April 30, 2010 - Me and Mash, good friends.

Third Grade Journal – April 19, 1992

Date head line – strongest person is Bill Szoke¹.

Date head line – Smartest person doesn’t know 0 + 0²

Date head line – five plus five exuals 20³

Date head line – A Kid hit a golf⁴ that didn’t come down!

Date head line – Government Fires all teachers⁵.

¹ – Bill was a kid in my elementary school who had somewhat severe learning disabilities, so naturally he was the object of an unfortunate amount of ridicule. It really makes me feel bad to think about it, so I think we should move on to more lighthearted concerns.

² – This makes sense, but for entirely different reasons than my eight-year-old self might have realized. I mean, what really makes up the idea of “nothing,” and what would happen if you put two of those nothings together? Deep!

³ – This could be possible. We all know that five plus five equals ten, but it could exual anything, possibly even twenty.

⁴ – That is, a golf ball. Hell, maybe he did hit a golf. I’ve never done it, but that’s not so say that nobody else ever has.

⁵ – Obviously these headlines involve a certain amount of fantasy, but I probably didn’t quite think this one through all the way.

Sixth Grade Journal – April 14, 1995

Today after school I have enrichment classes⁶, entemology⁷.

⁶ – Enrichment classes were these after school courses that involved various topics from computing to finances to bugs (as it was in my case). Exciting, I know.

⁷ – That is, entomology. And the class was taught by my Mom. Ooo, I remember that dragonflies belong to the order Odonata! Gold star for me! At the bottom of this entry, Mrs Robertson wrote, “How is that going? Are you enjoying it?” Oh, those questions answer themselves.

Sixth Grade Journal – April 14, 1995

If I could erase a day it would be about 2 months ago when I got mud on my mom’s carpet and I used Clorox Clean-Up on the carpet, and now our carpet is green with light green polka-dots⁸! I thought she was going to kill me⁹!

⁸ – This was a relatively legendary event in my family. I came home with dirty shoes, walked on the new carpet my Mom had just put in the sitting room. When I told her she was understandably freaked, and when she told me to clean it up I grabbed the first cleaner I could find from under the sink and went to work on the spots I had left on the carpet. She entered the room, saw the bottle in my hand, and pretty much lost her mind.

⁹ – This is not much of an exaggeration. I was pretty certain that she was going to kill me. In fact, while my Mom tried to use the vacuum cleaner to get up the bleach that was eating the color off of her carpet, I called my Dad at work and told him to come home because I was afraid she was going to hurt me. Not my proudest moment. Underneath this entry, Mrs Robertson wrote, “I’ll bet!” Thanks a lot, lady.

Sixth Grade Journal – April 18, 1995

Leaf – Cricket – Spider – Bird – People¹⁰

¹⁰ – This is probably one of those silly little “fill in the blank”-type entries. In all honest, I should just leave these kinds of entries off the blog. We all make mistakes, folks.

Sixth Grade Journal – April 19, 1995

The only people I would “run to see” is former Boston Celtic Larry Bird¹¹, or Dallas Mavericks star Jamal Mashburn¹². Jamal and I are good friends, so I would run to see him anytime¹³.

¹¹ – Larry Legend, baby. Who wouldn’t run to see him? Of course, to answer that you’d have to know why the phrase “run to see” was in quotation marks in the original entries.

¹² – Monster Mash. My boy.

¹³ – Underneath this entry, Mrs Robertson wrote, “What do you mean?” and underlined the phrase “are good friends.” Underneath her comment, I wrote, “He knows me, I know him, we’re friends.” Of course I was at least somewhat delusional, but I did really feel that I knew Mash because I went on two trips with the UK Basketball team to the NCAA Tournament when I was in elementary school. So, basically, we were good friends.

April 21, 2010 - Back to the present

I feel that this entry needs a little bit of introduction, and this is what I can offer. On one hand, I think these thoughts operate within the general framework/theme of this blog (since they essentially make up a journal entry), but I also think that it's acceptable for me to break up things from time-to-time with different types of entries. If you think this is foolhardy and/or a gigantic waste of time, feel free to let me know. Please enjoy and comment.

