Life in the Slow Lane

I spent $200 at Amazon.com for a flower press. That wasn't my intention, of course. I planned to read the books, base discussions on the books, maybe even dare myself to write in the books. But there is that old, annoying song it never felt right to sing in my family because of the number of teachers: "No more school, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks." No more school. No more school. It doesn't get any easier to say. But sometimes learning important things in school drastically changes your life. And Tuesday's homework assignment was particularly instructive and so I withdrew from classes on Wednesday. And now I have a $200 flower press. Yes, I will try to return as much of it as I can. And maybe, after I whittle down the pile of books faithfully preserving the petals that escaped a life of potpourri , I will be reminded that Life in the Slowlane is really the best sort of life to be living.

On Saturday, a day late due to the arrival of a certain somebody and the need to entertain another certain somebody , I turned in my 30 page paper. The thing of it is, even though I titled the document "30 Page Paper" in My Documents, the page count was suspiciously lower... oh, let's say like approximately eleven. I will hasten to point out that it has been many years since I last took a math class, but I think that eleven is not all close to thirty. Perhaps if I had taken more classes in statistics, I could make a graph where eleven is nearly indiscernible from thirty, but I didn't. And this is where we learn another good thing about school: We have opportunity to learn about GRACE. Getting something wonderful, unexpected, and totally undeserved... because friends, I got an A. Grace for sure, because somehow I finished my first semester of grad school. The first week of class, as an exercise in learning how to work with the online format, we were given the exercis...

What of the good things about school is that it is like having a cold. I know many of you probably were unable to follow that logic. But if you may recall that one of the good things about having a cold is the ability to get instant sympathy from people (I would actually go fetch the link to that list if I had a wee bit more time, but you will have to suffice without it for reference), maybe this will clear up the small matter. School is like that. People always remember the rhythm of school, the procrastination and stresses, the huge fat papers that are unlikely to ever be as huge and fat and paper-like as they are intended to be. Yes, complaining about school is a great way to bond, and that, I think, is a good thing. =)

It is a great reason to guilt people into posting more on their blog! I should try this more often.

Today I discovered another good thing about going to school. It can get you on national (and international) TV! You see, if I had not gone to school, then I would not have known how to look like I was in a classroom when I was asked to pose as a student in a classroom. And I did such a good job acting (nodding my head and looking appropriately interested), that not only was I used in the publicity photos and recruitment footage, but I also get one or two whole seconds (not just me in the background walking to the printer or sitting at my desk or even the sound of me coughing, but a bigger-than-life face shot) in the most recent episode of the TV program that aired last week (and mostly likely will air again, but I don't know when). So stay in school, always dress ready to impress, and you may only shriek lightly when you are surprised by your face on widescreen TV.

When in school, you have an amazingly good reason to buy books. Even better than that, you have a perfectly legitimate excuse to carry a book around (and not a national best seller) without being labeled a nerd or anti-social. Of course, being in school is awfully nerd-like and regularly anti-social, but you can always make the excuse that you are a nerd because you are in school and if it weren't for the fact that you had a huge paper due, you really would be so open to watching the final inning (or whatever it is called) of American Idol with everyone else... too bad about that school thing.

Another good thing about going to school is that there is actually some variation between summer time and the rest of the year (in addition to the weather).

Going to school saves money. Of course there is the small detail of tuition, but here it is, a holiday weekend with LOTS of sales going on, and I am not out shopping. QED going to school saves you money.

How am I supposed to continue procrastinating when all of the blogs I check are lacking in new content? Back in my college days, I devised a simple plan of finding small entertaining things to read as breaks from studying and writing: I called it Mad Week and I tried to write one witty thing a day that I could later go back and read. Sometimes I think this blog was birthed because I no longer had any Mad Weeks to look forward to. I might be wrong, but I think this week classifies as such. You have been warned.

I'm writing my paper, don't you see? I have five pages, not four and two lines, I have five full pages. And I'm done, except for the minor detail that the paper is supposed to be ten pages. Maybe if I changed the format a little bit, you know, went with size 14 font and 2.5 line spacing, double spaced after a period. I could change the margins or add a header and footer with my name, the title of the paper, the semester and year, the page number (although if I don't make 10 pages, it is better to leave this filler out, no need to make it obvious). Then I could include full citations in the body of the paper instead of a footer or works cited page. Maybe I could use the technique of stopping every small subject change to add a subheading or I could do periodic summaries and small introductory paragraphs about what I will be talking about in the next four paragraphs. Maybe I could somehow squeeze in a cute kid story (those always slip in without any hard feelings, righ...

