As Promised

I mentioned a few blog posts ago that I needed to write about two fairly profound experiences that I had recently, and as promised, here goes.

K and I went to New Orleans for the 4th of July weekend, as I believe has already been blogged. One of the things I love the most about NOLA is the spirit of the city. No, I am not looking at it through rose-colured glasses; I have been to the Ninth Ward, I have been outside of the Quarter, and I am uncomfortably familiar with the poverty and lousy hand with which New Orleans seems to have been dealt time and time again. In spite of these lousy hands, New Orleans is a city of vibrancy and life, a city prepared to celebrate every little thing, as often as possible. Most people mistake this excess revelry as a form of sinful gluttony, but really, it's just enjoyment of life, I think. Something we could all use a little more of, in my opinion.

The night before we departed NOLA, K and I sank into our air mattress on our friend's living room floor. Keith lives about two blocks from Bourbon, right in the heart of the Quarter. Going to bed in Keith's living room means falling asleep in a pitch-black environment, with the pulse of club music shaking the wooden slats in the floor and stray clips of conversations from passers by on their way to the party. This happens regardless of how early or how late you go to bed.

I had drifted off that night, and was in that place of not-quite-sleeping-soundly-but-not-coherent-either when I heard another sound that I love so much that seems to come only from New Orleans, and Friday night football games in Texas: brass instruments being blown into fortissimo, and a huge bass drum, strapped to someone's chest, being beaten as if his life depended on it.

The sound of New Orleans is something that helps me to identify it. I have, on many occasions, shut off the radio and rolled down the windows of the car as we drive into the city along Decatur, past Jackson Square and Cafe du Monde, simply to hear the city. Every time, my ear strains to pick out that beating of a drum and blowing of a horn that signals to me that we have, indeed, arrived.

I lay on the air mattress that night, approaching 1 a.m. I heard the drum, heard the horns. It was unmistakably one of those fabulous New Orleans brass bands - the kind that awakens in me some primal urge to move and dance. The kind that, if you aren't clapping in rhythym and bopping around to the beat, you must be seriously lacking a pulse. And so, I lay on the air mattress, squirming and dancing as best I could, without waking K. I imagined trailing behind the band, dancing deep into my knees. I imagined the stream of people around me, also dancing. I thought to myself, "how wonderful it would be if this happened a few hours earlier, and I could go out and dance in the street, and feel that music."

For those of you who know me well, you know that there is little that can get me out of bed once I am there. In fact, I would say that the only things that can get me upright again are flat-out emergencies, or gross acts of Mother Nature.

The fear of regret got me off the air mattress that night in New Orleans. It was 1:00 a.m., and I flopped off the side of the bed, threw on my sneakers, grabbed the gate key to the courtyard and my phone, and headed out the door. I bopped along to the corner of St. Ann and Bourbon, where the band had parked itself, and reveled in the music. An impromptu jam session broke out in the intersection, and I found myself tearing up at this spontaneous celebration that just seems to happen organically in New Orleans.

The band finished a few short minutes after I made it to the corner, and I turned back around and went back to Keith's, sort of marvelling at the fact that I based my decision to go solely on the fact that I would have regretted it had I not, instead of the inconvenience caused by getting back out of bed (as lazy as that sounds). I would have woken up in the morning, hypothesizing about how it must have felt, or what it might have sounded like, or how the people would have reacted to the beat. Instead, I had no hypothesis - I had a memory.

I made a decision that next day that, when presented with the opportunity, going forward, I would make a serious effort to PARTICIPATE in life, rather than be a bystander. It's safe to be a bystander, certainly, but is it deeply gratifying? Not a chance.

I had an opportunity to seize my inner New Orleanian a few weeks later here in Austin, but blogging that experience will have to wait!

Half-Way Mark

This post is just to say that I have completed 2 of 4 tests in one of my classes thus far (actually, by Monday, it'll be 2 of 4 in BOTH classes), and I am kicking butt and taking names. For reals.

I caught myself thinking this morning, and I am amazed that the material I am learning right now is sticking with me. In other words, I am reading and comprehending; listening and participating in conversations in class. I feel like I understand everything, which has not always been the case in some classes I have taken.

Perhaps some of that is better study skills, better focus and attention, and simply getting older.

Or perhaps it's because I've really been busting my tail and spending into the double-digits of numbers of hours each day (during the week, and maybe one day per weekend) invested in studying and learning.

Yeah...maybe that's it.

Blogging Break

Another week, and another week dominated by schoolwork and test-prep. Such is the life of a career student, I have come to learn.

School is going well; well, if not exhausting. I am beginning to think that I was under the influence of something when I decided it would be a great idea to take six hours in a five-week period.

