Ancient Greek in the Time of Text-speak

I’m going to (finally) take a break from talking about anything politically related. I’m just so tired. I want to talk about something else. And even though I keep saying I want to write about jobs and job searching and all of that wonderful business, I guess I don’t ACTUALLY want to write about that, because I can never seem to make it happen.

I’ve been meeting some new people recently, and the topic of education is just one that seems to come up. “Where did you go to school” always follows the job question. So while St. John’s and education, in general, is never far from my mind (in a learning-related field, how could it not be?) I’ve been thinking about it more and more. And something I keep coming back to is the fact that I was required to learn Ancient Greek with at least enough proficiency to stumble through basic translation. An old language with an entirely different alphabet, where words could mean more than one thing, where each letter and each word was placed with special purpose. A language so unlike the Germanic and romance languages I was used to.

It was like starting from scratch. Like being brought back to a time before you knew any language at all. It was beautiful and challenging and ancient, it was a giant puzzle with a million pieces.

It was my least favorite class. At first.

I love languages. I love learning languages. But the language-learning I was used to was much more intuitive. We all learn our native language by immersion. We’re surrounded by it, we pick up on tense and word order, we learn the accepted ways to say things. Language becomes so intuitive that learning the rules feels like going backward. My brain was not trained to memorize the way that the alphabet and the rules needed to be memorized. My knowledge of English was intuitive more than it was learned. Constructs of style that made a sentence sound worse never sat well with me. I was probably a terror to have as a grammar student. I had read enough English, though, to figure out how to get away with that sort of behavior.

That can’t be done with Greek. Particularly not when you’re first starting out.

There is no word order in Attic Greek. Word order starts to come together in translation when you match word endings and tenses. You can eventually sort out who the words are talking about, what they’re doing. Where they’re going. The thing is, you have to know your stuff. You HAVE to know the who, what, when, where, why, and how. You have to know the verb tense. You have to decline the word correctly. If you make a mistake, you’re going to lose meaning. And before you even GET to translation, you just have to MEMORIZE. You have to memorize A LOT. A new alphabet, for starters. Basic words. Declensions. What goes where, when. Which accent mark you need and where it needs to go.

My brain just seemed to rebel against all of that. But it HAD to conform, somehow. If I wanted to pass the class, if I wanted to graduate, I’d have to figure it out somehow.

So I failed a lot of quizzes. I did a lot of studying that felt absolutely pointless. It seemed like I’d still fail the quizzes no matter how much I studied. Still, I studied. Still, I failed. Still, I kept on going.

I never became an expert Greek scholar or even a decent translator. I don’t remember most of what I learned. There are a couple of words I can rattle off. A phrase here and there if I’m lucky. Knowing all that, was it worth it? Was it worth the time and the effort and the failures just to come out on the other end with a Greek/English lexicon and linguistic knowledge shaky at best?

Yes.

Absolutely.

When you learn a language so different from your own, you can FEEL your brain begin to work a little differently. It starts to pick up on the nuances and the patterns. It begins to recognize how the language works, which offers you insight into the patterns and workings of your own native language.

More important than that, though, is that learning Greek taught me how to fail. And when it had taught me that, it reinforced the teaching over and over again.  I’m not perfectly unafraid of failure. I’m not sure that it’s possible to be. But I do know that failure isn’t the end of anything. It’s often only the start of some new learning. I know how far my mind can be stretched and twisted. I know that I can take something that didn’t make sense to me before, something strange and foreign, and make it into something understandable.

One Thing You Should Know: I’m TERRIBLE at Blogs

Hi. Hello. It’s been a while.

Every idea I thought I had for this blog has just sort of…drifted out the window.

I’m not sure if I should offer excuses or apologies. I never really made any promises about how long this blog would last or where it would go. I tried to figure out something of an editorial calendar for myself (back before I knew what an editorial calendar was), but that clearly didn’t quite work out.

I’m not going to, though. Life was just…life. I got a little busy. The writing part of my brain got a little burnt out. But I’m going to try this again. I’m going to go wade through the five drafts I apparently have saved, whatever they may be. I’m going to figure out if they’re worth salvaging and posting. And then I’m going to sit down and come up with a list of topics.

This blog got a WEIRD number of views for being so totally inactive, and whether that was a fluke or not, I don’t intend on wasting that.

Give me a minute. I’ll write something soon. : )

A place to stand

I want to approach this…delicately. This blog isn’t really meant to be political, despite the content of my last few posts. But it’s surrounding me right now, constantly on my mind, so I guess it’s only natural I write it.

I wrote this post the day after the conclusion of the inauguration AND the Women’s March, and scheduled it to post later. I wanted to give myself – and others – time to think and process.

In many cases, I am trapped somewhere in the middle, more conservative than some and more liberal than others. I’m not special in that regard. Very few of us, I think, are truly purely any ideology. Our conservatism or liberalism  is tested, strained, bent by our religious or personal convictions, our relationships, our experiences. Or…they should be.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, in the end our greatest similarity is that we are so different. That we’re a patchwork within a patchwork, and threads of similarity are what hold these vast differences together. But sometimes, I guess, those threads wear thin. I think we’ve seen a lot of that this year.

I want to approach this delicately, but I’m not sure I’ll always be able to. Bear with me, and feel free to scold me if I ever bash through it with a sledgehammer, instead.

I like to see myself as an optimistic realist. Or maybe a pragmatic optimist is better? The terminology seems a little squiggly, but I’ll go with either one. I’m the kind of person who believes everything is going to work out as it should be in the end. But I also believe that it can take some bad times – some incredibly difficult, terrifying times – to make it to that end. I want to view the polarization and the changes of this year in the same way. And as I’ve been examining my own experiences of this election cycle, of its aftermath, of the inauguration, I’ve come up against some moments that – I think – open up some little bits of perspective.

I. You Know What They Say About Assumptions, Right?

Never – not once – did anyone ask me who I was voting for. Instead, they basically told me. This came from both sides of the political aisle, but I noticed it most strongly with Clinton’s supporters. Maybe that’s just because I spend a good deal of time in DC, which is overwhelmingly “blue,” I don’t know. It was sort of funny the first time it happened, annoying the second, and downright scary the third…and fourth…and fifth. And so on.

It seemed taken for granted not only that I would vote for Clinton, but that I would gladly stand behind her on matters I actually disagree with. No discussions, no questions, no attempts to understand my political beliefs, my moral values, my knowledge of any political platform. Just a sort of unspoken assumption, an understanding. This didn’t move me to be more accepting of Clinton. In fact, it pushed me away from her, her party, and her platform. It didn’t push me more toward Trump…it just pushed me away.

This  wasn’t just one person, it was everywhere and everything. Every time I turned on the television, read a news article, opened a new tab on my browser, looked at Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, it was there. And it was there from both sides.

