If I had a pile

of (all the words
I never) said,
I'd pick out and give you
all the ones
that (told you) that you
are worthy
of love.

Pumpkin pie for beakfast, pumpkin pie for lunch

but I just say "Family," when I'm asked what I'm thankful for.

The Placeholder

I put my jacket
on the seat beside me so
if you come, I won't have to
tell everyone to scoot
down a chair.

In the meantime I am
quite enjoying the company
of my jacket and
am a little concerned that
you may not be
able to match
its wit for conversation
or its aptitude for
keeping me
warm.

Atlas

When I look at
my reflection
(in the windows)
in the windows of the
academic buildings
there is (nothing
but a whisper)
a suggestion of a girl
a little
thing that carries
on her back
a backpack
bigger than she is
(bigger than she
is.)

Change the world

one unordinary kindness at a time.

Those Liars.

I cleaned my room
but somehow

my heart's still dusty
my mind's still crowded.

(and
they told me it was
all-purpose cleaner!)

I went to a protest

just to rub up against strangers.

The Applause of Crickets

We cradled the cracks on the sidewalk with careful steps.  There was nothing more to be said on the subject, so we said everything again, this time with more expression and hand movements.

"I just don't get what the use of a 'break' is!" I voiced to the night sky.

"I know!" Up went her hands.  "And I hate calling it that.  It's only two letters short of a break up."

It was a sad but cathartic rehearsal.

Quiet gathered around our soft, rhythmic pace.  Our performance must have rendered our audience of passers into awed silence.  I let out a sigh into the night sky, then shook my head.

A bus pulled up on the street beside us.  Just as she was about to roll on to repeating Act 1 again, I pushed her up the wet metal steps and dragged her onto a seat.  She was almost surprised, but not enough to protest.

We fidgeted, and sat.

A woman across from us in droopy, laundry-sack clothes fished an apple out of a walmart bag and took a bite.

"I just wish I knew what he meant." She said simply, looking off.

 I hushed her. "We're going to take this bus wherever it's going."

"Should I just text him and tell him I think we shouldn't call it a 'break'?"

"We both know you won't be able to focus on your classes tomorrow, anyhow.  You won't miss much by skipping them."

Her voice rose.  "And who's going to get the kids?"

"We'll get a room wherever we end up.  Somewhere cheap. I have my debit card."

"Obviously you are going to side with me.  But... what about the rest of our friends?"

"Plus, you can just get notes from other kids in your classes.  People like you, cause you lead all the group projects.  They owe you."

"I don't want there to be this... weird... division." She looked me at me with those perfectly framed blue disks of ocean.  "What if he decides this is it?"  The ocean stirred.

I breathed. "It's not over yet.  Don't count your doom-chickens until they hatch."

"They do owe me."

"What?"

"For the group projects."

"Oh."  I slumped further into my seat. "I thought you were talking about the doom-chickens."

The apple-woman's lips were leaking juice out of the sides of her mouth with every crunch.

The bus rumbled beneath us, and with every toss, our necks became less and less eager to hold our heads up.  Like old helium balloons, our heads slowly slacked and rested comfortably together.  I closed my eyes and imagined that we were headed to New York City, where it was snowing a magical snow that covered the streets in glimmer.  I pictured us stepping out into a world of white that made us smile and want to buy red satin gloves.

When we jerked awake, it was not snowing.  It had begun to rain again as the bus screeched for us to exit.  The woman was gone, and had left behind a browning core on the seat.  We shifted out and wandered onto the damp florescent-lit street.  The bus pulled away as our eyes were still trying to adjust to the night.  I peered at the silhouetted buildings, the trees, and then down at the cracked pavement.  We had taken a campus bus, which had looped back to where we had started.  I took her hand and we walked back to the dorms, accompanied by the applause of crickets.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- fictional

Right Foot in Front of Left Foot, Left Foot in Front of Right Foot

Some days

it's all I can
do.

The Wise Fool

In the past month, I've felt a lot of shifts happening in my life.  I've evolved from being a student, to being a teacher, and from being a follower, to being a leader.

