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| It came to my attention recently that there's a rumor going around, especially in Disciples Divinity House, that I'm not coming back to Chicago in the fall to continue my M.A. in Divinity. Before any more speculation goes on, I wanted to make something very clear: this rumor is true. I'm not coming back.
The rumor originated with an email I sent to Marsha Peeler, informing her that I wouldn't be taking up residence in DDH in the fall because I would not be continuing my studies at the Divinity School. I got an anxious email from Elsa a couple days ago, asking what was going on, and had a bad moment with Natalia yesterday when I realized I hadn't told her I was moving my stuff into a storage space instead. I realized then that there were a lot of people who would want to know about my change in plans and had been totally left out of the loop on recent events, so, I'm writing a note to explain, and tagging everyone that I think will care. (If I forget anybody, I'm sorry.)
To begin at the beginning, I wasn't sure, when I applied to the Divinity School, what specifically I wanted to study. I figured I would take some classes and figure it out. But time went on, and Biblical Studies drove me crazy, and then History of Christianity and Philosophy of Religion drove me crazy, and then Theology drove me crazy, and I was running out of subject areas with applications coming up in the fall. I really can't convey the gnawing anxiety that this produced. I had been so sure this was where I was supposed to be, and I couldn't seem to find anywhere that I fit. I couldn't find my thing, my axe to grind, my specific focus to spend most of a career on. I couldn't even find a general subject that I had positive feeling for. When I talked to people about this anxiety, I usually called it vocational angst. I really wanted to know what I should spend the rest of my life doing, had a feeling that I really ought to know soon, and really didn't yet. It ate at me.
Then a couple weeks ago, I had been up all night with a paper, and went out onto the Midway at dawn to talk to God. It didn't start that way, but I ended up pleading with Him to send me, send me on a mission, send me to my work, and I promised that wherever He sent me, there I would go, and I would do whatever He bid me. The next day I had a meeting with Professor Fox, which I had specifically arranged to address the vocational angst. He told me, frankly, that there was simply no point going for another degree if I didn't know what I wanted to study. Trying to guage what kind of time I had to figure things out, he asked after my summer plans, and I told him about going home and going back to work for the UH Writing Center, and before I knew what had happened I was telling him how much I loved that job and doing that work. And then the most curious thing happened. He looked at me a moment, blinked, and asked me, "So what are you doing here?"
He became the first of four people that day to tell me that if I had found something I loved, I should go do that, and never mind any sense of momentum or having committed to religion as a subject. What struck me at the time was how not-crazy this idea sounded, and how my spirit rebelled not at all against the thought of teaching writing for the rest of my life. Now that somebody had finally said it, given me permission to think about it as a viable option, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. Before two days had passed I had arranged lunch with my supervisor at the Writing Center to discuss options and masters programs, and my friend Rachel had sent me a break-down of English as a field, to help me choose a concentration. I thought and thought and prayed and talked to people, and the more I thought about it, the more natural and right it seemed. I worked at the Writing Center for three years, and I loved that job passionately. I loved my students and they drove me crazy; I took great pride in the work and always wanted to do it better, and I took the job in the first place because I was doing something equivalent in the dorm anyway. It's work that I know, that I enjoy doing, and that I know I'm suited for, and it never gets old, because every student is a new puzzle and a new challenge. I don't know exactly when it happened, but before very long, the decision was made. I'm going to be a writing teacher.
What I plan to do is this. I've already spoken to Dean Owens about transferring into the A.M.R.S. (Master of Arts in Religious Studies), the one-year program, for which I have already met all the course requirements. All I need to do is turn in the papers I have extensions on, pass the French exam (if I haven't already), and fly up in the fall quarter to do a one-hour defense of a paper I wrote for a course, with three professors of my choosing. Then I can petition to graduate in the fall, and I'll be done.
For the summer, I'll be in Houston with my folks, working at the Writing Center, and if all goes well, I plan to continue that arrangement through the next academic year. I've already missed all the admissions deadlines for next year, even the ones for the spring, so I'll take a few non-degree courses wherever I can in the meantime, and in the fall and winter, apply to masters programs in Rhetoric and Composition, perhaps to be followed by a doctorate.
