Reflection on an A-

I was not one of those kids who try with all their might to hide their report cards from their parents and invent all kinds of strange tales about the grades they make. I didn't bother showing my parents my report card half the time because I always got the same response and it didn't really motivate me much: "Good job." I made good grades because I wanted to, because I could, and because it was a natural byproduct of a love of learning. Talk about intrinsic motivation--I had it. Yet grades could still get me really upset, really worried. I almost dropped a class in college because I thought I was going to get a B. (I didn't.) I've always been used to making A's on everything because I've always tried really hard to succeed (well, except on math, but math doesn't even count for me.)

I think my undergraduate professors graded me too easily because I got my first graded paper back in graduate school last week and was disappointed...by an A-. Seriously. That A- told me I needed a reality check and made me pause to rethink the things I value, the things our society values. I worked really hard on that paper and I enjoyed writing it. I revised it at least three times. I felt pretty happy with the finished product. My TA liked it, too. But she also found things that were wrong with it. Things I probably need to work on. I'm going to need to revisit some of the claims I made in that paper, rethink them, and revise. And isn't this learning process infinitely more important than the grade she marked on my paper? Absolutely.

I still do well in school because I want to--I'd better want to or those loans are all for naught. But those grades mean a little more to me now than ever. They are proof that I'm smart, that I'm capable. They decide if and where I get to pursue a PhD. But I still don't want to get too excited about those grades, or too distraught by them. I don't want to lose sight of the reason I'm in school: because I love to learn, because I grow as a person when I read and think and write and talk through new concepts. Because I think that education is a powerful force for good.

Our society has lost sight of this goal. Everything is about grades and test scores. These things have a place in education, but we have given them too much power, too much time. We have let them speak a little too loudly about our self-worth and the worth of others. They have become instruments of domination, and they do violence to our children.

My classmates are just as worried about their grades as I am. I was nearly stampeded trying to reclaim my test paper in class a few days ago. We all had that sickening feeling in our stomachs as we walked down the hallway towards the stack of doom. It was the first major exam of the semester and it would tell us whether we were wasting our time and money on this degree.

So grades matter. But learning matters more. I want to remember that for the next two years as I work towards the completion of my Master's degree. Perhaps I can learn to practice the Hindu concept of action without attachment--devoting my acts as worship of God, without attachment to the fruits of those acts. Okay, so that's not going to happen, but maybe something a little like it: I will study for the love of it, read for the love of it, and write for the love of it. The grades might worry me, but I will not love them.

Welcoming October

I allowed all of August and September to slip by in silence. I didn't write a single blog, and I only wrote a few short journal entries. Honestly, I haven't had much time to think about myself, about where I am and what I'm doing. I've only had time to act. To catch the bus, to go to class, to drive to work, to sit at my desk and work, to read, to write papers, to make dinner, to wash dishes, to make appointments, to cancel appointments--to do and act and get done.

Today I told a new friend that all the weeks were going "zoom zoom zoom" (with race car hand motions). She thought it was funny, and maybe it is, but it's also kind of sad. I feel like life is rushing past me and I'm just caught in its wake. So today, even though I took the day off work to study for the most terrifying test of my life, I am writing a blog to welcome October.

A few weeks ago I had the unbelievable privilege of attending a reading by my favorite poet, Mary Oliver. Her words are the some of the most beautiful I've ever read, and I hold them very close to my heart. Hearing them from her mouth was like heaven--like being caught up in this beautiful transcendence. She read a poem I like, one whose ending is always a challenge to me:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I have no idea what career I want to pursue or where I want to be in ten years, but I do know a few things that I want to do with my life. I stole a few moments of silence last week to write them down. I think they are true and authentic for me, and perhaps matter even more than what I get a PhD in or what job I do.

First, I looked around my simple, not quite shabby little apartment and felt very content. I realized that I want, always, wherever I end up, to live very simply. I don't want my life to become cluttered with things or the love of things. I want the old chairs, the faded colors, the quaint and quiet charm of simplicity. Anything else would be too much.

I also want to leave space for quiet and attention in my life. I don't want to go very long without reading poetry, praying my rosary, staring out the window at a funny little bird or a tree swaying in the wind. I want to sit in silence, to let beautiful words wash over me, to take walks and admire this astonishing world in which I find God in every leaf and quivering dew drop. I want to live a life of loving attention.

These two are all I know so far. I don't know if I want to be a feminist theologian or a crazy writer or a social activist, or all three. And I'm okay with not knowing. I am more concerned with who I am in the mundane, quotidian moments of life and what I do with the quiet spaces of my heart than in being important or successful. If I can live my life simply and with a sense of presence, then I think perhaps I've done something worthwhile, and maybe even admirable, with my own wild and precious life.

Heads, I accept; Tails, I flee for the hills

I really hate making decisions. Big ones, small ones, short ones, tall ones. I hate them all. It takes me months to find shoes, years to buy furniture. I'm lucky if I can decide what to make for dinner. But I have recently had a very huge decision thrust into my face and given a mere two days to resolve it.