 And yet, I still carry on my back my former identities, realizing that I am still what I was last year.  As a teacher, I must learn how to be a catalyst to my students.  As a leader, I must follow the needs of those who are under my charge. 

Is this the burden of the wise fool?  To lead younger fools, while in full knowledge that you know no more than any of them?

As I watch my students and my friends going through the same difficulties (yet always through different paths) that I did last year, I can help wanting to “save” them.  I want so badly to explain to them why everything is going to be okay, to tell them that they’ll be better and alright in the end, to remind them that God loves them and is with them to hold their hands every step of the way.  Yet, I know that words and explanations are useless.  Not because they would not listen, but because there is a reason for the voyage to be long and filled with hardships.  We all must suffer into truth.

I’m glad I made a makeshift scrapbook last year, of various scraps of paper and thoughts of the day.  It helps  to remind me where I’ve been. 

As I retrace back through the books I read last year, making notes beside last year’s notes, I see the mark on the door frame that shows I’m just a bit taller than I was last year.  Yet in some ways, though my understanding of just how little I know has increased, I can’t help feeling a little bit threadbare.  Like a room under renovation whose workers stalled further progress after tearing it all down, I am waiting to be finished.  I am waiting for the Renovator to finish his work, so I can be more than an austere, empty space fit only for suitcases and odd bits of furniture.

The Kingdom of Heaven Looks Like

a round table
of friends and just-met-friends
laughing and singing
together, ever eager
to scoot their chairs closer
and turn their trays sideways
to make room
for
one more chair.

On Chasing After One's Hat

At 11:56 pm, in the second floor lounge of my dorm, there are kids finding corners to skype their friends in semi-privacy.   Above me, on the third floor balcony, there is a girl enjoying her cup-o-noodles over a collage of papers.  I am out here debating on whether to make this a late night or an early morning.

 700 words stand between me and my pillow.  They are due at 9:30 am tomorrow morning. I will punch, tear, or coax my way through them if need be.

Starting assignments is the longest part of the process for me, because I love titles.  When I interviewed for the scholarship that I didn't get, but inadvertently led to my life being what it now beautifully is, I spent half of the hour I was given choosing a title and a font for the essay I was prompted to write.

As I said, I didn't get the scholarship.  I did, however, end up getting two jobs and some of the best friends I could possibly imagine out of it.  I'm now extremely grateful not to have gotten that scholarship, because I think it might have ruined me.  It would have given me a sense of responsibility toward some sort of greatness that I wasn't ready for.  I'm afraid I might have felt pressured to reach for Greatness in a strictly academic, bullet-point sense, and that would have ruined me in the quietest and cleanest way possible.

But back to my grief when it comes to beginnings. After I have a title, everything follows.  Everything flows.  I have to give my piece a hat, or the rest of the outfit just doesn't come to me.

Sometimes I feel like this is how a lot of us entered education.  We were told to pick a title.  Business, Mathematics, Architecture, Music Performance, Journalism -- we were told to pick a hat.  There is no room for a man of many different hats, or a man of indecisive hats.  If you find that your hat doesn't fit, if it flies off in the wind, you need to chase it down, or find a new hat in a hurry.  I wonder when education began to be a game of chasing after one's hat.

Within the past year, due to various time crunches, I've had to do the impossible: begin without a title.  And, do you know what I've found?
By the end of the paper, a title just crops up.  Like an excavated artifact which could not have been identified without the beginning of some digging and dusting, the purpose develops out of the ideas and connections that interest me.  The title was there all along, but I had to begin without knowing its name.

I'd like to think that there are things worth chasing besides our own titles.

I have seen people with well-thought-out life plans meet the same ends as those who go through life with little or no clue about the next bend in the journey.  I have seen both end up stumbling upon what they love to do,  which directs them along a path they could not have possibly foreseen.  (And isn't this the best any of us could possibly hope for?) This is a path that is far better than one they could have devised on their own.  And I think it's quite possible that the best titles are stumbled upon on the way towards what inspires and captures us.

