Riffday: It. Starts.

So first of all, Nell says hi, and she will tell us about NZ when she gets back.  She just finally read that post a couple of days ago, but she can't figure out how to comment on her phone, which is the only computer she has at the moment.

Classes started today.  My usually-beautiful drive was not so great today because it is so smoky.  I'm listening to Ship Breaker on audiobook as I drive.  It's one of the ones I have to read for class this semester.  It's yet another post-apocalyptic. I'm curious about why there is so much post-apocalyptic stuff these days-- books and movies.  Maybe we will discuss that in class.  If you have any ideas let me know.  Are we so hopeless?  All we can imagine for the future is despair?

It remains to be seen if this guy can do something different with it, because honestly, I'm not all that excited about reading yet another book where civilization has fallen apart and it's a dog-eat-dog world out there.  yadda, yadda, yadda. end of the world, people killing each other to stay alive, institutionalized savagery-- yawn.  been there done that, got the t-shirt, ate the cupcakes.

It made me very happy to be back on campus.  Usually I'm not there on the very first day of class.  Even the remote parking lot was full, and there were lines everywhere.  Lots of excited energy, though.  The YA class looks like it will be great.  And I got to stop on the way back and get good bagels.  Have I whined about that before?  There are no good bagels in our town, so when school is in session, I make a weekly stop at the bagel store in U-Town. 

Also, like most bloggers I occasionally get e-mails from people wanting me to promote something. Usually I just delete them, because they are so obviously mass-generated e-mails, the equivalent of getting a form letter.  But recently I've received several from someone who sounds more sincere, so here is the link to a page on her site:  18 Ways Going Back to School has Changed (link removed at site manager's request, you can probably google it if you're interested).  It is more general than just adults going back to school-- the information on that particular page goes from grade school all the way up to college. It's kind of a fun article.  Check it out if you're interested.

The Chicken update.  I got a picture text from MadMax when I got out of class -- there were SIX eggs today.  That's the first time all six chickens have produced in one day.  MadMax named one of them Larry, and although a chicken is clearly a she, we've all accidentally called Larry "he" on occasion.  So I've accused MadMax of giving him-- I mean her-- a gender identity crisis that made it so she couldn't produce eggs.  But apparently today she did!  Go, Larry! 

Photographic evidence (sorry if this bores you to death-- it's sort of like posting endless pictures of your child's band concert-- but I just can't get over the fact that our chickens are laying eggs! woot!)

back to school-- seven days and counting

Just a quick one today.  I start classes on Monday, so things are busy around here.

I continue to get several hits per week from people looking for information about going back to school as an adult.  So here are some relevant posts-- and just to warn you, they will only be relevant if you are as terrified as I was.  If you're thinking your return to school will be a piece of cake, go find someone else's blog. :-)  no offense intended.

orientation
first big project as a grad student
the back to school post
back to school part 2

In spite of the complete and utter panic that I felt when I first returned to school a couple of years ago, I'm so glad I pushed through the fear and did it.  It has been a terrific experience.  Great professors, interesting classes, remarkable fellow students.  If you're trying to decide whether or not to do it, I vote yes.

Also, the one class I'm taking this fall as I finish up my thesis is Teaching Young Adult Literature.  It looks like the best class-- I'm really excited about it.  A couple of people have asked me what we're reading, here is the list:

Alexie, Sherman: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Cisneros, Sandra: House on Mango Street
Bacigalupi, Paolo: Ship Breaker
Rosoff, Meg: How I Live Now
Green, John: Looking for Alaska
Haddon, Mark: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Hiaasen, Carl: Hoot
Hesse, Karen: Out of the Dust
Ingold, Jeanette: The Big Burn
Krakauer, Jon Into the Wild
Le Guin, Ursula: Gifts
Myers, Walter Dean: Monster
McLaughlin, Lauren: Cycler
Stead, Rebecca: When You Reach Me
Yang, Gene Luen: American Born Chinese.

Not a single classic in the lot-- which is a bit disappointing to me, since I've never read any of these (although I already owned five of them).  But then on the other hand, I've never read any of these.  Yay!  It will be like that Jane Austen class-- dangit, I have to spend the weekend reading Persuasion.  :-)

why my hair is mostly pulled out

Here is what you should not do two weeks before the end of the semester:  do not buy a house.  especially do not buy a house that needs to be remodeled.  especially do not buy a house that needs to be remodeled that keeps having more and more problems the more you work on it.

