Beginning my studies, the first step pleased me so much,
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
The first step I say awed and pleased me so much,
I have hardly gone and hardly wished to go any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.
--Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
When you have acres of paper to fill up with pencil marks, you have no time to waste on the luxury of thinking.
--John Holt, How Children Fail
Looking back at my first semester
Last semester, I wore myself ragged just by spending time on the luxury of thinking. Ecstatic songs take much longer, and I most often was forced to neglect them.
I didn't have too many acres of paper to fill with pencil marks. It was the acres of pages I had to read that were a problem. I've so often heard a classmate say, "Yeah, I finished the reading, but I didn't understand any of it." Once in a while, I gave in to time pressure and exhaustion by not taking time to understand my reading assignments, but I rarely did. I found reading without understanding to be meaningless drudgery (I had the impression that my classmates found it so too, but they were more willing to accept meaningless drudgery than I was). So I took time to understand my reading--and what a lot of time it took! Though I've always loved reading, there were times last semester when I thought that if I read one more word, I'd scream.
I believe I managed to get a good understanding of most of the things I studied (with a few exceptions, such as macroeconomic equilibrium). I had very little time left over, though, to "sing it in ecstatic songs." I knew I wasn't appreciating my studies nearly as much as I could have if I'd had more time, and it frustrated me terribly. When I had a free moment (or took one that I didn't really have time for), I usually wasn't interested in doing anything other than thinking about recent reading or lectures--not thinking about how to use them to do well in the class, but thinking about what they meant to me and how wonderful they were.
Planning for Spring '98
It was easy to decide to take less classes. By December, I thought I had decided what they would be: I would take Econ 2 and the Writing Lab for credit, and I'd audit American Lit 2. The Writing Lab is only half a unit and isn't a regular class with homework; it's just a place to get one-on-one advice about writing. Auditing a class means you don't get credit or a grade for it, don't take exams, and don't have to do any more of the homework or attend any more of the classes than you choose. Auditing American Lit 2 seemed perfect: I could still explore and discuss literature, and I wouldn't have any pressure to complete gigantic reading assignments when I didn't have time.
Two days before the start of classes, I changed my mind about American Lit 2: Walt Whitman talked me out of it. It was that poem at the top of the page, "Beginning My Studies," that did it. When I ran across it in Leaves of Grass, I recognized myself in it at once. And it made me rethink my plans.
I decided not to audit American Lit 2 because I wasn't done with American Lit 1 yet. Specifically, I wasn't done with three of the writers it included. In American Lit 1, I read Emerson's essays, Poe's short stories, and Whitman's poetry for the first time, and all had great personal significance to me. After reading "Beginning My Studies," I realized that though American Lit 1 benefitted me very much, especially by introducing me to these three, American Lit 2 wasn't at all what I needed. Another survey course in which I'd discover more such authors in quick succession? No, not yet! First, I will take time to explore and appreciate what I have already discovered, and I will learn from it as well as about it. I will "stop and loiter" with Emerson, Poe, and Whitman for a good while longer.
By the way, if you'd enjoy discussing any of these three, don't hesitate to e-mail me! mail2ra@hotmail.com
Now a few miscellaneous notes . . .
"Song of Myself"
The last reading assignment for American Lit included (along with a great deal else) Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." Since "Song" is very long, the teacher said it wasn't necessary to read the whole thing straight through; if we wanted, we were welcome to just skip around and read bits of it, so long as we got a feeling for what it was.
I settled down to read it and quickly decided that I sure didn't want to read it straight through. What the heck is this? I thought. No part of it has anything to do with any of the rest, and some of it doesn't make any sense at all! So I started skipping around in it as the teacher had suggested. I found I enjoyed it very much that way, when I could pick out the neat stuff and ignore what seemed to be pointless nonsense. I concluded that "Song" was a collection of random thoughts and that I loved some of them but that reading the whole heap line by line would drive me nuts.
I kept thinking about "Song" for weeks after I read those bits of it. Lines from it would come back into my mind, and I'd go look them up to see exactly how they went. Three and a half weeks later, during vacation, I realized that I wanted to read the whole poem. Over the next few days (in between the other things I was busy with at the time), I read "Song" straight through, skipping nothing. I loved every word.
I saw that "Song of Myself" is not random at all. I can't give a logical explanation of how all of its lines go together, but they do. When I took it as unrelated fragments, it was lovely and interesting. When I stopped breaking it up, stopped looking for it to be ordinary poetry, recognized what it was, and embraced it as a whole, it was breathtaking.
"Ligeia"
Here's the paper I wrote last semester for American Lit. It's unconventional, or perhaps downright absurd. Ever read Edgar Allen Poe's "Ligeia"? If not, I recommend it; you can find it here. At the end of the semester, the lit teacher gave an assignment that was really my sort: choose anything or any combination of things that we'd read in her class and write some sort of 6- to 8-page literary analysis of it. I chose "Ligeia" and the most off-the-wall premise--that the whole story might be the daydream of a 14-year-old boy. I didn't say it was, mind you, just that the theory fit well and could be true.