What if we thought of our education less like a well-put-together outfit suitable for the public eye, and more like a newborn... to be nurtured, cherished, and christened only after it has been fully formed and is ready to leave the womb.  When I leave this place, my education will be messy, scared, and still always, continually growing.  Yet, my hope is that it will be more complex and alive and inspired than any hat could ever hope to be.

Success

I know garbagemen happier than graduates.

In the Fight

Some ride horseback, some have jets that fly

I feel like the things that happened today were supposed to be teaching me something.

God, if only I knew what that was.

We are Snails, Longing for Eternity

Every time my sister stays with me, she leaves a few things behind in random, yet obvious, places.  

I make a pile of them as I find them.  Usually, they are small.  A hairclip, some papers, and usually at least one item no one should ever lose track of.  Undoubtedly, a shirt or two will also linger behind.  I try them on.  We have different tastes, so her clothes on me look like someone attempted to dress a beanie baby in 80’s Barbie clothes.

This time, it’s a few pages of comics, guitar tabs, some euros, and her passport.  A few flashcards from studying for her MCLEX test lie scattered under the desk.  I will keep one to put in my makeshift scrapbook of objects that help me remember what has happened in a year.  Things of absolutely no intrinsic value are the only things I’m interested in keeping.  Things of value make me nervous.  I’m always relieved when they break or are lost.

I glance at the growing pile, a monument to … forgetfulness?  Unlikely.  To what, then?

I do not waste time wondering why she habitually leaves things behind.  No one wonders why there are messages on cave walls or graffiti beneath overpasses.  No one wonders why there are pyramids or why there are roadside crosses or graveyards or world records.  It is for the same non-reason I once wrote tiny initials on the fake leather of my bus seat in high school.  Each of us can only be in one location and one time; all of humanity is in rebellion against this undefeatable condition.  Knowing that we must move on, and knowing that someday time moves on without us, we are compelled to leave traces of ourselves behind.

Maybe this is why people have children.

As I dust surfaces and straighten bed covers, I recall a question Carl Sandburg asked in his poem Haze.

Is it only a fishbone on the beach?  Is the red heart of man only ashes?  Is the flame of it all a white light switched off and the power house wires cut?

He questions the temporariness of life.  The poem is about the cycles of humanity, the past and future mingling like a sunset on the horizon.  He ends the poem ,

Why do the prairie roses answer every summer?  Why do the changing repeating rains come back out of the salt sea wind-blown? Why do the stars keeps their tracks? Why do the cradles of the sky rock new babies?

listing natural cycles of rebirth.  As if to say, “I don’t understand why, but I know that this is not the end.”

on the edge of so much bigness

I am looking out the window, past the taxidermy bird I rented from the library, at the steeple with the weather vane turning slowly.

The things I've stepped on lately have stuck onto the soles of my shoes and made my walks from class to class sticky and heavy... and I don't know how to describe to you why this has been one of the most pivotal sets of 10 days I have ever passed through.

I read 30 pages of a book and, as a result, need to decide whether I want to have children.


I'm back into the rush of the strange and contradicting lifestyle of a student. 
High and winged questions
?
the definition of Success
the values of responsibility versus risk
what true Investment means, and whether investing has something to do with money
what it means to be poor, and if there is a role for the poor
rather than simply a place for the poor
(the ill have a place, but not a role.)
?
High and winged questions pass through my mind

my mind
-- a subway station where passengers never arrive anywhere, but only accumulate, annoyed
haha. a constipated subway station

All the while, I am a fry cook of assignments.  read 130 pages check study for japanese quiz check socialize check two page paper check

pulse

check

Trust in Where You Are

remember the music
festival we went
t(w)o

summers ago?

we sat but couldn't
listen, distracted
by the other's silence.
you handed me
a AA battery
and I held it
(I didn't know if there was any
life left in it.)

you did not know
I had just come from
breaking apart and starting to heal
(in the way that you only can in
the arms of a stranger
beneath
a red striped tent)
from
some advice I was lent
from
a guitar wearing a girl
(and the skirt I was wearing was sprinkled
with

the stuff that leaks out

when you find
you're not supposed to be fixed,
just loved.
you realize
you're not supposed to fix,
just love.)

you had handed me
a AA battery,
I don't know if there's any more
life left in
it
sits in a box up high
next to dust animals and
some ribbon.