I'm supposed to be writing. I have a ten page paper due next week, a thirty page paper the week after that, and somehow, I was supposed to have managed ten minutes of journal writing every day for the last month and a half. The problem of ten minutes of journal writing every day is that frequently in ten minutes of journal writing my greatest efforts net me "Friday, May 16, 2008." Of course, in the following ten minutes I may just be able to pull off two or three pages, but those first ten minutes usually leave very little to show. So yes, I have quite a bit of writing to do. And that isn't even taking into account the letters sitting on my desk at work. This week was not nearly as productive as some weeks, I think I only managed maybe 25 letters. And all week long, as I peaked into my file drawers to take stock of the piles tucked away or I made up another reason as to why I should go check the level of paper in the printer, I heard the sound of many excuses march...

In the three quarters of a semester that I have been back in school, I have many times thought "I am insane for having signed up. I am going to fail. There is no possible way for me to do all that is named in the course syllabus." I have been right about everything except for that second sentence. I am insane for having signed up, and there is no possible way for me to do all that is required, yet somehow, so far, my grades have stayed in that range that even a straight-A-student (except for trying to fail math to spite the teacher) can live with. Well, except for the grade I just got back on my reflection essay. If I remember how to do percentages in my head (I only tried to fail one math class) the grade comes out to be 85%, but it is the principle of the thing that makes me begin to doubt. Any displeasure with a grade less than an "A" is always about the principle of the thing. I considered arguing this very important issue with the teacher (I haven't qu...

School is in session and that means that the post graveyard is getting larger and larger. For those of you who don't know, the post graveyard is the place that half-finished and barely-started posts go to die. There they linger in drafts, perhaps funny at one point, perhaps of some interest once upon a time, but now they wilt. But do not mourn too deeply, Dear Readers, I have a sinking suspicion that come time for me to work on my two final papers, those posts will walk like the zombie of that bad movie I never watched. And they may fall just as flat.

My homework this past week included interpreting this piece of artwork (by Lon Kauffman ) as if it were making a statement about social justice. Just for the record, I am much better at deciding what a piece of artwork says and then showing how it says it than to try and figure out the authorial intent. I mean, isn't it obvious that this is about social justice?

Apparently my course of study believes in the wisdom of the charge "Know Thyself". For this assignment, I am supposed to consider my Myer-Briggs profile and determine how it affects my spiritual formation. I've taken this test a number of times over the years, but the last time I took it my results were very different from the time before. So curious about how my results might change again, I found another version and deliberated over my answers. But as far as knowing myself, I'm not sure it is all that helpful. With the exception of the "I" over "E", which presented a percentage of 93 verses 7, all of the other combinations are of equal or nearly equal percentage. How can this be? Reading through the descriptions of the eight potential introverted personality types, it seems unlikely that all of these types could exist in one office with some sort of comraderie, much less in one person. I think the only way these eight introverted personalities ...

One of the first assignments of my new program was to take an inventory of my primary learning style. I received the folowing results: Your primary learning style is: Visual/Nonverbal 36 Visual/Verbal 36 Auditory 24 Kinesthetic 24 I'm not exactly sure how to interpret that. Primary learning style: I don't have one! The results continued on to say that I am balanced in learning styles, but I'm not sure that is a good thing. The tips for each of the learning styles for increasing your learning potential included using multi-colored highlighters to mark up notes and books and such. I don't like using highlighters. I find them distracting. Even worse, I am sure that I was supposed to report my findings of this inventory on some discussion board somewhere, but I can't figure out where that is supposed to be. I guess maybe it is because I haven't been taught where it is visually nor nonverbally nor verbally nor auditorily nor kinesthetically.

One of the reasons I chose to go back to school now is that people continually told me "It only gets harder, the longer you wait." I had no idea they were referring to memorizing a new student ID number.

When I first turned into the residential neighborhood of smaller, older homes, I began to wonder if maybe I would be spending the week in a room wall to wall with beds. And then I turned up a street that said "No Outlet" and slowly drove up the block, checking the house numbers: 438 and I was looking for 700. In a block with a dead end. But what a dead end! Two stone pillars on either side of a gate with a path stretching up and up and up, through gardens and wonders and... peace. And up two flights of stairs and down a long, long hallway to my room, where I throw open the curtains and find that I am perched just perfectly balanced between the world I left behind me and what lies before me: the world of misty covered mountains and open meadows. I half suspect that if I could manage to open the window without damaging the screen I could find myself in that other world Where lungs fill with an air more pure than any other Where feet walk more surely on craggy peaks Where eyes...

I'm sitting in a conference room by myself, pondering my stay here tucked against the mountains, and the semi-silence, self-imposed and otherwise... and one of my professors walks in, picks up an abandoned banana and holds it up to his ear. "Hello? Hello?" And looking confused, he walks back out, still holding the banana. I wonder what sorts of things I will be learning from him.

A new back pack. A pile of new books. Even a new computer. All dressed up, with that happy-anticipation of a fresh new year... I may just have to take a picture of myself to commemorate.