_______________________________________________

After the first week of May I will have completed my second year of graduate study in English. I have met new professors, read many books and articles, and been more than impressed by the intelligence and abilities of many of my peers. Through all of this, there is one thing that I have learned, one thing that I consider a fact of my continued education.

There is no such thing as a graduate student.

Naturally, my own experience is limited. I have only studied in one specific department, situated in a specific field in a specific university. I don’t want to assume that my feelings on how graduate school works are somehow universally representative of how things work for everyone in a position similar to my own. I am keenly aware, however, of the reality that I am no longer a student. The reason I am no longer a graduate student is because, as I understand it, there is no such thing as a graduate student.

I recognized and admitted this fact when writing a letter to my younger sister last week. In her previous correspondence she expressed frustration with one of her own graduate courses, writing, “If I already knew all this shit about the XIX century I wouldn’t take this class.” But in my experience, that is precisely the reason why people take classes in graduate school.

I have been a student – in an educational, non-theoretical way – for twenty years. I have almost no memories of the period in my life when I was not a student. In many ways, this is all I know. But now this definitive element of my life has changed.

I think that my understanding of what it means to be a student is fairly uncontroversial. To me, being a student means engaging in the process of trying to learn new things, identifying your interests and being educated about things that were once unknown or foreign to you through a relationship with a teacher. Being a student is about creating a fuller scope of knowledge and understanding, learning about topics and themes and people that you didn’t know before.

Of course, being a student is also about being taught. But it is now clear to me that at some point the educational experience shifts from expanding into new fields to entrenching yourself in a specific field of study, whether it be an author, a time period, a theme, or a theoretical approach. If you want to study William Blake, you don’t enroll in courses on 20^th century American literature to learn about a field outside of your specialty but instead to find trace of Blake’s poetry in the writings of Hemingway and Fitzgerald (even if, as I am often inclined to believe, such traces are not there at all).

My interior response to these ruminations is always the same: perhaps I just don’t know what graduate school is supposed to be about; perhaps I consistently miss the point of obtaining a degree that refers to me as a “master” of something. Maybe this is just a natural transition that others in graduate school are anxious to make, and therefore go through more smoothly. Maybe being a student is part of a process that naturally ends at a certain point, of which I was naïvely unaware.

Seeing the ease with which my peers (if I may call them that) take to this new role makes it clear to me that I have approached graduate school in entirely the wrong way. It seems as though my first priority must be to identify my primary interest and do whatever I can to use other courses of study as a means for further solidifying my academic position. If I want to study 20^th century British poetry – which is but one of my many interests – everything I do should serve to inform how I understand the lines of Yeats and Hughes and Larkin.

Therefore, if I enroll in a class on the plays of Samuel Beckett (which I did), I shouldn’t write a paper on the plays themselves as I see them (which I did) but rather create theories about how Krapp’s Last Tape was influenced by WB Yeats. If I take a course on the American 1850’s, I should only really be concerned with assertions of a dialogue between Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and Eliot’s “Four Quartets.”

I find one inherent problem in this understanding of graduate study, and that is that it brings an end to the education process as I know it. At the risk of sounding childish, insecure, and ignorant, I am not convinced that it is beneficial or educational to approach topics in this way. More than that, I find it dishonest to show educational interest when your real goal is to reduce an entire field to a footnote in your own studies of an all-but-disconnected topic.

Moreover, I find it selfish to operate under the assumption that other fields of study are somehow incomplete without forcing these types of readings. In other words, even if I were by some hilarious miracle to become the world’s preeminent Ted Hughes scholar, I don’t know that I would ever feel that it was my scholarly duty to show how my reading of Crow can affect (and make adequate) a reading of Moby-Dick.

What it comes down to is that graduate school is about teaching yourself instead of being taught. Despite what my sister feels, it is about taking classes on subjects you already know instead of topics foreign to your experience. I suspect that this is precisely how one can become worthy of the title of “master.” Graduate study is more akin to a laser beam than a shotgun blast.

