First of all, I'm mad as hell, and I've been trying not to show it, and it's just making me madder, and somewhat mean. So, first things first: I've gotta gripe a little bit... Just to clear the air a little...
Okay... Here goes:
This summer, I am taking two "classes" at Evergreen. One "class" lasts all summer, and I get fourteen credits for it. The other lasts for the second half of the summer (which begins Monday), and I get four credits for it. To give you an idea of what a "credit" is worth, a full-time student usually takes 16 credits per quarter, or 48 per year. This year, I have taken 56. I would have taken 60, but that would have cost me an extra $1,600. And fuck that. Furthermore, I do not know of ONE student -- aside from myself -- who has NEVER LOST one credit, either for absences, or not doing assignments on time, or whatever.
If all goes well -- and, knowing me, I don't expect that it will, although I'm holding out hope -- I will graduate with LESS THAN FOUR YEARS OF COLLEGE. Technically, it'll be three years and two-third of a year, or something. But it's still less than four years of actually being in school. Why? Because I've fucking WORKED HARD.
Okay. That's just some background information.
Now, I need to explain a couple of other things... Evergreen is a very cool school. They let you study pretty much whatever you want, and you can get a degree in it. You can get a degree in recreational drugs, if that's what you're interested in. But, the catch is, you ACTUALLY HAVE TO DO WORK. That is, you can't just sit in your dorm room and smoke weed and get credit for it. You have to read books about OTHER people sitting in THEIR dorm rooms smoking weed. You have to write papers about your experiences. You have to meet with others to workshop about sitting in your dorm room and smoking weed. You have to learn interpretive dance and choreograph and produce a performance-art piece relating to sitting in your dorm room smoking weed. Then, you have to write an evaluation of yourself, and one of your teacher. This might be fun, for those people who would be interested. However, it's also WORK. You REALLY have to DO stuff. Unless you're in Dave Rutledge's class. He doesn't really expect anything from you. But you really ought to at least pretend to do something. Otherwise, you just suck.
Evergreen has these things called contracts. This is where you design your own "class." In order to do a contract, you have to fill out a form, beg various faculty members to "sponsor" you (nobody likes to sponsor contracts), write up some proposal-type stuff, including what you're going to be doing each week, and then collect a shitload of signatures to hand in to the registrar's office. And that's BEFORE you do any "work."
So, this summer, my fourteen-credit "class" is a contract. And my contract is this: I'm going to work on my book. It doesn't sound particularly academic, but what the fuck? Other people will spend an entire quarter on ONE painting. Hell, some people spend a whole quarter -- sometimes more! -- on choreographing a dance, directing a play, etc -- something that happens only once or twice, and then you've spent a whole ten weeks on it! One girl I met, made a "house" out of cardboard and shitty plastic things from a secondhand store, and then tore the entire thing up, and gave all the plastic things to passers-by. Seriously. So, okay, I don't feel so awfully un-academic after all.
So, I'm working on my book. I've been "working on my book" for six years now -- six years and a month, today, if you want to get technical. But now, I actually have to do work. In my proposal -- which my professor never actually read, but I wrote one anyway -- I decided to write AT LEAST five chapters during these ten weeks. That's one chapter every two weeks. Each chapter is approximately seven pages long, give or take. That's thirty-five pages -- single-spaced. Plus, I'm keeping an almost-daily journal about my progress. PLUS, I'm keeping a book log, because I was a jackass, and ordered a shitload of books from Amazon.com at the beginning of the summer, and I'm bound and determined to read at least SOME of them. So, when I'm not writing, either a chapter, or a journal entry (a paper journal, FYI), I'm reading something from my humongous stack of books. Technically, I'm also supposed to meet with my professor once a week, and go to the Writing Center once a week, but I've been kind of lazy about that. This is mostly because my professor, who is really quite a nice person, and a VERY good teacher, happens to be a total flake, and is constantly rescheduling. And, my Writing Center woman, who is an absolute goddess, went on vacation for two weeks. So, okay, I've been sucking ass about that stuff.
Okay, so that's my contract.
Now, Monday will be the halfway mark for this contract. So, maybe I ought to assess my progress so far...
