What is our purpose for existence? Why are we here, alive, functioning (sometimes), moving along the path from infancy to old age (most of us), reproducing ourselves (some of us) -- and how does our purpose, as each of us understands it, affect what we choose to do in our lives?
I’ve been thinking about prayer and meditation, and that too little of it was a major factor in the crashing I wrote about last week. Yes, I was very busy for a couple of weeks, and yes, everything in my life just seemed to come together at the same time, and certainly most of my available hours were filled up and overflowing with to-do lists and post-it notes and necessary e-mails, etc., etc., etc. But I’m convinced I would have handled it all much better and more serenely – and more energetically – if I hadn’t stinted on my usual prayer time.
Especially since I don’t spend hours and hours praying every day or every week. More like 30 minutes, max, of spiritually focused quiet time spread throughout the day. As focused as I can manage, anyway.
I wasn’t raised in a religious tradition that included an emphasis on personal prayer, and a few months before I heard about the Bahá'í Faith I came to the conclusion that prayer was silly. After all, God – if there was a God – knew what I wanted so why should He need me to ask him for anything?
Clearly I had a very simplistic idea of the nature of prayer. And it’s taken me many years to get closer to understanding prayer as Bahá’u’lláh defines it: a way to clean the dust and dross of daily life from the soul, like polishing a dusty mirror so it can better reflect sunlight. My understanding is still pretty rudimentary, but at least now I can sometimes tell the difference in my life and my serenity, or lack thereof, according to whether I do or don’t remember to polish the mirror of my own soul.
It’s so easy to do, and also so easy to forget, because I’m definitely inclined more toward doing than being. I put a lot of time and energy into eating right, exercising, working on my various projects, serving the Bahá'í community, helping with my grandsons (my daughter calls it “Grandma Duty”). Shouldn’t all that be enough? Not according to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
"The body without spirit is not capable of real accomplishment. Although it may be in the utmost condition of beauty and excellence, it is, nevertheless, in need of the spirit. The chimney of the lamp, no matter how polished and perfect it be, is in need of the light. Without the light, the lamp or candle is not illuminating. Without the spirit, the body is not productive."
So along with everything else, or more accurately, before everything else, I have to make room in my life for a little soul polishing. Have a bit of conversation with God. Get some spiritual nourishment. Slow down. Look inward. Be.
Which is why my cancer adventure was such a wonderful gift. It forced me stop, not just for a few minutes but for six months, all the while not knowing whether this was a hiatus from my regular life or preparation for the end of it. So like many others, I found a great blessing in an experience usually perceived as negative, sad, often unfair -- the blessing of realignment of priorities, of acceptance, of stronger faith, of a better understanding of my purpose.
Now the challenge is to keep and increase the measure of serenity achieved during that time, even in the midst of all my current “doings.” Sometimes, as a way to focus my meditation, I picture a butterfly dancing through space, free, happy, the way I imagine my soul will dance when it is liberated from connection with this body. Because the butterfly, changed so radically from its original state when it emerges from its cocoon, seems a perfect symbol of our own human transformation, and helps me remember that life extends far beyond the initial training-wheel phase of physical existence. That there will be so much more to learn, to do, to be.
One day during surgery recovery, before I knew whether my first post-surgical scan would reveal any new cancer sites, I wrote something that I recently re-discovered and am going to be careful never to lose again. It helps me remember that one day, for at least a few minutes, I understood my purpose.
I am tied to this world, not with thick rope that binds me to it, that would tear off chunks of me as I leave it, but rather with gossamer threads, light and soft as cobweb string, that holds me while I am here and lets me float away in complete freedom when it’s time to go.
-30-
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Crash!
What is your activity threshold?
Now you’re probably asking me, what exactly do I mean by activity threshold? OK, maybe I should make it sound a little more scientific, something like Maximal Level of Active Involvement in Voluntary Commitments? (See what I’ve learned from all the doctoral dissertation titles I see in my job!)
MLAIVC = how much can you stuff into your life before you crash?
I can handle quite a lot so long as there are spaces for physical rest, mental recess, and ordinary tasks such as laundry and grocery shopping. Which means that in any given string of evenings or weekend days I need one or two that are free and clear, with no commitment to anyone for anything.
Years ago, for example, I learned that having two jobs, if one of them is full-time, just doesn’t work for me. I manage for while – a couple of months maybe – and then the part-time job has to go. Unfortunately there have been a couple times where it went pretty much immediately, no two weeks’ or even two days’ notice. Unhappy bosses. Uncomfortable conscience. Not a good feeling.