The people I knew who voted for Clinton automatically assumed that I would – of course – vote for her because she was the Greatest Good. The people  for Trump automatically assumed that I would – of course – be voting for him, because he was the Greater Good.

My question is why there wasn’t a single person – from either side – who was actually attempting to reach people like me. People who felt very strongly that they did not want to vote for either candidate. People who felt like the choice wasn’t between Good and Bad or even between a greater and lesser evil, but between awful and horrible. Why was political homogeneity simply assumed? Why should anyone ever be genuinely afraid to say who they were voting for? I wouldn’t have, if I had been asked, but plenty of people didn’t want to say they would be voting for Trump or for a third party, for fear of retaliation. What the people and the media are currently doing, what they have been doing throughout the last few years – and probably much longer than my 23 years on Earth can give perspective to – worries me much, much more than either a Trump or a Clinton presidency ever could.

And the assumptions haven’t ended with the election. The polarization in the media and in our social lives has been in the news, has been condemned by certain members of the press. People have freely admitted to it, and yet nothing changes. Something has to change. Or else we’re just going to be running in circles forever, chased by the next Democrat or Republican with big enough teeth and deep enough pockets to pursue us.

II. Who Are We? Women! What Do We Want? An Equal Voice! Who Wants Us to Shut Up and Sit Down? Um…The People Promoting Equality. 

We all have to choose for ourselves the positions we take. The places we choose to make a stand. What we’re going to fight for, who we’re going to let lead that fight…or if we’re going to lead it, ourselves.

So I’m not – and never was – against the Women’s March.

I think it was important. I think the after effects of it are important. I don’t think we should ever blindly trust political leaders of any size or shape or affiliation. I’m disappointed that – of the people who are becoming politically active now – only some of them were politically active during the Obama administration. But I’m glad they’re doing it, now. Even if I don’t always agree with them. Discussion and real, true change? That doesn’t come from any one man. That comes from people voicing their thoughts, and listening to the thoughts of others. .

But we all have to choose for ourselves the place we’re going to make a stand, and who we’re going to stand with. And that’s why I couldn’t stand with the Women’s March. Not despite the thought that all people should have equal rights under the law, but because of it. Not despite the idea that all voices should be heard, but because of it.

I think the Women’s March did a lot of things right, from the fact that it truly was a peaceful protest to the fact that the marchers walked up to and thanked law enforcement. But it was a human event, and so it was not perfect. Madonna’s speech comes to mind, as do the signs saying “protect the environment” left in heaps around DC.

But it seems like the only people talking about these problems are a lot more right-wing than me, and – often – phrased in ways that aren’t going to be productive. Saying it “wasn’t necessary” isn’t exactly right. Saying it was “useless” isn’t right, either. Saying “the wrongs outweighed the rights” is an overstatement of great proportions. I think in its supposed overarching theme, there was a good point: “Dear Mr. President, we’re nervous about some things you’ve said, some things you want to do, and we’re here to tell you that we’re watching you.”

If it were up to me, there would be a million people peacefully in DC after every election, giving that exact same message.We are the people in  the Constitution that you’ve sworn to uphold. Look at our faces. Hear our voices. Don’t let us be just numbers, Twitter mentions you never look at, letters that your staffers don’t even read. We aren’t just form-letter responses and applications to tour the White House.

I think that’s great. I think that’s important. But there’s a very big “BUT” coming.

BUT the march that was supposed to say exactly that, that was supposed to be a unifying thing? It silenced – or attempted to silence – a lot of voices. And I think we need to be careful of that, no matter who it’s coming from. This time, it was coming from Planned Parenthood, the funder of the Women’s March. The group not only denied certain groups partnership, but made it VERY CLEAR that anyone who disagreed with them wasn’t welcome.

And yes, my friends, I’m talking about the pro-lifers. Because – and I have no problem admitting this – I’m one of them.

So why is this a problem? Doesn’t Planned Parenthood, or the funder and organizer of any March have the right to deny partnerships? Sure. Deny all you want. That’s not what I’m worried about. It’s a problem because it extends far beyond denying partnership. It extends into the fact that it was made very clear that anyone who disagreed with Planned Parenthood on this point also disagreed with the March as a whole. It was made very clear that they weren’t going to be welcome at the March. And I’d hope this would be obvious, but the fall-into-line-or-shut-up mentality? That’s not exactly equality. That’s not exactly fair, is it? It’s certainly not right. In fact, it sounds a lot like what the March was professing it would protest against.

There were Pro-Life marchers there. There were Pro-Life people who participated. And even the groups who were denied partnership based on this one difference in views still chose to attend. But they were shouted at, jeered at, their signs were torn, their signs were hidden, other marchers tried to drown them out by chanting “my body, my choice.”

Like many people, I’ve been asking myself where we go from here. And my question now is this: is this movement really going to allow all people a voice, going forward? Even those who disagree?

Because disagreement comes with democracies and democratic republics and any form of government made to govern a body of people. So if you’re going to say “this is what democracy looks like,” if you’re going to say “women deserve a voice,” if you’re going to say “women deserve to be taken seriously,” if you’re going to say “women deserve to be heard,” that needs to include all women. That needs to include everyone. 

My voice saying “I believe that abortion hurts women” should not be silenced by chants of “my body, my choice” but should be answered with “why?” It should be answered with (as it sometimes was during the March, so I’ve heard) “I disagree with you, but I’m glad you’re here.” It should be answered with the understanding that my worth as a woman, as a human being, as someone with a voice, is worthy of recognition. Not scorn.That I am someone worth having a discussion with.

No, this doesn’t begin or end with abortion.  This doesn’t end with women. This extends through everything and everyone, from saying that white cis men need to sit down and shut up to saying that the only way to be a feminist is to be pro-choice. This extends to views on the economy, and the right to own a gun. This extends to every hot-button topic we’ve seen. We keep throwing stones at one another, and then pretending that the other isn’t there. All the while, we’re just shattering our own windows, putting holes in our own walls, turning our backs on ourselves and then acting surprised when we see our own destruction.

We aren’t meant to be one thing. We’re not meant to be red or blue. We’re not meant to sit down and shut up. This nation was built by people who disagreed on just about everything, and that disagreement has never stopped.

It shouldn’t have to.

And no one person or group of people has the right to decide that it should.

I didn’t vote for this

A brief life recap before I begin! I’ve started a new, wonderful job. I’m loving every minute, and so happy I took the chance on applying. You would think that would be the reason I haven’t been writing here so much, but you would be wrong. I’ve just not felt motivated, to be honest. But then Election 2016 happened.