With all the things I could have written, why did I pick this? First, it's what occurred to me when I read the story, and I wanted to explore it and set it down on paper. Second, it was something new. Sure, I could've just analyzed symbolism in Scarlet Letter, but I'd have been the ten-billionth student to do so. How likely would I be to come up with anything the teacher hadn't heard 50 times before? And what was the point of writing something she had heard 50 times before? This paper was unique. Third, it was an interesting and amusing challenge to fit this idea into the context of academic writing. As the composition teacher put it, academic writing is about "demonstrating, illustrating, and proving your thesis." I had to reconcile that with all the fanciful, unprovable notions and this-reminds-me-of's that occurred to me when I read "Ligeia."
In the midst of all that end-of-semester madness, I made this paper my top priority. That made no sense as far as grades went since I could've gotten a "C" on the paper and still gotten an "A" in American Lit. But the "Ligeia" paper was too important to me than any of the other projects I had going; I was determined to do my best work with it regardless of what that did to my grades in another class. So I did, and I had a splendid time writing it.
Drawings (inspired by American Lit)
When we were discussing Poe's spooky stories, the teacher talked about how horrifying they were and said it was because Poe "stands too close. He's right there, and you can't push him away." She would make an anxious face and gesture as though at someone standing at her side. I could almost see him there. Just for fun, I did a little drawing of the two of them: the teacher holding a book of Poe's stories and looking nervously at Poe, who stood next to her with a hand on her shoulder and a sinister expression. I stopped in the teacher's office and gave the drawing to her (I kept a photocopy). She liked it. Of course we got talking about Poe, and I tried to tell her my perspective on the spooky stories, which I didn't find horrifying. I agreed that he was "close"--it's the perfect description--but that didn't scare me. I couldn't quite manage to explain it to the teacher in a way she'd understand. When I got home, I did a drawing in which I was reading and Poe was sitting beside me in a friendly way. I showed that one to the teacher the next week, and then she got what I was talking about.
The final exam question that I neglected to answer (see "Finals" in Fall '98) involved comparing and contrasting Emerson, Poe, and Whitman. During vacation, I decided to draw an answer to it. In the sketch, I'm sitting and reading with the three authors around me: Poe behind the sofa looking over my shoulder; the affectionate Whitman by my side with his arms around me; and Emerson, always intellectual and a student of nature, sitting nearby and holding out a leaf for my inspection.
Finally, deciding that the living-room scene didn't fully portray the effect of Emerson's essays, I drew one of just him and me, in which we're distant figures silhouetted at the top of a cliff, looking out over a wild landscape.
Emerson
Reading Emerson's essays was a joy. They expressed some of my deepest beliefs with amazing beauty and clarity. They put into words things that I had felt were true but had never been able to explain. And even when I disagreed with them, I loved them for their beautiful writing and the way they made me think.
We read five of them for class (also, I read "Man the Reformer" during vacation). I read "The Poet" silently as usual. When I read "Nature," my mom was nearby, and I kept reading bits of it to her just because they were so lovely she had to hear them. finally I realized I was doing that so often that I might as well read her the whole rest of the essay, so I did. I found that, besides enjoying sharing it with her, I liked reading it aloud; it went more smoothly that way (in class the next day, the teacher mentioned that all essays were originally speeches). I offered to read her "The American Scholar" too; she enjoyed it. When I got my next Emerson assignment, though, Mom didn't want to hear any more.
Our house is out in the woods, and it's a 45-minute walk to the top of a ridge. There, one is completely out of reach of civilization and can see for miles in any direction. That's where I read the Divinity School Address and "Self-Reliance." This time, no longer sitting in the kitchen and saying, "hey, listen to this," I read them the way they were meant to be read. I forgot about being a student doing an assignment. I shouted them as my addresses to the world.
I wished I there'd been time to read more Emerson. I did several more reading assignments up there because it's a beautiful place where I could study undisturbed. Also, I realized that I had gotten so busy with school that I wasn't getting nearly enough exercise, so the hiking was a good idea. I kept it up until we hit the rainy season. It was good habit. But, nice as it was to be out there in the fresh air while studying Hawthorne or economics, it was not the joyful experience that reading those essays had been.
The class also studied Emerson's poetry. I'd read some of it before. All I'd especially liked then, and all I liked when I reread it for the class, was "Days." It's one of my favorite poems of all, but I'm not very interested in the rest of the Emerson poems I've read. They're too intellectual for my tastes. If I'm going to read an intellectual argument, I don't want it in verse; it's more effective and more beautiful if put into a well-written essay. I like poetry that expresses what can't be put into arguments.
I always compare and contrast my teachers, so it was interesting to see that the Lit teacher and the composition teacher had opposite approaches to Emerson. The Lit teacher thought the best way to study his essays was to go through and look for the neat little quotes and discuss each one separately. I certainly enjoyed doing that in the class discussions, but it struck me as rather superficial to do only that; the essays seemed like much more than quote collections to me. The composition teacher said the best approach to Emerson was to read all his work and look at it as a biography instead of philosophy. Interesting idea! I'd like to try it sometime, when I get around to reading that much Emerson. But, unlike the composition teacher, I find the philosophy side fascinating.
Having begun with quotes, I'll end with one, from "The American Scholar." If, instead of "books," you said "classes" or "teachers," you'd have a perfect description of my approach to college.
"Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by it clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul."
The active soul--that is what one is allowed to develop in unschooling.
Back to the fall '97 semester
On to the spring '98 semester