Reminder #18

When you're walking somewhere and up ahead you see people holding and covering their noses, just stop right where you are. Or turn around.

Starting today, I will not eat out for a week. No Arby's. No McDonald's ice cream cones. No Little Panda's.

I just needed to write this somewhere so that I'd be sure and do it. Once words are writ in this here blog, they might as well just be considered truth.

I just found another reason to love Abilene more than Lubbock.

The vanilla ice-cream cones at McDonalds, to which I have had a near-addiction since my freshman year in college, cost me only 70 cents in Abilene, as opposed to the $1.05 I was forced to pay back in Lubbock.

That thirty-five cents can add up. Believe me.

This, in addition to having a better traffic system, less dust, cheaper groceries, more trees, a better library system (I’m such a dork), decent churches, more movies, better parks, and no composition administrators makes this a pretty habitable place.

“Why, when God’s world is so big, did you fall asleep in a prison of all places?”
-Rumi

Thinking Aloud

Last week, I graded somewhere around 300 papers from TTU freshman. It was a pretty simple beginning-of-the-semester sort of assignment, and so part of it was just that they relate some potential career plans. It was a depressing job for me.

Here is why, a quotation I got from one of the drafts:

"They say that you need to pursue your passion, but that can often be difficult when you are not passionate about anything."

The depressing thing about reading these three hundred or so papers was just this sort of thing. Draft after draft after draft (etc.) sent an identical message to this one, and even though I think it was something that I was already pretty aware of, it was amazingly saddening to me.

The problem, as I see it, isn't that the kids don't know what sort of career they want to pursue yet. I don’t see that as the core issue at all. The real problem is that they can't even begin to ask the question of what they might want to do with their lives because they can't identify anything that they're passionate about. There is practically no sense of meaning, no sense that there’s anything worth dying for, in their lives (except for, perhaps, a Hummer). These students made very clear that there has been such a collapse of meaning in this culture that they, quite literally, see no reason to get up out of bed in the morning. And so, they don't.

I find this especially sad considering that well over ninety-five percent of those Tech students would profess to be Christians. I think that this is a fairly strong indication of just how dead God is in our lives at the moment, even for many of those who profess faith so loudly. I would think that there would at least be a starting point for these people who profess faith, a core of meaning from which to eventually build some vision of the particular life. But, I don’t think there is that core, not in their realities.

Anyway, my perception of this situation has been high in my considerations recently. Basically, I think that this is why I've been moving away from English studies.

My thinking’s not entirely clear on this at the moment. I know that there is a lot of value in gaining the skills offered by learning to write and learning to read, skills that go well beyond the English classroom. But, it feels to me as though acquiring those skills provided by the English class is sort of a level-two accomplishment, and the students haven’t gotten even close to reaching level-one yet (this statement makes sense to me, though I’m not sure how clear it is outside of my head.). It just seems to me as though the skills offered in English classes are meant primarily to enhance lives of meaning; I don’t think they necessarily provide the skills to create lives with meaning. (This is my most debatable point, and I'm not going to provide much clarification at this time. I will say that if you read early American documents, I’m specifically thinking of works like ol’ Ben Franklin’s Autobiography and Charles Brockden Brown’s novels, you'll find that that’s what early Americans sort of envisioned--the composition of individual meaning. Basically, existentialism. I think, though, that this idea is only about halfway right, and for my students, it's the other half that's missing.)

So, it seems, that’s why I see myself moving away from the idea of teaching English for a living. My rule, provided by Frederick Buechner, is this: “I believe that it is possible to say at least this in general to all of us: we should go with our lives where we most need to go and where we are most needed.”

So, I think this explains a little, at least to myself, about why I’ve felt that compulsion to head from literature studies and toward seminary. The problem I see around me, the primary problem I see, is the sort of pervasive spiritual impoverishment that seemed so evident to me in the students’ papers last week. Answering that problem, at this point, is the need. Lord knows what, specifically, needs to done next. That's not the important thing, though, at this point. At least, I've got a starting point.

Reminder #17

Don't try moving a large house plant in a room with a ceiling fan.

Getting Over Grad School

There are many lingering symptoms to the grad school disease. I'm working on getting rid of them.

The Symptoms:
1. Stress. I'm dealing with this one pretty well. I think I wrote yesterday that while I was in school, there was a ubiquitous tension in my bones. It's leaving. I will say that in ways it's hard to let it leave. I mean, as long as you're stressed, you (1) know you're alive and (2) have some sort of purpose to your life that is extremely evident. After all, there's something you care a lot about that's making you stressed. Still, that sort of thing giving you your reason for living isn't healthy, physically or spiritually. So, I'm letting that one go. We hope.

2. Grad School Gut. That's one of the worst things about grad school. What do you do in grad school? (1) You do homework, and when you're not doing homework, you're (2) worrying about the homework that you're not doing. The result of these two things is that you (1) don't exercise and (2) eat out because you can't spend that time you need to be doing homework cooking and (3) eat out because you're stressed and eating makes you feel less crappy and (4) you drink an absurd amount of coke because you desperately need the caffeine to stay awake to do more homework. The result of all of this is that you gain weight. I went into grad school weighing a little too little; I came out weighing a little too much. The grad school gut needs to go.

In the effort to start this process, I went jogging today. I mapped out a mile-long course in Will Hair Park. A mile used to be no problem. The problem: I haven't run since about the time I was a freshman in college. So, I nearly killed myself by the time I had gotten half of that mile done. I stopped myself. In addition to giving you a gut, grad school also gives you a slight bit of wisdom (or so I'm told), and so I knew that I couldn't get rid of that gut if I was dead (or maybe...?). Anyway, I stopped, and I walked a while. We'll do this slowly but surely.