Reason #127 I need to be committed into white padded rooms:

Sometime last year, I stalked this guy's facebook because I thought he seemed cool.  (barely knew eachother, friend of a friend kind of thing.) I saw he had a girlfriend, and I clicked on her page because she had an interesting profile pic.  She seemed to have a sense of humor kin to mine, and a blogspot blog, so I checked it out and was hooked immediately.  Since then, I follow her blog every couple weeks and her writing is always genuine, inspiring, and fun in a way that I'd like to write someday.  They just seem like such a quirky, cool couple... going strong for about a year and a half.

I hadn't checked on her blog for some months.  Then today, I noticed that his profile no longer has a "in a relationship with" status... and I freaked out.  I looked through his wall history to make sure they were still together and that they had just chosen to omit a relationship status declaration.

(Now, I know you're all on the edge of your seats, so I'll just tell you that I'm fairly certain they are still together.)

I actually went through emotions of panic, targetless anger, and sympathy for a couple I have barely even formally met and who would not know who I was if I walked up to them and said hello.


Who does that?  Maybe I need to watch more tv or something.

h's and a's

His laugh was far better than
seeing successive
h's and a's.

Someone please take me to where I can see

stars.

Please Come Again Later

I'm all sold out.
I've just sold out
and won't be restocked for a while.
I'm afraid the only things left on the shelves
are scatter-plot words on
half-baked thoughts.
Enough to stir
(almost) my stagnant sea.

I don't know how to deal with waiting, so I write.

I watch the IV drip.  Her face still looks so beautiful.  My dad stands and shifts in the doorway, not in the room, not out of the room, while my mom slides her finger across her phone screen. 

I can tell by my dad's eyes that he's desperate.  There's nothing he can do to fix things.  There's nothing he can do to be well-prepared; we don't know anything yet.
 I zero in on her bifocal glasses, lying on the beside table, and in them I can see distorted lights and tubes.  I think about what a good photo this would make.  I don't know how to deal with waiting.  None of us do.

Finally, a nurse comes in that my dad can grill for information.  He proceeds to question her about magnesium and blood sugar, testing her knowledge and adequacy.

I wish Stephanie was here.


I've never seen her so weak.  Just Sunday, we were all eating homemade fried chicken and mashed potatoes together at her house in Worthington.  Aunts and uncles from the new england states were in town, so we did it up right, the Jackson family way: eat tons of food, talk about politics, and then everyone falls asleep on couches.
My dad is deploying to Iraq after this summer, so my aunt insisted on taking pictures of my dad with his three brothers.
 Grandma was feeling a little weak that day so she didn't go outside to join them.  I stood on the porch with her and put my hand on her fragile shoulder as we watched the four middle-aged men goof off in front of the camera like rambunctious 12-year-olds.
"You raised some pretty good boys, Grandma."
Her mouth quivered a little bit before she spoke, "Yeah," she paused.  "None of them have ever ended up in jail. 'Least that I know of."
I smirked and chuckled under my breath.

She's a breast cancer survivor, and an amazing cook.  She's obsessed with Elvis, and she doesn't know what the internet is.

She is now a list of numbers on a white board. 73. 128/43. 18. I don't understand what they mean.

Will I ever be able to enter a hospital without "What Sarah Said" playing in the background like a Scrubs episode?  I half-expect Carla or J.D. to walk down the hall.

Her face still looks so beautiful.  She's not just a person, she's the glue that keeps the whole family together.  In her own, quiet, dry-humored way, she's the heart that connects us all; the central hub we all return to.

For some reason, it doesn't feel right to pray for everything to instantly be good again.  It doesn't feel right to ask for this all to poof away.  The only prayer I can pray honestly is,
"God, fill up her room.  Be there with her, and hold her hand.  Hold us too, cause we don't know what's happening."

