Thursday, June 19, 2014

Why I Am Naming My First Kid After My Professor



(No, I’m not expecting a child, but life favors the prepared. And the hypothetical “Dotty” of mine will have so many punny clothes).

Or rather, how my professor basically helped me become alive.

I went to college with a fear in my heart that was sitting neighbors to my dream to be a novelist. Most people just say writer, but novels were what tugged me out of bed to be born. I didn’t know what else to say, to be honest I was a bit too embarrassed.

“What are you going to do with a writing degree?” was all my father asked, and I would just say nothing, avoiding his gaze. To him, writing was reports. To me, it was a passion, a life line, and I wanted to create worlds. Not stiff jawed research reports.

To be honest, again, I was scared out of my mind. And doubted myself. Deciding my life plan as a tender teenager was like dashing any hope of ease once I blew out the candles to my twentieth birthday. A decade of hard work and milestones, every decisions reverberating throughout the rest of my life; the rocks I dropped into this pond would ripple to my death. I feared desperation as I became desperate.

            After a job shadowing my Sophomore year with my adviser, I decided I wanted to be a professor. The way he taught the class and his description of how to get to that job field put a path to follow on the unmarked territories of my life map. Sitting in the capstone class he was teaching swelled my heart, and I was talking about it for months after to my rather uninterested friends. I finally had a plan, and it looked beautiful. I was exhilarated, and a bit apprehensive. Was I just trying to justify to myself that I truly liked writing as much as I said I did?

I suppose the major gear in the grinds was growing up, all of my “literary geek” and “writer” friends were rather uppity (not saying all, just a select few I seemed to bump into), saying that I wasn’t a true writer or true geek like they were. Although, every time I wanted to talk character development or try a new book, they were too busy with either their indie concerts or playing Final Fantasy XIII, obviously there was no time to pencil in their “passion” in their schedules. It made me feel alone.



It was when fate decided that, my junior year, I would sign up for a Dr. McGavran’s Jane Austen Film and Literature class. She smiled at me in the English building and told me I should take it, nodding as she hooked her famous female writers umbrella onto her elbow. I agreed. And I am grateful every single day for that.

            For that class, we had to read all but Northanger Abbey of Jane Austen’s work. I stared at the book presentation sign up sheet the first day, where the class would pick one of the six slots for the six novels. People were crammed and jotted in and crossed out for Pride and Prejudice, and I felt my shoulders drop. On a whim, I scribbled my name under Mansfield Park as it said “Cinderella-like,” and I felt akin to it.  
           
            The first book/movie combo we engrossed was Sense and Sensibility. I, surprising myself, actually fell in love with it, watching the 1995’s version with dreamy eyes (both Dr. McGarvan and me loved the older versions; everyone else in class was for the 2000s push. Except Pride and Prejudice we did a 180, newer better and class loving the 90s one). I suppose it’s the lack of connection I held with my peers that I developed more thoroughly with my professor. It wasn’t long until I was coming over to her office just to chat, eying her full wall length book shelf crammed with aged multicolor.  
           
            Although, the breaking point started when we began reading Emma, and she recently discovered I was just reading eBooks as I was cut off from my parents at 18. I ventured back to her book horde and she handed me a book, gold with age and a frail turquoise cover.

“I had this book before I was married, you can see my maiden name in it. I have been married for 47 years,” she said, her eyes popping as she tapped the cover gently. My mouth eased open and I felt a Disney moment of “So this is love.”

The major milestone, the first igniting my passion, was a proof of it to myself in front of my peers. I grew up with bad self esteem, and I once doubted myself a great deal. I was researching for my Mansfield Park paper and stumbled across an essay saying that Fanny Price had something called a “Virgin’s Disease.” After class, the students actually arguing and getting into almost cat fights about their disdain for the poor girl, I almost ran up to my professor and told her my discovery in accelerated words. Her eyebrows jumped as she gasped, her excitement matching mine as I told her about it and said I would forward the discovery as other students were requesting her attention.

I walked out of that class, realizing exactly what went down. I was literally jumping up and down about something about literature that most of my peers and literature geeks rolled their eyes about. It made me realize that I cared about literature on an extreme depth that I had only one group of people that finally made me feel at home with – professors. As the words of Vinny from Atlantis: The Last Empire “it was like a sign from God – I found myself that boom.”

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