And Milkwood and Silkwood

LiveJournal keeps randomly logging me out and putting the wrong date and/or time on the update page. Feh.

Got an e-mail from Dr. Donovan the other day which contained the reading list for the Tolkien class. And now I'm even more excited about the class. Especially because I already own most of the books on the list. We're reading The Hobbit and LotR, naturally, as well as The Tolkien Reader (which I bought just for the essay "On Fairy-Stories" when I was working on my crazy term paper for Nietzsche last semester), and his translation of Gawain and the Green Knight. I already have that book because we read Pearl and Sir Orfeo for Dr. O's class. The things I don't have already are Beowulf, the Prose Edda, and Vinaver's edition of the Arthurian legends. Shippey's book, Author of the Century is optional, but I think I shall get it anyway.

Yesterday was my niece's birthday party. She turned three on Wednesday. I gave her a couple books based on The Rainbow Fish. (Same author and everything.) I was going to get her the original, but it was almost twenty bucks and I didn't have that much cash on me. The card, which was the only one she insisted on opening herself instead of pulling off and putting aside for her mom to open, was a Sesame Street one with Elmo and a counting game. I saw it in the store and thought it was perfect. The whole thing was a big hit with her.

After the birthday party, I went to hang out with Gabrielle. She got dinner and then we went to see Mean Girls. It was an entertaining movie. Decently written with a fair share of clever lines, but the characters could have stood greater development insofar as relating to each other goes. Overall, I enjoyed it, even with ticket prices up to nine dollars.

Also I found out, talking to Gabrielle, that Under Milkwood is not the Theatre-in-the-Making alumni reunion show. Paul Ford is still directing it this summer, just not as part of the TITM thing. So that was a surprise. Also a surprise: auditions for it were last week. I'd thought they were still coming up, since Eric said Friday that he would be auditioning next week. He's just special, I guess.

I've been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Today I got to chaper 16, which talks about teaching freshman English and withholding grades from the students in order to make a point about real education. In the absence of grades, everyone did better, but the A students liked it while the D and F students did not. So, as it came out, those who did well had motivation to do so outside of grades; they were the ones interested in being educated. The whole time I read this section, I kept thinking of Reed, and in fact, the very last paragraph of the chapter talks about the place. Although the comments were not wholly correct. It mentions the withholding of grades until graduation, which is correct, but does not say that the withholding happens only so long as you have Cs or above - a detail which I am unfortunately quite familiar with.

So now, reflecting on Pirsig's findings with his grade-withholding experiment and on my own experience with such things, I've got an interesting case to think about. I've never given much thought to my grades and for most of my educational career, haven't had to. I'm generally too involved with the coursework to give the evaluation aspect a second thought. And I was quite happy with Reed's policy of keeping mum on grades; in fact, it was one of the many things that attracted me to the place. It should have been perfect: I should have been so busy learning things, as usual, that I didn't give a second thought to scales and letters and numbers or even have unbidden intrusions on my blissful grade ignorance. But that is not what happened. Those intrusions came, and unlike in high school, the news wasn't good and eventually got worse. By the end of my last semester at Reed, I was doing That Thing that I hate and could never understand before why people did it: grade-mongering. Calculating exactly how well I needed to do on the next assignment just to pass O-chem. It made me feel dirty, but still I did it, because I desperately needed to pass.

So what happened? How did I become the opposite sort of student than I had been before Reed and have since become once again? I'm still not quite sure. But considering the grade issue in isolation, it appears that knowing about my C minuses set off a feedback loop that ended in grade-mongering. That is, of course, not the only factor involved in my last two semesters at Reed, and not even a major one. But it played its role, especially when I tried to dig myself out of the hole I'd made for myself. Which I couldn't do because I didn't know how. I should have taken time off sooner. I should have gotten help when things started turning rotten. I should have done a lot of things differently.

Not to say that I regret anything that has happened or resent the turn my life has taken. I don't. I don't regret anything, not even Nathaniel (my one and only regret for a long time). And I'm reasonably happy now, in some ways more so than I was at Reed. If I hadn't come back, who knows how or if I'd have righted myself again and returned to studying the things I should have been studying all along. I would not have gotten into medieval studies at all. And I would not have met the people I know now. (The MSSA has played a big part in this, and I can thank Sarah for getting me involved with it.) I still believe things happen for a reason, perhaps one that no one will ever know. Almost have to, if I'm to avoid a profound and perpetual dissatisfaction with life.

I would call an angel the one who came to me and said I'd have to live my life over and over again exactly as I've lived it.