Despite the fact that this post is going to be about the election, I’m not going to talk about politics. I’m not going to talk about all of the things the executive branch can’t do, which the general public seems to have forgotten about. I’m not going to get into the details on why the Electoral College isn’t actually The Worst Thing Ever. I’m not going to tell you if I think Trump winning the presidency is a good thing or a bad thing. You aren’t going to hear me tell you what I’m registered as or where I voted or how I feel about anything.
I’m not going to talk about any of that, because it doesn’t matter.

I’m going to talk about facts and I’m going to talk about people.

Here are the facts of the matter:

• Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election with 279 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 228.

That’s all I’ve got for you right now.

So let’s talk, guys. Let’s talk about people. And let’s talk about how absolutely horrendously disappointed I am in 95% of the people I know on Facebook.

It’s not because of who they voted for. To be honest, I don’t care who they voted for. I’m not friends with people because of their political decisions.

It’s because in the last twenty-four hours, I have seen those people tell their friends, families, coworkers, you name it, that they want nothing to do with them. Because of a vote. Because a vote makes them horrible people, despite the YEARS of evidence that probably proves the contrary. Because these people – who are, in general, intelligent and well-educated and kind – have decided that the best answer to all of this is hatred.

Hatred, and the encouragement of violence, and the alienation of people who love them. And that isn’t even touching on the simple rudeness and vulgarity, which I’ll let slide.

The answer is not creating an echo chamber for yourself, where the only people you’re friends with are those who agree with you. The answer is not telling people that they’re horrible or hateful. The answer is not hatred. The answer is trying to take ten seconds to understand. To talk. To discuss. To learn and to teach.

Because what you’re doing when you continue on this way? You’re driving stakes into an already divided nation. You’re building walls and burning bridges. You’re sending any hope we have for a better next time up in smoke.

Look – you’re allowed to be worried or confused or angry or sad. You’re allowed to be all of those things at once. You’re allowed not to like the decisions of your friends and families. I’m worried, too. I said I wouldn’t tell you who I voted for, and I’m sticking to that. But I can tell you that I truly did not want either candidate in the White House. I can tell you that I lost this election. I can tell you that I would have lost this election if HiIllary Clinton had won. And that’s what makes me angry.

America deserves better than this. America deserves better than a choice between Awful and Terrible.

And we all deserve better than the way we’ve been treating each other.

However you voted, the fact of the matter is that, in four years, you’ll have the chance to vote for someone else. You might not ever have the chance to mend the bridges you’re working so hard to burn.

People are so much more important than presidential elections. Dehumanizing, hating, dividing, ignoring? It’s going to get us something worse next time around. It’s not going to fix a single thing.

Love is the greatest gift we have in this world. I’m not saying you have to like everyone. I’m not saying you have to like anyone. I’m saying that you really should love them.

I’m saying that love shouldn’t have the condition of “if you voted for…” 

Hatred breeds hatred breeds hatred, leads to destruction, to war, to unhappiness, to brokenness. You can fix nothing with hatred. But you can heal great wounds with love.

My greatest hope is that, someday, I will actually be able to vote for a candidate I believe in. That day hasn’t come, yet. Until it does, I’m going to keep being friends with people i disagree with. I’m going to love people because of and despite of their flaws, faults, opinions, ideas, and voting records.

And I’m going to live every day thankful that I live in this nation, no matter who sits in office.

Why are Millenials so entitled?

I thought I was going to talk about jobs today, but I’m going to save that for another time. Today, I want to talk about names. I want to talk about expectations. And I want to talk about a few other things, too. But first? Let’s play a game.

I want you to go to Google or whatever other search engine you use. Type in the beginning of a few sentences. Something like this:

• “why are millenials”
• “what are millenials”
• “how can millenials”
• “why can’t millenials”

You get the point.

I want you to see how many of those automatically generated search results come up with positive search terms. Here are some phone examples:

Of course, phone browsers are pretty limited in the amount of automatically generated search terms, so let’s try my browser. I’m not going to screenshot these. I’m just using a little netbook and I don’t feel like fighting with commands and Paint right now. We’ll just try a list. Top results for some search terms. Let’s see what happens.

“Why are Millenials…”

1. So rude
2. So stupid
3. So lazy
4. So entitled
5. So narcissistic

“Why do Millenials”

1. Not vote
2. Hate America
3. Travel
4. Leave the church

“Why can’t Millenials”

1. Get jobs
2. Grow up
3. Fall in love.

Pretty similar to the phone ones, with some interesting results. Now, I’m sure you could actually search these terms and find articles and arguments about the positive aspects of my generation. Apparently, however, that’s not what people are looking for. According to these search terms (and the people searching them, because you only Google “why are Millenials so stupid” if you’re looking for validation of your poor opinion), Millenials are stupid, entitled, narcissistic, lazy, incompetent citizens who don’t amount for much now…and never will.

Here’s the thing, though. Humans have an alarming tendency to become what they are told they are. Call someone “stupid” long enough, they’ll begin to believe it. When they begin to believe it, they begin to act it. Call someone “lazy” enough times, see if they’ll choose to spend a weekend on the couch or at the gym. You don’t need to coddle someone to see a turnaround in this. I say that because it’s true AND because I’m sure there’s someone out there who’s going to come back with the “participation trophy” comment, and frankly that’s another trope I’m sick of. I’m not asking you to say that Millenials are sweet, talented, wonderful, flower-crown princes and princesses. I’m just saying it might be nice if you stopped calling us stupid and then berating us for being rude two seconds later.

Yes, you know what? There are rude Millenials. There are entitled Millenials. There are Millenials that I – a Millenial – can’t stand to be in the same room with. That’s called “being human,” you know? It happens. Some of us are rude.  But I want to say that the amount of times I’ve seen someone being outright rude (yelling at the Starbucks barista for a mistaken order, terrorizing customer service workers, cutting people off on the road, pushing and shoving on the Metro), it’s very rarely a Millenial. I’m not pointing fingers at other generations, but you know what? It’s usually the people older than we are.

Maybe I’m biased. Maybe this is what I’m unconsciously choosing to notice. I don’t know.  I can only tell you what I see.

All I can tell you is that we have grown up with the stage already set for us, particularly those of us on the younger end of the Millenial age range. Stupid, lazy, entitled, jobless, narcissistic, non-voters who hate America. May as well have stamped it on our foreheads at birth. Born in 1990? 1993? Well, we already know how you’ll turn out!

I’m exaggerating. I am. You know it, I know it. Boom. Transparency. BUT. It isn’t so grand an exaggeration.

I want to remind you that my generation grew up being told “go to school and get good grades so that you can get a good job someday.” And we did. Only to find the market glutted, even if we were lucky enough to avoid entering the workforce in the midst of the recession. (This will be another post in itself, but look at entry level job postings, and you’ll see an alarming number requiring higher degrees, including Masters and PhDs for jobs that once required a BA at the highest. You’ll see ENTRY-LEVEL JOBS requiring between three and six years worth of experience, with some as high as ten.) A high school diploma won’t get you very far, and a BA might get you a job…if you’ve got years of prior experience or good connections.