Perhaps I am just unhappy because graduate school has not been what I expected. There was never any indication in my undergraduate education that things would be this way, so maybe this is my version of shell-shock. Maybe it has just taken me this long to realize that graduate school is about realizing your potential as an autodidact: first you much teach yourself so that you can teach others. I can find some resolve in that.

But now there are new questions I must ask myself. How long have I not been a student? How long have I been trying to be one when it was impossible to do so? What exactly am I if I am not a student? How important are these labels in the end? And most importantly: what do I really learn or understand from this process?

Begrudgingly, I learn that I am no longer a student. So it goes.

April 14, 2010 - Eat all breakfast, eat all dinner

Third Grade Journal – April 12, 1992

Today’s team of the day is the Chicago Bulls¹. Michael Jordan is the Best player for the Bulls². He has won three slam dunk championships³. Horace Grant is next.⁴ His number is 23. He is a guard. Horace Grant is a Guard or a forward⁵. His number is 54. Scotty Pippen⁶ is a forward or a guard. His number is 33. John Paxson is a guard⁷. His number is 5. He is a good Field goal shooter⁸.

¹ – This is not a simple repeat. I guess the Bulls were just that good.

² – And I guess I was finally starting to accept the reality that Jordan was the best player in the game. I do still harbor lingering feelings about Larry Bird being the best, but I admit that those feelings might be a little bit silly.

³ – Not so fast there, buddy. Jordan won in 1987 and 1988, but that’s it. If you’ve never watched it, the 1988 Slam Dunk Contest might be the best ever. Just a recommendation.

⁴ – I guess I got a little ahead of myself here.

⁵ – A 6’10” guard/forward? We’re not talking about Magic Johnson here. Also, can I really mention Horace Grant before Scottie Pippen? Really?

⁶ – Apparently Scottie Pippen’s name just confounded me in those days. At least this is closer and less silly-sounding than Scottie Pippien.

⁷ – John Paxson? Seriously, John Paxson? The guy was averaging seven points per game that year. That’s the same as Stacey King, who I’ve never heard of before in my life.

⁸ – One of the most awkward basketball-related phrases ever.

Sixth Grade Journal – April 12, 1995

To keep the peace in my house:

1 – Kill Emily’s dog⁹

2 – Play SNES

3 – Play Sega¹⁰

4 – Eat all breakfast

5 – Eat all dinner¹¹

6 – Play Game Boy¹²

7 – Read

8 – Play on computer¹³

9 – Sleep

⁹ – I don’t really recall hating my sister’s dog that much, but there’s no real way to misread this statement. Next to this part of the entry, Mrs Robertson drew a line and a question mark. Is it really that hard to understand?

¹⁰ – That’s a lot of video game playing. It would have been mostly The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Baseball Simulator 1000 on the Super Nintendo, and Sonic the Hedgehog and Golden Axe on the Genesis. Awesome.

¹¹ – I thought that “eat all breakfast” meant eating breakfast for every meal until this part. Maybe I wanted to eat everything prepared for every meal so I could have it all and there would be nothing left for anyone else. Nah, that can’t be.

¹² – More video game playing? On the Game Boy I would have been playing Tetris and Final Fantasy Legend (which I was dreadfully terrible at and didn’t understand at all).

Eighth Grade Journal – September 5, 1996 (continued)

I Whispered A Small Spell¹⁴ And A Giant Blue Hand Came Out Of My Staff. It Gripped Hearne Really Tight And He Dropped His Sword And Shield. “AAAHH! Let Me Go You Moron!” Hearne Yelled. I Stopped The Spell And He Fell To The Floor¹⁵. “Guy, I’m Gonna Kick Your Butt!” Hearne Said¹⁶. “How About I Train Your Swordsmanship.” I Said. “Yeah Right. How Are You Gonna Train Me?” Hearne Asked. “Not Me. Him¹⁷.” I Said, And Pointed To His Right. My Next Spell Made A Huge Knight In Armor With A Sword And Shield. He Attacked Josh and Hearne Fell Into The Wall. “Crap!!” Hearne Yelled. Nate Tried To Hold The Knight So Josh Could Get His Sword. But The Knight Threw Nate On The Floor¹⁸. Nate Picked Up His Sword And Ran To Hearne’s Side. I Made Another Knight That Looked The Same Appear¹⁹.

