I must be going soft in the head. I'm in the grip of intense nostalgia for Middle Tennessee State University and my two years there.
You must understand, I hated living in Nashville. I was miserable beyond anything I've ever experienced since the worst years of my adolescence. I didn't meet anyone sympatico, the culture was strictly hicksville, I had to order my newspapers from New York because the local newspapers didn't carry any international news, the weather was hellish, and I couldn't even get a decent cup of coffee the first year I was there. God, I was unhappy. I tried to like the place, believe me. I even went into therapy specifically to learn how to deal with living in the South. It helped quite a bit, except by then I'd already developed panic attacks, and gained 30 pounds to boot. Once I knew we were leaving I started to feel a bit less antagonistic about the place, but that was eight years after moving there. Prior to that, I simply put one foot in front on the other, tried to find joy where I could, and did all my socializing online.
I liked going to MTSU, though. It was my first time back to college since 1980, and it was empowering. The campus wasn't much to look at, and I had to drive 40 miles to get there, but it was wonderful to be in a learning environment where everything I'd done in the past 15 years was useful in the classroom. It was plenty weird to be older than the teachers in many cases, and the freshmen were young enough to be my children. I had to take remedial math courses since I'd never taken any math at the college level and I scored laughably low on my entrance tests. I was a junior thanks to all the credits MTSU accepted from the University of Washington, which was nice; it allowed me to skip the excrutiating undergraduate English requirements and go straight for the interesting upper level courses in my major.
I could have taken a second major in music as I had enough credits there, but I figured I had enough to concentrate on. It was bizarre to have homework again, finding time and energy for it after work being the chief difficulty. There were times when I wanted to cry as I sweated and clutched my brow trying to grasp algebraic equations. Class time, on the other hand, was pure bliss. I turned into the person I used to hate when I first went to college; we would be discussing, say, Romantic poets, and I would suddenly have a great flash of insight about the rise and fall of mimetic art, and, to the utter horror of the class, I would want to talk about it. It was funny being on the other side, and I was sympathetic to a point, but mostly I didn't care. I was paying good money out of my own pocket to get that education and I wanted to pick the brains of anyone who knew something I didn't.
I met several interesting people at MTSU, mostly teachers but occasionally other students. I think my favorite semester was when I took an interdisciplinary playwriting class from Claudia Barnett (thanks and a tip of the hat to Mike Reed who reminded me of everyone's name over at the Drama Department). She used MOO to teach part of the course, and I had a great time working on programming at AtheMOO (A Theater MOO). There were some amazing people in my class. An easy-going, charming fellow named Warren Gore was tremendously talented as an actor and a playwright. He'd had some minor successes in New York, where he'd lived for five years, but he'd recently returned home to Manchester and was desultorily working on finishing his bachelor's. I got the feeling he had a problem with alcohol. Julie, a skinny Goth girl from Shelbyville, had the role of Mary in Jesus Christ Superstar that semester, and still turned in three funny, unusual plays. Shelbyville produced some of the best actors I saw while in college which surprised me; it's mainly known for producing and training Tennessee Walking Horses. I can't remember most of the other students except by face but the drama kids were all a lot of fun to spend time with.
It was a good semester. I wrote one decent short play and one terrible one-act, and got a B, but I learned a lot about writing plays. I also learned to appreciate a certain kind of Southerner: the educated kind. I'd been thoroughly alienated by years of working in Nashville with mainly high school graduates who watched a lot of tv, never went near a library or bookstore, and named Jesus Christ as their favorite celebrity. I decided I might possibly be happy as long as I went to college. I was thrilled to discover I could excel in subjects I once felt unequal to. I could feel my brain working at normal speeds again as I parked in one of the far lots and strode past the Blue Raiders' stadium on my way to some brick covered edifice to be lectured on synesthesia, Yeats, the anxiety of influence, or some other new and fabulous bit of information. I felt like myself again. And I enjoyed being a part of something Tennessean for the first time.
Oh, what the hell. I admit it. There is at least one thing I miss about living in flyover country. I genuinely miss MTSU.