So yes, maybe it does seem like we’re entitled, maybe it does seem like we’re being asked to have jobs handed to us, but there’s another side to that story. And on another note? I’ve never met anyone who has expected to have a job handed to them. Usually they just expected to find a job within the first year after college graduation. Usually they’ve sent out applications and attended interviews and polished their resumes. Usually they’ve only received disappointment after disappointment.

We were told to expect something. We were told to expect that if we jumped through all of the hoops, hit all of the right notes, we would have a job and some sort of financial security. Most of us weren’t promised those things outright. Most of us weren’t ever expecting to hit it rich straight out of college. But you know what?

We were expecting to put those degrees we had put ourselves in debt for to good use. And we found a recession that will continue to affect our lives for many years to come.

We didn’t construct that recession. We didn’t have the chance to. We couldn’t even vote for the people who might have changed it.

If we’re stupid, we’re stupid because an educational system we did not create has great, gaping flaws. We’re stupid because we were rushed through systems that didn’t pause to help us. We were the first to see the push for academics at earlier years, the first to see the consequences of schools “teaching to the test.” We did not design that system. We had no say in that system. We had no say in what we were taught or how we were taught it.

If we’re narcissistic, it’s because of the advent of Youtube and Instagram and Facebook. We’re the “selfie generation,” right? (Let me take a moment to point out how seldom I see people my age using “selfie sticks,” because that needs to be said.) We’re also the first generation to have had access to the Internet while we grew up. We’re “narcissistic” because of another generation’s perception of us. I would argue that we’re no more narcissistic than the girls who hairsprayed their hair for hours every day, or the boys with their gel and their combs. I would say that the “selfie generation” with its Youtube stars and Instagram celebrities is no different, and no more narcissistic, than the generations that idolized Hollywood stars or supermodels. It’s different, certainly. More immediate, more present, more instantly accessible. More visible to older generations. The result is the same.

There is a fine line between pointing out problems and playing the victim. I am the first to have no patience for people trying to skate through by whining “it’s not fair” and expecting some sort of compensation handed over. I worked so hard in college that I made myself sick with it. I’ve pushed myself into challenges. I began applying for jobs months before I had even graduated from college. I worked hard, I prepared, I did what I could, and it helped. But timing was on my side, too. There was a certain degree of luck involved. I have friends who are much more intelligent than I am, much better at many things, who are just as well educated, and who have not been able to find long-term employment. Not through their own fault, usually, but because of a market glutted with college degrees and graduates of unpaid internships.

I’m saying that if we feel entitled to anything, we feel entitled to having a chance to try this strange new thing called “adulthood” without being called “stupid” at every turn. I’m saying that we feel entitled to actually being able to find and be seriously considered for entry-level jobs without first working in unpaid internships we can’t afford to take. I would say we think we’re entitled to the same opportunities other generations took for granted, not to be considered special snowflakes.

After all, we’d be the first to tell you that if everyone’s special, nobody is.

We learned that when older generations were handing out our participation trophies.

 

In case you couldn’t tell, I was always that weird kid who really liked school

No one is ever quite as interested in your own education as you are. It doesn’t matter where you go to school or how long you go there.This is probably both a good thing and a bad thing. I say this because I would honestly talk about education for ever and ever, and everyone I ever spoke to would hate me.

But a blog is a blog, and not a conversation, and you’re all free to just sort of maybe glance at this and leave. I’m not stopping you. There’s no social code to worry about. You do you. But today I’m going to tell you a little story, because education is important to me. You’re probably going to hear a lot about it if you read any future posts at all. Not necessarily about my education, but about education in general. Maybe about my views on education.

And education is one of those things where the background is actually important, unlike…I don’t know. Tax filing ? No one cares about that history. I’ve tried to forget about the whole process. And your history with it doesn’t really matter to the grand scheme of things. Education, though, that’s intensely personal. Sir Ken Robinson gave a Ted talk in which he says that education is as intensely personal as money and religion. The talk is called Do Schools Kill Creativity. (I’m addicted to Ted talks. In case you were wondering.)  And I think that my own education will give quite a bit of insight into my views on education in general. So here we go.

Part I: K-8

I spent the first eight years of formal schooling in public schools. I was technically four years old when I entered kindergarten. Though I was to turn five within the first week, my parents could have decided to wait another year before enrolling me. But, as my mom told me once, “you were ready.” I think maybe she meant that she was maybe a little bit sick of my incessant “why” questions, a game a made of asking “why” until my parents just stopped answering. I don’t really blame her.

And I was ready. I certainly didn’t know it then, but from what I remember of kindergarten screening, I – little, four-year-old, already-a-smart-ass me thought it was a little ridiculous. (Why were they making me jump rope? Do they really think I don’t know how to play with blocks? That color is red, lady, how old do you think I am?)

Public school was fine, mostly. I remember being a little bored. More than a little bored, at times. Which isn’t to say that I was one of those genius kids who skipped grades or taught herself the square roots of numbers while others were still learning to add. I certainly wasn’t. It was just that I often found myself finished with assignments before the majority of the rest of the class, and spent the remainder of the time reading or drawing or daydreaming. There were, of course, things that challenged me. Math, for example, particularly as I edged toward middle and high school.

Things were fine until middle school, and then it sort of started to break down.

I can’t quite pinpoint what it was. It was probably a mish-mash of things, all of which ended up with me crying about going to school for possibly the first time in my life. Or, at least, since very early on. And I don’t just mean “I-just-don’t-wanna-wake-up” didn’t want to go, I’m talking about nausea, sleepless, coiling dread kind.

Maybe it was being graded on making a pillow out of squares of fabric. Maybe it was the fact that my math teacher actively made fun of one of my classmates when she wasn’t in the room, refused to help me with questions I was struggling with, and didn’t believe me when I told her the NYS math test wasn’t going to have any say in whether or not I was a successful human being. (Yes, I did say something like that. I remember, because it’s not exactly like me to say things like that unless I’m angry or frustrated, and I was certainly both. But more on all of that another day.) I suppose I should actually thank that teacher, actually. It was because of her class that my mom and I discussed the idea of going to a different high-school. She made us define “sale price” as “the price at which things are sold,” and I thought it was funniest thing ever. What started as a joke (“Mom, listen to this definition!”) became a serious conversation about the fact that there were options outside of the public high-school I thought i would go to.

Part II: High School

The Buffalo Seminary was the first private school we toured. It was also the last. I just knew. It was a pattern that would repeat itself when I got to college searches.

I just had this gut feeling. This was where I wanted to go. I was willing to put all of my eggs in one basket.

I’m naming this school (though I didn’t name the previous ones) because it became a second home and a second family.