¹⁴ – When we last left off, I was resting my injured shoulder (you know, the one I hurt when I dropped my crossbow and shot myself), failing to improve my swordfighting skills because of my cowardice, and antagonizing/attacking those taking care of me by casting spells.

¹⁵ – What a nice guy, eh?

¹⁶ – If you were ever wondering what it was like in the apartment when Josh and I lived together, this should give you a pretty good idea. Sure, it was volatile and somewhat violent, but we got through it.

¹⁷ – Zing! Didn’t see that coming, did you?

¹⁸ – One would think that Nate would know better than to rush a magical knight. Poor form, sir, poor form.

¹⁹ – Evening the odds! I can’t handle the suspense!

April 11, 2010 - Deep Trouble

Sixth Grade Journal – April 6, 1995

I get made fun of a lot¹, the class motto is ‘Treat others as you would like to be treated².’ I treat people like I want to be treated, but I still get treated bad³, I have no friends anymore⁴, they all gang up and turned against me. Everyone hates me⁵.

¹ – I haven’t skipped any entries from my journals thus far, but I felt somewhat compelled to leave this one out for obvious reasons because it seems "sad." That said, I do think that it’s pretty funny to lampoon this sense of melodrama, which I find rather heightened and silly for an eleven year old. This will be something of a running theme.

² – Not a bad motto as far as mottos go…

³ – But those are the risks we take. I can’t say that this is entirely true, obviously.

⁴ – This is a strange comment considering that I was one of the most popular kids in my elementary school at this time. There were times during this period when I felt slighted because I was trying to bridge the gap between my Hager friends and my ALP friends and felt like sometimes they were better friends with each other than I was with them. None of this really makes this entry any less ridiculous to me.

⁵ – I know it might sound strange, but all I can really do in response to this is laugh. What a silly boy. Underneath this entry, Mrs Robertson wrote, “I’d like to talk with you about this.” As you might imagine, I’m pretty sure we never talked about it.

Sixth Grade Journal – April 11, 1995

I would like to be the first person to live under the water⁶.

⁶ – Probably because people treated me bad and because I had no friends and because everyone hated me. That would be pretty cool, though, provided that I didn’t have to stay there. I mean, people who are in submarines must go nuts after about a week. Beside this entry, Mrs Robertson wrote, “Wow! That would be great!” I know it would be. That’s why I wrote it, lady.

Eighth Grade Journal – November 8, 1996

What’s Going On⁷? If In Lunch One Person Makes Fun Of Me (Which I Don’t Mind), Then Everyone Around Joins In⁸! Then Jenni, That Big-Headed, Bratty, Moronic Word I Don’t Want To Say⁹ Harasses Me, Usually Right In Front Of Teachers!!!! She Has Repeatedly Kicked Me, Hit Me With Her Fists, And Hit Me With Books Since My First Day Of 7^th Grade¹⁰. Just Today She Hit Me In The Head With A Book And Cussed Me Out Right In Front Of Mr. Tate¹¹! Last Year She Stole My Calculator (Actually 2) And Several Of My Things From My Locker¹². She Is Always Caught But Never Punished. I Won’t Hit Back Because It’s Not Good To Hit Girls¹³ And I’d Actually Get In Trouble. Deep Trouble¹⁴.

⁷ – Instead of continuing the Annoyance saga, today I am opting for a further exploration of my (hopefully past) penchant for melodrama. There are few better sources for this type of overblown reaction than the free write entries in this journal. I even labeled this entry, “Complaining.” Seriously.

⁸ – I love this idea. I mean I don’t care if one person makes fun of me, but if someone else joins in then that’s really going over the line! I feel like I would remember this happening, so I’m not sure that these vicious roast sessions were traumatic enough to warrant this “complaining.”

⁹ – Gentlelady? I can’t imagine that the word I had in mind was somehow worse than that!