(Write)rs

There is a library full
(of books, I'm afraid)
that (almost) authors
(never) wrote
someday.

The blank pages
line the shelves
with (nothing)
words that never found their way
(got lost) from pen to page.

The difference between writers
and (almost) not writers
is
that writers
write.




--
After a conversation with my discrete systems prof about his plans on being a writer someday, I thought to myself, "Could they build a library big enough to hold all the books that were almost written?"

I have been reading a lot of ee cummings lately, if you can't tell. :P

I have this disease

which involves searching for poems at two a.m. and
convincing myself I was in love with people that
I was never much in love with.

They tell me it can be cured with diet,
exercise and nine
hours of sleep;
I'm far too tired to try it.

Belated

I forgave the fracture you lent me
(months ago, you know that) as wordlessly
as water whispers grit away. I knew
not to wait for apology
(which came
like belated funeral flowers.
I was
the widow and the deceased.)

Walking home today, a wet
mug was left in leaves, in half
on the street,
hemispheres held
together
by the handle.

I cleaned it up, cut my hand,
(but no blood) set it
on the desk
to dry out in the sun. It fell
and spread out on the floor for me
to clean again
(again, again.)

It broke in the way that only something
already broken can break.

A fork in the road is forcing me to put down the chopsticks.

If you are a normal reader who doesn't really care about details, please skip down to the next large star. *

I have to make a decision today.

I've gotten several emails from an English professor about a project going on at the Virginia Ball Center. http://vernacularmemorials.weebly.com/
How cool is that? But it takes up all of your time and only covers about 9-12 credit hours toward my creative writing major or honors core requirements.
I talked with my discrete systems professor, Dr. Stankewitz about my Creative Writing - Mathematics pairing, and he suggested I take a class from Brent Blackwell, and English professor with a wide range of knowledge in mathematics as well.  He is teaching a course this fall that fits an honors college core requirement, HONRS 296.

"This is an interdisciplinary examination of some of the most important ideas of the physical sciences and mathematics in the past two centuries. Since the advent of modern calculus, concepts such as non-Euclidean geometry, topology, quantum mechanics, relativity and spacetime, logical paradoxes like Schrödinger’s cat, and Gödel’s incompleteness theorem have pushed specialists towards great insight, while baffling laypeople. As a group, we’ll explore these concepts within a general contemporary context and examine how they provide insight to tackle a broad range of pressing modern problems ranging from plasma containment or faster than light travel to genocide, war, politics, and religion. We will utilize a variety of texts along the way from scientific to literary."

Sounds pretty swell, right? And, this would allow me to take Calc 3 with Stankewitz, and I really like his teaching style.
Gah.
And, I'll only have room in my 4-yr plan enough to do one Virginia Ball Center project.  (If I even have room for it at all!) So... if I do this one, I won't be able to do any others. What if an even cooler one comes along? What if one involving mathematics comes along? I won't be able to do it.

*
I'm starting to realize that, as much as I love being double-jointed, being split between math and english makes me practically unable to make a name for myself in either department because I can't put the time and energy into either. I could be joining clubs, getting things published, making friends with professors, etc. ... but I'm a little busy just trying to keep my nose above water.
[Do I even want to join clubs and get things published? Sometimes I think all that's just a bunch of phooey and takes away from the true successes of life.  Like winning the car-kicking game.]
Maybe I should just minor in creative writing.
But, am I really cut out for pure mathematics?
Could I work on a math problem for a year and fail to prove anything and not stick my head in an oven?
I need to do something that has a tangible effect.

Do I even truly like mathematics, or is it something i've just always had and think I should keep having around?
If I take a semester to do a VBC project, I could be frittering away valuable time that I could be using to figure out what the heck I'm doing!  If majoring in Mathematics isn't for me, I need to figure that out pretty darn soon.