If you want to know how I feel about this, there is a certain feeling of taking a step backward to go forward, and I am sorry to be so suddenly leaving and not coming back; beyond that, though, I am so profoundly relieved. All that worry about my vocation and my path in life has dropped away; I have found my sacred quest. This is the thing, the thing I can do for decades, and the way that I can do real good for real people. I'm elated and excited, and looking forward to getting back to the work I loved best.
That said, I don't feel for a moment that my time in Chicago was in any way wasted. I wouldn't trade this year for anything. I have had so much growth here, so much change and transformation; I am so much more certain of my being and my abilities, so much more confident and comfortable with myself. And I have made so many friends here that I am so glad to know, friends who have shaped me and helped me and made me smile, made me question, made me think and hope and strive. I am sad to leave Hyde Park, where I have so enjoyed living, and I am sad that I will not get to know these people better, but be assured, I will not forget them quickly. I am also glad to go home, glad to have found my course at last, and to have a plan. There are people I miss in Houston, and work I've missed doing. I wish I could be in two places at once.
To my Chicago friends: Send me emails, call me, write me letters, send smoke signals, send telegrams: keep in touch. In all the craziness and rush and suddenness of these last weeks, there are a lot of people I never got to say good-bye to, and all I can say is, I'm so very sorry, and I'll be back to visit at least once this fall. I will never be able to tell you what this place has meant to me, and how much I would have lost if I hadn't come. Suffice to say, I leave a part of my heart here, and I am supremely grateful to call you friend. Go with God, until we meet again.
I know this seems very sudden, and no doubt it is, but it is also right, and that's the compass that I sail by. I know this is what I should do, and it is a very good thing to find my way at last. God is very, very good. | | |
| Who could have known, when I went in to see Professor Fox today, that a half-hour conversation would change everything I thought about my future, my career, and my vocation?
Well, let's not get too terribly dramatic, but it isn't far from the truth.
Since before Spring Break, I've been suffering from some vocational angst; essentially, I couldn't seem to find my place within the academic study of religion, or any particular focus that I could imagine committing to for the next fifty years. It never bothered me before that I didn't know what I planned to do next, after I finished whatever I happened to be doing this year or couple of years. I'm sure it wouldn't have bothered me now, but the next logical step after my masters was a PhD, and what you do for your doctorate establishes much of the trajectory for the rest of your career. In short, the next step was a massive one, and I began to worry. It didn't seem like the eight months between now and application deadlines would be enough to answer the question, establish a direction, commit to a specialty, and pull together enough background to be qualified. That was another thing that troubled me; I felt like I was coming to the subject too late, like I didn't have anything like enough background to locate a focus, let alone pursue a doctorate, and who knew how long it might take to get that background to my satisfaction? It felt like I couldn't get ahead.
When I expressed my worries to Professor Fox, he told me plainly (in the tone of one who wishes to help by offering sense) that there was no point in pursuing a doctorate or another masters if I didn't know what I wanted to study. Toward helping me to figure it out, he asked after my summer plans. I mentioned going back home, resuming my old job at the Writing Center, and he very naturally asked what that was. So I told him, and in the course of our conversation I ended up expressing to him how much I had loved that job and teaching writing. At which confession he squinted at me a little, tilted his head to one side, and asked, "So what are you doing here?"
A few weeks ago I was talking to my mom about all this, and she reminded me how much I loved my job tutoring at the Writing Center, and said maybe I should include that in my vocational calculations. As with so many other things in my life, it may well turn out that Mom, true to form, was right. Professor Fox became the first of four people today to tell me that if I had found something I loved doing, I should go do that, and never mind any sense of having committed to religious studies. I went to see him precisely because I believed he would tell me what he really thought, and because, in a discussion of his that I attended, he showed himself open to sudden shifts in the direction of one's pursuits, a dedication to thinking outside the box, and that was something I needed in an advisor.