And there have also been times when I simply overcommitted myself to this task force and that project and such-and-such volunteer service until those spaces mentioned above just plain disappeared. And meeting all my promises became a matter of dogged perseverance with a lot of moaning and groaning and sighing thrown in.
About that time the Human Spousal Activity Barometer, better known as my husband, would say, “You’ve done it again!” Like I really needed him to tell me what I already knew.
OK, maybe I didn’t always know. But I’ve learned. Over time, I’ve become much better at respecting my threshold and avoiding over-commitment. A couple years ago, when my cancer was discovered, I experienced something relatively new. It’s called Doing Nothing. Or at least, nothing extra. For the six months from diagnosis, through surgery, and until completion of chemo and radiation, my whole focus was on just existing. No committee meetings. No volunteering. No big or little projects, personal or otherwise. At some point during that time I was able to once again attend meetings of the Urbana Spiritual Assembly and somewhat resume my duties as secretary, but that was pretty much it.
Basically my calendar was: get up, go to work, go to the cancer center, go home, go to the sofa, stay there until bedtime. Pretty strenuous, huh? Actually, yes, it was!
So when the treatment period ended and my energy level slowly started rising again, I found myself in the interesting position of having one free night after another, all week. It was kind of nice, actually. But little by little, as I felt better, I once again Became Involved. But carefully. Made sure those above-mentioned spaces were included every couple days.
It’s a matter of prioritizing, I think. You have to know – that is, I have to know, you might already have this well understood – how to distinguish what I really want or need to do from what is less important. Or, to paraphrase ‘Abdu’l-Baha, I have to be willing to put the most important ahead of the merely important. After all, sometimes everything durned idea or project or activity that pops up can seem, and actually be, important.
So I’ve been doing pretty well on the MLAIVC barometer. Until along comes a 10-day stretch when somehow almost everything I’m currently doing comes together at the same time. It started nearly two weeks ago. On every single week night and weekend day I was committed to do or help do something really important and/or necessary that just happened to be scheduled during that period: significant Bahá'í events, tasks for the children’s theatre project my daughter and I are developing, the annual new-school-year party at work, Interfaith Alliance meetings, a campus lecture I’d been waiting for two months to attend, and (as they always say in advertisements) much more! Including getting a flu shot before work one day, taking advantage of the free galley giveaway at the campus children’s book center after work another day, and lunch hours commitments such as prayers with a friend and ice skating practice and going to the Registrar’s Office to get my transcript. Plus some exercise time and some GRE study and … oh never mind, that’s about enough of that!
All good stuff. All very important. Much of it unavoidable and unchangeable to other days or other weeks. And lumped together, all too much!
So Thursday, I crashed. Actually Wednesday but the physical act of crashing had to wait until Thursday. Called in sick that morning. Spent all day on the sofa. Still felt kind of punky on Friday, like some bug was trying to get me, and went home from work early. And all the time worried that I might have to stand up a friend and miss participating in a special bike ride planned for Saturday. 42 miles through Amish countryside in the Arthur, Illinois area. Also known to our highly experienced bike club president as “Tour de Manure.”
By Saturday morning, after as much rest and sleep as possible, I felt fine. Able to get up and go by 6:45 a.m., lunch packed, bike tires properly inflated. Ready for a long, happy day.
The weather was perfect, the conversation-while-biking was interesting and fun, the wind was vigorously challenging in many spots, the scenery was beautiful, the haunted cave at Rockhome Gardens was satisfyingly scary, the other riders were friendly, the peek into Amish culture was fascinating. (Check out the picture of horses having a nice chat while they wait for their people to return.) Plus a very cool t-shirt.
All in all, a great day. And exhausting. So when it was over and I came home … you guessed it.
Crash!
-30-
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Decision time
How do you make important decisions?
Do you make lists, putting the benefits in one column and the costs in the other? Do you call a dozen of your closest friends to get their opinions, well-considered or otherwise? Do you flip a coin? Do you pray?
I’ve tried all of these methods at one time or another. (OK, maybe not the dozen friends, but at least two or three.) The benefit/cost list idea actually appeals to me most, since I like to think of myself as a rational, methodical thinker.
