On graduating and transitions
Today was my last day of work. Since September, I had worked in the English department at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Mine was a work-study position. Since today was the last day of finals week, the semester is officially over. That means I’m officially a college graduate and therefore am no longer eligible to hold a job reserved for students.
During this semester, I took what is unquestionably the most difficult class of my college career. It was an independent study which required me to pull my own brain apart and reassemble it in a way which could be easily read later. I read a great amount of theory for this class. I read and re-read thousands of pages of primary texts. I dreamed and daydreamed about the dead author whose essays and fiction I read over and over again. Despite this, the class was delightful and a bright spot at the end of the longest day of my week, which fell on a Wednesday, and went like this: a forty-five-minute commute, three hours of work, four hours of class, then my independent study. I frequently printed things out and read them during this class, a rehashing of my brain rearrangement.
The thing that made the class delightful isn’t a thing at all, but a person. My professor, Neal Bruss, who already meant a great deal to me before this semester (he’s a linguist–just in case you don’t know my feelings about linguistics, see here), saw me through this independent study and made my thoughts make sense and read not just my criticism about other people’s literature, but my literature as well. That is, he read my book (the one that’s coming out next month) as well as short stories I threw his way and the in-progress novel that I’m currently writing. He gave me feedback on everything and it was the sort of feedback that any writer or student really wants, the constructive feedback of an astute reader, the type of feedback that makes you actively think about the project and the problem, so you’re thinking forward rather than downward. His comments would always be structured as, “Yes, and–” rather than “Okay, but–” Moreover, he’s just horribly bright and really funny and I wish that he’d adopt me.
Anyway.
He dealt with my ridiculous schedule (of work and classes) all semester and gave me his time and attention whenever I needed it, even outside of class, because he’s committed to helping me learn, but also to helping me be the writer/thinker that I want to be/am. He believes in me and tells me so and that’s such an amazing feat, I can hardly stand it. So, when we had lunch today and talked about where I see the next year going (and, I suppose, all of life going), I didn’t really hold up well. I should mention that I’ve been a wretched mess this whole semester, crying left and right, and today was no exception. I think this has something to do with being aware that I’m being taken care of. I never feel like anyone’s responsibility but my own and I prefer it that way, but when I realize that someone else is actively trying to do things for my benefit, I’m bowled over by the kindness, by the attention, by the unexpected compassion of it all. I’m blindsided by it. The best part about working with Professor Bruss is that he deals with me regardless. He accepts that I’m kind of shaky sometimes, but he lets me work right through it. He challenges me in the best possible way. I wish I could carry him around with me somehow (even though I know I’d eventually drive him crazy).
I’m so lucky to have met the people I did during the time I spent at UMB, my classmates and professors and co-workers and colleagues. I’m lucky that they accepted all the things I’d already done with my time and the skills I already had. They were kind enough to help me fold so much information into what I already knew and make it pertinent to my work. I got what every undergraduate education purports to provide–an enriching experience, an applicable addition to that which I’d already devoted so much effort–but I also feel like I was made part of a family. And, like families do, they helped me go to college.
I spent eight years not going to college and when I think of the things I did then, they seem both remote and close at hand. Bookselling closest of all, though I haven’t been paid to sell books in nearly eight years. I started selling books and writing around the same time. I was eighteen. I was lonely. So I wrote to stave off loneliness. I wrote to try to grow. Luckily, I’m still writing (and still growing), so I blame that for my perennial emotional proximity to bookselling.
Yesterday, Neil Gaiman–whose work I read a lot when was a bookseller, whose characters I loved so much, I got them tattooed on me (which is funny because I’ve had them so long that they remind me of other books I’ve read since (like Invisible Cities (my tattoo of Dream is from a panel wherein he meets Marco Polo in the desert) and Infinite Jest (my tattoo of Death is a beautiful woman, and so too was Wallace’s description of death)), whose work I imitated when I first started writing (but certainly did not surpass)–gave a commencement speech at University of the Arts in Philly. Because I’m graduating this year and because I’ll commence in two weeks, I watched the video of his speech and was reminded that I’m a writer-who-reads-her-work-to-other-people because I saw a recording of his Last Angel Tour at the Aladdin when I was 20 years old. I remember thinking what a great thing it would be to tour performing my own work. When I went on tour in 2009, I felt a bit like him even though I was reciting work and not reading it. And I’m about to tour again, which is exciting and scary.
But before tour, commencement.
And before that, I’ll probably watch Neil’s speech again because it’s applicable to writers and artists and anyone who’s ever made things and doubted and continued making things, despite their doubt.