My Human Growth & Development (HGD) class is really interesting. I am learning that there are myriad of ways to screw up young minds. :) My professor is an interesting woman - she teaches at two campuses, and is a clinical counselor as well. I appreciate that she illuminates certain topics with anecdotes from her clients. I also appreciate that she has charisma in spades, and therefore, can hold my attention for the four hours that I am in her class. The caveat is that she is a talker...which means that she frequently gets off-topic, as talkers are wont to do. For example, we have 1.5 class periods between Test 1 and Test 2. The first .5 of a class consisted of about 45 minutes of test-related material, with the rest of the class devoted to talking about the ramifications of co-sleeping, and whether or not certain types of corporal punishment constitute child abuse (for the record - only slapping the buttocks with an open palm is OK!) I'm all for getting off-topic, but when you only meet 10 times for the semester, off-topic can be a huge impediment to being prepared for an impending test.

Just call me a party pooper.

My Psych class is a bit more of a challenge for me. I can comprehend the material easily, and am caught up with reading material. My main beef is my professor.

In my opinion, there is a certain divinity in being a human being. I believe that human beings are special, unique and glorious creations. I believe that the brain of a human being is a marvelous, mystical thing.

My professor, on the other hand, does not. He maintains that, since homo sapiens are so genetically similar to most all other species, that we are not very special. He believes that our brains are just like the brains of all other animals, differing only in size and certain sensory reception functions. He also believes that environment plays little to no role in who we are as human beings...in other words, your destiny lies completely within your genetic makeup.

I often leave his class feeling very down and disheartened. Not only do I vehemently disagree with his theories (however grounded in science they may be), but I also find that I am hyper-critical of him specifically because of that fact. Don't get me wrong - he's a nice guy, and funny as anyone - but I just can't help but wonder why he doesn't see the incredible in being a human being on this planet.

He's not clinically depressed, and he's certainly not the most cynical person I have known...we just differ greatly in our perception of this experience of life. I have to remind myself every day that 1) these are just his THEORIES, and 2) I will come out of the class with a much better foundation for my belief system, since I will have spent five weeks trying to justify MY theories against his. In simpler terms: no pressure, no diamond. As a good friend has pointed out to me a few times, faith without test isn't really faith at all.

This week will be a little less intense, I think - no dual tests on the same day. Instead, there's only one test, over 4 chapters, and one of the chapters will be covered in the lecture AFTER the test. If it doesn't sound fair, that's because there is little fairness in six hours in five weeks. :) But I'm not complaining. Really.

My other "stressor" right now is our move, which is looming at the end of these next two weeks. Don't get me wrong - I will be soooo glad to get out of a rental situation and into an equity situation. HOWEVER, the idea of having to keep up my demanding reading schedule and help pack up an entire household is daunting, to say the very least. I have my closet packed, with the exception of my clothes and shoes, but aside from that, we have not yet begun to fight.

This last paragraph is a reminder to myself that I need to blog about two profound experiences I have had lately - I shall refer to them here as NOLA band, and dancing. When the reading subsides a bit, or when I am in desperate need of a break, I'll share them here.

Back to the books.

Cross-Eyed

That's what is happening to me right now, as I have spent roughly 6 of the last 10 hours I've been awake today READING.

4 chapters down today, and two more to go. I would estimate that, by bedtime today, I will have read close to 300 pages of text and notes, if not more. Fortunately, I have learned a lot, and have never gotten bored.

Among the things I have learned today:

1) The plurality of God in the book of Genesis is questioned in the very first verse. In the original Jewish text, instead of saying that ..."God created the heavens and earth," the word "Elohim" is used, instead of "God." The suffix "-im," in Hebrew, denotes plurality. I'm still chewing on that one, but found it interesting nevertheless.

2) In the Dark Ages, Christian converts were so preoccupied by the second coming of Christ that they celebrated Easter EVERY SUNDAY! It wasn't until they realized that there may be a slight delay in that second coming that church leaders (correction - the First Council of Nicaea) decided to sanction an official, annual holiday...and the date was chosen based on the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox.

3) NEW VOCABULARY! "legerdemain" refers to skill or adroitness. It comes from the French "leger de main," or "sleight of hand."

4) The Mozart Effect is a hoax. Not exactly a hoax, because that makes it sound nefarious and misleading, but it has not been able to be replicated outside of it's first "observance," and therefore, can not be considered a theory which is true.

5) We have only a 1.7% variation in our DNA from that of a Bonobo, which is a type of pygmy primate. There are traditionally no Bonobos found in zoos because they are so sexually promiscuous!

That's all for now, I am afraid. There is laundry to be done, more reading to be had, and more retinas to be burned...but hopefully not my bad one.

