A Humorous True Account.

Once upon a time,

the same grad school

sent me 

not one,

not two,

but three rejection letters.

I mean, so far.

Two via email,

one crisp paper copy.

All signed by different people.

Luckily,

I'm not upset.

But really.

Pull yourselves together, people.

I get it.

I'm not some clingy girlfriend who won't take a hint.

Communicate with each other.

The height of class.

I love living in this world because

there are people 

who rap about Alexander Hamilton.

(mild language)

Doesn't that just make you glad?

School's out.

You know in Finding Nemo

 

how Nemo's all

 

"FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!"

 

?

 

 

Well today I'm all

 

"LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!

LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!"

Major win.

Today, I get to write a paper

for a linguistics class

about Boy Meets World.

This is why I love my major.

A blessing on your head.

My educational career has been one big lucky break.

No really.

Just now,

as I was thinking I would never be able to finish 

my presentation due tomorrow,

I found out that my professor is sick

and 

class

is

cancelled.

What about Greek 102 when the only times I didn't do my homework

were the only times that Dr. Bay decided 

not to check our homework?

And what about when I should have failed that class 

and I got an A?

How about getting in the 85th percentile on a practice LSAT

without ever studying?

Seriously, so blessed.

I can't not believe that God is watching out for me.

Studia Humanitas.

In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands,

And ate of it.

I said, "Is it good, friend?"

"It is bitter--bitter," he answered;

"But I like it

Because it is bitter,

And because it is my heart."

Stephen Crane

I think the thing that bothers me most about my life

is that I'm mortal.

Casper David Friedrich

No really.

It's something that I can't accept,

because it feels so limiting.

I feel like I'm made of greater stuff than that.

I should be able to pick up French again,

perfect Greek,

start German,

and dabble in Latin.

I should be able to get another degree in history teaching

and another in humanities

and another in American studies

and then go to law school.

Why don't I know the history of labor unions?

Why can't I be an expert on 

every case that went to the Supreme Court

and why haven't I read 

the hundred most influential books of all time?

When will I know the story of the Irish Republican Brotherhood

and when will I celebrate the national day 

of each country in the world?

I should know how to play the harmonica.

I should see Casablanca.

I should memorize etymologies.

I want to know everything.

Everything about mankind and the human condition.

About what they did and what they thought and what they made.

There is something so godly about being a human being.

I want to know everything,

because down to my living, breathing guts

I am a human.

Which also happens to make me feel so frustratingly limited.

I look forward to the day when I will burst my limitations

and learn everything

and become like God.

Being mortal is like tasting a bit of being godly

but

how

I

yearn

for

more.

The Life of a Linguist

"To be aware of language change is not going to make you a better person and it may not make you speak or write differently, but doggone it, it's fascinating."

-Mark Davies, BYU professor of corpus linguistics

I Can Do Anything Good.

I took the GRE today.

And it went rather well.

There are too many possibilities.

Academics.

I seriously had the best professors during Spring term.

Brother Seely 

made me love the Old Testament.

And is that even possible?

He told us stories that made him look bad,

and that made him look better.

Dr. Hallen

made me read slower and think more.

She gave me mercy when I didn't deserve it at all.

Brother Minert

said I was a fine young lady.

He brought our class homemade cookies twice.

It wasn't just Old Testament, philology, and family history that I learned this semester.

The Parting of the Ways.

It's become inevitable.

It's time for the parting of the ways.

Emily Dickinson,

we're through.

After being assigned to read all 1,789 poem in Emily's corpus in the last month,

I've got an extreme case of metrical fatigue.

Too much meter.

It pounds relentlessly like mallets in my Grinchy head.

Each poem loses all meaning and becomes nothing more than a tell-tale heart that I wish I could shove under the floorboards.

No offense meant to Emily.

I appreciate her just because my professor admires her so much.

When she dies, I think my professor and Emily will be instantly bosom friends,

sitting in a quaint corner of heaven, recording couplets.

.

.

.

.

.

But Emily and I are not friends.

I was about one bee or butterfly poem away from being put over the edge.

Emily, it's been real.

I'll see you when I compass Paradise - 

Graduation

Today & tomorrow is graduation at BYU.

I think graduation is nice

(as long as I don't have to go into the Bookstore).

Everyone walks around campus in funny outfits.

And family is there.

And people are happy for each other and proud of each other.

In just a year, that will be me wearing those robes.

But I'm totally getting a Master's degree because their outfits are cooler.

I already wanted to get one, but now there's even more of an impetus.

"He lives to learn in life's hard school."

What I'm learning in school:

-Attic Greek

-Marriage Preparation

-Writing about Arts & Humanities

-LDS Temples

-Theoretical Syntax

What I'm learning in the school of life:

The most magnificent part of life is the human soul,

body + spirit.

You must treat the body how you would treat the spirit if you could touch it.