Ramble Series: School Daze

Captain’s Log September 6, 2012:

One of the best pieces of advice that I have ever gotten was from Oprah: “When somebody shows you who they are, believe them”. It’s advice I’ve taken a while to plant firmly into application. But as is most of the advice I’ve received in my life, it’s sound.

Today was the first day of school. I felt nervous and anxious like I always do. I take this as a good sign. My professor tells us to call her Martha or Martha Nell, just nothing succeeding Ms. or Mrs. “Call me Mr. Smith,” she says and I laugh, “just not Ms. or Mrs.” She’s adamant.

Our discussion circulates the class syllabus, tangential anecdotes, and inquiry around what it means to read a text, with a sprinkle of politics, naturally. Bubbling energy in the air, she tells us many things. She tells us: her Rutgers background, countless hours beneath library lights at Amherst, and plugging into email back in nineteen ninety four; oh and of course her first writing gig with Trojan. Yes, she says, the condoms. She’s well rehearsed but still funny. I like her honesty. Martha is obsessed with Emily Dickinson. This confuses me. And still, I get it. I look at her obsession like my own obsession with the lives of Black women writers, particularly Toni Morrison. I love her character, her demeanor, her voice...I am just in love with the bitch.

Then, Martha tells us a secret. She says it doesn’t really matter what you study. She says,  “make sure,” her finger dangling toward us weakly as she peers over glasses barely gripping the edge of her nose.“That you study, what you love.  You must have a passion for the thing,” she leans back in her chair.

“Because then, those long hours, those tortuous nights aren’t so tortuous. Oh, but they’re tortuous alright,” she laughs to herself tightening her grip on her spectacles.

My stomach is warm with satisfaction.  Yay! I like my teacher. Now, I know how those scared ass sixth graders felt when they realized I was the coolest teacher they’d ever effin met.

They’re about ten of us and we scatter the gamut when it comes to assortment. There’s Steve, the retired psychiatrist well into his sixties looking into ways literature intersects the lives of the ill as therapy, a high school teacher sick of teaching students how to research and ready to explore on her own, a poet, a cancer survivor who nods in agreement with Steve’s area of interest, a teacher of business writing who hates literature but figures she’d dabble in it for once, a pre-k teacher, a recent college graduate, a second year PhD with an obsession for Moby Dick, another teacher sick of education classes, a quiet one I can’t really remember, and then me.

We sit in a mutilated semicircle, our choice of seat suggesting we don't want to be too close to each other...urinal rule.  I sit quietly engaged and observant. Butterflies of anticipation flutter in my stomach and efforts to silence them manifest as random scribbles of Martha's anecdotal lecture in my tiny red notebook.

This semester, we are asked to conduct a research project, to become an expert on a particular work. Our semester project is to choose any text and research it under the pretenses of our class focus and guiding questions. Throughout the course, she asks us to consider,  “What is it like to read this? What does it mean to read professionally?” and “Where is the text?”

 I've chosen Gwendolyn Brooks's A Street in Bronzeville because I love Chicago circa 1940s and 50s, I love the black migration, and I love Brooks for her perspective on both. Taking Martha's advice to let our passions lead us, I feel this is a good choice.