When I was six years old, my mom gave me a cassette recorder, a microphone and a blank tape. It provided this budding rock star with the beginnings of her recording career and her mother with a few hours' peace and quiet downstairs. And what did this rebel have to express? An anti-establishment view of coloring beyond the lines or perhaps an angry diatribe against peas? Not exactly.
"I love school! School! School! School! I love school sooooo much, I wish I could go everydaaay!"
I've been a nerd all my life. It's only gotten worse.
After spending a year watching the clock tick down the hours until I achieved my big goal (in-state tuition rates), I finally enrolled in a Masters program in English here in NC. Last week I arrived on campus to handle all the business of starting a new school. As I pretended to gripe my way down my checklist, my face betrayed my attempt at cool indifference. The grin in my student ID photo makes the Cheshire Cat seem sullen, the expression of one secretary showed she wasn't accustomed to such enthusiasm in the parking permit line, and my stack of new school sweatshirts and regalia rivalled that of the freshmen parents'. When I entered the bookstore, the scent of new textbooks greeted me (say what you will, textbooks have a great smell), and it took every ounce of self-control not to run like a madwoman toward the books, arms flailing.
Despite my lifelong love for all things academic, I didn't fully appreciate college while I was an undergrad, especially initially. I'd focus on my lack of memorization skills in geography, my sheer hatred of geology lab, or how the writing in my head always seemed so much better than the words that spilled onto paper (my singing? very much the same, and I've got the cassette to prove it). Now when I walk on campus, I notice and savor all of it. It feels both exotic and strangely familiar, almost like a movie set of my college life, only with a different cast. I smile at recognizing these strangers, at recognizing past versions of myself and my friends in them: the tight pack of girls talking so quickly and excitedly that the only decipherable words are the occasional, "I KNOW!"; the guy sitting out on the dorm steps with a guitar, trying to impress women with knowledge of a chord; the two students smiling through that awkward yet wonderful friendship-falling-into-flirtation moment. Even the bulletin boards seem like movie props; someone needs a roommate, used textbooks for sale, anyone driving to Altanta this weekend? I walk in a near-daze, recognizing every inch of my new surroundings, but seeing them in a fresh way. I even view my class and its course syllabus differently; less in obligation and more in opportunity.
I love being a student again. It just fits. Humanity should feel grateful there still aren't cassette recorders around, because I've got the makings of "I Love School: The Remix" floating around my head.
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What I find most troubling about the title of your recent entry is the suggestion that one can both "rock n' roll all night" (as you say) AND study every day. As a former bass player for a punk revival band specializing in covers of 19th century Americana (like "O Sussana!" or "She'll be Coming 'round the mountain when she comes" or "Mama's little baby loves shortening bread") I can speak first hand about the actual perils of trying to rock n roll at night while hitting the books during the day. Back in 1991 when I was trying to finish my double major (Cultural Anthropology and Post-Feminist Literature) at the University of Chicago I almost had a nervous breakdown: I just couldn't maintain my killer baselines while maintaining my focus on the nuances and subtleties of the collected works of Claude Levi-Strauss. I had to make a choice and I quit the band. It was the toughest thing I ever did. It's been a real painful thing for me. When someone tells me that they are depressed, I say, "You don't know pain."
As for your focus on literature...they say that Herman Melville wrote the Great American Novel (Moby Dick). But is that really true? How can anyone laud a book that ruined whale metaphors for everyone? My favorite book is my unpublished manuscript, "The Adventures of Stig Stiggle." I take it to the next level, as they say.
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