I guess I always knew this day would come.  I need to make at least this decision, this decision for this coming semester...
but I know every well that the decision I make today could effect the rest of my college experience.
I picked the wrong week to become re-disconnected with God. I really need his guidance and I just don't feel like he has any answers to give me.  I've stopped asking, and I'm not sure if that's because I've stopped leaning on him or because I know very well that God expects me to do the best I can with what I have.  I think he's given me a map, and all I want is a GPS.

Bah. Bah, I say.
I know this blog post isn't entertaining or wise, but I guess this post wasn't for any of you, it was for me to sketch out a few things.

On a side note, the paper for my math class.... that was supposed to be on communication which I wrote mostly about communism... got a 100. Stankewitz liked it so much he read the last sentence to the class.
I'm probably prouder of this than anything else I've turned in for any class all year. Not simply because it got a good grade... but because it was a risk (as I think all great work is) and it paid off. And because it was writing and math in harmony... and I can't ask for a better assignment than that.
Speaking of which, I have to give a presentation of my dreams and goals tonight for Dr. Stedman's class (the one mentioned in a previous blog post, for which I turned in a paper saying I would quit school and marry rich).  I'm hoping I can somehow get by with not having anything more figured out than when I first splashed onto this campus.

This week is car-kicking week, but I've been so worried about sorting this stuff out that I only have 6 points.
Sigh. I'm a failure.

More than One or Two

I need there to be writers from Indiana
(not so many writers,
not too many writers,
but more than one or two.)

I need there to be a dress
in the way the wheat bends its knees to the wind
like a lover forced to confess.
Does the heartland beat like the wandering feet
in Dante’s and Kerouac’s chest?

I'd dissolve in Cali;
a drop in the ocean.
A cornstalk scorched by the sun,
I’d wither and fall     in New York City
with buildings too tall and too young.
I need to be
a tree on a hill
with old oaks to lend me their rings;
a lark that is joined by a chorus of few,
unique in the song that it sings.

due to some unfortunate complications, i can't get rid of this word box. oh well.

I need to know writers grow in Indiana
not just to be grafted away.

There must be writers of red-cast skies
of tiny hands picking blackberries that dye
the guilt-stained smiles and tell-tale tongues
blue from impatience for process of pies…
Theirs is a song that must not go unsung.

The pen flows smooth when taken to tales
of bales and harvest moons.
Does the heartland sing like a thing of wings?
Ask Sandburg to hum you the tune.

The rhythm and heave of trains endures
through shrill cicada nights.
The lakes and trees still buzz with warmth
and cradle soft porch lights.

I know there are writers from Indiana;
the heartland thrives and swoons.
(not so many writers
not too many writers,
but more than one or two.)

This is one of those days when I feel the seams coming together ...
so many things I've ripped apart and trimmed again, are finally ready to be sewn into harmony.

I feel a strong sense of purpose, without knowing any better what I'm doing than I did last week, or even last year.
It's weird how important it is to demolish everything and start new, even if all you do is erect a structure very similar to, if not exactly, what you had before.

I'm vague tonight because being specific would take too long and I need to go to sleep.... but if you're interested in one concrete example, I've realized that I love my old broken down '93 Toyota.  And no matter what wheel you put me behind, I will always be the girl in the little broken-down car. I will always be a mess, and I'm beginning to let myself off the hook for that.  Sir Charles reminds me of my sister and my brother-in-law, because they started dating with this car. I like that Sir Charles was gift. I like that almost everything I own was a gift. It makes me feel like I don't have a right to cling to tightly to any of my things, because they fell into my lap so undeservedly.

It's always these days when I get the least amount of work done.
sigh....

Pre-wise ; Post-wise

Last night I saw the reflection of spidery twigs from trees in a puddle on a road.
I just stopped . dead in my tracks, without really knowing why at first.
Then I thought back... to the last time I had stopped to absorb the intricacy of this image
this image of winter thawing
and what had I thought about the world back then?
what complexities in my life had I been ruminating?
it just seems like a time so far away.
this has been a decade of a year.

I catch myself before saying that my life was simpler back then; it wasn't.
It would be easy to say that I was more innocent or more naive then,
but I'm not sure if that's the case.

