My friend made this epic artwork a few days ago for fun and gave it to me. I added the background (because why not? Blue’s amazing!) and of course every artist’s signature must be in their work somewhere. This friend of mine said that it was all mine and she didn’t need any credit, but when do I ever listen? So, I added on a codename and here we have it:
I got it a few days ago and didn’t just want to randomly throw it on. I was waiting for a special occasion. And that day came about today. Today is officially my last day of my Freshman year of college.
I don’t get it. Not one bit. How the hell did the time pass that fast?
I feel like just yesterday I had left my hometown, was wandering my apartment building, lost, and using needing a drink of water as excuse for conversation with my last link to home (long story for another time. Maybe. No promises). And I complained about being homesick. Missing the old neighborhood, my friends, my high school, my teachers, my dad and my brother.
And now, having to go back to that home tomorrow morning, I’m missing this home. The apartments, the town, the Chipotle that’s at a walkable distance!! (and let me tell you, Chipotle is my most favorite restaurant in the frikin’ world!) I’m going to miss the staff and the students. The professors that helped me refine my skills in not just the subjects they taught, but in life. And I will especially miss my Hemingway-loving English prof who was the only professor I had two semester in a row.
I believe I’ve already told this story in my first post, but I’ll say it again – When I first came here, I hated Hemingway. I hated most classic lit. It was boring and I wanted action and romance and John Grisham and Robyn Carr. Hell even the stories from my Disney Storybook Collection seemed more interesting than In Our Time.
But over the course of several months, I’ve learned to appreciate that it doesn’t matter whether it’s classic lit or contemporary fiction. It doesn’t matter if it’s Disney or Dickenson. It doesn’t matter if it’s the written word, a painting, or a piece of music.
It’s all about the same thing.
It took me a minute to realize it, but it really is.
About a week ago, I wanna say, I reconnected with an old English teacher from high school and she was talking about how they’re trying to revamp the curriculum to make it more inclusive and I gave her some modern recommendations (both of which came out of my Contemporary Lit. class from my first semester), specifically Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (at the time, these were the two that came to mind and I knew I made the right choices when she said she had read them both) accompanied by this explanation:
Every year since elementary school, I’d always be taught one text at a time. Rarely, yes, I’d be given a more contemporary work to read, but then, it would only be that one work I’d be concentrating on. And even up until my senior year of high school, my reading speed just wasn’t as fast and so I’d only focus on that one book and I’d wait for a separate time to read my choices from the library. (It wasn’t until quarantine that my reading speed picked up).
Then came my Freshman year of college and I doubled up on English. I took a class that focused primarily on Hemingway, then the Contemporary Lit. course. It forced me- no, it gave me the opportunity to read both classic and contemporary literature at the same time. And that opened my eyes a lot. And it wasn’t just in those two classes… Lessons I learned there, I was able to apply them to my curriculum in other classes too. It almost blew my mind. And then, I realized, that’s how it’s meant to be.
That’s what it’s been about…
It wasn’t until high school that I attained a true understanding of what it means to learn. It wasn’t until high school that I felt I had teachers who cared less about the grades and more about the subjects they taught us, and even more importantly the life lessons they gave us.
All the way from my Freshman year Gym teacher to my Senior year Calc teacher, each and every single one, half the time would go something along the lines of this: I don’t care if by the end of this class, you learn nothing about [insert subject here]. though it would be nice if you did.” [Cue the class laughter here]. “I care more about turning you all into mature young adults who are ready go out into the real world.” (Note that no teacher ever specifically said this verbatim, but you get the idea).
And I was a little afraid going into college that I might miss those true learning opportunities. They tells us a lot of horror stories when we’re graduating about how the course load doubles and triples and it’s all about the G.P.A. and, let me say, that’s a bunch of B.S. (And B.S. does not stand for Bachelor of Science).
Don’t get me wrong, these people do care about our grades and they do want us to learn whatever subjects they’re teaching. But it goes beyond that. A person who got an A only by memorizing facts and figures and has no real understanding of how to apply anything they learned is a lot worse off than that person who may have received a B but gave it their all and took at least one important life lesson away from the class that they can apply to their real lives and the real world and make a real impact.
Or at least that’s how it works where I am.
And I could not be more grateful.
I’m really gonna miss you [insert name of college and/or college town here which I am not telling you for privacy/security concerns but if you know me, you know it, so fill it in].
But after a couple of days of spiraling in and out of this blog about several reasons I don’t want to leave…. I’ve finally decided, it’s time.
*Taking a deep breath*…. I’m going home tomorrow morning. And I’ll be back in the Fall.
