Oh, the Places You'll Go!

In the graduation classic, Oh, The Places You'll Go!, Dr. Seuss writes, 

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

With all due respect to Dr. Seuss, and with the greatest appreciation of his assurance that I have brains in my head as sure as I have feet in my shoes, I have to clarify: I write mostly about myself on this blog because I'm uncomfortable trying to speak on the behalf of anyone else, but I am most certainly not on my own.  I think I've made clear here in the blogosphere how hard I've worked to earn my Master's in English Language and Literature from the University of Maryland.  For this accomplishment, though, I want to stop and take a minute to celebrate the support I've received from all of the people who make sure I am never on my own, and without whom I am sure I could not be so successful in my studies.

Billy has been here with me for every single step, every single word.  I'm a lot of things, but I'm not very balanced, and if left alone, I'd let my academic pursuits completely consume me.  I'd burn pretty brightly, but I also know I'd burn out pretty quickly.  Billy helps me maintain a slow, steady burn by simultaneously supporting my academics and reminding me that there are things outside school that take priority.  And when my flame flickers, he fuels me by finding different ways to remind me that I can succeed because I've always succeeded before.

It's a cyclical thing, this success:  I've always succeeded before because I've always been told I can.  My mom and dad have been nurturing my love of books since before I entered school.  They've always put them in my hands, helped me open the doors, and helped walk me through them until I gained the courage and confidence to walk through the doors on my own.  I have yet to figure out how my parents brought me up to believe I could be one of the best at the things I tried.  I think this is an important distinction: I can never remember thinking I was the very best at anything, but I have always felt like I was among the best.  This attitude they've helped me nurture keeps me reaching higher but also keeps me (I hope) from stepping on anyone else to get there.

In addition to being a good student, I take pride in being a good classmate.  I really care about what other people are thinking, I listen to them when they are speaking, and I really think hard about the ideas they're pitching.  (Sometimes I think this borders on annoying them, when I continue asking them questions about their ideas, or suggesting other points of view, but I can't help that I find their ideas so interesting.)  I think I'm a good classmate because I have such good siblings.  Since I'm the middle child, I've never been on my own in my family, either.  My brother, sister, and brother-in-law regularly ask me to explain myself, listen to my point of view, and suggest their own ideas that are similar to and different from my own.  Plus, we have a lot of fun together, which also helps to remind me that I'm not just a brain inside a head.

While my own parents and siblings helped develop me into the type of person I am, my in-laws are the "boots on the ground" support through the daily rigors of my academic schedule.  One of the difficulties the humanities are facing right now is that the work we do can't be easily explained in bullet points or measured by statistics.  The Morris/DePriests are a pretty left-brained family: we've got a lawyer, a physicians assistant, a nurse and a kinesiologist in training, and employees of the National Security Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute.  Literary studies is pretty far afield from these types of scientific, legal, and medical interests, but since I'm interested in it, they're interested in supporting me in it, and that has meant a lot to me these past two years.  (There are two other English degrees in the family, though, so I'm not completely alone.) : )

I've also been fortunate enough to find support within my own program.  I'm pictured here with Kent Cartwright, our department chair and the big boss in my office, and Kandice Chuh, the outgoing director of Graduate Studies and the director of my MA Writing Project.  Both were given awards for their guidance and mentorship by the Graduate English Organization this year, and it's as if I was asked to choose the recipients of these honors myself.  Kandice helped me to believe I was capable of getting into the PhD program and also worked to convince the admissions committee I was capable of succeeding in it.  Kent made sure that despite budget cuts, there were a good number of spots available in the PhD program, and so at the end of the day, here I am, in the PhD program and forever indebted and appreciative to the two of them.

So here we all are!  It meant more to me than I can express to have so many of the family members who made my degree possible there with me to celebrate my graduation.  I'm also thankful to all the family members who couldn't make the trip but who were there to celebrate with me in spirit, and those who joined us the following day at our house to celebrate my accomplishments along with Billy's and Vickie's.

I'm not on my own, and I couldn't have done all of this on my own.  Thank you, from deep down within me, to all of you who have made it possible for me to pursue the work that I believe is so important and that I find so fulfilling.

The Graduate

Vickie is officially a Valpo graduate!  Welcome to the club!