¹⁰ – My relationship with Jenni during this period was combative and tumultuous. Although she is smart and nicer than I ever let on in eighth grade, she was guilty of such attacks against me. Is it any wonder that I didn’t know whether she liked me or hated me?

¹¹ – While she did hit me from time to time (albeit not in such a brutal or vicious way), I don’t remember Jenni ever cussing me out. I also don’t remember Mr Tate, so clearly my memory isn’t quite perfect.

¹² – Technically, she got Kris Rucinski to figure out the combination to my locker and steal all those things. I remember losing papers and such things, but never anything as serious as a calculator (or two).

¹³ – A champion of nobility and restraint. You do your thing, eighth grade Guy.

¹⁴ – This is so amazing to me that I almost think that my goal with this entry was to write something silly and melodramatic so I could be amused by its absurdly exaggerated tone fifteen years later.

Eight Grade Journal – November 10, 1996

Is It Just Me, Or Are Teachers Really Sexist¹⁵? Just Moments Ago Jenni Hill Said Something To Me. I Ignored Her But She Repeated. I Got Irritated So I Said: “Be Quiet You Moron¹⁶!” And A Teacher Told Me To Be Quiet! I Couldn’t Believe This!! Jenni Talks For 10 Minutes And When I Tell Her To Stop I Get Busted¹⁷!

¹⁵ – Well, naturally.

¹⁶ – I’m sure that’s not actually what I said, but man I wish it was. That would be a highlight reel moment that I’d like to go back in time and watch.

¹⁷ – Deep trouble, for sure.

April 10, 2010 - Chewed out by Mrs Thornburg

Sixth Grade Journal – March 21, 1995

FTC – Federal Trade Commission¹ AC – Alternating Current Est. – established Uhf. – Ultra High Frequency Pst. – Pacific Standard Time inc. – incorporated²

¹ – Seriously, a journal topic about abbreviations? Also, what reason does any sixth-grader have for knowing what the FTC stands for or what the Federal Trade Commission is?

² – This list seems so random, it makes me wonder if this topic was about figuring out what these abbreviations stood for instead of just listing abbreviations on our own.

Sixth Grade Journal – March 22, 1995

The jobs I hate are: Taking out garbage³, and going to school⁴.

³ – I didn’t really have that many chores, but taking out the garbage did make Sunday nights pretty lame. Of course, shortly after this I would have to mow our lawn using a stupid push mower. Now that was a job worth hating.

⁴ – It’s sad that kids don’t realize how awesome school is until they are done. I would love to spend eight hours a day with all of my friends five days a week. That would be a pretty great job.

Sixth Grade Journal – March 23, 1995

Today I have Advanced Youth Education⁵, a computer class, at 3:30 p.m. and I am going to the Y.M.C.A.⁶ Today is a terrible day, just for accidentely spilling some water, I got chewed out by Mrs. Thornburg⁷, man, I really dislike her⁸.

⁵ – Next to this entry, Mrs Robertson wrote, “What kinds of things do you do?” I told you that it’s a computer class…what else do you need to know, lady? I don’t owe you any sort of play-by-play of my life outside of the classroom!

⁶ – I did a lot of stuff at the Y back in those days. Also, thank goodness that I eventually dropped the habit of putting periods in-between initials in an acronym.

⁷ – Mrs Thornburg was the principal of my elementary school, and she was not my biggest fan. I don’t particularly remember this incident, and it probably didn’t only involve me accidentally spilling water, but it is likely that I got in trouble without really doing much of anything to deserve it. She was a real tyrant.

⁸ – I love that Mrs Robertson read this entry (or at least appeared to, since she commented on my Advanced Youth Education schedule) but didn’t really seem to care that I flat-out stated that I disliked the principal. Brilliant.

Sixth Grade Journal – March 23, 1995

1) serve 2) ace⁹ 3) volley 4) set 5) match 6) point¹⁰ 7) match point 8) love¹¹ 9) forehand 10) backhand 11) net 12) let 13) out 14) fault 15) win¹²

⁹ – I have always been fascinated by power servers (and therefore, aces), but it was always the weakest part of my game when I actually played. On a side note, you may notice that this entry has the same date (March 23) as the one before it. This is not a typo, but rather one of the many mysteries of this blog that might never be solved.