I find myself oddly relieved. Teaching writing is something I feel like I can do, and do well, and do for a long time. Obviously some further study would be required, but it wouldn't be the behemoth endeavor that getting a firm ground in religion or philosophy of religion would be. It would be adding on to things I already know, skills I've already learned, and talents I have that can't be learned. It would be something I was suited for.
We shall see how much this comes to, but I feel like a corner has been turned, and much of my worry has sloughed off and disappeared. I prayed, yesterday, that God would send me where He willed, that He would show me where to go with this life I've been given; perhaps this is my answer.
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| Once again it's been a while since I put anything up here. Mostly I'm writing now for two reasons: first, I was trying to find information about somebody online (never you mind who) and couldn't; second, I really don't want to write my Religious Ethics paper that's due tomorrow. So, what better to do with the frustration than blog for a few minutes?
It's been a strange couple of months since I came back from spring break. My sleep patterns, writing patterns, and work habits have been all over the place, and I seem to have trouble settling down to do anything. I really want the quarter to be over, the year to be over, and myself to be back at home working at my old job at the Writing Center and selling collectibles on Ebay. Of course, I also know that a couple months from now, when the heat has reminded me why I hated Houston in the first place and commuting two hours a day has become a drag, I'll be dying to get back to Chicago, where the air is cooler and the thoughts soar higher, where my books and guitar will be waiting for me, where dear friends and great classes can be found. I feel sometimes like I'm always waiting to get on to the next thing, and never enjoying the thing I'm doing now. For the next three weeks, let's see what I can do with that. In nineteen days, I'll be home with my folks and a heavy suitcase or three, resuming my old job and renewing old friendships, but for those nineteen days, there is the quarter to finish up, my stuff to pack, and at least one dear friend to say goodbye to for a good long time, as he heads off for a masters at Oxford. Let's see, from this moment, how well I can do at keeping my head in the game.
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| I haven't posted anything here since last September. As it often does, an awful lot has happened between then and now. But that's another story.
In the last few months, three or so people, in the middle of a conversation with me, have asked me whether I have a blog. I don't maintain it well, and hardly anybody reads it since I stopped posting, but I suppose I do have a blog. Still, I don't think that's what they were asking. I originally opened this webpage so I could keep friends and family informed of my doings while I was in Ireland, and ever since I've used it, however intermittently, to publish events I thought worthy of note to whomsoever might want to read about them. I think these people, listening to me profess ideas that perhaps they hadn't heard before, were asking me whether I had written any of this stuff down where they could read more of it at their leisure. As to that, the answer must largely be no.
Although it may not readily appear so, I am a person who draws a distinct line between public and private. Events, happenings, explorations into new countries and cities, are the kind of thing that anyone may see and anyone may know about, and of which it is only polite to keep family and friends informed. As to what I think and feel about those public events, and as to the smaller, unseen events that occur only within the confines of my own head and heart, such things enter into the province of confidence and trust; these are things I share only with people with whom I have a bond, and the idea of putting up ideas, daydreams, first principles of the heart, where absolutely anyone may read them with no difficulty at all, is troubling at best.
More than this, I don't know what copyright law has to say about websites, but it has occurred to me that I might want to publish some of this stuff I'm coming up with one day, and if I put it up on the internet, it's not impossible someone might find one of my cherished ideas worth stealing.
That being said, I'm not sure exactly why I'm keeping this page open. Facebook has grown to such an extent that it's not difficult to keep track of me any more, and if I'm not going to be unveiling my soul or putting out fiction, I'm not sure what's left for this undoctored blog to do. Still, I've had it up for two years, and it's not impossible I'll find a use for it sometime yet to come. Mostly, I just wanted to put something up, having been silent so long. I still like you, Xanga, if only 'cause you've got a funny name.
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| So, to pick up where I left off. Sunday morning, August 31st: me, Dad, and David on the road with half my worldly possessions, in Dorcas (my mother's Kia Sportage), headed for Chicago. Moving Day. (dum dum DUM!!!!)
We saw this weird sign-sculpture on our way out of our hotel, and Dad obligingly pulled over and aimed the windshield at it so I could get a picture. Here it is.