Because you will have to spend all the time that you should be spending on your two 20-page papers running around town picking out paint colors and getting stain samples and looking at ten gazillion colors and types of tile (who knew there were so many different kinds of tile?), and meeting with the carpet installer to find out how to solve the problem of not one level floor surface in the house.  And you will need to "pop over" to the other house at least two times a day and sometimes up to four to respond to various questions that come up as our valiant, beleaguered carpenter tries to do the things we asked him to do in a house where nothing is quite right.

Every time I'm over there I make myself stand in front of the window, even if it's only a few seconds, to remind myself why we're doing this.  Julie reminded me that it would be good to have before and after pictures, but it's already too late.  The old carpet is pulled out, they're drywalling over the cheap 70s paneling tomorrow, and the 30-year-old fiberglass jacuzzi tub got pulled out the first night.  Ha.  But I just remembered that the bright red-plaid glue down carpet in the laundry room is still there.  I'll try and get photographic evidence tomorrow.

It's entirely possible I will be insane by the end of this.  I went to Costco this afternoon and bought a bunch of frozen food because I will not be cooking for the next two weeks.  Other than to slide things into the oven or the microwave.

The carpet installation guy (who is already booked out until mid-January) said to me today, "Remodeling is brutal."  Why, yes.  That would be correct.

the Code, and Poetry Tuesday: Marianne Moore

There is a code among students.  You don't try to make another student look bad.  You cover for each other as much as you can.  If the professor calls on your neighbor and you know your neighbor didn't have time to finish her reading last night, you jump in with a comment.  You grouse about how far behind you are and how much studying you have to do, even if you don't.  You don't try to look extra smart or outshine the other students.  In other words, it's students vs. the professor, in a subtle, not-too-blatant kind of way.

But I'm way closer in age to my professors than I am to the other students.  In fact, I'm often older than my professors.  We can talk about our kids, college tuition, buying a house, home maintenance, raking the yard, running car pool-- all things that my professors and I have to deal with that most of the other students don't.  And this has become even more obvious as I start to have professors again.  This is my third class with my Ulysses professor, and the second with my Modern Poetry professor.  Two of the professors I had last year I had for more than one class.  They are people I profoundly respect, and also just like to sit and talk to.  They're becoming friends.

So last week I crossed over.  I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it.  My modern poetry class is an undergraduate level class that I'm taking as a graduate independent study.  I attend the class, and then meet with the professor once a week for further, more in-depth discussion.  The class is a particularly uninspired group.  On the first day of class, almost of all of them said that they were a) education majors, not english majors, and b) had to have this class in order to graduate in the spring.  They don't really care about poetry.  They don't do the reading.  They don't like to discuss.  They just want to come in, zone out through a lecture, and get their credits.  (And by the way, I suspect that these same students are very animated and involved when it's a class they're interested in, they're just not interested in poetry.)

So last week when the professor--one of my friends--was becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of involvement from the class and asked, "So who did read the assignment?", normally I would have waited to see how many others raised their hand. But this time I blew right through the Student Code without a qualm and acknowledged that I had.  He was grateful.  I felt a bit like a heel.  But I've reached the point where I feel far more loyal to him than I do to the other students.  Funny feeling.

We've only just started Marianne Moore, so I don't have too much to say.  But here is the published version of her poem "Poetry":

POETRY

I, too, dislike it.

   Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it,

                one discovers in

it after all, a place for the genuine.

And that's all there is to the poem.  But then you flip over to the back of the book to the footnotes (which I suppose would technically be endnotes), and it says, "Longer version:" and proceeds to a 30-line version of the poem.  Was she just being witty?  making fun of the idea of poetry?  Or was she so disgusted with the self-involved, smug attitude of some poets that she was trying to pare away every unnecessary thing?  It's hard to say.  In the longer poem, she makes a plea for poets to be "literalists of the imagination," to write "imaginary gardens with real toads in them."  By which I think she means that (for example) even if you're writing fantastic fiction with trolls and elves and dwarves, the characters and their situation still have to be real, to connect with the reader in a way that feels authentic.  There have to be real toads in the imaginary garden.  The longer version ends:

...In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,

  the raw material of poetry in

    all its rawness and

      that which is on the other hand

         genuine, you are interested in poetry.

and there you have it.