I like to think of myself that way. Unfortunately, it ain’t so. That system only works for decisive people, which group does not include me. It’s not my fault. As you might remember from a previous story, I put all the blame for my indecisive nature on the time I was born. (See the August 16 blog, if you’re curious.)
Here’s what happens when I try to use the list method. First I put fact #1 in the benefits column. Then I think, hmmm, well, of course, in such-and-such a situation or for this-or-that reason it could actually be a cost, so I move it to the other column. But on the other hand, it could be both, better put it in a third column for “not sure.” After repeating this wishy-washy shuffling of the various other facts, I end up going back to fact #1 (and 2 and 3, etc.) and putting them back in their original column, thus spending most of my decision-making time on this completely unproductive process and just about zilch on actually making a decision. Which is really OK, because I probably wouldn’t be able to stick to a decision if I did make one!
Consulting friends works out a little better – after all, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá told us that we should consult on all matters. (Don’t ask me where he said that, just trust me, he did. Somewhere.) And talking it over with a friend or two often helps, except what I really want my friend to do is make the decision for me and tell me what it is. And at the same time, what I really don’t want my friend to do is make the decision for me and tell me what it is, because I’d never listen anyway.
So scratch that system, at least as the main one.
As for flipping a coin … someone recently suggested a method she’d heard about, where you flip a coin and if you don’t like the answer, pick the other one. Let’s see, do you think that would work for me? Sure. Right. I’d be flipping that coin until it disintegrated.
So now we get to prayer. And very specifically to what I call the Five Steps of Decision Making and what the book calls “Dynamics of Prayer.” The particular book referenced here is “Principles of Bahá'í Administration,” and the specific passage is in the Appendix and is attributed to Shoghi Effendi, guardian of the Bahá'í Faith from 1921-1957, although it’s noted that the attribution has never been authenticated. Personally, I don’t care if it’s authentic or not. It works!
According to the text, Ruth Moffat, an early American Bahá'í, reported that Shoghi Effendi told her the first step to solving any problem is to pray and meditate. Second, “arrive at a decision and hold this” even if it seems “almost impossible of accomplishment.” You asked, you got an answer, don’t quibble, trust it!
Third, “have determination to carry the decision through” and “immediately take the next step.” Fourth, be confident that this is the correct answer and that the reason will become clear. And finally, “ACT … as though it had all been answered ... until you become an unobstructed channel for the Divine Power to flow through you.”
In the 40-plus years since I became a Baha’i, I’ve followed this guidance several times, and have always found it to be effective. Sometimes I’ve experienced a very strong sense of what I should do, and not always what I thought the answer would be. The most explicit example of that happened in October of 1969. At the time I was trying to decide whether to return to Illinois State University the next Fall to continue my undergraduate education, or to stay in the Chicago area and keep working full-time as a secretary.
I picked an evening when neither of my apartment mates were home and tried my best to buckle down and just plain pray, without distraction, and with focus on the question at hand. And I got an answer, loud and clear. Not something I heard, exactly. I don’t know how to describe the sensation. It just seemed to be there, in an almost physical sense. When I tried to deny it as not being logical, I felt like a wall had plunked itself down next to me and was not allowing me to move to any other mental position.
The answer that I felt so strongly was, yes, go back to school, but no, not next Fall. Now. Meaning in January, when the Spring term would start. It didn’t make sense because I had a lease, and to leave the Chicago area and move back downstate in January would involve either finding someone to replace me or paying my apartment mates for the remainder of the lease term. And I really didn’t want to have to deal with either option.
But I’d started this prayer process with the inherent promise to complete it, and completing it meant accepting the answer, etc., so come January I was back on campus. Now here’s the moral of the story: if I hadn’t listened to whatever or whoever was giving me instruction, I wouldn’t have married my husband less than a year later and that means our daughter would not have been born. Due to specific circumstances in his life, and the fact that I came back in January instead of the next September, the two of us became good friends and then engaged. That exact situation would not have existed in September.
Which is not to say I wouldn’t have married eventually, and maybe even to the same man, or that I wouldn’t have had other children, but not this child, this particular combination of genetic traits who has become a particular adult who does so much good for so many people that I really believe she was the reason for the answer that came that evening. Because I also believe that praying for answers, and especially in the systematic way Shoghi Effendi is purported to have explained, gives us access to information beyond what we can acquire with our brains. Someone out there knows stuff about us that we don’t know, and when we pray we open the channels for them to tell us what we need to do for reasons we don’t yet comprehend.