Now we get away from the pictures for a while. To make several very long hours short, we found the Graduate Residence Hall, more or less where I expected it to be. I signed in, got my keys, and we pulled around back to begin unloading all the stuff. We had that almost completely done, in fact we were down to the fridge, which was the heaviest, bulkiest, and last item to be unloaded, when the nice lady from behind the front desk comes around to the back door and asks me, "Nicole honey, why are you making your daddy work so hard?" pushing a luggage cart. We all stare at the nice lady with the luggage cart for a minute, computing in our mind how many boxes of books we've already carried up to my second-story room and wouldn't have had to carry if we had known about the luggage cart, and David silently plans six more ways to kill me in addition to the list he'd already compiled while carrying the books. Then Dad and David load the fridge onto the cart, as all three of us thank the nice lady profusely, and the world goes on turning.
Then we began the second leg of moving day: Ikea. Ikea actually went pretty smoothly, all things considered: we found it right where it was supposed to be, were helped by a very nice guy in the kitchen department, and got all my shelving components with very little difficulty. The only rough moment was when I discovered that I had somehow managed to come into the store without my purse, and thus without the means of paying for the $700 worth of stuff I was about to buy. Run out to the car, run back in, go through the checkout, see the disbelief on David's face, fill up Dorcas again with the Ikea stuff, hit Bed Bath and Beyond for the hangers I'd known I would need and the Twin XL sheets that I hadn't, head back to the Dorm. This time we unloaded with the luggage cart, got done much more quickly, and then, six hours after arriving in Chicago, it was time to say good-bye.
I won't lie. That was hard. I had a difficult moment by the back door, after David and Dad had driven away, when it began to sink in that I was moved (just me, not the whole family), and home was now twelve hundred miles away, and I was staying here. Then I reminded myself that I'm not alone, no matter where I go, picked myself up, and went up to my room to begin the rest of the moving-in process.
Before I did anything, before I touched anything, I dug my camera out of my over-stuffed purse and took some pictures of the wreckage. This is what my room looked like after everything was moved in, but before I started to unpack. (This is the part Mom's been waiting for. Here you go, Mom!)
View from the door.
The Mess Proper
Most of the Ikea stuff, and the boxes of books (there were seven at final count).
The big beautiful desk, covered in stuff.
My windows (two of which, to my delight, open (air conditioning is considered something of a luxury around here)), and my view. And my trashcan, but the point is the view, north over the park and toward campus. Focus on the view.
The next thing I did was make sure of my internet connection (which worked immediately, by the way; these are not your UH dorms), locate the nearest Dominos and order pizza so that I would have something to eat for the next couple of days. With sustenance on the way, I turned my attention to enforcing order on the chaos. I shifted some stuff around so there was actually floorspace I could use, and began putting together the first of the shelves. This is a more difficult operation than it sounds, because these are the kind of shelves that, while you're putting them together, will tip over if something is not holding them up. Once they're fully assembled, they're solid as a rock, but during that process, something has got to hold them up straight, or they will fall to pieces. Which makes assembling them a difficult and complicated thing to do when you are only one girl with two hands and a screwdriver. It took a good two hours, not including the dinner break, of wrestling and tooth-gritting and, yes, some protracted swearing, to get the first shelving unit up, but I was not daunted, and in the end, I was victorious. I can prove it; I took a picture. 
Now having shelves on which to put things, I unpacked my kitchen stuff from Ikea. It made a nice, tidy, well-equipped little kitchen, I thought.
That was really my goal for the night. It's not that I wasn't dead tired after that long day (though, to tell the truth, David and Dad had much better right to it; when we were unloading, I was the one who had to unlock doors, so Dad insisted on making sure I could always get a hand free, which meant the two of them were stuck with the majority of the really heavy stuff. I appreciate it, guys.). It's just that I couldn't go to sleep with all the mess around me, and that I really did want something to do right then, so I could feel like I was owning this whole business right from the start. It felt good to unpack some stuff, set up my own space.
My posts tend to run long; this one has pictures, so it's really long. Here I'll take a break, to pick it up on the morrow.
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