Summer's almost over. School starts next Monday. A very full semester, an "Oh god what was I thinking" kind of full with two tough classes, loads of homework, my first music lessons in twenty-two years, and several bureaucratic hoops to jump through so I can graduate by Christmas. But the end is in sight at last. I'll be free from this relentless, punishing drive to finish what I started. It's not working out the way I thought it would when I finally decided to go back to school. It's a compromise. But it's the best I can do, and that's saying something.
I'm sad, a little. No Bachelor's degree for me. No graduate school, no opportunity to write and analyze and think critically with guidance from people who have studied the subjects in great detail. Instead, it's back to teaching myself, back to the same old struggle to understand the links between art, science, economics, politics, and society by reading voraciously. There's nothing wrong with learning that way, in fact I've become a pretty smart cookie using that method, but it's slow. I yearned to be taught, to give and get feedback, to face intellectual challenges among a peer group, but I'm at the wrong time of life to do it other than piecemeal, and I have reached my limit. Until I have the opportunity to study full time I will never be able to divide my resources without sacrificing something very important to me: free time. Without free time I become deeply stressed. I can't do it any more.
So I choose the compromise. A college degree, if not a university degree. A major in music, my heart's desire for so many years. In return I get pride, self-esteem, and a firm belief in my intellectual capacity. If I had the chance to study at the higher levels I now know I'd do extremely well. I've proved that to myself over and over by getting top grades in Logic, Oceanography, Biology, Anthropology, all sorts of classes I never thought I'd understand much less excel in. For someone who has always thought highly of her intellect yet worried that it was just wishful thinking it's good to have some external validation.
It's not over yet, but soon now. One more semester, just eighteen weeks to go. I hope you don't mind learning a little state history along with me. Luckily, there's no way to inflict my piano lessons on you, but I am sure I won't be able to resist passing along nuggets of information on the History of Ethnic Peoples of California. I can tell you about potlatches and the varied uses of cedar bark, longhouses and salmon weirs, the many Indian nations who lived on Puget Sound and the Columbia river, whaling customs and totem pole carvings, Captains Vancouver and Cook, the establishment of the fur trade in the Pacific Northwest, the Oregon Trail and the Lewis & Clark expedition, but that doesn't do me any good now. I like history, though, so I don't really mind having to take this.
The only sad part is that my summer of doing nothing is over. The season itself is not over. The trees are still in full leaf, a deep dark green, the wind smells of grass and flowers, the days are long and sunny, and the hills are the uniform tawny brown of late summer. No hint of autumn chill tints the night air, no nut-hoarding squirrels signal the coming change of season. The delicate plants in my garden which die off quickly when the temperature changes are still thick and green. But my summer is at an end. I have enjoyed it very much. Now I know what I have to look forward to when all this schooling is over at last.
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