Nate, Vickie, Me, and Billy after the ceremony

Billy and I were happy to have the opportunity to return to Valpo this past weekend to meet up with the west coast family in order to celebrate Vickie's graduation.  Having her attend our own alma mater has been a lot of fun for me these past four years; I watched her enjoy many of the same experiences I did while also taking on many more responsibilities.  In the past year alone she has served as the President of the Student Nurses Association, Group Coordinator for Valpo Overnight Visits, Tour Manager for the Admissions Office, a consultant in the Writing Center, a member of the Dance Ensemble, a DJ on the campus radio station, and a member of the medical team that traveled to Central America on a spring break service trip.  Her intramural team has also done something mine was never able to do-- beat out the sorority teams to win the yearlong points award-- and they've done it three years in a row!  

Vickie with Mom, the VU Class of 2010, Vickie has had enough photos, Vickie with Dad and Judy, 

Vickie amongst her nursing classmates

In addition to all of those extra-curricular activities, Vickie also completed her nursing coursework, so she was awarded her Bachelor's of Science in Nursing!  Being six years ahead of Vickie in school meant I had left home before she started racking up accomplishments in high school, so as an older sibling, it was a lot of fun for me to be able to go back to Valpo to celebrate such a major accomplishment in her life.  Spending time with her on campus made me realize that while we both attended the same university, she made her own space and her own impact there in ways that make me really proud.  While I spent more of my time searching for the perfect beer pong partner, writing lesson plans, and chasing sorority girls off the elliptical machine, I think it is a testament to the environment and opportunities Valpo provides that we both came away from there feeling so positively about our experiences.  When I first visited Valpo back in 2000, it was the friendliness of the people that made me want to go there, and despite all the beautiful new buildings they've built between my tenure there and Vickie's, that friendly attitude remains the thing that makes Valpo a place I'd recommend to anyone who asked.

I got up early on Saturday morning so I could go for a run along my old marathon training route.  Valpo's campus feels so different now that it doesn't make me too nostalgic, but that run certainly did.  It brought back the feeling of accomplishment I enjoyed while training for the marathon, but it also served as "Liz's underage drinking tour," and I made it through five miles easily because I was busy thinking about all the fun I had with my friends in the various houses and apartments on the outskirts of campus.  Though I look back now and wonder how I bonged beers with such ease, I have really fond memories of all the goofy things my friends and I did on the Valpo party circuit.  I know a lot of college kids get themselves into serious trouble because of their drinking habits, and I've often tried to figure out how it was possible that I never did anything I seriously regretted, never found myself in a dangerous situation, and never got arrested (or even written up!) despite all my shenanigans.  This weekend I got to thinking, though, that despite making some questionable decisions about how much to drink, I always made good decisions about with whom to drink.  My friends at Valpo were all good-hearted, kind people, and we always looked out for one another.  When I watched Vickie begin to think about life after Valpo, I couldn't help but remember being in that position six years ago.  I have never been one who wanted to go back to college, but it made me miss all my old friends and the fun we had together.  It also helped me to remember what a special time those four years were in my life, so I'm thankful for that.

It seems self-indulgent to say that the best thing I can wish for my sister is that, after enjoying college as much as I did, she is able to find as much personal and intellectual gratification as I've found in my post-college years, but that is what I wish her all the same.  I know she's had a positive impact on that university, and I hope that going forward, the experiences she had at that university prove to have made an equally positive impact on her.  (And if anyone ever asks me what I "gave back" to Valpo in return for everything I took away, I can just say "I gave you Vickie!")

Want to see her collect her diploma?  Want to see the fierce red heels she wore with her cap and gown, which the people who took the photos above clearly did not properly appreciate?  Want feel seasick as a result of my extremely poor camera work?  Want to lose your hearing from hearing me cheer for her?  Then watch the video below! 

(The Graduate is the novel by Charles Webb upon which the movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft is based.  I'll summarize simply by stating: Benjamin Braddock did not attend Valparaiso University.)

Words Words Words

I'm nearing completion on the last paper I have to submit to complete my Master's coursework.  This made me think about words.

Anne-Marie is thinking about the inadequacy of words.  I think that's because, last week, she was overwhelmed by words.

Krista just sent me an email which concluded with the words, "Good luck with the last paper.  Thinking of all the words you've had to write in the past 2 years makes me nauesous.  You have a gift that I don't possess."  (Let's keep things in perspective here, though.  This is a woman who, after giving birth to her daughter naturally, told me that sitting on an exercise ball and having her husband roll a water bottle along her spine were great "pain relievers.")