OK, so that was, at least to my mind, a dramatic result of using this Five Step process. However, when I used it last Monday, I didn’t get a resounding “DO THIS” kind of answer. It was more like, yup, you know what to do, don’t deny it, just go for it already. Sort of a warm, soothing sauna rather than a wake-up-or-else cold shower.
And what was I trying to decide? Whether to apply to the master’s program in creative writing. The consulting-with-friends method of decision making also played a big part in this one, because so many of you sent me such wonderful kind and supportive comments on my last blog – on the blog itself, in Facebook, and via email – that the whoever or whatever was listening to my prayer didn’t have to give me much more than a gentle nudge.
Shoghi Effendi, or rather Ruth Moffat’s memory of Shoghi Effendi, doesn’t seem to be guaranteeing that the answer that comes will necessarily be the final answer, but instead that this is the answer you need. “Have faith and confidence that … the right way will appear, the door will open, the right thought, the right message, the right principle or the right book will be given you.” So I don’t know if I’m supposed to go ahead with this application because I really might get accepted, or because applying is a necessary route to some other important place in my life, or because there’s something I need to learn from the process. All I know is I must do it, for whatever reason, and that I must do it with “the determination to carry the decision through.”
So since the book says to immediately take the next step, as soon as my prayer time ended I went straight to the computer and registered for a date to take the dreaded GRE exam.
October 19. 12:30 p.m.
Pray for me. PLEASE!
-30-
Do you make lists, putting the benefits in one column and the costs in the other? Do you call a dozen of your closest friends to get their opinions, well-considered or otherwise? Do you flip a coin? Do you pray?
I’ve tried all of these methods at one time or another. (OK, maybe not the dozen friends, but at least two or three.) The benefit/cost list idea actually appeals to me most, since I like to think of myself as a rational, methodical thinker.
I like to think of myself that way. Unfortunately, it ain’t so. That system only works for decisive people, which group does not include me. It’s not my fault. As you might remember from a previous story, I put all the blame for my indecisive nature on the time I was born. (See the August 16 blog, if you’re curious.)
Here’s what happens when I try to use the list method. First I put fact #1 in the benefits column. Then I think, hmmm, well, of course, in such-and-such a situation or for this-or-that reason it could actually be a cost, so I move it to the other column. But on the other hand, it could be both, better put it in a third column for “not sure.” After repeating this wishy-washy shuffling of the various other facts, I end up going back to fact #1 (and 2 and 3, etc.) and putting them back in their original column, thus spending most of my decision-making time on this completely unproductive process and just about zilch on actually making a decision. Which is really OK, because I probably wouldn’t be able to stick to a decision if I did make one!
Consulting friends works out a little better – after all, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá told us that we should consult on all matters. (Don’t ask me where he said that, just trust me, he did. Somewhere.) And talking it over with a friend or two often helps, except what I really want my friend to do is make the decision for me and tell me what it is. And at the same time, what I really don’t want my friend to do is make the decision for me and tell me what it is, because I’d never listen anyway.
So scratch that system, at least as the main one.
As for flipping a coin … someone recently suggested a method she’d heard about, where you flip a coin and if you don’t like the answer, pick the other one. Let’s see, do you think that would work for me? Sure. Right. I’d be flipping that coin until it disintegrated.
So now we get to prayer. And very specifically to what I call the Five Steps of Decision Making and what the book calls “Dynamics of Prayer.” The particular book referenced here is “Principles of Bahá'í Administration,” and the specific passage is in the Appendix and is attributed to Shoghi Effendi, guardian of the Bahá'í Faith from 1921-1957, although it’s noted that the attribution has never been authenticated. Personally, I don’t care if it’s authentic or not. It works!
According to the text, Ruth Moffat, an early American Bahá'í, reported that Shoghi Effendi told her the first step to solving any problem is to pray and meditate. Second, “arrive at a decision and hold this” even if it seems “almost impossible of accomplishment.” You asked, you got an answer, don’t quibble, trust it!
Third, “have determination to carry the decision through” and “immediately take the next step.” Fourth, be confident that this is the correct answer and that the reason will become clear. And finally, “ACT … as though it had all been answered ... until you become an unobstructed channel for the Divine Power to flow through you.”