The Buffalo Seminary (SEM) is a small (and it was even smaller when I went than it is today) private, nonsectarian, all-girls high school in Buffalo, New York. It was the first of its kind in the area, and continues to be spectacularly unique in a lot of ways. I cannot begin to express how grateful I am for the simple fact that I got to be a student there.

To tell you all about this place would take an entire blog post in itself. Maybe that will come, someday. For now, here’s a picture of the facade. It’s a picture that makes me feel homesick each time I look at it.

Private schools aren’t the answer for everyone, but this particular school was my answer. For the first time I could remember, I was truly challenged. Not just challenged in math, but challenged in all subjects. Maybe most important, though, was the fact that each class made me feel truly known as a student. Not always perfectly known, maybe, but that was my fault. I was even more quiet and reserved in high school than I am, today.

The teachers cared about me, though. They cared enough to challenge and to question, to draw me out, to help me when I asked for help, or to offer help when they could see I needed it. Class sizes were small enough that individualized attention wasn’t just some wish, it was reality. I can’t remember exact class sizes, but the student:teacher ratio rarely exceeded 8:1.

There is no perfect school. There were teachers I didn’t get along with so well, and there were homework assignments that felt like they’d never be completed. I was a teenager, so I wasn’t always happy. About…anything.

But I was learning. Not just book-learning, either, though I certainly had that. I was actually involved in school beyond half-hearted membership of a school newspaper. I actually joined sports teams, which was probably shocking to anyone who had ever known me. I joined the crew team, though I bowed out before spring season of freshman year. I was a member of the fencing team. I took part in school plays, I sang in Glee Club, I was a member of Writer’s Club. I had a place. I’m not exaggerating when I say that SEM was my second home. There are some days I feel a specific type of homesick that doesn’t bring me back to the house I grew up in, but to SEM’s double doors.

There’s a saying that floats around SEM, a leftover saying from previous generations of students and teachers, that says “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” I did not realize until I was studying the Bible in college that it came from Isaiah, I only knew that it resonated with me. I only knew that I had entered SEM quiet and self-conscious and unsure, and I left with the confidence to begin a new life in a new place, entirely on my own. That confidence was not of my own creation. It was something formed in every class and every free period,formed by every teacher and every fellow student.

SEM took me seriously. I was never given weird, sidelong looks when I said I wanted to be a writer (which happened at middle school, and happened so often that I learned to shut my mouth about it). Instead, I was encouraged.

I was never dissuaded from applying to the weird liberal arts school with no majors. Instead, my college counselor’s eyes lit up as she told me she thought I’d do well there.

How can you not love a place like that? How can you not think – as I do – that education, when done right, looks quite a bit like SEM?

Part III: College

Which brings me to St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. You’ve already seen this picture if you’ve read my other posts, but here it is again:

St. John’s College is a small liberal arts school. There are no majors, and everyone graduates with the same degree. In fact, everyone takes the same classes.There are classes for mathematics, science, music, and language, and seminars two nights a week. Freshman year begins with Homer’s Iliad, and students continue through the western canon from there. Here’s the reading list. Classes are discussion based and student led, and class sizes are small. The school often makes lists with titles like “Weirdest Colleges You Can Actually Attend” (I tried but failed to find the link to the most recent one), where it is listed along with McDonald’s Hamburger University. And clown school. No joke.

Just as I knew that SEM was the place for me in high school, I knew I wanted to go to St. John’s from the moment I stepped foot on campus. Actually, I was pretty much positive from the first moment I heard about it in my sophomore year of high school (thanks, Mom!). Sitting in on classes, though? It was like nothing I had ever seen before. It felt like the perfect step forward from SEM. Small classes, entirely discussion based, and the students were asking the most wonderful (and sometimes bizarre) questions.

Now, I need to make a bit of a disclaimer, because I was far from the perfect St. John’s student. I’m quiet. I’ve always been quiet. I prefer to work through my thoughts with written words. I never spoke as much as I should have. But, as one of my favorite tutors (our word for professors, or teachers, or whatever else you want to call them) said, “You’re quiet, but you’re not silent. I hate silent students, and that’s not what you are.”  (Well, it probably WAS me, in some classes. Like lab, for example. Particularly in junior year. Maaxwell and electricity and electromagnetism presented a bit of a problem for me. I passed, somehow. It’s fine.)

The reason I mention this is because that sort of imperfection, that sort of mismatch, was part of the reason I chose St. John’s. I knew it was going to challenge me, I knew that it was going to be difficult, and I knew that there was the chance for some failure. But SEM had taught me that it’s the places of discomfort that teach you the most. It taught me that failures aren’t always actually failures, they’re just places to build on.

And I learned more at St. John’s than I could have learned anywhere else. I truly believe that. Maybe it was a “bad” fit in one category, in the area of speaking as often as I should have, but it was perfect in others. It was exactly what I needed, exactly the place I needed to be. It challenged me like nothing else has, before or (yet) since. The learning never stopped. I could leave class and sit in the coffee shop and talk for hours about music, or Greek verbs, or philosophy. I read books I never would have picked up, if I hadn’t gone to school there.Conversations carried from class to the dining hall, from the dining hall to the dorms.

Most important, though, it was another place I fit. It was a home I got to make for myself. I got to struggle. And I did struggle, let me tell you. There’s a reason that the equivalent to what we do there is a double major and a double minor. It was worth it, though. It was worth every sleepless night and every moment of stress, every moment of worry when my thoughts came to a screeching halt in the middle of trying to make a point.

I’ll tell you how I knew it was worth it: on graduation day, I couldn’t stop smiling. Not because I was so excited to leave, but because I had done this big, wonderful thing. Because I knew that I wasn’t the person I was when I started, but someone better. Someone who knew her own strengths and her own weaknesses in a way that she never had, before.

I graduated as someone who knew that her education was worth the price she had paid for it. Because as much as I complain about student loans, I don’t regret them. Maybe I should, maybe a sane person would. I can’t. Those four years were worth so much more. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

 

I can’t regret what I learned, the people I met, the conversations and the ideas that changed me, the all-night essay-writing sprees. Most of all, though, I would do it all over again for the chance to spend those four years with some of the most intelligent, thoughtful, downright strange, most wonderful people I’ve ever met.

I would not be the person I am without St. John’s. I would not be the person I am without the people I met there.

Conclusion:

This probably doesn’t explain much of anything, does it? You mostly now know that I went to two very unique schools that completely changed me as a person, in more ways than I could possibly describe here. Still, it all had to be said. As I wrote, over and over again, these places had a hand in forming me. In helping me to learn and grow and change. Most people aren’t lucky enough to call their schools “home” and mean it. I thank God every day that I was. That I am.

