Walking back from class today I felt that heavy, pit-in-my-stomach sad feeling that comes with the end of things. It happens at the end of a good story or going home after vacation or waving goodnight to your friends after a night of laughing on the back patio. Strangely, this came to me because it was the last day of classes. I thought maybe I should be skipping or throwing graded papers into the air while I sang about freedom Goofy Movie-style, but instead, I was oddly distressed.
I've been lucky to be surrounded by what I love this semester. The worst thing I can imagine is being in college and hating the classes you take. It just makes no sense. This is possibly approaching the sappy and sentimental, but really, I'm going to miss my teachers and the discussions and the books and poems and ideas we've explored. I have been exposed to SO many new things this semester, it's incredible. It's been good, too, to be surrounded by others who care for things, who want to learn, who are fascinated by language and thoughts and the things they imply.
Even though I am disclosing how embarrassingly cheesy I am with this statement, I must say that I LOVE the clap on the last day of classes. The sound gives me goosebumps. It's like the crowd singing together at a concert - there is something powerful about a group of different people all celebrating and rejoicing around the same thing.
I was a part of a quality clap-experience yesterday. It was my last History of Literature (ENGL 383) class and I was quite depressed. I want to be best friends with my professors (Levenson & Cushman). They gave their closing words, we said our class name (we all say our name at the same time and it makes a really cool sound in a class of several hundred) and then the clap began. It was great to look around and see everyone cheering and smiling - a definite "awww" moment.
But what really made the clap so great were the words they were celebrating that came before it. I (as the dork I am) took notes on the final lecture. That class makes me want to pump my fist in the air and yell "YAY ENGLISH!" and then kick all science-y people in the knee. I love hearing from people who are passionate about what they do and why they teach it. To close, here are some words Lev&Cush said in their final lecture. They aren't exact as I was frantically trying to write down what they were saying, so these are unofficial quotations and more of the general ideas, but they are wonderful nonetheless.
Maybe that image of putting your nose in a book isn’t real. Maybe your
nose doesn’t really touch the binding and get all wrinkled or inky. [But
it does display] the intimacy of reading. Everyone has the memory of staying
late up reading while the p’s thought you were asleep. Everyone has a
favorite position for reading, a certain posture.
It's not exactly a lover, a book, but you can hold it a certain way. You
can gaze at it from a distance. You can remember it when it isn’t
there. Some books are just textbooks, but some of them are your
books. And if someone steals them, you want them to fall in a ditch and scrape
their knee. It is profound to me, [this idea that] there is something so very
sacred about the act of reading.
Reading gives this tense and nervous and exhilarating mix between private
life and the life we share. There is this solitude of reading on your
own and then the compulsion to talk about it with someone else- it is impossible
to keep the reading pleasure all the way private. You run home to your room for
your favorite book, hide under the covers, read as if your life and then jump up
to call your sister...we come up out of solitude to show what we can find.
But what are the social implications of reading? Will reading literature
make us better people? No is the answer. Not if we are determined to be
jerks. What literature does, however, is help make real to us the interior
lives of real people. And here is the next thing: if we can make real to
ourselves the interior lives of others, we have a way to make real the
associations between ourselves and others. That seems, to me, something of
importance.
Reading helps us see the connections between the drops of
our individual selves and the larger world each of us is boiled down from.
It develops the sense that other people’s lives are real. When we can fully
grasp that, we go and we make change. Powerful things happen.
Roy has said "All we can do is to change the course of history by
encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don’t. There is beauty
yet in this brutal, damaged world of ours."
This is exhilarating- that
through reading and literature, we can keep imagination alive in the age of
terror and excitement. We can discover and create in this brutal,
damaged world of ours.
We all know what we need to resist: the culture of cynicism, embarrassment
in the sight of ideas, the flight from emotion, the poison of the
predictable. But we have what we need to do so. We have the books,
and we have each other.
I've been lucky to be surrounded by what I love this semester. The worst thing I can imagine is being in college and hating the classes you take. It just makes no sense. This is possibly approaching the sappy and sentimental, but really, I'm going to miss my teachers and the discussions and the books and poems and ideas we've explored. I have been exposed to SO many new things this semester, it's incredible. It's been good, too, to be surrounded by others who care for things, who want to learn, who are fascinated by language and thoughts and the things they imply.
Even though I am disclosing how embarrassingly cheesy I am with this statement, I must say that I LOVE the clap on the last day of classes. The sound gives me goosebumps. It's like the crowd singing together at a concert - there is something powerful about a group of different people all celebrating and rejoicing around the same thing.
I was a part of a quality clap-experience yesterday. It was my last History of Literature (ENGL 383) class and I was quite depressed. I want to be best friends with my professors (Levenson & Cushman). They gave their closing words, we said our class name (we all say our name at the same time and it makes a really cool sound in a class of several hundred) and then the clap began. It was great to look around and see everyone cheering and smiling - a definite "awww" moment.
But what really made the clap so great were the words they were celebrating that came before it. I (as the dork I am) took notes on the final lecture. That class makes me want to pump my fist in the air and yell "YAY ENGLISH!" and then kick all science-y people in the knee. I love hearing from people who are passionate about what they do and why they teach it. To close, here are some words Lev&Cush said in their final lecture. They aren't exact as I was frantically trying to write down what they were saying, so these are unofficial quotations and more of the general ideas, but they are wonderful nonetheless.
Maybe that image of putting your nose in a book isn’t real. Maybe your
nose doesn’t really touch the binding and get all wrinkled or inky. [But
it does display] the intimacy of reading. Everyone has the memory of staying
late up reading while the p’s thought you were asleep. Everyone has a
favorite position for reading, a certain posture.
It's not exactly a lover, a book, but you can hold it a certain way. You
can gaze at it from a distance. You can remember it when it isn’t
there. Some books are just textbooks, but some of them are your
books. And if someone steals them, you want them to fall in a ditch and scrape
their knee. It is profound to me, [this idea that] there is something so very
sacred about the act of reading.
Reading gives this tense and nervous and exhilarating mix between private
life and the life we share. There is this solitude of reading on your
own and then the compulsion to talk about it with someone else- it is impossible
to keep the reading pleasure all the way private. You run home to your room for
your favorite book, hide under the covers, read as if your life and then jump up
to call your sister...we come up out of solitude to show what we can find.
But what are the social implications of reading? Will reading literature
make us better people? No is the answer. Not if we are determined to be
jerks. What literature does, however, is help make real to us the interior
lives of real people. And here is the next thing: if we can make real to
ourselves the interior lives of others, we have a way to make real the
associations between ourselves and others. That seems, to me, something of
importance.
Reading helps us see the connections between the drops of
our individual selves and the larger world each of us is boiled down from.
It develops the sense that other people’s lives are real. When we can fully
grasp that, we go and we make change. Powerful things happen.
Roy has said "All we can do is to change the course of history by
encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don’t. There is beauty
yet in this brutal, damaged world of ours."
This is exhilarating- that
through reading and literature, we can keep imagination alive in the age of
terror and excitement. We can discover and create in this brutal,
damaged world of ours.
We all know what we need to resist: the culture of cynicism, embarrassment
in the sight of ideas, the flight from emotion, the poison of the
predictable. But we have what we need to do so. We have the books,
and we have each other.
1 comments:
Emily - love this post. I totally understand your sadness/bittersweetness at the end of things. I remember my roommate taking Levenson and Cushman's class and loving it. The professors at UVA really are top-notch. Thanks for sharing their words and the Vonnegut quote - love it, love it, love it!
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