Exhaustion...already

This has been a big week for me, for us, and yet, here it is, only Thursday, and I feel like I could collapse into a big pile and sleep for three days.

First of all - WE BOUGHT OUR HOUSE! It's taken about two and a half months, but in spite of that, IT IS DONE! No one can take it away from us...unless we foolishly decide to not make our mortgage payments!

The closing was fine; in fact, it was filled with much less anxiety than I anticipated. I thought we would be met with a mile-high stack of papers, requiring us to sign over our souls. Not the case! Instead, we were met with a plate of warm, freshly-baked cookies and a Lowe's gift card from our realtor. We were in and out in about an hour (can you really call that in-and-out?!), and another hour later, we were homeowners. We will get the keys probably toward the end of the month, so in the meantime, there is a lot of packing to be had.

The other big deal with this week is that I started school. For the next five and a half weeks, I'm taking Intro to Psychology and Human growth & Development.

Both of my professors are outstanding; the premises for both of the classes are outstanding as well. Intro to Psych is not your traditional Psych class...in other words, don't expect me to be able to analyze you at the end of the semester! Instead, it's a focus on the science of the brain - more of how it works, and less the philosophy behind it. When the professor was explaining this to us, I felt like a kid on the night before Christmas; I was SO STINKING EXCITED! My mind also jumped to the exhibition we currently have down at the museum...what a nice compliment my class will be to my docenting!

My professor is great, and I really enjoy him. Any professor who picks on his students (out of affection) is OK in my book. He's sarcastic and direct, funny and interesting. He is also very science-minded, which I enjoy.

I did find myself a little verklempt today, however. We were talking about the idea of biology versus environment; that is, we are who we are primarily because of our biology, and NOT because of our environment. My professor ended our lecture with the assertion "When it's biology versus environment, BIOLOGY ALWAYS WINS!"

As I drove home, I felt myself feeling really dismayed and almost depressed about the note on which class ended. I have never belonged to that school of thought that we are just "dust in the wind," or specks of dirt on the planet as human beings. I believe that all of us have some sort of higher calling in life - really, that's just fancy-talk for my belief that we are all called to be the best versions of ourself that we can be in this life. We can't control everything that happens to us, but we can control the way we tread upon our planet, and the compassion we have toward animals and other human beings. Anyhoo, I began to ruminate on the idea that NO MATTER what decisions I make, or paths I choose, my destiny is pre-determined by my biology, and that I have nothing more to await than some genetically pre-determined fate.

What I HAVE arrived at is a couple of things, one primarily being that THIS IS COLLEGE, and there will be professors that I have, and don't agree with. After all, the whole biology versus environment thing is just a theory, no? All of science is theories, not facts.

I also arrived at the conclusion that I do believe that biology controls about 90% of who we are...but it can greatly be affected by environment and other external factors (medications, therapies, accidents, etc.) that can alter our biology, whether it be temporarily or permanently.

My HG&D class is a bit of a beating - and I mean that only in the sense that it is four hours long. My professor is a talking maniac, but she's so captivating, and wildly entertaining. She also works as a clinical counselor, and uses stories about her clients to illustrate topics we are discussing.

I sorta feel like I joined the rest of the universe today, in that I learned all about Freud...or, as much about Freud as one can learn in that timeframe. I have always known that Freud was an important figure, and that he had all sorts of wicked theories about childhood, sexuality and dreams, but today, I feel like I could actually participate in a conversation about some of those things. That's a very good way to feel about anything, I think.

A rather unintended consequence of this class is a little fear - the fear of just how impressionable we are as human beings, particularly as LITTLE human beings. Just based on some of the discussions that we had today, I realized HOW IMPORTANT it is when we choose our words and actions toward one another, be it toward our children, parents, siblings or spouses. I'm not sure how else to articulate that, but to be aware of my words and actions, going forward, is going to be at the forefront of my mind.

The nice thing is that the two classes I am taking right now are very complimentary; in fact, many topics in my second class were reiterated from my first class. I like that, with these classes and professors, I am getting two sides of the same coin, so to speak. In one class, I'm getting the "how," and in the other, I'm getting the "why"...or at least one person's opinion about the "why."

On the other hand, this semester is pretty much going to kick my rear end...to North Dakota and back again. Both classes are reading and studying-intense, and to further illustrate that point, I will admit that I have a test on 4 chapters of HG&D in a week...and here I am, blogging! (one thing I learned in class: procrastination is validated by prior experiences [and successes] in PROCRASTINATION!)

So, in a nutshell, suffice it to say that I am STOKED about this semester, but may very well go missing in the next few weeks...I have a lot of reading and writing to get done!