When everything stood still

It’s weird, the things memory can do. What it decides to hold on to and what it chooses to leave behind. How you can try to hold on so tightly to the memories you want to keep, only to find them fading like old Polaroids, while the ones you would rather forget are kept in HD. How your mind can hang on so tightly to things. How just the sight of a date on a phone screen can make it feel like you’ve just stepped in icy water.

I was in third grade on September 11, 2001. I remember (or think I remember) exactly what I was wearing. I remember how perfect that morning was, a big yellow sun and a clear blue sky. The kind of day that makes you think nothing bad could ever happen.

And I remember the sight of a television screen reflecting back that bright blue sky, but this time bleeding smoke. I remember planes flying into buildings. I remember shock. I remember seeing fear – real, true, crushing fear – on the faces of adults for the first time in my life. I remember photographs and video clips of people made into ghosts by ash, of women in skirts and high heels stained with blood, of people running. I remember my heart beating. I remember asking questions no one could answer. I remember asking why and how and who, and for the first time knowing that I’d never really know the answers.

There are moments in life we can point to. We can say “that was when everything changed.”

I’m only twenty-three years old. I only have a handful of those. But September 11, 2001, was the first. The end of some sort of innocence, the realization that there is great evil in the world, that safety isn’t promised, that there is fear beyond thunderstorms and nightmares.

It changed me then, and continued to change me as I learned things I couldn’t have known in third grade: video of firefighters walking through crowds going the opposite direction, the look in their eyes that said they knew they weren’t coming back. People falling from windows. Ash-covered crowds of people fleeing Manhattan in terrified masses. I went looking for the stories at one point, trying to piece together this memory, sharper and clearer than most, that I couldn’t understand. Trying to make sense of something that couldn’t be understood. That can’t be understood.

I can remember a time before 9/11. I can remember seeing loved ones off at the airport, right up at the gate. I can remember watching their airplanes taxi down runways. And I can remember the silence of the skies in the days that followed. I grew up just minutes from a major airport. Planes flew overhead so often that eventually they became just background noise, something you didn’t notice at all. But you could almost taste that silence.

I can remember visiting the Newseum in Washington, D.C. with my high-school class in junior year. I can remember sitting in a darkened room, watching news footage I could remember seeing for the first time. I remember looking around with tears in my eyes and seeing my classmates crying, too. I remember the hush of the elevator as we left the exhibit. I realized then what I know now. We remembered. We were so young when it happened. We grew up in Western New York, seven hours by car from Manhattan. Even those of us who didn’t lose anyone, didn’t know anyone who lived in New York, were changed by this. I knew that the way I was feeling – like a fist closing on my heart, like something heavy on my chest constricting my breath – wasn’t one I was alone in.

I remember being in middle school or high school and trying to understand why it was so painful to remember. I had no connection to the events in any real way. I had never been to New York City. I had never seen the towers in person. It felt like a sadness that wasn’t mine to have, a story I was carrying that wasn’t mine at all. Like something stolen. It took me years to realize that it’s not just New York’s story, not just the story of survivors or of those who lost loved ones. It changed the whole world, changed everything. It’s the story of anyone who remembers it. And it’s the story of those who don’t remember, who were too young or born after. The ones who have never known a world before.

I started writing this at about 11am, ET. By this time in 2001, both towers had fallen. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had just ordered the evacuation of Lower Manhattan.

Everything was different.

I can’t speak for a whole generation. Nothing gives me the right to do that. But I wonder what it means for us, a meaning that runs deeper than memories of far away smoke. This event marked us, somehow. Some more than others – the ones who lost family, who lost friends, who were there. Who saw it happen. Who were in the Pentagon’s day care center, or in school in Manhattan. But the rest of us, too. The ones in upstate or Western New York, the Midwest, Southern California, everywhere else, watching newscasts and eavesdropping on the hushed conversations of parents and teachers.

We grew up with a very real knowledge that horrible things can come out of the clear blue sky. That thousands can die because of the actions of a few. That you can wake up in one world and fall asleep in another.

That anything and everything can change in just one moment.

And that beautiful things, good things, can come out of ash and dust and rubble and terrible pain. That strangers will wrap arms around one another to help or to comfort, that even the horrible things that kill thousands don’t win, in the end. We remember not only the end but a beginning, too. Pillars of light screaming into the sky to proclaim that we will not forget, we will not be silenced, and – now – One World Trade Center.

The event is already being taught in history classes to students who don’t remember. It’s our responsibility to remember, because we’re the last generation that will. Someday we’ll be the only ones that remember. It is our story to tell. A story of a world that changed, of a nation falling to its knees in fear and pain and then – the very next day – getting to its feet again. A story of a world where other nations stopped, where other nations played the anthem of the United States, where the world for that one moment held together.

A story of fear and death and hope and life, of people who gave everything so that others could live.

We can’t forget that, any of it.

We can’t afford to.

By Derek Jensen – Tysto, Public Domain, http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=164197

 

 

23? Me?

My birthday was on Thursday. I didn’t do much, but at least this time it felt like a birthday. I don’t know exactly how to describe what I mean, but turning 22 didn’t feel much different from 21. And 23 obviously isn’t any different from 22 in any really fundamental way. Maybe I’m just feeling optimistic, but it felt like a change. In the moment, it felt like a change.

And, okay, 23  years isn’t an awfully long time to be on Earth, to be a person. I’m still only barely an adult, learning how to walk on my own for the second time in my life. I’m not the wisest, I’m not the smartest. But I’m learning. So this blog post might not be short, but it should be easy to read. It’s just going to be a list of 23 things I’ve either learned or realized over the last year. Some are silly. Some are more serious. I tried to avoid clichés and platitudes. I don’t know that I really succeeded.

Here goes.

23. Always check to make sure you have a mixing bowl BEFORE you begin baking.

22. It’s always harder to get started than it is to actually do the things you’re thinking about doing.

21. Having a dog isn’t going to solve all of your problems. Or any of them. It might even add a few. But it does make your life better.

20. You will get lost. It’s inevitable. Don’t panic. You will accidentally end up, say, in Washington D.C. when you meant to be in Maryland. You’ll accidentally end up in, you know…the Pentagon parking lot. Without meaning to go there. “Lost” is a temporary state of being. Slow down. Breathe. Keep going. You’ll figure it out. You’ll get there. (This doesn’t just apply to roads and maps and Siri’s directions, either. Life can get you lost, too. The same advice applies.)

19. Sometimes “sick” doesn’t mean coughs and colds, it means bone-deep-tired and aching-pain and something that clenches tight around your stomach and your vocal cords and your heart and won’t let go. Sometimes “sick” doesn’t mean in the body. Sometimes “sick” means something you can’t explain. Take the day off anyway. You’ll feel better in the morning.

18. Where you are right now isn’t where you’ll be forever. You’re not stuck. Things will change.

17. Answers aren’t always final answers. There are some things you can negotiate, and some things you can’t change. You won’t know until you try.

