I just finished my junior year at Portland State
University. PSU is the sixth college I’ve attended in an educational career
that is unique not only for its peripatetic nature but for the 35-year “gap
year” between Sophomore and Junior. When the last of the brood left the bunker
(families with six children don’t do “nests”), I thought it high time to finish
the English degree that was put on hold when I moved to Japan in 1984. I gathered
all the stray academic threads into an Associate’s degree at a local community
college (side note: it is especially challenging to get an official transcript
from a college which no longer exists, but
I have done this) and started Big Girl School at PSU last fall.
It
may come as a surprise to you to learn that in the non-academic world there is
a dearth of people who are interested in discussing the parallels between Toni
Morrison’s Home and Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. This is not a
problem in a college. People in a college are still susceptible to wonders. I
scared an entire bus full of Parisian strangers once when I screeched and
lurched to my feet in shock – I had looked up, by chance, and seen the Sacre-Coeur
basilica glowing atop a hillside, just as it does in every photograph you’ve
ever seen of Paris; it took me by surprise, okay? – but on the train to PSU,
nobody thinks anything of it when I spend the ride feverishly declining Latin
verbs under my breath. I’ve lived in towns where that sort of behavior would
get you locked up; here strangers pat you gently on the shoulder to get your
attention and say, “Good luck on your test!” Those middle-aged fears about
early-onset dementia are ameliorated somewhat when one makes the President’s
List every quarter. Still, when I forwarded the “Study at Oxford Next Summer!” blurb
to The Man with a “Hah! Wouldn’t this be
a hoot!” note,
I WAS KIDDING.
He made me apply anyway and
I GOT IN.
You
don’t get accepted to Oxford and just not
go. So I’m going. I’m leaving on Saturday.
Come
along for the ride, won’t you?