This made me wonder: how many words HAVE I had to write?  So I added them up.  Well, I added up the number of words I've actually submitted.  The magic number is (currently):

114, 486!

I have no idea how many words I've actually written.  I usually end up trying to cut a significant portion of every draft.  This exercise also revealed to me that both my PhD writing sample and my MA writing project were exactly 10,018 words.  What are the chances of that?!  Guess I've got a new lucky number.

Let's not even try to imagine how many words I've read.

The best part is, we literary studies types will tell you that words don't actually, in themselves, mean anything.  I know: it's complicated.  I'll just stop there.

In other news, the rest of the work going on at this house is a little bit more pragmatic.  Patti, Chuck, and Brian spent last week helping Billy power wash and stain the deck in preparation for our cookout next weekend.  It looks great but it's currently under water, so you'll have to come see the "after" shot yourself.

(Words Words Words has a summary on amazon but my brain is too fried to figure out what this book is actually about.  But it's written by a linguist, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's about words.)

Are You My Mother?

Happy Mother's Day, Mama!

I know a lot of kids say their parents taught them they "could do anything they wanted to do," but my mom has really always believed I would be successful at anything I tried.   Even better, she thinks everything I want to do is a great idea!  "Oh cool," she says, any time I tell her what I'm working on.  Thanks, mom, for building in me the confidence to believe that my ideas are good and that I can make them happen for myself.

Happy Mother's Day, too, to all my other favorite mothers and mothers-to-be!

Jacelyn with Cash, Beth with Josh, Jolene with Mason, Krista with Clara, Patti with Billy, and Tina with baby-to-be.

As for me, I've got to deliver this paper in just under a week, so I must get back to work! : )

(Are You My Mother? is another children's book by P.D. Eastman that we grew up reading in my house.)

Things Fall Apart/Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Well, I almost made it through this semester without a breakdown.

Ten weeks in, I can remember feeling like a breakdown was coming.  I remembered what had triggered my breakdown during fall semester, which I calculated to have been only 8 weeks in.  "I'm past due," I joked to Anne-Marie.  And then the breakdown didn't happen.  I got it together.  Even after I cried during my defense, I picked myself up and got back to work.

Yesterday the breakdown happened.  Tears, picking on Billy, feeling sorry for myself, the whole deal.  I don't know if it is better or worse that I hadn't seen it coming.  In retrospect, I can see exactly why this train was coming off the tracks.

I began my week by reading all of Beloved in a single day.  Not a good way to start your week.  Not only is it 300+ pages, it's an emotional workout that you shouldn't try to perform all at once.  There are moments in the book where you really would be wise to set it down, walk away, and let it simmer.  I couldn't.  (You should read it, though.  It's as good as everyone says.)

I haven't been exercising.  I haven't had time.  I'm not going to bother digging up the old blog entry, but I am about 95% sure I said something along the lines of "I should always make time for running" when I did this to myself last spring.  But I let it slip again.

I haven't been blogging.  I've only been writing in complicated academic sentences.  (And a lot of them.  I've written 9,000 words since Wednesday morning.)  Blogging is good for me because it forces me to stop and look back on something that has happened.  I'm a pretty reflective person anyway, but I'm also a writer, and writing is the best way of reflecting I've found.  Everything moves by me too quickly if I don't stop to write about it.  Also, blogging helps me feel connected to people outside my state, outside my house, and outside my brain.  I think about you guys as the audience of this blog- I'm not just writing for myself.  And it is delightful to get comment notifications popping up in my email box that say people are interested in the reflections I've performed.

I haven't been cleaning.  I let all this stuff pile up around me, and I don't take the time to put it all away, and it causes me psychic anxiety that I don't actually acknowledge.  But it's there.  When things are cleaned up I can breathe easier.  I can find things easily.  And I can't get angry with myself or Billy about them not being cleaned up.

It takes 30 minutes to get in a good workout.  It takes maybe 30 minutes to write a blog entry.  In 30 minutes, I can get a lot of mess put away.  So why don't I do it?  I've been at this two years.  You'd think I'd have figured out how to carve out these 30 minuteses for myself, but I still get to this point in the semester where I'm swamped and I forget how important it is to do these things.  I forget that they actually help me do better all those things that are swamping me.