¹⁰ – I’m not sure that I would consider “point” a tennis-specific word.

¹¹ – Could the scoring for tennis be any weirder? Could this list contain more words that pertain to other sports or even things outside of sports?

¹² – I guess maybe I shouldn’t be so picky.

Sixth Grade Journal – April 5, 1995

When I look at old photographs, I think of when¹³ my parents, my grandpa, and the early time in which they all were alive¹⁴.

¹³ – If it appears that this sentence got away from me just a little (and I think we can agree that it did), I feel relatively certain that this was the point when the train began sliding off the track.

¹⁴ – This entry is confusing and falsely tragic. At that time both my parents were still alive (and luckily still are now), but all of my grandparents who had been alive during my lifetime were also still alive. Weird.

April 9, 2010 - But he wears glasses like me

Third Grade Journal – March 22, 1992

Atlanta Hawks is today’s player¹ team of the day. On their team is Dominique Wilkens². His number is 21. He is very good. He has won two slam-dunk titles³.

¹ – At first this seems like a typo, but I’ll let you decide which it was supposed to be.

² – That is, Dominique Wilkins.

³ – Very true. This is an important omission from the previous entry that was more clearly dedicated to the stylings of Mr Wilkins. I mean, the guy beat both Jordan and Julius Erving in 1985, and was robbed against Spud Webb. But I’m sure you already knew that.

Third Grade Journal – March 26, 1992

Today’s team of the day is the Detroit Pistons. Isiah Thomas⁴ plays for the Pistons. His number is eleven. He is⁵

⁴ – I was all set to fix this typo, but apparently it is “Isiah” and not “Isaiah.” You don’t always see riffs on Biblical names like that.

⁵ – Another case of my former self having oh so much more to say and simply running out of space and/or time. Tragic.

Third Grade Journal – March 31, 1992

Today’s team of the day the Chicago Bulls. One of the best players is Scotty Pippen⁶. He is very good⁷. The 3rd Best Player is Horace Grant. He is good too. But He wears glasses like me⁸. The best player is Micheal⁹ Jordan he is 100% owesom¹⁰ he has won two slamdunks titles.

⁶ – That is, Scottie Pippen. Also not to be confused with Scottie Pippien.

⁷ – Whoa whoa whoa. You’re just going to mention Scottie (for a second time, no less) without mentioning his participation in the 1990 slam dunk contest? For shame. I mean I know he came in fifth place out of eight contestants, but still.

⁸ – I love the “but” here. It can only mean that I felt that Horace was somehow good in spite of his glasses. Could I have really been that self-deprecating when I was eight years old?

⁹ – That is, Michael. For the longest time the name “Michael” just looked wrong to me because I didn’t understand how you could put an “a” before an “e.” I guess I got over it.

¹⁰ – But not necessarily in the same way that Manute Bol was. In case you can’t tell by the fact that I had “player of the day” entries featuring Pippen and Grant but none featuring Jordan, I was a bit of a hater in those days. Actually, I’m pretty much still a hater now, only I’ve moved on to LeBron James.

Third Grade Journal – April 6, 1992

Today’s team of the day is the Houston Rockets. Hakeem Olajuwon¹¹ plays for them. He is first place is blocks¹². Eric “Sleepy” Floyd is very good¹³.

¹¹ – Of all the names to spell correctly. I’ll say it again: what a kid.

¹² – Olajuwon was actually second in blocks during the 1991-92 season even though he had the second highest per-game average of his career. He finished just one block behind David Robinson for the season. Pretty brutal.

¹³ – I’m not sure I knew or even knew who Eric Floyd actually was. I am sure, however, that he wasn’t “very good.” Averaging 9.1 points per game (as he did for the 1991-92 season) and getting nickname because of your penchant for falling asleep during games is not what I would call a particularly strong showing or legacy.