16. You’re not going to bankrupt yourself by buying that extra cup of coffee when you just can’t keep your eyes open. Stop torturing yourself. It’s a dollar. You’ll be fine.

15. A year isn’t very long at all.

14.Surprising people with kindness can be so, so small. And so big, all at once.

13. There are people who would give anything to have the kind of life you get to lead. Try not to forget that.

12. All hurts and joys are lessons. Sometimes they only teach you how to hurt and keep going, or how to find joy through some sort of darkness. And that’s okay. Sometimes the feeling itself is the most important lesson.

11. Drugstore makeup usually does the job just as well as the fancier stuff (and costs you less), but you know what? It’s okay to buy that overpriced liquid lipstick once in a while.

10. It’s okay to have days (or weeks, or even months) where you do nothing at all. Where you close all the doors and all of the blinds and stay inside. Where you do nothing but read or watch Netflix and drink tea. Just don’t let that be all you ever do.

9. The people you don’t expect to be friends with? They’ll surprise you. Sometimes they’ll be just the friends you didn’t know you needed.

8. There’s no such thing as taking too many pictures, even when they’re pictures you don’t want to be in. Just smile. Stop worrying about your body or how to hold your hands or if your hair is out of place. I promise you don’t look as bad as you think you do.

7. Learning is always going to happen, whether you go looking for it or not. But some learning requires you to go after it, to fight for it. Sometimes it isn’t a pretty fight, or an easy one. Sometimes you’re too tired or too busy to do much more than sort of stand at the edges of it. Rest, recuperate, and keep seeking.

6. You don’t have to be The Little Engine That Could. Persistence is important, determination is important, but you are not a train. You are not on a track. It isn’t so much about “I think I can, I think I can,” as it is about KNOWING you can. But maybe not like this. Maybe not right now. Maybe not without a little bit of help. Maybe there’s a different way. (And if there’s not? Take a deep breath and keep those wheels moving.)

5. Do things that make you happy. Little things. Wear a favorite piece of clothing, put a little extra cream in your coffee, try a new kind of tea. When things get dark or gloomy or tough, it’s those little things that will keep you pulling through. And when things are good? Those little things will make life even better.

4. Try to slow down. Even just a little. Just for a little bit at a time. Even if it doesn’t quite work out, even if you have to pick up some speed at some point, the trying will make a difference.

3. Find joy in things like certain slants of light, or the way the clouds are moving Always notice the moon.Love everything – every little flower, every bird, every person. Even if you don’t always like them.

2. There are more things in this world that you don’t know than things you do. Let it make you feel small, sometimes. Don’t let it crush you.

1. No one really knows just where they’re going or what they’re going to do when they get there. Not really. There’s going to be times where this becomes absolutely clear. When you’re in a snow-storm trying to get home, two hours into a commute that should have taken half an hour. Everyone has the same white-knuckles on the steering wheel, but everyone is together, somehow. Helping to dig out, to get un-stuck, to keep moving. You know this, even though it’s so easy to forget. Don’t forget.

“But what are you going to DO with that?”

Attention: this post was written on my iPhone. Autocorrect and phone keyboards may have done some silly things. I’ve tried to correct them all, but I may have missed one or two. Forgive me this lapse in attention to editing!

So much for twice-a-week scheduling. The funny thing is, I have excuses but I had the time. I thought about writing something both days that I was supposed to, and each day in between. Somehow, I just never made it to a keyboard. Willful abandonment of blogging duties, I know. I would say I’m sorry but that wouldn’t really mean anything, and I doubt any of you actually need the apology. Work is a thing. Traffic is a problem. I was too lazy or too tired or too distracted. The usual. 

This blog post wanders a bit. Just fair warning. I tried to make it stick to a path, but it didn’t want to. And it’s just a blog post, not a business proposal, so I didn’t feel like forcing it. Anyway. 

I have a Liberal Arts degree. I also have a full time job, one I was offered while I was still finishing my last year of school. But while I was still in the middle of earning my degree, the general public seemed to think no job would ever hire me. Whenever I – eager to explain the course of study I was enjoying so much, learning so much from – explained what I was doing in college, I would receive the same question every time:

“What are you going to DO with that?”

It was a question I grew used to answering with a forced smile and super-sweet politeness, patience and manners strained with the repetition. I was learning so much, working so hard, and the question was not “what are you learning,” not even a question of what I wanted to do when I graduated (asked in true interest, curiosity, or excitement) but a skeptical question. A startled sort of judgement always lingered in their eyes, as if I had told them I was pursuing a degree in 1990s Cartoons. 

The answer I usually have was a non-answer to match the non-question. I’d tell them that I didn’t know, that I was still thinking about it, that other schools and employers knew my school’s good reputation. But what I wanted to do was to go on and on about the importance of the degree I was pursuing. I wanted to explain that I had chosen this degree (and St. John’s College’s program in particular) because I didn’t want to specialize, I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn everything, because I wanted to write. And to write successfully, I knew that a broad, solid base of education would be the best start. 

We’ve begun to treat education like some sort of factory, churning out parts for other industries. We make people into wheels or cogs or pistons to fit a specific purpose, to fill a specific need. They go on to fit into place in machines called “Business” or “Education” or “Medicine” or “Law.” And maybe they are well prepared for these slots. We certainly need them there. We need doctors and teachers and lawyers and business executives. My concern is that we are making people capable of one thing and one thing only, taking away the freedom to learn and move and change. 

For a long time, maybe the job market wasn’t structured to support that kind of freedom, but soon we may need that ability to move and change and grow in order to keep a job at all. 

It wouldn’t be so bad if specialization existed only in higher education, but it starts much earlier than college or grad school. We begin to worry about teaching “job skills” while kids are still more interested in blocks and dolls than in stocks and industry. We strip away the broad foundation on which they could build these interests, and then wonder why our country remains so far behind in comprehension skills. The liberal arts, the humanities, are not taught at the beginning, not offered to everyone. They’re seen as a luxury, somehow a specialty in themselves, left for the cerebral or the indecisive or the last-minute-major-pickers to follow. 

This mentality- education for utility – can be heard everywhere. We don’t really go to college to learn anymore, do we? Ask a high school grad why they’re going to college, and they’ll probably tell you that they’re going because they have to, they’re going so that they can get a good job (four years and thousands of dollars later). Think about all of the basic, entry-level jobs that require bachelor’s degrees or master’s degrees. Middle and high school classes resound with students asking “but when are we really going to use this?” 

My education started in the middle of those echoes, elementary and middle school full of those questions. What’s interesting to me is not the question itself but the way it was addressed. In my public middle school, when someone asked “but what are we going to DO with this?” something like a concrete answer was given. As though the teacher needed to defend the teaching. We would need this particular math problem if we wanted to carpet a floor. Of course, the real answer was that we would need to know the answer to this question so that we wouldn’t fail the standardized tests. 