In the 40-plus years since I became a Baha’i, I’ve followed this guidance several times, and have always found it to be effective. Sometimes I’ve experienced a very strong sense of what I should do, and not always what I thought the answer would be. The most explicit example of that happened in October of 1969. At the time I was trying to decide whether to return to Illinois State University the next Fall to continue my undergraduate education, or to stay in the Chicago area and keep working full-time as a secretary.
I picked an evening when neither of my apartment mates were home and tried my best to buckle down and just plain pray, without distraction, and with focus on the question at hand. And I got an answer, loud and clear. Not something I heard, exactly. I don’t know how to describe the sensation. It just seemed to be there, in an almost physical sense. When I tried to deny it as not being logical, I felt like a wall had plunked itself down next to me and was not allowing me to move to any other mental position.
The answer that I felt so strongly was, yes, go back to school, but no, not next Fall. Now. Meaning in January, when the Spring term would start. It didn’t make sense because I had a lease, and to leave the Chicago area and move back downstate in January would involve either finding someone to replace me or paying my apartment mates for the remainder of the lease term. And I really didn’t want to have to deal with either option.
But I’d started this prayer process with the inherent promise to complete it, and completing it meant accepting the answer, etc., so come January I was back on campus. Now here’s the moral of the story: if I hadn’t listened to whatever or whoever was giving me instruction, I wouldn’t have married my husband less than a year later and that means our daughter would not have been born. Due to specific circumstances in his life, and the fact that I came back in January instead of the next September, the two of us became good friends and then engaged. That exact situation would not have existed in September.
Which is not to say I wouldn’t have married eventually, and maybe even to the same man, or that I wouldn’t have had other children, but not this child, this particular combination of genetic traits who has become a particular adult who does so much good for so many people that I really believe she was the reason for the answer that came that evening. Because I also believe that praying for answers, and especially in the systematic way Shoghi Effendi is purported to have explained, gives us access to information beyond what we can acquire with our brains. Someone out there knows stuff about us that we don’t know, and when we pray we open the channels for them to tell us what we need to do for reasons we don’t yet comprehend.
OK, so that was, at least to my mind, a dramatic result of using this Five Step process. However, when I used it last Monday, I didn’t get a resounding “DO THIS” kind of answer. It was more like, yup, you know what to do, don’t deny it, just go for it already. Sort of a warm, soothing sauna rather than a wake-up-or-else cold shower.
And what was I trying to decide? Whether to apply to the master’s program in creative writing. The consulting-with-friends method of decision making also played a big part in this one, because so many of you sent me such wonderful kind and supportive comments on my last blog – on the blog itself, in Facebook, and via email – that the whoever or whatever was listening to my prayer didn’t have to give me much more than a gentle nudge.
Shoghi Effendi, or rather Ruth Moffat’s memory of Shoghi Effendi, doesn’t seem to be guaranteeing that the answer that comes will necessarily be the final answer, but instead that this is the answer you need. “Have faith and confidence that … the right way will appear, the door will open, the right thought, the right message, the right principle or the right book will be given you.” So I don’t know if I’m supposed to go ahead with this application because I really might get accepted, or because applying is a necessary route to some other important place in my life, or because there’s something I need to learn from the process. All I know is I must do it, for whatever reason, and that I must do it with “the determination to carry the decision through.”
So since the book says to immediately take the next step, as soon as my prayer time ended I went straight to the computer and registered for a date to take the dreaded GRE exam.
October 19. 12:30 p.m.
Pray for me. PLEASE!
-30-
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Gimme a G, gimme a R ...
Sometimes it doesn’t pay to know too much.
And after eight years of coordinating student admissions for a graduate department, I certainly know a lot about the challenges and difficulties involved in applying for grad school. So the idea of doing it myself is daunting, to say the least.
But there it is, and it doesn’t seem to want to go away.
The idea is this: to get a Master’s of Fine Arts in creative writing, in the English Department of the University of Illinois, where I received a bachelor’s in the same subject two years ago. An undergrad program, by the way, that I started in 1963 and finished in 2007. 44 years, with a mere 31-year break when completing my degree program was the farthest thing from my mind.
And still was when I signed up for a Social Issues acting class in 2001, just a few weeks after starting my new job at the university. The class was free -- a lovely fringe benefit -- met right after work just a couple blocks away from my office, and was really more of a repertoire company than a standard class. No homework. No exams. Each semester the students put together productions that explored topics such as racism or sexual abuse and present performances followed by discussion in various venues around campus. It was a great class and gave me the chance to work with some very talented young actors, none of them theatre majors, and a teacher whose low key directing style is amazingly powerful in pulling all the elements of production together to create effective and high-quality performances.