Oh! and one last thing.  One of you who reads and doesn't like to comment came up with a name for dh.  She says that since I use Aunt BeaN because my initials are BN, he should be "DeaN" because his initials are DN.  Which is perfect.  So, I am christening my long-suffering spouse Dean.  Now you know.

in which I start out discouraged and move back to normal

I've had several demoralizing things happen in a row.  I just don't know if I'm cut out for this grad school stuff.  I've been hanging out with literary types today due to volunteering at a literary conference that's going on in UTown.  I'm completely intimidated and discouraged.  I feel like the country bumpkin trying to hang out with the sophisticated people.  I don't know the right words, I don't know how to make their kind of jokes, I can't imagine this is going to end well.

But they let me in, and I'm not quitting, so I suppose there's nothing to do but just keep going.  It's funny, I hit this point every semester, and every semester I end up doing fine.  But it doesn't change the feeling-- I just don't have the gloss of intellectualism that you need to have to survive in academia.  That's why even though I've started practically handing out my blog address on the street corner, I haven't given it to anyone connected with my master's program.  Because the stuff I go on and on about here is so not the kind of stuff that would cut it in the academic world.  So they don't need to know.

So fuck it.  (excuse my language.)

I started this post sitting at one of the public computers in the lobby of the hotel where the conference is being held.  I wasn't exactly crying, but I was sort of leaking if you know what I mean.  My turn at the registration table was over, so I left and went and got a chocolate milkshake and a cheeseburger (strictly verboten on my low-fat diet, but ohmylord did I need comfort food).  Then I checked into the hotel where I'm staying so I can be back at the registration table at 8 a.m. tomorrow and took a half hour nap.  Between the comfort food and the rest and a couple of e-mails from people who had no idea what was going on but who were supportive of me anyway, I'm feeling better again.

The thing I regret is that there are a few people in the program whom I really like and admire, and I want them to admire me back.  And maybe they will, but just in a different way than you admire academic people.  And now that I'm pulling myself out of my funk, I think they do like me.  None of them can believe I'm doing this "at my age" and with the commute I have to do.  It takes guts of some sort, if not the academic kind.

There have been a couple of posts in the Bettyverse recently about self-confidence.  They've got me thinking.  You may have noticed that I don't have very much.  I'm working on that, but my goal isn't to be the kind of self-confident that is utterly sure of how great I am and of my own opinions.  I know a few people like that, and although they make admirable heroes, they aren't people I feel close to.  I just want to figure out how to value my own kind of self-ness, my own unique brand of being.  I have a long history of aspiring to believe or act in ways that don't suit me.  I'm working on that, too.

good grief, I'm practically sobbing into my coffee cup here.  (which, if I meant it other than metaphorically, would be decaffeinated, of course).

On a sort-of sideways related note:  although I've never been a huge fan of apple products (besides my iPod, to which I am utterly devoted), I am sad that Steve Jobs is gone from the world.  In reading about him today, I ran across the commencement address he gave at Stanford in 2005.  There is both a text and a video version here.  It's long, but it's worth it.  Or if you want a shortened version of it, the highlights are here.

Riffday: first week of class is over THANK GOD

Hi, y'all.  I wrote half a post last Monday that was so incredibly boring that I never published it, but for some reason it then stuck in my head that I had posted this week.  I realized last night that I hadn't, but since I HAD TO STUDY, I couldn't do it last night.

Dang.  In three months I had already forgotten what it's like to have to study.

So.  The first day of my second year was more intimidating than I was expecting, because even though now I know where things are, and I knew at least a student or two in each of my classes, there were also several dozen students I hadn't met who were surprised to see me there.  Which in turn surprised me.  In spite of all the teasing about my older student status that I do here in my blog, when I'm on campus, I generally forget how much older I am until someone else notices it.

But I lived through it, and by the end of next week, it will be a non-issue again.  The three classes I'm taking--a James Joyce class, a linguistics class on the history/structure of the English language, and Modern Poetry-- all look like they will be fascinating.  The only downside is that they are back-to-back:  9:40 to 11:00, 11:10 to 12:30, 12:40 to 2:00.  And since none of them are in the same building, that means I have to... um....manage my time wisely to even go to the bathroom, let alone eat.

