He grant you your heart’s desire
And fulfill all your counsel!

We will sing for joy over your victory,
And in the name of our God we will set up our banners.
May the Lord fulfill all your petitions.

[I’ve always amused myself by imagining a sinister overtone to “We will sing for joy over your victory:” as if I had no choice but to graduate in order for others to be glad about it.  But of course this was not the meaning.]

A footnote in the NASB kindly tells me that counsel might also mean purpose, as in, “May He…fulfill all your purpose.”  It also suggests that the banners may have been ‘the troop standards around which the units rallied.’  I have difficulty envisioning the success or victory of a college graduation meriting this kind of exaltation, or even exultation.  The verses seem rather something that ought to be said about a person’s whole life: This is a someone whose victorious example – whose life’s purpose – others might rally around.  One’s counsel certainly does not end with a bachelor’s, so I’ll hold the gift in trust for later, hoping that in time others might take joy in a life lived with (very) quiet Christlikeness.

An excellent reminder.  But not yet.

So I packed the little bear in a box full of scarves and socks, and a fuzzy brown rabbit from Ireland, and a pair of knitting needles and some CDs and a miscellaneous computer wire.

College Play-by-Play

Fall 2004

Honors English, college algebra, concepts in fitness, Old Testament, Intro to Philosophy, and German 1. I get up for algebra at 8:00 every morning. I share a room for the first time in my life. I lie about the steps on my pedometer, which doesn’t work anyway. Since I don’t know any better, I read a thousand-page book on philosophy from Plato to Locke.

Spring 2005

Writer’s Seminar, Honors English 2, Walk/Jog, Intro to Psychology, New Testament, Speech, German 2. I read Homer and love it. My A in psychology is actually at risk. I share a room for the first time in my life with a person I don’t really like. Ich spreche ein wenig Deutsch.

Interlude: Summer 2005

I travel to Urumqi, China, and fail to teach English to middle-schoolers for four weeks.

Fall 2005

First Semester Civ, Brit Lit I, Colloquium: Lewis, German 3. I experience civ, a six-hour joint literature and history class. I read the Pearl poet and Alexander Pope. I read Mere Christianity, again. I watch some German movies and actually understand them. I experience again a room of one’s own.

Spring 2006

Writer’s Seminar. Second Semester Civ, Brit Lit II, Chaucer, Fine Arts, Colloquium: Fine Arts. I move to the back row of civ. I read Matthew Arnold and Chinua Achebe, again. I struggle through Middle English. I feel like I’m starting to get this whole college thing.

Fall 2006

Advanced Composition, Drama, American Lit I, Frost and Stevens, Intro to Sociology, Colloquium: King Arthur. I laugh my way through Advanced Comp and Sociology. I find myself surprised to enjoy reading some stageplays, for which class I write one of my favorite papers. I drag myself through travel narratives and contemporary poetry. I present papers at the Sigma Tau Delta Conference in Pittsburgh. In a whirl of stress, I write over three hundred pages this semester.

Interlude: January 2007

Natural Science, Literature for Young Adults. Safe now in the little red house on Pulaski Street, I knock out six hours in one of the easiest J-terms ever, since we are snowed in and class is always canceled.

Spring 2007

Comparative Civ, Shakespeare, American Lit II, Biblical Ethics, Colloquium: Viennese Aesthetic, Contracted Study. I read everything for Shakespeare except Troilus and Creseyde/Cressida. I enjoy reading contemporary fiction. I am under the laughably mistaken impression that I will be writing the first part of a novel for my thesis.

Fall 2007

Poetry, Wharton and Fitzgerald, OSLEP class with Marilynne Robinson, Independent Study, Colloquium: [I’ve Forgotten]. I see Marilynne Robinson for perhaps six hours. I learn about the slicks. I continue to hold most poetry in contempt. I change my thesis to “The Education of a Heroine,” and write most of it. I stress about graduate school and my future. I feel like I’m starting to get this whole college thing.

Spring 2008

Art History, Independent Study, Fiction, Intro to Linguistics, Critical Perspectives. I can now converse about Bakhtin and Derrida. I really, really work for my A in Linguistics. I finish writing my thesis and present it. I write a decent short story. I get rejected from seven graduate schools. I get engaged. Eventually, I graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in English with college honors, summa cum laude.

I’m exhausted. Now I know why.

Finals

I’m trying to pscyhe (psych?) myself up to work on finals. I have an in-class final today at 1:00-3:00, linguistics, which I feel like I’ve already studied my brains out for; and I have two take-home finals due on Wednesday. I can write my critical perspectives final this morning, review my notes before the test at 1:00, and start my fiction final this evening before I work at 5:00.

This sounds like a really depressing day.

Fortunately I began the morning by reading some fiction by Connie Willis, and I’ll dose myself with tea (British breakfast, milk and sugar) before beginning.

Wish me luck? Or perhaps just diligence for these final finals.

**Edit.

I’ve finished critical perspectives and linguistics (I tried, which is to say either it was successful or it wasn’t), and now all that’s left is fiction, which is ironically true.  As I suspected, I’m not going to work on my fiction exam this afternoon.  Tomorrow is good enough for me.

The End

It’s the end of all undergraduate classes ever. Now all I have left is one in-class and two take-home finals. If necessary, these can be accomplished within sixteen hours.

I think I ought to be nostalgic, taking bright afternoon photos of the buildings that have come to mean learning, but mostly what I feel is tired. Of course I’ll look back…but not too often and not with sepia-toned fondness. If I want to remember the campus, I’ll remember without a photograph. My professors I’ll miss , and my housemates most, but not the hard blue chairs with attached desks or the overhead projector in Shawnee Hall 102. Not mailroom Box #60178 at the end of the cold aisle with no cellphone service, and not the basement of the library that leaks in the rain. Not the price of textbooks or any trappings of scholasticism. Not Shawnee, Oklahoma, and not August 2004 to May 2008. Good bye, fare well, the end.

This cannot be profound. Every senior must have felt this.

Bah, I can’t muse very well right now. I have no pensive psychological distance; my perspective is still too narrow. Suffice it to say I feel faintly guilty that I’m so happy to go.