I received one college credit hour for that first class, and two more when I took it again the next semester. And that got me wondering. How many other classes would I need to take to finish my degree requirements? What classes would they have to be?
Thanks to a dedicated and hard-working undergrad advisor in the English department, and an equally conscientious admissions coordinator in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, I eventually learned that it would take 10 more classes to fulfill the requirements that were in effect when I first started as a freshman.
Of course, two of those classes would have to be general education physical science – Chemistry 101 or some such impossible thing – so I put that out of my mind and started on the fun part of the list. Literature classes. Fiction and non-fiction creative writing classes. Three other acting classes for a partial theatre minor.
Enrolling in just one class per semester, with my work schedule and lunch hours adjusted since these classes all met during the day, it seemed like a very, very long journey to the end of this program. But taking classes became a routine – and very stimulating -- part of my life, and when the day came that I found that all I had left was the dreaded science requirement, time seemed to have flown by to get me to this point.
So there I was, in late August of 2006, sitting in a lecture hall, surrounded as usual by students 40-plus years younger than me --15 years younger than my daughter, for heaven’s sake! – attempting to understand the first lecture in basic astronomy. And pretty darned worried that I wouldn’t grasp a word of it.
I was right to be worried. The subject matter throughout that semester, while interesting, and apparently pretty simple for most of the other students, was light years out of my comfort zone, not to mention my actual capacities of comprehension. Studying for that class took a myriad of hours of puzzling (or just outright memorizing) my way through the textbook and lecture notes as well lots of time spent in the office of the teaching assistant, who probably should get some sort of commendation for helping me. Here was a guy who had been in love with astronomy since he was a little boy, and whose brain wrapped itself around the subject as comfortably as a cat curled up on a pillow, struggling to find new ways to demonstrate the most basic – and to him, obvious -- concepts to someone who had once taken a college aptitude test and scored in the 9-10 range in language and social studies and 1-2 in math and science.
But pass that course I did. And with a B. Can you believe it?
In order to apply to graduate school, I have to take the Graduate Record Exam, or GRE. And because of my job, I already know a lot about that. I know it’s a very tough test. I know that students usually study for months to prepare for it, and I’ll have to take it in a few weeks. I’ve seen the modest scores of applicants with near perfect undergrad GPAs, whereas my overall GPA, even with the mostly As and a couple Bs that I earned since 2001, is still in the low C range. I know that one section of the exam is quantitative, i.e., math. And you know, from the astronomy story, how well I’m likely to do on that.
Yep, I definitely know too much.
OK, let’s look at this whole subject logically. Calmly. One step at a time. Application to master’s program: GRE. GPA. Personal statement. Recommendation letters. (Yikes, what if my recent undergrad instructors don’t recommend me? Heck, what if they don’t remember me?) And to up the ante a bit more, I want to specialize in an area that the U of I program doesn’t officially offer, so I’d have to be submit a sample of performance writing rather than the more usual narrative fiction.
But on the other hand, the young woman who directs the MFA program met with me this week for almost an hour and listened to my story, my aspirations, my misgivings. We had already emailed a bit, and while she was kind enough to give me some time during her office hours, I fully expected her to conclude the discussion by telling me that the whole idea was impossible. Forget it. No way.
Instead she encouraged me to apply. Not because she thinks I’ll be accepted, she has no way to assess that yet, but because she thinks it’s possible. Or at least, not impossible.
So I’m thinking.
My daughter wants me to go for it. Apply. See what happens. What would be worse, she says, trying and not being accepted or not trying? A very unfair question, to my mind.
I have to decide quickly in order to have a chance of finding a GRE exam in my part of the world that still has some empty seats. Gads, there it is again. GRE. Scariest three letters in the alphabet at this moment.
But then, I passed astronomy, didn’t I?
And after eight years of coordinating student admissions for a graduate department, I certainly know a lot about the challenges and difficulties involved in applying for grad school. So the idea of doing it myself is daunting, to say the least.
But there it is, and it doesn’t seem to want to go away.
The idea is this: to get a Master’s of Fine Arts in creative writing, in the English Department of the University of Illinois, where I received a bachelor’s in the same subject two years ago. An undergrad program, by the way, that I started in 1963 and finished in 2007. 44 years, with a mere 31-year break when completing my degree program was the farthest thing from my mind.