I'm sure I'll get better at it as the semester goes on, but this week has been a bit chaotic.  I have been living on granola bars.  Which is perhaps not a bad thing, considering that (due to cooler temps*) I pulled on my one pair of jeans that fit this morning and they... didn't fit.  Damn. 

In past semesters, my earliest class has been 11:10, so it is also new to have to leave so early in the morning.  I rolled out of the driveway at 7:02 a.m. on Tuesday and walked into class just as it was starting (the drive is two hours and fifteen minutes, then there's a twenty minute walk).  Due to a couple of snafus this morning, I didn't leave until 7:10, and even though I might have tried to make up time by pushing the speed limit a little (promise, it was just a little), I was still about five minutes late to class.  I guess I have to work on my routine.

So here in the States it is a holiday weekend, and we are going on our annual camping trip with three other families.  We've been doing this for at least six or seven years now.   It will be fun, but the place where we are going this year is not only far outside of internet range, it doesn't even have pit potties.  Yikes.  Usually we at least have pit potties.  It's a good thing it's only for a couple of days.

* I apologize for mentioning the cooler temps to those of you who are living through the drought and heat wave down South.  I was there for the last one in 1980-- in fact, I spent that summer as a camp counselor in an un-airconditioned cabin, so I feel your pain.  Archery.  Oh. my. god.  The archery range was like a furnace.

and p.s.  London Mabel is working on her Star Wars posts-- check them out. 

back to school part 2

Last night we put Nell on the train to Seattle to start her senior year of college.  I'm sure she just went to kindergarten last week.  And I just got back from taking MadMax to his first day of eighth grade, his last year of middle school.  I swear I was still changing his diapers yesterday.  (He would kill me if he saw that.)  And I start classes next week.

The first day of school, more than any other day of the year, makes me sentimental, way more than the last day of the school year, when we're all so glad for it to be over that we can do nothing but celebrate.  I cried after dropping them off on the first day of school every single year until at least fourth grade-- usually I managed to wait until I was in the car, but one notorious year (MadMax's first grade), there I was sobbing in the classroom as the teacher did her welcoming spiel.  It was awful, and believe me, I wouldn't have done it if I could have helped it.

But I haven't done it in a long time, until this year.  It was too much-- both of them in 12 hours.  and Nell is a senior in college.  How did that happen?  MadMax, ever reticent, spoke only enough to cajole me into picking him up this afternoon so he wouldn't have to ride the bus, hopped out of the car, and was gone.  I don't even enter the building anymore.

I didn't sob, but I did get teared up.  I'm so lucky to have such great kids, and here they are growing up on me and pretty soon they'll both be gone.  OK, that's enough of that or I'm going to get all mushy again.

I start classes next week.  And since I continue to have readers who find this blog after searching for "back to school," maybe I will write a little bit about what it's like to go back to school in your 40s (because I was still in my 40s when I started, unlike my current advanced stage of fifty-ness).

I started out here locally at our community college about four years ago.  I'd taken the occasional on-line class, or six-week non-credit class over the years, so I wasn't completely unfamiliar with the campus.  I even taught spreadsheets (and DOS!) back when we first moved here almost 20 years ago.  So other than feeling like a dinosaur compared to the other students, it wasn't too bad.  I only took two classes that first semester (Chinese and a programming class).

I became the self-appointed den mother in each class after awhile-- the classes were small, and we all knew each other before long.  Of course, that was completely unofficial, other than teasing about feeling like the den mother, I never really said anything about it.  But it was a helpful idea for me.  It gave me a way to understand how to relate to these kids who were so much younger than me.

But the next fall I decided it was time for bigger things and started driving to our state university in UTown, two+ hours away. And that was completely terrifying.  In some ways it was worse than being a freshman, because when you're a freshman, there are several hundred other freshmen there feeling like neophytes along with you.  The next oldest person in my fall classes last year was 27.  And most of them came straight out of undergrad, so they hadn't taken much of a break from school at all.  It had been 25 years for me.  You should see my student ID card, which I had to have made the week before classes started:  I look like the proverbial deer in the headlights.