I haven't yet figured out how to keep things from falling apart.  But I do know how to gather them up and put them back together.  I'm starting the morning with this blog entry.  I'm going to get my hair cut.  I'm going to the gym afterward.  We're going to plant a tree in Pop's yard.  And then I'll get to you, Harriet Beecher Stowe.

(Things Fall Apart is a novel by Chinua Achebe that describes how, well, things fall apart for an African tribe once colonists arrive.  He's borrowing the line, "things fall apart," from a "The Second Coming," a Yeats poem which says "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold."  The Yeats poem concludes with the lines "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
Earlier in the week I devoted much of my time to explaining how I believe that in Joan Didion's essay collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, she proposes that writing is a way of trying to rectify the falling apart Yeats describes in his poem and she describes in her essays.  Here's to hoping she's right.)

America's Library: The Story of the Library of Congress

On Wednesday, I took my first trip to the Library of Congress.  Evidently the Jefferson Building is an architectural marvel.

(image via F. Barry Wheeler)

Unfortunately for me, I did not go to the Jefferson Building.  I went to the Madison building, which has enough identical-looking fluorescently lit gray hallways for even someone with an unnaturally keen sense of direction to begin to feel lost.  (I almost always know which direction to walk to get where I want to go.  I maintain that I can feel which direction I want to go unless my surroundings are sufficiently disorienting.)

Anyhow, nobody is interested in my pity party about the beautiful structure I missed, especially since I could be back there in an hour if I really wanted.  So on to the real story.  I went to the Madison building because a) that's where you get your "reader's card" and b) that's where the "Newspaper and Current Periodicals Room" is located.  My current research project involves Margaret Garner, the slave woman who fled across the Ohio river into Cincinnati in 1856, and when faced with being recaptured, tried to kill all four of her children (and succeeded in killing one by slitting her throat).  You might know her as the woman whose story inspired Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize winning novel, Beloved.  For me, though, Margaret Garner is the woman whose story gives a historical context to Cora Gordon, a character nobody writes about from Harriet Beecher Stowe's second antislavery novel, Dred: A Tale of the Dismal Swamp, which hardly anybody writes about.

After Margaret Garner was captured, the Cincinnati papers ran daily feature articles in the "city news" sections that recounted the day's events in court.  I made my way to the Library of Congress to read through these articles in order to understand the historical context of Cora's character and to see if there was anything in the articles that might help me understand Stowe's representation of Cora's experience.

I admit to having been really geeked up about my visit to the LoC.  When I go to the Maryland Room on campus, where I do my research on Katherine Anne Porter and where I was able to read Mencken's review of One of Ours, they do everything they can to enhance the aura of the experience.  They make you leave all of your belongings in a locker outside the room.  All you can take inside are your laptop, papers and books, and a pencil (no pens allowed!).  You have to request your items ahead of time, and you're watched closely while you peruse the materials.  Sometimes they even make you put on white gloves before you can touch the materials!  (I know this is nerdy.  By now, I think you all know the particular variety of nerd that I am.)  The Library of Congress was, by comparison, a total letdown.  I was allowed to take essentially whatever I wanted into the room with the exception of my giant purse.  The newspapers from 1856 were bound together in a giant book, which they propped up on a angled platform for me, and nobody really cared what I was doing.  I was there for six hours, and at one point, I even found myself resting my head on the newspaper.  I was way more upset that I'd allowed myself to do this than anyone else there was.  In the Maryland Room, you have to secure special permission to photograph the materials; in the LoC, I snapped away at everything and nobody cared.

I will say, though, that the experience was pretty intriguing.  As I flipped through the issues of the newspaper in my bound edition, I began to understand what it would have been like to experience news in that way.  There was a period in our younger, much less busy days when Krista and I were daily viewers of the Court TV channel;  we tuned in every morning to watch the latest developments in several different cases.  Reading the daily feature articles in this bound volume was like watching Court TV, 1856 style.  Part of the reason Garner's case was so interesting was because her lawyers were trying to prove that she was "freed" simply by traveling into Ohio with her owner as a young child, which would allow them to keep her in Ohio as a freed slave even though that would mean she'd have to stand trial for the murder of her child.  Conversely, her owner's attorneys were trying to argue that she was a recaptured fugitive slave, and according to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, she must be returned to Kentucky and handed over to her owner.  (Ultimately, the Judge ruled that though she could have "freed" herself when she traveled to Ohio as a child, she "waived her right to freedom" by returning to Kentucky thereafter.  As if she had a choice- she was 8!).  Thus, Garner's case became a conflict between the state laws of Ohio, which gave slaves their freedom, and the federal Fugitive Slave Law, which took it away, and everyone (even then) knew that the case would have large implications in the slave debate.  The fact that she admitted to killing her child, and that she evidently preferred to stand trial for murder instead of returning to slavery, also made it a huge national news story.