And still was when I signed up for a Social Issues acting class in 2001, just a few weeks after starting my new job at the university. The class was free -- a lovely fringe benefit -- met right after work just a couple blocks away from my office, and was really more of a repertoire company than a standard class. No homework. No exams. Each semester the students put together productions that explored topics such as racism or sexual abuse and present performances followed by discussion in various venues around campus. It was a great class and gave me the chance to work with some very talented young actors, none of them theatre majors, and a teacher whose low key directing style is amazingly powerful in pulling all the elements of production together to create effective and high-quality performances.
I received one college credit hour for that first class, and two more when I took it again the next semester. And that got me wondering. How many other classes would I need to take to finish my degree requirements? What classes would they have to be?
Thanks to a dedicated and hard-working undergrad advisor in the English department, and an equally conscientious admissions coordinator in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, I eventually learned that it would take 10 more classes to fulfill the requirements that were in effect when I first started as a freshman.
Of course, two of those classes would have to be general education physical science – Chemistry 101 or some such impossible thing – so I put that out of my mind and started on the fun part of the list. Literature classes. Fiction and non-fiction creative writing classes. Three other acting classes for a partial theatre minor.
Enrolling in just one class per semester, with my work schedule and lunch hours adjusted since these classes all met during the day, it seemed like a very, very long journey to the end of this program. But taking classes became a routine – and very stimulating -- part of my life, and when the day came that I found that all I had left was the dreaded science requirement, time seemed to have flown by to get me to this point.
So there I was, in late August of 2006, sitting in a lecture hall, surrounded as usual by students 40-plus years younger than me --15 years younger than my daughter, for heaven’s sake! – attempting to understand the first lecture in basic astronomy. And pretty darned worried that I wouldn’t grasp a word of it.
I was right to be worried. The subject matter throughout that semester, while interesting, and apparently pretty simple for most of the other students, was light years out of my comfort zone, not to mention my actual capacities of comprehension. Studying for that class took a myriad of hours of puzzling (or just outright memorizing) my way through the textbook and lecture notes as well lots of time spent in the office of the teaching assistant, who probably should get some sort of commendation for helping me. Here was a guy who had been in love with astronomy since he was a little boy, and whose brain wrapped itself around the subject as comfortably as a cat curled up on a pillow, struggling to find new ways to demonstrate the most basic – and to him, obvious -- concepts to someone who had once taken a college aptitude test and scored in the 9-10 range in language and social studies and 1-2 in math and science.
But pass that course I did. And with a B. Can you believe it?
In order to apply to graduate school, I have to take the Graduate Record Exam, or GRE. And because of my job, I already know a lot about that. I know it’s a very tough test. I know that students usually study for months to prepare for it, and I’ll have to take it in a few weeks. I’ve seen the modest scores of applicants with near perfect undergrad GPAs, whereas my overall GPA, even with the mostly As and a couple Bs that I earned since 2001, is still in the low C range. I know that one section of the exam is quantitative, i.e., math. And you know, from the astronomy story, how well I’m likely to do on that.
Yep, I definitely know too much.
OK, let’s look at this whole subject logically. Calmly. One step at a time. Application to master’s program: GRE. GPA. Personal statement. Recommendation letters. (Yikes, what if my recent undergrad instructors don’t recommend me? Heck, what if they don’t remember me?) And to up the ante a bit more, I want to specialize in an area that the U of I program doesn’t officially offer, so I’d have to be submit a sample of performance writing rather than the more usual narrative fiction.
But on the other hand, the young woman who directs the MFA program met with me this week for almost an hour and listened to my story, my aspirations, my misgivings. We had already emailed a bit, and while she was kind enough to give me some time during her office hours, I fully expected her to conclude the discussion by telling me that the whole idea was impossible. Forget it. No way.
Instead she encouraged me to apply. Not because she thinks I’ll be accepted, she has no way to assess that yet, but because she thinks it’s possible. Or at least, not impossible.
So I’m thinking.
My daughter wants me to go for it. Apply. See what happens. What would be worse, she says, trying and not being accepted or not trying? A very unfair question, to my mind.
I have to decide quickly in order to have a chance of finding a GRE exam in my part of the world that still has some empty seats. Gads, there it is again. GRE. Scariest three letters in the alphabet at this moment.
But then, I passed astronomy, didn’t I?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
