My first college experience was when visiting my sister in Boston for two weeks. I was a 21 year old fireman on an island in Alaska at the time. She took me along to her first day in a class at Harvard. I think the teacher's name was Brooks and he had written 35 books all about Chaucer. The class was just about...Chaucer. He asked everyone to say their name and...something. I said my name and that i was just visiting. There was laughter and he said something. He then began to speak in the 'Old English' and was completely unintelligable but impressive. Then he read a text in the Kings English that was understandable. Afterward, he asked the classwhat the piece was about. There were so many answers from the class and so many words. I secretly thought it was about Chaucer making fun of spring-time romance...I thought back to the musical Camalot and the characters 'Going Maying' (my parents were considerably older than me so I knew such things). In the end I alone was correct compared to the verbal classmates.
I was very surprized by this having assumed that the college people were superior to me. I thought more about their responses and pondered that they were more interested in being eloquent than in being right. I remember it being very confusing.
Eventually I went to college in Charlotte and worked at a 3 star restaurant as a dishwasher. I made exactly the amount of money I needed and my mind was free to drift (lazy). But I enjoyed it and my co-worker Osman from Sudan - we worked on his English nightly. Soon I learned that some women had a problem with a 'dishwasher'. I learned I was without status. Frankly, that confused me for years...it still does to some level.
For the rest of college (in Wilmington) I was set on doing what I wanted and reading what different courses may have inspired...sometimes the required text. To this day, and even after additional graduate work later on, I cannot not pull together an academic paper to save my life. But I took the ideas very seriously. I think now that by not losing my curiosity, by not knowing ever why I was even there, by making enough C's to still manage to receive my G.I. Bill...I actually got an education. I was too old after the military to get the College Experience...but somehow I learned many things that stick with me...and delt with ideas that were foundational to understanding my country and my world.
I am old enough now to know that I am not smart enough to have pulled that off....it came off largely to a personality problem of being obstinate. It came about from my own limitations and having no thought about my future.
Can you get an education, you know, a real solid education...by 'going by the numbers?' Or is education instead something more personal...and less about a corporate view of 'excellence.' Even communication...is a mere artful trade.
