As much as I try to deny it at times, I think I really am academic by nature. I think I do actually enjoy studying most of the time (I just hate that it cuts into my other activities). I think I do get satisfaction out of correctly deriving an inverse trig function. I think I enjoy becoming more educated, however self-centered and egotistical my reasons for doing so may be.
I had an awesome English 1 teacher. Besides being a Christian, good friend, and understanding of everything I went through that year, she was just a good teacher. She challenged us a lot. But since then, I haven't been able to get excited about English at all. Maybe that's because my other English teachers have sucked. But in any event, I started getting really excited about English tonight.
Well, not so much English. But poetry. And that reminded me of Mrs. Crossman (my freshman English teacher) because we spent so much time on poetry that year. But tonight, I had to write another poetry response. You'd think I'd hate it. It is a bit of a waste of time. But tonight I got to write about a Natasha Tretheway poem. Seriously, if you never buy another book of poems, buy Bellocq's Ophelia . Last time, I wrote about Elizabeth Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?". As "cliche" as that poem is (and even though it inspired one of my favorite songs), I hadn't ever really paid much attention to it. A couple weeks before that, I wrote about "The Soul selects her own Society" by Emily Dickinson. Obviously, being a big Dickinson fan, I'd read it many many times and studied in it school. But I was able to make a stunning (if I do say so myself) analysis of it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's been a long time since I've gotten excited about English, and especially poetry. I was burned out for a long time. But tonight, I plan to blow off calculus (oops!) and pour over all the books of poems that Jamie Bevill gave me a couple years ago. And who knows...maybe I'll even write something!
- thoughts provided by Katey Orr @ 9:11 PM