But if you're doing this, here is my best piece of advice:  hang in there.  Don't give up.  I can't tell you how many times I almost quit that first semester.  In fact, the only  thing that kept me from quitting is that practically every one I know was aware that I was doing this, and I was too embarrassed to quit.  My classes were very different from what I expected.  In some ways they were a bit easier-- the reading load was considerably lighter than it was 25 year before.  But in most ways it was much more difficult, because I had to learn how to deal with theory-- about which there will be more in the next few posts.

But I kept slogging along, because I couldn't let myself quit, and much to my surprise, I ended up with a 4.0 that first semester.  You just never know.  So.  Be brave.  You can do it. 

the back to school post

Two weeks from Tuesday, I'll be back in class.  Twice last week someone wandered here from a google search for the words "back to school," and they were probably looking for advice on school supplies or sources for kids' uniforms or good ideas for sack lunches (which would be a great topic, let me know if you have good ideas-- I am the world's most boring maker of sack lunches).

But this is just me, now ancient of days and back in school again.  I'm working on a master's in English.  I started last year, and if you decide to go back to school 25 years after your last experience, I'll just warn you:  it's terrifying.  The first few days, you feel like you've accidentally beamed down to the wrong planet as you wander around with all your years of life experience tucked under your belt but with no more clue of where you're going or what you should be doing than the rankest 18-year-old freshman.

But you get over that.  That's not to say you never feel out of place again, but you get used to being the Old One, and you figure out where your classes are and where to eat lunch (and how to pay for lunch, which can be more complicated than you'd expect), and where you can get a locker so you don't have to lug your books around all day.

So if by chance you did find this blog because you googled "back to school" and you really are going back to school as.... um..... a mature adult, shall we say, just hang in there for the first ten days or so while you are thinking, Why the hell did I think this was a good idea?  Because chances are, once you get past that first week and a half, you'll be fine.

anyway.  that wasn't what I sat down to type about.  If you've been around for awhile you might remember that last fall, the first semester of my master's program, I posted and posted and posted about my struggles to wrap my brain around literary theory, and academic feminism in particular (if you missed them, the labels "gradschool" and "feminism" over there in the left column will provide more than you ever wanted to know).

But last spring, to my surprise, the gradschool posts mostly petered out.  There are a couple of reasons for that, and the main one is that I realized how dumb I was being to wade into a huge, ongoing academic discussion without knowing what I was talking about.  Not that I didn't have legitimate opinions-- I still am not a devoted follower of the theory way of thinking-- but I didn't really understand the implications of what I was arguing.  As I learned, it became a case of "The more you know, the more you know how much you don't know."  It seemed wisest to keep my mouth shut for awhile.

But I did learn a lot last semester, and I thought as soon as the semester was over and I was done writing all those papers, I would start hammering out posts to finish thinking through what I'd been working on.  Instead I discovered that once the semester was over, the last thing I wanted to do was keep thinking about school.  I've been more than happy to take the summer off.  I've read some school-related stuff (background on Ulysses, and some Montana lit in search of a thesis topic), but not nearly as much as I had planned.  I think it has been good for me to have a break.

this was going to be the first of a couple of posts about things I learned last semester, but now it's become plenty long without me even getting there.  I do go on and on.  More soon.

the jig is up, the news is out, they finally found me

The insanity of what I'm doing-- driving 500+ miles per week, at almost 50 years old, to take classes with a bunch of kids many of whom are less than half my age, so that I *might* be able to get a job that I'm not even sure I will like-- is always apparent to me.  But more so at some moments than others, and never more so than today, when I raced around (as usual) getting ready to go this morning, popped a couple of advil and a magnesium to ward off a headache and a couple of zinc to head off yet another cold, dropped my son off at school and drove two+ hours to UTown, walked the mile from the free parking lot to the building where my class is, sat down at an empty table to finish reading the last three pages of our reading assignment that I just could not hold my eyes open for at 12:30 last night, and then walked up the stairs for class only to find out it was cancelled. 

And oddly, I'm back into the student mindset enough that I couldn't help but feel a leap of happiness-- even more strongly than the frustration.  Woot!  No class!  So here I am, in the student center, writing a blog post, because I cannot get right back in the car and drive home.  On Thursdays I only have one class, and that was it.  Even on the days when I actually have the class, I can't make myself drive straight home.  I usually hang out in the student center or the bookstore for an hour or so, then go to the bagel place (no good bagels in our town), then head home around 2:00 or so.