Afterward, I went to Burger King. My fridge won't work yet, so there wasn't much else I could do for lunch.

3. Loss of People Skills. Frankly, I never had a whole lot of them, and because of that, I don't need to lose what I got. I may not have lost as many of these as did other things. I did have some excellent friends at TTU. The thing, though, is that they were only in a rather confined area. I mainly saw them at school. Now, we were all always at school, because we were always doing our homework, and so I saw them all quite a lot. And we did do a few non-school things together. But for whole areas of the life, I was definitely alone at grad school. For instance, at Wal-Mart, I wasn't going to run into anyone I knew. At church, I wasn't going to see anyone I knew. Walking across campus, I wasn't going to see anyone I knew (unless it was a student of mine, in which case, I was their professor--that's slightly weird). I had a small community. I didn't have a large community there. And that's a little weird here to adjust back into. I walk across campus to go to the post office, and people see me who knew me a year-and-a-half ago and wave and talk. Or, I go to Whataburger and run into two friends I've known since I was a freshman. I'm shocked every time. I'm going to have to think about why I think this is so weird a little more or why it's a little unsettling. Don't get me wrong, it's good. It's nice to be someone somewhere rather than anyone anywhere. But it's weird to adjust back into.

4. Being Stupid. I read somewhere that you're IQ drops in grad school because you're cramming too much in. It takes a while for it to come back. Believe me, I knew this before I read the study somewhere. I feel much stupider than I once was. My mind works a little more slowly. It's all coming back to me now though.

I'll end there for now. I intended this to be like a paragraph long, and it kept going. And I bet I could keep going. I won't bore you anymore though. Writing interesting stuff is another thing I lost. So it goes.

I've finally gotten Internet service in Abilene, so I can now begin blogging and emailing people again. It's sort of embarassing. I do a New Year's resolution on blogging more, and then, I don't have easy access to the internet for several weeks and don't get to blog much at all. So it goes. I'll make up for it later.

So, I'm moved into Abilene now. I have an ugly apartment which I will eventually publish some pictures of. I'm really glad to be back here. I'm amazed by how relaxed an unstressed I feel. I had almost forgotten what that was like.

I didn't, by the way, get the Cisco job for this semester. They wanted to hire me for next semester. That would be a cool job, but I don't think, at the moment, that I'm going to take it. I like being in Abilene at the moment, but I doubt I hang around here for that long.

That's just a quick update. I'll be trying to blog regularly from now on.

Well, today I get this voice message. From Cisco Junior College. I couldn't get ahold of them, but I'm pretty sure they're offering me a job. I'm sort of split between being excited and being scared. On the one hand, it would be an interesting experience, particularly if I'm getting to teach a literature course or two. On the other hand, even though I have sort of taught three college classes, I've not exactly had my own class. The Tech people were sort of guiding our hands, and I've not had experience coming up with my own courses. Still, I think it could be fun, and it would be an opportunity I can't really pass up.

I think the funnest thing about it is thinking what literature I would teach in a freshman literature course. I would have room for about two short novels, two plays, several short stories, and a lot of poemts. At the moment, I'm thinking The Princess Bride for one of the novels and maybe either The Moviegoer or The Color Purple or The Assistant as the other. The Color Purple might be interesting since there's so much wrong with the novel. For plays, I would do Shaw's "Arms and the Man" and Shakespeare's "King Lear."

We'll see though.

Reminder #16

Don't mean but be.

Resolutions Again.

That time. I’m putting my resolutions here because this is, theoretically, a public arena. I’m making these resolutions here so that whoever reads this can help (or force) me keep them.

I have a lot this year. They are all important, so the numbers don't necessarily matter.

1. During this coming semester, read through the Bible three full times. (This one shouldn’t be too difficult since I’ll have some free time. (Skimming genealogies allowed.)
2. Pray more. (This is the constant resolution.)
3. Decide all that seminary stuff. The details. (…)
4. Lose a little weight, or at least, change that weight into more muscle. (I gained about twenty-five pounds in grad school (I’m now app. 180-185), which puts at about the weight I think should be at. The problem is that too little of that is muscle weight. I’m going to exercise a good bit more and eat better next year.)
5. Survive my sister’s wedding. (This may be the most difficult one; I’m not a huge fan of social gathering, at least not when I’m at all in the spotlight (even in the very tip edge of it.))
6. Blog more. (I’m serious about this. I’m going to blog more, just to keep myself writing. This means that the quality of posts will get even worse, but that shouldn’t matter much.)
7. More volunteer-type stuff.
8. Keep one-day-per-week of Sabbath rest. (And my sister and BJ better be doing this one, too.)

If you will, remember to pray for all of the people affected by the fires in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.

Growing up in Menard, I've seen a number of grass fires, but I've never seen anything like this. In the last week, I've been in Lubbock, Abilene, and Menard. All three of them have been hazy and have had the ubiquitous smell of smoke because of all the surrounding fires. Abilene today even looked cloudy, and it was just smoke from all of surrounding fires (particularly the horrible ones around Cisco, Eastland, and Gorman). Menard alone had three pretty major grass fires in the county just today, including a pretty enormous one that we drove past north of town. Two days ago, a fire got within about fifty feet of my grandmother's house (though that turned out ok). Menard shouldn't be in any particular danger at the moment, but several towns have been almost totally wiped out, including Cross Plains, which isn't far from here and which has a few people who used to live in Menard. I think Gorman has been totally evacuated, too. Just remember these people.

And pray that the federal government will jump in on this thing, too, to help out the local fire departments which are undermanned and underequipped. You would think they would have wanted to be on the safe side this time.