I have kept a (paper) journal almost every day -- completely separate from this one -- outlining my progress, talking about what else I need to work on, etc. I have read four books so far, and I'm almost done with a fifth -- and I've written several paragraphs about each one. I have met with my professor twice, and have gone to the Writing Center twice. And, most importantly, I have already finished FIVE chapters, plus about a half a one I was working on today. That's a grand total of thirty-six single-spaced pages.
That's:
* One entire chapter (6-7 pages) every week: written, proofread, and revised at least a little bit.
* One entire book every week -- that's an average of 319 pages PER WEEK that I've read; an average of more than 45 pages per day. And please trust me on this one; some of these books aren't easy at ALL...
* Twenty-two pages of hand-written journals and notes and stuff
* ...to say nothing of the journal pages I'm not going to put into my portfolio at the end of the quarter. To say nothing of the research I've been doing, which often takes HOURS for one or two stupid little facts. To say nothing of "prep-time," which is, for me, the writer's equivalent of stretching before a marathon: getting myself into the right mood, getting my body adequate nutrition, listening to the right music, making sure everything's in place so I don't have to get up, etc. (Prep-time often takes an entire day... And it doesn't always work...) This doesn't count laundry (of which I did SEVEN loads last week), cooking (I usually cook at least one meal per day for Jake and I, plus a few snacky things), letting the dog out, feeding Jake's nephew sometimes, and waking Jake up before five or six in the evening (which is a thankless, cruel job, but somebody's gotta do it, and it may as well be somebody who loves him, or he'd get his ass whooped for being such a dick in the mornings -- *grin*).
So...
This is what I have been doing.
I am telling you this because this is absolutely THE LAST TIME I am EVER going to justify my work to anybody -- mentally, or verbally.
I'm not going to name names, I'm really not. Because I really love and respect some of the people who think I'm not doing any work.
What the fuck do you think I HAVE been doing?
Okay, so it looks like I do a lot of sitting in front of the computer. It looks like I sit in the yard and read and smoke cigarettes a lot. It looks like I'm leading a pretty slow lifestyle. Well, by the way, regardless of whether or not I publish this book, it's GOING to be good. It's going to be VERY good. Meanwhile, I've learned about a million things I never knew about myself, the English language, and the psychology of relationships. Oh yeah, and I had to do a bunch of research about some weird crap, too, so I also learned some mostly-useless knowledge about ammunition, ancient religions, abnormal psychology (including stuff that's not even CLOSE to being in Intro. to Ab. Psych textbooks), and upstate New York local history.
So, my book's going to be very good -- a lot of it is already very good -- and I'm learning a lot of things. I'm going to be able to teach English someday, and I'm going to be able to do it WELL, because I know where I fail as a reader and a writer, and I'm learning tricks to avoid failures. I've been working on THOSE kinds of techniques in every class I've taken so far. Monday, I start my linguistics class, and next year, I'm finally going to learn another language -- hopefully, that'll prepare me for teaching English as a second language someday. It's an option I'm going to keep open, at least. Contrary to popular belief, despite the fact that most teachers do actually suck, teaching IS a very noble profession. It is also a very necessary profession; there have been teachers, or something similar to them, since the days of cavemen.
So, before you DARE give me "that look," like I'm wasting my time, like I'm a burden on everybody around me who does "REAL" work, like I really ought to be doing something useful, like dusting the windowsills or something, please TRY to consider the idea that I AM doing work, and I AM accomplishing something, and that I AM going to be successful in my life -- that, in fact, I already AM successful... And, that I'm probably happier than you. I don't mean to rub that in, but I'm doing what I love, and I'm good at it, and I really couldn't be any happier with my current "work" -- and how many people can say THAT?
(It actually makes no difference whether I write these things or not, because most of the people who give me "that look," or actively tell me I ought to "DO" something with my life, do not read this journal... But at least I feel a lot better now...)
I was sitting in a coffeeshop today at 4:30 when my tattoo started to tingle. It wasn't "tingling," exactly, but it wasn't quite "aching," either. Sort of a combination between the two.
Once, I had a friend with a tattoo of the same thing, in the same place: our left wrists. His was old and big and looked like he'd had an accident with a pen; mine was small and new and cute. I never even realized exactly what his tattoo was supposed to be until long after I'd gotten mine.
I think, when my tattoo tingles, it means we're thinking about each other at the same time. I can't think of any other explanation. So I felt very comforted. I smiled, and whispered: "I'm thinking of you too, wherever you are..."
Then I closed up the laptop and went home.
~Helena*