Borderlands

Borderlands

Sunlight streams down on verdant hillsides after two days of cold rain. Respite. All of Mount Vernon flocks outside to lay claim to little patches of sunlight before the sky turns again. My dog looks at me with more than just pleading, actual urgency, in his big brown eyes. “Big park or campus?” I ask. I know the answer will be both. We are getting out of the house. It is decided. Herding dogs know how to care for the broken-hearted, the wandering, and the lonely. That’s all me. I need shepherding.

Panic

“That's the thing about pain,’ Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. ‘It demands to be felt." --John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

A New Eden: How Myth Shaped American Identity

American Lit I response essay based on an outline for philosophy class. I don't know what to do with it. It seems like the seed of a much larger idea. 

Consuming Books

I forgot about this essay. This made it into my portfolio along with Daniel Suelo, Jdimytai Damour, and the Price of Our Souls and The Island of Pineapples and Fucking. 

College Your Way: Higher Education the Disney Way

5/31/14 Edit: This essay is rough. I played with a new form with the hyperlinks. I’m trying to figure out a more sustainable blog style because I don’t churn out enough academic work to update regularly for the 12 or so people who habitually read this blog (and the other twelve students who happen upon it accidentally while writing papers). I don’t think this format works particularly well for me, but it was a good experiment.

I’m heading off to Cornell College in Iowa a couple months. I’m thrilled with my decision, but I have your standard set of student worries; I’m worried about controlling the amount of loans I’ll need; I’m worried I haven’t really earned all the accolades I received at community college. “C’s get degrees” as the old adage goes, but, they do not maintain scholarships.

Additionally, my alma mater switched from billing per credit hour to billing per contact hour. Some courses saw a 200% increase in cost. I’m planning a protest at the next board meeting. The administration and the board failed to adequately inform current students of these charges. Actual face time with a professor is now privileged. This change did not result in faculty actually being paid more, which to me that just sounds like the admin now owns access to the faculty and can charge a premium for it. Welcome to the future.  

I just want to sit in a circle and talk about books. Then I want to teach people how to sit in circles and talk about books. Why is this so expensive? 

City on a Hill: Admission of an Older Student

“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.”

Matthew 5:14

“[this is] for refusing to believe in miracles

because miracles are the impossible coming true

and everything is possible

this is for the possibility that guides us

and for the possibilities still waiting to sing

and spread their wings inside us”

Andrea Gibson, “Say Yes”

“Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like the arctic tundra or sea ice.”

-Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby