Throwing the yarrows
As of the 26th I’m a full time student. I went in, got the placement tests, met with the counselors, got the financial aid forms in, found out how to find out stuff. People were a lot more friendly than I had anticipated. Every staff person I had to deal with was actually very nice, to, nice enough to be helpful.
I tried this new approach in Canada, which was when I went in to a store, to say up front “Hi, I’m a dumb American, I don’t know how to do this relatively easy thing, can you help me?” It not only worked, it made us laugh and put us all at ease right away.
I used the same technique here. I walked in places and just said “Look, I only have a vague idea of how to do it, but here's what I want to do, here are my efforts so far, what can you tell me about where to go and what to try next?”
People really responded well.
But now it’s pretty much as if I have taken my entire life and just thrown it up in the air like Jackstraws and will just have to see where it all falls out. I don’t know where the money is to come from for any of this. I don’t know how we’ll eat. I don’t know if we will have the highly necessary roommate. I don’t know a damn thing and in a way its more a good feeling than scary. It’s exciting, a challenge, a rekindling of the old street hustler skills.
But underneath there is also suspicion and wariness. The knowledge that at any time the frickin’ worst could happen. Get in the the wrong car, take the hot hit handed to you, walk into the strangers house. The super keen ability to look ahead around the corners is being activated and it’s going to have to permutate if it is going to be of any real assistance here.
But people are the same in essence wherever you meet them, and if I can just remember that and put them into context, well that’s where the skills I’ve been building on ever since the streets will come in.
It’s really odd though that 20 years after I should have picked up my Bachelors, I’m just getting started, but as I said to the counselor I was working with, “I’ve got 20 years ahead if I’m really, really, lucky, and I’ve got a thing to do.”
posted by Stella Magdalen @ 8/07/2005 11:22:00 AM
5 Comments:
The only place where being honest about what you don't know is with a mechanic. I've been hosed more than a few times.
Good luck in school! I'd do it but I don't know what I would want to be. Work just doesn't mean anything to me besides the paycheck.
Thanks so much. I got lucky again and finally figured it out after 25 years of saying "I don't know what to do when I grow up"
Now I want to be a therapist specialising in addiction and abuse while using archetypes and mythologies to help people recognize and conciously assist in, the formation of, (through music, writing and art,) their own personal mythology in order to help them recognize the heroic nature of their own life and struggles.
Huh, that's first time I've really fully voiced it, it sounds ponderous and pretentious but I mean it sincerely.
Yay for you! Congratulations. I'd love to go back to school, now that I realize what an ass I was to not go when I had the opportunity.
I just need to find a college where I can get paid for going, or bring the kids.
P.S.
Still terribly amused by that "Shouting down a deep well" metaphor.
~S
Aye theres the rub, eh? The only reason I can attempt it is that I think I've run out any other options. We're so broke anyway as a result of not being able to work much that I guess it just doesn't matter if we're broke this way or broke t'other. It all just sort of coalesced by necessity tinged with odd circumstance.
It should be interesting to see my Dad's reaction.
The pitch black sheep returning to the academic fold.
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