I was kind of amused that when I signed into the room, I had to choose between circling "House," "Senate," or "Guest."  Everyone that day had circled Guest.  I also thought I'd be surrounded by researchers like me, but that was not the case.  Mostly, the people that visited while I was there seemed a little crazy.  One guy was expecting the workers to help him research some old member of the Army, whom he claims founded the National Weather Service, but is never given adequate credit for it.  Normally I would have tuned these conversations out, but since it was weather related, I couldn't help but eavesdrop.  This guy claimed to have spent $2,500 of his own money on this research project, because NWS and NOAA and the "National Weather Bureau" (whatever that is) are unwilling to help him because they want to cover up this army guy's participation.  Worst of all (from my perspective), he hadn't done any research about whether the LoC might have any materials that would help his project, he just seemed to have shown up in DC expecting someone to figure it out for him.  After he left the room I wanted to ask the people at the desk what percentage of the people they interact with on a daily basis are trying to get to the bottom of "conspiracy theories."  Note to self: if you find yourself investing $2,500 of your own money in a project, it's because nobody else is interested in that project.  So don't continue to be shocked when people aren't jumping for joy at the prospect of helping you with it.

At one point, some man came up to me and asked if I realized I'd been staring at the bound volume for four hours.  I said I guessed not.  He asked me "how" I could do it, so I explained that it was either finish my research today or have to come back into the city again.  Then he asked me what I was researching, and he asked me why, and when I said I was in graduate school, he said "Oh, so you've already trained yourself in how to make yourself miserable.  That could have been your answer to my first question."  I thought this exchange was funny.  When I told Anne-Marie about it, she thought it was creepy.  Point taken.

Everyone working there was really nice to me and very helpful.  Before I went, I couldn't figure out why the people I spoke to on the phone were bending over backwards to help me locate my materials.  After I'd arrived, I realized it was because they must be used to other people expecting the employees to do all the researching for them.  Sometimes I believe my impatience can actually be a virtue.  It has made me into a "get shit done now" type of person.  I can't even begin to imagine showing up at the LoC, asking someone to find something for me, and sitting around waiting while they see if they can go dig it up.  I believe that my get-shit-done-now-ness was enhanced by my experience as a high school classroom teacher.  I could write a whole nother blog post on this topic, so I'll leave it at that for now.

My final amusing exchange of the day was at the coat check, where I had to stop in to pick up my purse.  I noticed that there was a lot of stuff that looked really old and beaten up sitting on the floor instead of placed inside the numbered compartments.  I asked the coat check guy if that was where they put the stuff that nobody claimed at the end of the day.  His response?  "No.  That's where we put the stuff that smells."  This brought to mind that while I was traversing the confusing hallways, I had passed a few gentlemen that looked like they hadn't showered in quite some time.  I was intrigued by the idea that if you were a homeless person in DC you might devote your time to researching in the archives.  It was a beautiful day, so they must have been there for some purpose besides escaping the outside air.  I couldn't help but wonder what they might have in common with the escaped slaves in Dred who flee the restraints of the mainstream society that enslaves them and choose instead to live "off the grid" in the Dismal Swamp.  And then I thought: Okay, Liz, that's enough thinking for one day.

I am happy to report that I finally sat down to write this blog entry this morning because after devoting the past several days to thinking about Dred and Margaret Garner, I finally have an idea of what I will write for my paper.  But that paper's not written yet, so I need to get back to work.  And, coincidentally, I'm also reading Beloved today for my other class.  It's not an accident that I find a way to bring all of these things together.

So when you visit DC, remember: head to the Jefferson Building for the aura and beauty of the Library of Congress, or the Madison Building for your reader's card and a handful of weirdos.

(America's Library: The Story of the Library of Congress is a nonfiction book that apparently explores the reasons the LoC was founded and the ways it has been used over the past two decades.  I haven't read it, but I imagine its "story" of the LoC is quite different from the "story" I just told.)