a melon-colored suit and burgundy tie

its week 3 and already i'm falling behind. what is it about fall quarter that makes me want to just give up? spring quarter last year i was filled with fervor--i was really gung-ho about getting that 4.0, but every time fall quarter comes around, i just...don't want to do it anymore. and the cycle repeats itself. perhaps i'm only driven in the spring.

europe was wonderful. i didn't want to come back. the only reason why i did? someone needs to feed our birds. that was the only reason. it wasn't that i had someone waiting for me to come back, it wasn't that i had to finish my college education, it wasn't that i wanted to see my home again. i was so out of mind with the strangeness of the places i went to that i wanted to stay until i knew them. i wanted to stay until i made those places mine. only then would i move on.

but i'm back here with a brand new set of classes and a brand new spread of professors. i have the same language professor as i had this time last year. i didn't know he taught this level and i feel both gratitude and dread because when you like your professor, you don't want to disappoint them--and i feel i already have. i'm taking a criticism class for my major and we're reading Plato at the moment, whom i've never read before. my professor is British from a German colony in Africa. his opinions are as arresting as his loudspeaker voice: john milton is the smartest poet there is; the romantics had evil theories; the british and french are so much alike that they despise each other; our president is an idiot. he'll welcome disagreement, then tell you you're wrong. he says the novel is the lowest form of literature in existence and claims that literature as "stories" is a base and vile notion. i will put in a tentative ballot to keep him in power, but only because he shocks me and makes me laugh. but that doesn't mean i have to agree with him. my other english professor is "wild and woolly" and gets really excited about the feud society in Beowulf. i think she's wonderful, although the reading is hard to get into. my bio professor is an anthropologist at heart, but not such a one as the esteemed Eagan who still ranks supreme as one of the best BR professors who ever taught me a lick of anthropology. this other one isn't as compelling and i could really do without having to sit through lecture. but i refuse to buy the textbook for the class and so must attend. and lastly, my writing professor, who shall get a paragraph of his own.

i'm not taking choir this quarter, for excellent reasons. i don't think i'll graduate with a minor--instead i'm trying for an emphasis: a bachelor's degree in english with an emphasis in creative writing. to achieve this emphasis, i must take four classes, one of them being writing 31. now, if you know me, then you know that i hate reading about how one should write or taking classes on how one should write, or joining groups were other people tell one how they should write. i take my writing very seriously--and very personally. but i thought that if i ever want to present my work to a publisher, then i'll have to get used to public scrutiny. agreeing to this emphasis and taking this course was the first step. i have yet to find out whether this first step is a smart one. my professor is not much older than i am, probably my sister's age, and he...he...it makes it difficult for me to maintain any sort of professional or scholarly attitude towards the class. to put it plainly, i feel out of place. i don't like reading what he and the other students like to read, i can't talk about the reading in the way the other students do. i think i might be the oldest one in the class and i feel...i'm feeling it, i'm feeling how much older i am than them, no matter that its probably only a difference of a few months or one year. i feel like what i'm going to submit tomorrow will either revolt them or impress them. and my professor, i want to impress him. but already i feel like what i will produce for this class is radically different from anything i've written before because i always write with my audience in mind. and what they like to read is alien to me. what's in my heart is very different, but i don't think they'd appreciate it, and for now i must broaden my horizons and write stories i never thought i'd write. he's very modern and contemporary and i really don't know what to say about him except that he makes me feel old. and he makes me feel tense, like i'm balancing between speaking the old things i'm thinking that will disgust the class and keeping silent and just watching him. he makes me tremble inside.

but my old mind must turn to Plato's Phaedrus now. there i will surely find people i can admire and oldness that i can relate to.