So let's see if I can think of something interesting to say.  Hmmmmm... the long-stewing half-written post with further thoughts on feminism?  a summing up of why some people think Ulysses is the greatest novel of the twentieth century?  (which I never felt I could write before because I hadn't actually read it)(but NOW I HAVE!! yay!).  an update on the plans to visit our daughter in Prague in June? (we bought the tickets!! woo-hoo! but there's a long complicated story involved, including an explanation of the Schengen area, which might just bore you to tears).  An update on the audiobooks I've been listening to? (to which I've listened?)  a rant about how as soon as the temperature rises above 40 degrees around here, they start working on the roads? (with no warning, suddenly there was a five minute construction stop about halfway here). 

Oh, I know-- I never told you about DH's 50th birthday party.  It was a couple of weeks ago.  His best friend--whom we met in 1984, and who went through many years of professional training with dh, then spent a few years living in the Southwest, and now lives across the street from us with his wife and three kids--was born exactly one day before DH.  So his wife (the subject of this post) and I usually plan something together for their birthdays, and since this year was the big five-oh, we had been pondering the occasion for quite awhile.  At one point we were going to take a trip.  then we were going to rent a condo up on the ski slopes and have an après-ski party.  But shortage of funds nixed both those plans, so we ended up deciding to just have a party.  We invited about 80 people and I'm pretty sure there were at least 65 people there. 

It was a lot of fun, even for me, the anti-social one.  DH had a ball.  The party wasn't a surprise, but I bought a plane ticket home for dear daughter, and that was a surprise, which was fun.  We had it at their house, which made my life much simpler.  If you aren't a party person yourself, DH's BFF's wife is the perfect person to give a party with, because she is amazingly awesome and did about 75% of the work.  My contributions were a) the invitations, which were way cool if I do say so myself; b) to clean up our house and provide kid-friendly food so all the kids could hang out at our place while the adults were across the street; and c) to come up with an iPod playlist for the party music.  b) ended up being something of a bust because the kids didn't want to be across the street, they wanted to be at the party.  So we ended up with a clean house and a bunch of kid food out of that one.  And c) the iPod playlist was useless because it was so noisy I never even plugged my iPod in.  So a) the invitations were pretty much my only contribution.

But putting the playlist together was like a trip right back to high school.  DH and I had pretty different taste in music back then (we didn't know each other yet, we met our jr year in college)-- he liked Kansas, REO Speedwagon, Styx and Journey; I liked... oh, dear, am I going to admit to this in public?  all the pop stuff-- Elton John, Chicago, Earth Wind & Fire, Ohio Players (Rollercoaster! of Love!), and.... Barry Manilow.  I can still sing all the way through on "Weekend in New England" (although now I crack up when I get to "with YOU there's a HEAVEN, so earth AIN'T SO BAAAAD!!")  When I was in college I retroactively changed my taste in 70s music to Led Zeppelin, the Stones, and Clapton, but at the time I even liked Olivia Newton-John.  It shames me to remember, and I can't believe I just told you.

So anyway.  I listen to the Stones and LedZep and Clapton all the time, but I hadn't listened to all that other stuff in a very long time.  So my new 70s playlist has been on near constant rotation while I'm driving.  Lorelei let's live together, and can't smile without you, and if you leave me now and so HERE I AM with OPEN ARMS hoping you'll see what your love means to me.... Ah, the good old days.  Just kind of makes you want to grab somebody and sway gently under a disco light while plastered to each other's sweaty bodies , doesn't it?  (Those weren't on the party playlist, of course, because they aren't exactly party music, not like *ahem*  YMCA and Sisters Sledge.)

GS: let me try this again

I've mentioned before that being a mom doesn't come easily to me.  At work or around other adults, I often find myself being maternal-- keeping track of people, or trying to help, or taking care of things.  But toddlers?  pre-schoolers? infants?  I just don't have the patience.  I did not feel a huge wave of maternal bliss the first time I held my daughter in my arms.  I felt a wave of terror, of complete and utter inadequacy.  I did not cherish The Baby Days.  I was utterly and completely relieved to leave my daughter four hours a day with a wonderful woman running an in-home daycare so that I could keep my job on a part-time basis.  The older she got, the more I enjoyed her.  Her teenage years had their definite moments of angst, but I'd take a teenager any day over an infant.  Heck, I'd take a whole house full of teenagers over an infant.

