on the importance of lemurs and calculus

I don't exactly remember the impetus for this renewed career assessment. The new quarter has just started at UW and maybe it's the flurry of new pencils and shiny, optimistic faces. Or maybe it's remembering the article I saw when I was at Harvard -- this woman who fled from her oppression in South Africa against the beliefs of her entire community and fought tooth and nail to get an education in the United States. She literally almost died in this pursuit, and was disowned by everyone in her family, who felt that a woman had no right to learn how to read and write.

Hi. I have free tuition to one of the top research universities in the country. And I have a community more than happy to see me take advantage of it.

When I was in college, I couldn't wait to graduate and get a job so people would stop making me learn stuff I didn't think I needed to know. So my professors wouldn't tear my poetry to shreds. So my TA wouldn't flunk my solid proposal for an environmental television station (called SPF-15) because Dean Baker insisted that everyone fail their first effort in journalism. So that the portly, self-aggrandizing print journalism professor wouldn't call me a "photographer with a writing problem" in front of a class full of my peers. So I wouldn't spend five hours straight fumbling with strips of negatives in the dark, crying into the pans of Dektol.

I hated school. I hated journalism. Furthermore, I was bad at it. My spot news photographs of a tragic fire were shot in the reflection of a misty stained glass window. I shot political events with irony and processed the film grainy like a police mug shot. And when I was allowed to do "features", they were soft-focused and run twice through a #5 red filter to make them contrasty and dramatic. One by one, my professors nodded up Comm. Ave., telling me I belonged "up on the hill". This was their suggestion that I was not journalist material and in fact belong at the School of Fine Arts. In their eyes, SFA classes were the short-bus of the photography world.

I summarized this experience well in a single line written in purple marker in my junior year journal: "I don't want to cover disasters -- I want to take pictures of pretty things and write pretty stories and be in love with this world."

The problem was that I made the pictures in my head and then photographed them, or wrote about them. I didn't want to tell the story of what was in front of me. Often it was too ugly.

Still there was Newswriting and Reporting I, II, and III -- over which I suffered several nervous breakdowns because I had to talk to people I didn't know about topics I was unfamiliar with. That's pretty much the definition of my worst nightmare. Uninformed dialog and trains. Then we did an uplifting segment on proper composition of obituaries. But I think the worst part was the requirement that we read no less than 3 newspapers every day. And we were tested on them. And I failed every one.

The news depressed me.

It's weird -- these are the things I most remember. Though I also remember my Beaches and Shoreline Processes class, which supposedly was created so that Communication majors could fulfill their science requirement painlessly. Mon Frere and I both laughed yesterday that we could remember three things from that class: terminal moraines, tectonic plates, and lemurs. Lemurs have nothing to do with beaches nor shorelines. In fact, they are fuzzy little mammals that have long, striped tails. It was just a random image the professor snuck into his slide show to see who was actually attending lectures. Lemurs are from Madagascar. That question was on the final exam. I went to his office hours because he had a giant saltwater fish tank and a beagle, and because he wore pastel sweaters and told fascinating stories.

I took an entire class on James Joyce's Ulysses, and it did indeed require an entire semester. I think we also had one day left after completing that book to stare drop-jawed and drooling into our copies of Finnegan's Wake. Oh that Joyce, he's such a kidder.

The stuff I really enjoyed doing -- creative writing and composition, I placed out of during the entrance exams and therefore could not take them.

The class I remember most, out of all four years, was a class I took my freshman year: Sociobiology. I pored over the textbooks, fascinated by the social structure of bees and the familial organization of lions. The symbiotic relationships that exist in so many environments.

Which brings us to my current state. Loving the natural world. Wanting to study creatures and habitats and the earth I live on. The oceans, too. And not just because of fond memories of a gentle-spoken professor with a mint green cardigan draped over his shoulders.

There's all sorts of elements involved here. I don't even know where to begin looking at school. Going for another BS, or taking some undergrad requirements and starting a master's degree.

The problem? Numbers.

At BU, each school was given sarcastic acronyms. The acronym for the College of Communication, COM, was the College of Optional Math.

The school made an effort to create at least one class for us in the natural sciences. But they gave up on math and distributed calculators with our Journalism 101 text books. (We could use them after graduation to figure out how to live on a journalist's $14,000 yearly salary.)

Pretty much anything I would like to study further requires at least basic math. And college-level basic math requires high school math. And, well, I still carry the scars of a losing battle with high school math. It would take not only a class and a dedicated tutor, but several years of therapy.

But I am making small movements toward taking a serious look at this. I requested a copy of my transcript last week. I honestly did not remember my courses or the grades I received in them. The transcript came today, and I left it on my desk unread for an hour or so. I didn't have the courage to look at it, convinced that with all these terrifying memories, I could not have done very well. When I flinchingly opened it and read it sideways as though it would bite me. And then wondered why I had been beating myself up for the past six years since graduation for my performance. I made Dean's list. I rocked the house. A's all over the place. I have renewed faith in my capabilities. I do remember pissed-off parents on more than one occasion. But now I can look at those four years and feel good about my accomplishments, I can stop dragging home the proverbial bone. I am Okay just as I am.

CUE: triumphant, cheesy after-school-special soundtrack.

Anyways, time to go. If you got nothing else out of this blog entry, I hope you at least remember that Lemurs are from Madagascar. That will be on the final exam.