Relevance

If high school was absolutely irrelevant to my life, college is proving to be the opposite. Every day I'm here I learn something about myself or draw connections between different classes, worlds, or disciplines. Anthropology is the best major for someone of a philosophical, musing nature: it allows for the discovery and analysis of relationships between everything. And (in your face, American education-system structure) all of these connections came from the classes I chose, in the fields I like, not the stupid "General Education requirements" you make me take.

So there. Nyah. (This sound comes with the image of me sneering at the pompous bureaucratic asshat wearing a "Hello-My-Name-Is-American-Education-System" sticker.)

As Michelangelo said "I am still learning." This is so, so painfully true. Every day I learn something, be it helpful, sad, unflattering, or bizarre. Today I found my job description in a book of American horror stories by H. P. Lovecraft, whom I'd never heard of before taking my Popular Genres literature class. Here it is:

"The imaginative writer devotes himself to art in its most essential sense...He is a painter of moods and mind-pictures - a capturer and amplifier of elusive dreams and fancies - a voyager into those unheard-of lands which are glimpsed through the veil of actuality but rarely, and only by the most sensitive..."

Ah, Lovecraft. Once again, my sister proves her often spot-on taste in literature by telling he was "good." (It's impossible to be narrow-minded when she's pestering me to watch Doctor Who, read Harry Potter, and discuss Twilight. I have been forced to vacate every uninformed stance I've ever held against popular culture because of her.) I don't read horror. I don't like to be scared because, quite frankly, I can do that all by myself. But Lovecraft is a person I wish I could have known; his meticulous use of language and the joy he takes in writing is similar to my own (see yesterday's post "Linguistical Logistics").

I love to learn, maybe because my imagination is so diverse and expansive. You could put me in isolation and, once I got used to having no internet and no treadmill, I'd be content to while away my hours with my own thoughts and my own worlds. I love to think, and what is learning but stretching your mental muscles? I can't imagine (ha) anything more relevant than that.

Irreverently,
WolfGrrl