You get the idea.  June Cleaver I am not.  There are a number of consequences of this:  for one thing, I am enormously proud of myself for sticking it out.  It didn't come naturally to me, but I kept at it because it was more important to me than anything else ever had been.  I still remember the day when my daughter was 3 and we were sitting in the cab of the little Nissan pickup I drove back then, and we looked at each other and it was like we really saw each other for the first time.  I remember giving this little nod and thinking, Okay, then.  I can do this.  We're all right.  I don't take credit for the amazing person she has turned out to be (she is now 20, and she has done that all by herself), but I do take some credit for not screwing it up. (I'm leaving my son out of this for now since he is still at home and just turned 13, but he is a similarly awesome kid). 

So on the first day of class of "Progressive Voices" (Four American Women Writers of the Progressive Era), when the professor had us go around the room and each introduce ourselves and tell "something interesting" about ourselves, the only thing that came to mind was my kids.  My kids are far and away the most interesting thing about me. This is the bare truth.  I am by nature an observer.  I am not interesting.  I watch people and I think about them.  I don't do crafts or hobbies or sports, I haven't had an interesting career, I don't have any big accomplishments in my life to brag about.  Except that I survived my kids' childhoods (I'm still surviving my son's, of course, but he's out of the bitty kid stage, anyway).  (And honest to pete, it didn't occur to me until the next day that the fact that I've had a blog for seven years would be something interesting.  Never crossed my mind.)

But you can imagine the reaction that I got in a roomful of students in a feminist literary criticism class when I said that the most interesting thing about me is my kids.  It just isn't done.  We're women, hear us roar.  We don't find our fulfillment in other people, we find it in ourselves and our own accomplishments.  And on the one hand, I get that.  I've been a feminist for practically my entire life (I should write a post about my childhood moments of feminism someday).  I took a class in feminist literary criticism in 1983 before any of the other students in this class were even born.  But on the other hand, it pissed me off.  I could almost see their eyes rolling, their inward groans of embarrassment for me, the immediate conclusions that were jumped to with eager leaps.  But you know, I'm not embarrassed that I'm proud I've turned myself into a good mom.  I suppose I could have gone into a long-winded explanation of what I meant when I said the most interesting thing about me is my kids, but damn it, I shouldn't have to.

This isn't done yet.  Just more of the continuing conversation.

GS: textbook case

I don't know why I post about some of this stuff because if you don't already think I'm nuts, this will do it.  But what else am I going to post about?  This was my week.

It's been about three years since I first decided to go back to school.  I started with classes at our community college, then last fall, I started driving the two+ hours to get down to UTown and our state university.  In mid-October, I had to write the first paper I'd written in 24 years.  I remember the night before it was due, I was staring at the complete chaos on my desk, notes and papers and a stack of books, and my laptop and who knows what else, and thinking, "I just can't do this anymore.  It's not possible for my brain to function at this level.  I'm going to have to drop out."  and on and on.  I did get it done (by about 2 a.m., if memory serves, which wouldn't be a problem since I'm kind of a night owl anyway, except that then I have to be able to do that drive the next day).  And then I waited with dread to get it back and see how badly I had done.  I was so freaked out about it that--I'm not kidding-- when the prof handed our papers back, I grabbed mine, stuffed it straight into my backpack, drove two+ hours home, and made my spouse look at it first.  I was so terrified they were going to kick me out for being an idiot.  But of course I did fine, so I persevered and now here I am in the master's program.

And I'm doing it again.  It's completely neurotic.  I can reason with myself and rationalize and try to have some sense that I am a functioning adult human being, but it's all for naught, because Monday night I just lost it.  I had a big presentation to do on Tuesday (so not only the intimidation of being a grad student for the first time in decades, but also major fear of public speaking), and I came unglued.  By the time my poor spouse got home, I was standing at the stove cooking dinner and crying.  Not hysterical sobbing, but just a continuous, uncontrollable stream of tears down my face.  I knew it was going to be horrible, and that someone was going to have to pull me aside and tell me that oops, they had made a mistake and I really am not capable of this level of work and please go home.   Poor dh looks at me and says, "what in the world are you doing cooking dinner when you have a big project due tomorrow?"  and I wailed, "Well, I'm going to get kicked out of grad school tomorrow anyway, so I figured I might as wellllllll....."