I'm not going to lie: I flipped a coin, tried that old point blindly to a spot in the Bible trick--I even tried typing "Erica should..." into Google search. I realize that all of these are incredibly pathetic, but, hey, I was desperate. I agonized over the decision, talked it over with friends and family, prayed for some semblance of peace, changed my mind constantly. And then I realized something so huge: I didn't need God to give me a sign or tell me what to do. The decision was my own and God would be with me whatever I decided. I think that when I was younger, I wanted God to tell me what to do so badly because I was too afraid to make my own decisions. I hid a lack of moral courage and a refusal to take responsibility for my own actions under a pious desire to "do God's will."

So today I decided. I made the best possible decision that I thought I could. I may regret this decision somewhere down the road, but I did my best. And I feel peace about it, maybe a little excitement, too. And I know that God will be with me, helping me, just as God would have if I'd chosen a different path. I think this is what God's will is really about--not a single act, not a direction chosen, but choosing to trust in goodness and love, to have faith in benevolence.

Thanks, Garth

I am much more afraid of things than I would like to be.

Cats, for instance.

Sometimes squirrels, if they look especially twitchy.

Most other human beings.

I don't like this about myself. I want to be one of those confident, nonchalant people who walks like she's bullet proof. I would like to not have a panic attack every time a dog barks at me; I would like to not suspect that all of my neighbors are rapists and axe murderers. I really would. And I would like to not have to cede ground to stray cats every time they cross my path.

I know where this fear comes from. And I know that although it is overblown it is not unfounded. There are, after all, some really screwed up people out there (and some really mean cats), and I'm not exactly an impossible target. Still, I want to be able to take a walk in my extremely safe neighborhood and smile at the people who pass by without looking over my shoulder and wondering if I've already seen that blue van drive by once or questioning the motives of the guy with the limp walking thirty feet behind me.

Today I took a walk and coached myself to look at the birds and the trees, to think about all the beautiful things around me, to take note of the basketball hoops and wading pools and rose gardens. To think about the good. And I was doing very well until a bug flew into my eye and I was immediately after accosted by a large young man with long brown hair, a black T-shirt, and a face full of acne, who wanted to know my name and shake my hand. I hesitated, sized him up: He was a lot larger than me and he had big hands. I gave my name but decided to forgo the shake; he said that he was Randall and then asked abruptly who my favorite country music star is. I realized then that he was harmless and tried to come up with a country music singer even though I don't listen to that stuff. But before I could answer, he shouted excitedly that he loves Garth Brooks, that Garth Brooks is the greatest country music star ever. I laughed and said that yes, Garth Brooks is a pretty cool guy. Then Randall walked off down the road talking to himself about Garth in a loud voice and swinging a plastic bag. I went the other way, rubbing the bug out of my eye and laughing that I was scared to shake that guy's hand.

I didn't feel afraid the rest of the way home. Well, except for when I passed my neighbor who looks a little like Freddy Krueger.

Subject + Predicate + Infinity

I have always wanted to be a great writer.

When I was a kid I wrote stories and my parents read them, assuring me in excited tones that I was going to be a famous author, that they would buy my best-selling novels and that I would take care of them in their old age. I always won the writing competitions at school and wrote A+ papers all the way through college. I haven't published a damn thing (and honestly haven't even tried), yet my father still asks me, now a 23-year old test editor with an English degree, when I am going to publish a book so he can retire. I always laugh and say, "Dad, it doesn't really work that way."

I have always fantasized about life as a writer, just me at my desk pumping out literary brilliance, perhaps in a cabin in the woods somewhere or in a condo overlooking the beach. Publishing novels, poems, creative nonfiction. I've also dreamed of being a passionate, crazy journalist telling all the smug middle-class Americans about the injustices and triumphs going on all over the world, waking them up from their contented self-seclusion. Traveling, writing, protesting, fighting for the good. I am smiling as I write this because it sounds so beautiful and worthwhile and noble, and the job I'm really doing--answer reviewing and editing Language Arts tests all day--seems more harmful to the world than helpful. I'm also smiling because I'm geographically illiterate and terrified of airports, so my journalist career would be quite a stretch for me.

Still, when I'm really honest with myself about who I am and what I want, I always come back to the same simple declarative sentence: I want to be a writer. It's the only thing I've ever thought that I was good at, the only thing I've ever felt at home in. Writing has always been my space, the place that makes sense for me. I feel so alive when I write, so real. I am disgusted with myself for having neglected something that I love so very much, for shrugging my shoulders and saying that I'm too tired of reading after work, too tired of looking at a computer screen, too tired to do anything that matters to me. Too tired to live?

I know what it means to put a sentence together: subject plus predicate plus infinity. The writer writes worlds into existence.

How could I not want to be a great writer?

Because I'm tired of ranting in my head...