In fact, most of the standardized tests that I remember included questions designed to apply to the “real world.” In ways that would never be useful to the average person, unless you were planning to become a lawn-cutting fanatic, or the type of person to buy 500 watermelons, sell 16, cut 12 in half, and divide the rest among your friends (leaving how many for you?). 

In my private high school (exempt from the shadow of standardized testing) the answer was different.

I can remember the time someone asked “but when are we really going to need this?” in Algebra-Trig. We were frustrated, staring down a complicated problem, and it was early. The question came as a way to dismiss this problem, to solve-without-solving. I remember the patient smile on our teacher’s face, but I remember her answer more clearly: “you won’t.” 

“You won’t,” she said, “but it’s not about that. It’s not about teaching you answers for specific problems, it’s about teaching yourself to think. It’s about teaching yourself to think in different ways.”

Because if you’re only taught how to answer one question, what do you do when that question changes? What do you do when new questions arise? A broad education including problems you may never realistically “need” prepares your mind to adapt. To problem solve, even with variables that are changing, that are beyond your control, that don’t quite make sense yet. 

Education isn’t about – shouldn’t be about – preparing you to carpet floors or take shortcuts across differently shaped lawns from point to point. It shouldn’t be about preparing students to become workers, but preparing them to be people. To be adults. It should be about preparing them to think about what it means to be human, what it means to make choices, what it means to be free. It should be about preparing them to make their own decisions, preparing them not for the work force but for the life outside of paid time. 

Life is not an exam with cut-and-dry answers or unchanging circumstances. And, yes, children in shool should learn how to get from point A to point B, they should learn grammar and arithmetic, area and circumference, and all the rest. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t. I am saying that the reason shouldn’t be “so that you’ll do well on the test” or “so that you can carpet a floor,” the reason should be the reason my math teacher gave: “so that you can learn how to learn.”

The St. John’s College motto translates to “I make free men from children by means of books and a balance,” the seal is a scale encircled with books to represent the liberal arts and sciences. And so to all of those questioners, I say: “what am I going to do with that? I’m going to learn. I’m going to live. And I am going to be free.” Oh, and I’m going to get a job. While I’m still in school. Because that’s how well my “useless” degree prepared me.

I’m going to end this long and winding blog post with a quote from Scott Buchanan’s essay “The Last Don Rag,” which served as a constant reminder, while I was struggling and working and learning, of why I was there in the first place. 

“Intellectual freedom begins when one says with Socrates that he knows that he knows nothing, and then goes on to add: Do you know what you don’t know and therefore what you should know? If your answer is affirmative and humble, then you are your own teacher, you are making your own assignment, and you will be your own best critic. You will not need externally imposed courses, nor marks, nor diplomas, nor a nod from your boss . . . in business or in politics.”

Thursday, 7:49 pm

Well, guys. I don’t know how I’m going to tag this. I’m not even sure how I’m going to write it. I clearly didn’t know what to title it. This isn’t the post I was planning on writing today. Or ever, for that matter.

The truth is that my stomach is in knots and there’s a strange, scratchy feeling in my throat, like that feeling you get just before you start to cry. But I’m dry-eyed. I’m breathing normally. I made dinner and I ate and I talked to my mom on the phone. And my best writing never comes from pain.

Some people bleed through words. Sometimes I do, too. But it’s never the sort of thing meant to be read. Those words are kept in notebooks and tucked tenderly away. They’re ugly and messy and wandering, and they bring me right back to the way I felt then. I’ve always preferred to laugh through words. To explore. For me, words – and writing – have meant adventure. Joyous adventure. So even when I was writing about something sad or difficult or strange, I could find some quest in it. And I could revel in that.

This is not a feeling I can revel in, but it has been sitting inside of me, and I think it would hurt worse not to see it in writing.

It’s difficult for me to talk about it because of how fresh this hurt is. I hate to know the people I love are hurting, or at risk of being hurt. It hurts to watch things fall apart. It hurts to be so far away from the people I care about most. It hurts to love. We think it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, but it does. And it should.

We talk about this flimsy, floppy, Valentine’s-day love built on bouquets of flowers and thin promises. We bury ourselves in loves like that, and call it the real thing. Worse, we call sex love. Sometimes, it seems, society says that sex is better than love.The rise of Tindr proved that. Because that love? That isn’t real love. That’s candy floss. That will dissolve the moment there’s a drop of rain. But real love?

Real love is tough. It’s strong. It endures.

There’s a popular idea now – and I’ve seen it everywhere – that we should cut people out of our lives for destroying our “peace of mind”. We slap the label “toxic” on any old thing and call it valid. And, yes, sometimes it is. Sometimes we find ourselves entangled with people who are venomous, who drag us down, who hurt us for the sake of hurting. And sometimes we see a threat to our mental peace in well-meaning words, in honesty.

I had a high-school teacher once who told us that discomfort is a good thing. It means you’re learning. You’re growing. That math problem you have to present in front of the class? It’s not your enemy. It’s going to help you grow. I never felt alone in that class, no matter how little I understood.

And I’ve never felt alone in this life because I have friends who love me enough to be honest with me. Not the “brutally honest” label we sometimes like to give ourselves these days, not the type of honest that’s really just plain old being mean. But the kind of honest that means I’m loved. I’m cared for. Love doesn’t mean trying to keep people exactly as they are, or protecting them from every hurt that comes along. Because love doesn’t settle. It doesn’t say “I’m going to preserve you exactly as you are right now, because you are perfect.” It says “I know you aren’t perfect, but I know you are good. I know you can be better. It’s going to be a rough walk, and sometimes I’m going to have to drag you up that steep hill you don’t even want to look at. But we’re going to do that together. We’re going to make each other better.”

Love is a choice. Love is the needle that lances the wound, and love is the healing salve after. Love is not letting your child fall asleep after that hard knock to the head (even though they really, really want to!). There is discipline in love, and sacrifice, and other hard things we don’t much like talking about.

I’ve always felt that 1 Corinthians 13 was the most overused passage of the Bible. There are so many wonderful words about love in that book, yet these are the ones we return to.

I never saw the struggle, before. Just think about the people you love. How they’ve tried you. How sometimes you just don’t like them very much. Think about the times you almost walked away. And then read it again. It is not easy to be patient or kind. It is not easy to leave pride at the door. It is not easy to quell anger or to forgive. It is not easy to persevere in the face of great odds.

But that’s love for you.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

Tonight I hope, I love, and I hurt. Why that’s so isn’t a story for the public (and isn’t that, after all, what the internet is? Isn’t what I’m doing now like sitting down at the mall food court with a total stranger and telling them that I’m hurting?).

Next up: “But what are you going to DO with that?”: A case for “useless” degrees.