To his credit, he did not roll his eyes and laugh.  Because I deserved it.  I pulled myself together and got my notes done, and the presentation was fine.  Far from perfect, but it got done, and it seemed to be fairly well received, and I'm sure I didn't fail.  Fortunately for me, I had a partner who was great.

But the point is that it is just mystifying to me how I can let myself get into that state.  It's completely irrational. I mean, even if it was horrible, there's no way I would get kicked out of grad school on the basis of that one assignment.  That's just silly.  But in the moment, I am totally immersed in the feeling of panic and misery and despair.

And believe it or not, the topic of the presentation was psychoanalytic theory.  So we were talking about neuroses.  About how Freud saw the id--the unconscious--as this mass of seething socially unacceptable sexual desires and urges that result in neuroses and compulsive behavior.  And Lacan's version is that whatever we can't speak, whatever we can't understand through the language that creates our consciousness, enters the unconscious and then is acted out outside our conscious control.  So not only am I freaking out about my ability to handle the academics of the assignment, I'm thinking to myself, "Oh, crap, this is me.  I'm a nutcase."

and it just might be true.  be thankful you don't have to live with me.

It Starts. (aka Orientation)

I'm sitting in the atrium of the student center at the university, having just gone through the one-hour orientation session the English Department held for incoming master's students.  I'm trying to remember what kind of orientation we had the last time I did this, and since I've already admitted how old I am, I will even confess that it was in 1983.  But I can't remember.  It was too long ago.

I do remember a woman named Mary from that program.  She was probably in her early forties--younger than I am now--but to me at age 22, fresh out of undergrad, she was ancient.  The ink was barely dry on her divorce.  She had a couple of teenage kids.  And she was so, so excited to be in graduate school.  It was the kind of excitement of someone who has been given a Get Out of Jail Free card and is looking about in wonder and amazement that all of this has been here all along, while she was slaving through whatever it was she had done before.

We were not fans of Mary, those of us who were young and smugly, unknowingly arrogant about where we were going and what we were doing (even if we weren't exactly sure what that was).  Even though she was older than us, she seemed naive and backward in a way that made us uncomfortable to be associated with her.  She asked breathless questions. She could often be found after class talking earnestly to the professor about who knows what.  If the professor assigned a 5-7 page paper, she wrote 18 and handed it in bound in a formal report cover.  If we were supposed to read Tom Jones, she read Joseph Andrews, too, "for perspective." The rest of us were still thoroughly of the undergrad mindset where one does the least amount of work possible to achieve the desired grade.  We had Things To Do.  We were Busy and Active and Involved. She seemed, honestly, a little pathetic.

You can probably already guess where this is headed, because oh, yes, I have become Mary.  (Except that I will never write a paper that's longer than it's supposed to be.  Not my thing.)(oh, yeah, and I'm still married.)  It's a funny feeling.  I want to tell them that even though I don't know the buzzwords that let everyone know that you are in with the cool crowd, I am a smart person.  I am not a complete loser.  I have raised children, I have filed my own taxes, I have owned a home (three of them), I have held jobs and made money and been a productive member of society.  But I know it's useless, because I remember how I looked at Mary.  There is nothing she could have done that would have convinced me that she was One of Us.

OK.  so now that I've gotten that out of my system.  I should also say:  it's not so bad.  I don't mean to whine.  I'm not here to socialize.  I can just keep my head down and do my work and get it done.  Oh, wait, I forgot where I live.  That should have been "get 'er done."  *smirk*

So.  orientation.  It was, for the most part, a description of the timeline we should (ideally) follow if we plan to complete the MA in two years-- which I would like to do.  So it was useful.  A little intimidating, but useful. I'm not planning on setting the world on fire or coming up with any original insights that will recalibrate my field of study, I'm planning on finding a topic that interests me and researching the heck out of it and writing it up.  (get 'er done, right?).   So sticking with the timeline would actually be a good thing.  Now I just have to find a topic.

Oh! and finally!  I got accepted to grad school.  I start at the end of August.  Stay tuned for Aunt BeaN's excellent graduate school adventure.