Gay marriage. We've been talking about it at work lately, all of us agreed: Is this seriously still an issue? It's as backwards as Jim Crow laws or the need to fight for the 19th Amendment. Are human beings seriously still being denied the right to marry, make families, share the privileges and joys and (as my more bitter co-workers suggest) miseries of marriage because they want to share them with a member of their own sex? Really?

I know that in writing this I risk alienating my more conservative friends, and that is certainly not my intention. I am just absolutely dumbfounded that gay and lesbian persons do not have the full rights that I hold in the United States, a country that is supposedly founded on freedom and tolerance. This is my big, loud "Huh?"

Admittedly, only a few years ago I was on the fence about the issue. I decided to write about the legalization of gay marriage for my ethics class, but I was undecided, unsure of what I really thought about it. I ended up writing against it only because it was easier and I knew that was what the professor wanted to hear. But the arguments I used, even if they did win me a 98, were ridiculous. Gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry because they can't reproduce? Neither can the infertile or the elderly--but no one is stopping them. And what about people who don't even want children? Should they be banned from marrying?

How is granting people who genuinely love one another the right to marry going to damage my marriage, make my marriage any less special? It isn't. And the next argument is that if we let gay people marry, what's next? People wanting to marry their dogs? I won't even validate that illogical, heartless argument with a response.

I realize that I am ranting and oversimplifying the opposing arguments, but I'm just so fed up with it all. I know that some people view homosexuality as sinful and against their religious beliefs--and they have every right to do so--but how many other "sinful activities" are religious people working to ban? I haven't seen them trying to deny marriage to heterosexuals who have sex before marriage. Why should my religious beliefs determine someone else's happiness? It's disgusting.

I don't think this is just a religious issue, or even just a legal issue. It's a basic human rights issue. A ban on homosexual marriage is, simply, inhumane. So that's it: I am praying for same-sex marriage to be legalized in all 50 states.

"What do you tell a woman with two black eyes?

Nothing. You've already told her twice."

This was the ignorant joke told by a co-worker of mine at which I did not laugh, or even crack a smile.--I stared, pointedly. This, of course, prompted him to go on and on about how he wasn't a woman-abuser and his wife was the person in charge in his house, and he was just joking around for irony's sake, etc. etc. etc.

When he finished this long-winded attempt at an apology, I asked, "Would you tell a racist joke? It's the same thing." It is incredible to me how intelligent, morally concerned people can make jokes about subjects that are unquestionably not funny. I know it's because people don't realize how powerful language is--how it shapes our culture, our attitudes, our beliefs. Our entire existence is framed in language; whether we realize it or not, language constitutes our world as we know it. It is a more effective tool of oppression than any gun or tank or fist.

Someone very close and dear to me was recently abused by her child's father--I couldn't laugh at that, so I surely can't laugh at a joke about beating a woman. I tried to explain to my coworker that telling jokes about abusing women is aiding the oppression and violence that women experience every day around the world. A joke like this perpetuates the idea that it is okay to abuse women, that the abuse women undergo isn't as disgusting and horrific as other crimes--genocide, torture, child molesting...who could laugh at those?

Yet why laugh at the idea of a woman being struck by a fist? Where is the humor in that? Unfortunately, men are not the only guilty ones in the oppression of women, in their abuse and degradation. Women, too, are guilty.

I cringe when I hear women use words like bitch or pussy in reference to themselves or others--not because the language is vulgar, but because I know that it is language like that that makes woman a second-class citizen. To call a man a pussy is to calm him weak, cowardly, womanly. Less than. Women have often been as eager to align themselves with patriarchal culture as the men have wanted them to be--either by making themselves the doormat of men or by trying to become as much like men as possible. Today a woman tried to convince me that men have a more difficult time in life than women these days, that they have been "castrated" by the theft of the breadwinner role, relegated to an uncertain role of manhood. I wanted to scream at her, "Finally, the oppressive system is being broken down, the emperor removed from his tyrannical throne, and you would rebuild it, you would put him back to the place of god, and woman to the place of his slave?" It is absolutely enraging.

True, women have won significant gains in education and in many professions; we have all the same legal rights as men; we can be ministers in many churches, work in any field we choose; decide whether we want to marry or not, have children or not. But I cannot walk down the street alone by myself without feeling the need to look behind my shoulder, to keep a sharp eye out. I have to check my backseat before getting into my car after pumping gas. If I had a daughter I would live in terror at the thought of her molestation, her rape. So are the sexes equal? No. The poet and feminist critic Adrienne Rich said famously, "I am a feminist because I feel endangered, psychically and physically, by this society and because I believe that the women's movement is saying that we have come to an edge of history when men - insofar as they are embodiments of the patriarchal idea - have become dangerous to children and other living things, themselves included."

After I pulled out the best of my literary and feminist theory thought for the education of my ignorant co-worker, he (to his credit) responded with a sincere, "I've never thought about that before. I never realized it was that way." And my heart was glad. Surely my education has not gone to waste, my passions are not for naught; you really can change the world, even with a head full of literary theory.