It may be.
Maybe I was a little more…  pre-wise.
but then maybe I'm now a little bit post-wise in some ways.
There are some things I feel myself unlearning, forgetting
that maybe it's better that I keep. 

Innocence is a greenhouse plant
grown from careful seed
sown of fallen fathers and mothers
who did things they wouldn't
wish on their daughters.

You have to graft on to stay alive
I hope you graft on to something Good. 

---

The only things separating you and I are the books we've read,
the people we've met, and time.

--
I don't really believe that.
---

Why do we make decisions we would never
wish upon our sons and daughters?
Next time you think about doing something harmful and you think
you're only hurting yourself, please think of two things for me:
think about the son or daughter that will inherit your self-inflicted fractures
(because they will)
and think about the poor prophet who is, right now, somewhere praying for you,
who feels every ounce of your pain though you may never know it.
Have pity for them and act wisely.
Do you really think that, right now, there isn't someone praying for you?
Do your really think that there isn't someone right now who is tied
to your heart's well-being?
--

 "I mean, that book of yours is cool and everything,
but you can't depend entirely on leaves and berries." 

"I don't know if you want to depend on much more than that."

I was watching Into the Wild on Friday and those lines struck me.
 --

I got blindsided by finding out some off-setting news Saturday morning, and I've been reeling ever since.

It's a long story, but it involves me going on a midnight crusade across campus
to rip down
advertisements that demean women. My thoughts are still a little scattered,
but I feel
that something else in me is coming into focus.  Maybe.
It's taking its sweet time to get there.

Career Paths

I'm in a class I should not be in.
The title of the class is "Big Dreams, Big Goals, Big Money." This is a class for students who have the first two, and need the last one. I have none of them.
It's a class that takes successful students and preens them... teaching them how to prepare their academic resumes in order to have a chance at major scholarships for studying abroad, going to graduate school, or whatever academic goals they need money for. It's a wonderful opportunity they're offering us; a one-credit-hour course offered to the top 12 students in the honors college.  Barb Stedman, who teaches the class, is a spark of a lady, and if you ever get a chance to look her in the eye, you will feel as though anything you could ever dream to do is entirely possible, and that it will be hell getting there.

At first I thought I was sent the invitation to take this class by mistake, but it turns out I somehow ended up being recommended to her by the Dean of the honors college, Dr. Ruebel, who taught a humanities course I was in last term.  I set up a meeting with her, and explained that there had been a grievous error; that I had no dreams or goals or money... but she said that she liked that I was going to write poetry about math, and that she wanted me in her class.
I have this fault in my character that I like to call my "specialness complex," which leads me to make decisions based solely on the fact that they make me feel special.  And so, I made the decision to be in a class that is focused mainly on nailing down specific details of your future plans, despite the fact that this is not something I am wired to be able to do. It's a stretch for me to make plans a week ahead, let alone years in advance.  Apparently, I need to be part of more leadership organizations and I need to ask a professor if I can be their apprentice for research in mathematics. But, I'm afraid of all that getting in the way of my truly important commitments: swing dancing on weekends and singing in the library stairwell between classes.

--

For class today, we were supposed to write a rough outline of our goals and aspirations for our future... both for academics and future career
and bring it to class.
[I figured it was for the beginnings of the essay we are writing as our final project for the year]
So, I
with my major so brazenly undecided,
made a flow chart of 5 different possible majors and their results
some of which lead to the same goals via different paths.
Little did I know...
we were supposed to turn this in for Dr. Stedman to look at.
I hope she has a good sense of humor
when she sees one of my possible majors was "Quit School"
and the possible goals branching off from this were
"world domination"
"street poet"
and
"marry rich."

Toast in the Tub

What if there was no such thing as liability lawsuits

and the world was designed with the intention of eliminating idiots? 

There would be "exits" with no down ramps 

on the 3rd and 4th floors of parking garages... 

labels on knives encouraging you to keep them close to children... 

instead of caution tags on hair dryers, there would be "helpful tips" 

on how to save time by drying your hair while taking a bath

while making toast in a toaster on the side of the tub.