Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Have's

Here I am, located at computer Libr140 in the W.E.B. DuBois Library Learning Commons, imbued with time and nothing to say. I could remark about the oft discussed pronunciation of the dear DuBois' last name. I could complain about the dreadful parking situation here at UMass. (I mean, really! Over $200 to park down by the Mullin's Center!) I might also mention my drastic unhappiness at the fact that the University (capital U, of course) has chosen to taken away my grants following the realization that I am, in fact, an out of state student. Who knew that all these many, many years I am actually a (traitor) student from Connecticut. Good ol' richest-state-in-the-union Connecticut. Alternatively, I might begin a discussion about my worry about graduating (May is so soon.), my even greater anxiety about hearing back from graduate school, or what if I need to find a job concerns. Truly, there must be nothing so difficult in the world as being twenty-one. Well, except maybe the impending being twenty-two.

Who of us can imagine not being a student. Certainly not me. This is not because I lack imagination. (I was an inventive child.) It is simply that I am a student - that is what I have been brought up to be via sixteen years of education, not all of which I have enjoyed, but all of which I feel has been a of benefit to me. Simply put, I cannot imagine not learning, not waking up with a paper to do, not waking up with a book to read, and not having that time of wake up be sometime after 8:30. I like being a student. I like being engaged and challenged and pissed-off by a difficult class, which later I will get an A in (or else I conversely don't like it). More than that I am comfortable in my large holding environment.

I am a humanities major, English specifically. All of this aforementioned education has given me a great appreciation for beauty and an ability to think, at least decently. All of this aforementioned education may not have made me marketable. Probably it has and in my intense anxiety I fail to realize that because I have options as a person of the humanities and have not funneled myself comfortably in a career that four years of undergraduate education has prepared me for.

This post has become unfortunate and self involved. Two things I prefer not to have, but there it is. I am doing the best I can do. I have people to love me and support me and to help take care of me. I am lucky and grateful. I am trying to have the strength to do what I will do.

1 comment:

Leslie said...

Oh, the burdens of being a senior English major, I know them well. I even remember writing some silly newspaper column piece about how proud I was that I had learned esoteric and unpractical things, because I didn't go to a trade school, I went to a University! I didn't learn how to DO, I learned how to THINK!! That's embarrassing.

I'd regale you with how it all worked out and I got a job reading novels that pays $100K, but here you see me, still in school, living below the poverty line. Sorry if that's depressing for you.

I have the same feeling you do about education--it's really all I know. I like to think that my education teaches me about many, many things, but the lifestyle is so ingrained. But it's a pretty good one, nonetheless. I'd suck at 9to5.