| August 23, 1998 Studenting
Wow, it's nearly the end of August. I realized today
that this is the first year since 1974 that this hasn't meant the beginning of school for
me. A 24-year student . . . that's a long, long time.
I always liked school, both as a student and as a teacher.
It was a good thing I enjoyed it, since my family moved a lot and I ended up
attending 12 schools in the 12 years before I graduated from high school.
I started school at age 5 in England in 1974, at the village
school in Barnham, near Thetford in East Anglia. There were just three classes in
the school, couldn't have been more than 50 or 60 children total. That's where I
learned to read, and to speak with an English accent instead of a South Georgia drawl.
I spent an awful lot of time reading Enid Blyton books in those three years.
My best friend's name was Heather, and she had pretty blonde hair in a braid down her back
and her family kept chickens (how exotic!). I had a boyfriend named Simon
who liked to dress up in women's clothing and play doctor. I sure wonder what
happened to him.
Later I attended an American school on Spangdahlem Air
Force/Army base in Germany, then spent six months in Quitman, Georgia before heading back
to England for three more years. This time I was in the equivalent of junior high,
attending Hinchingbrooke School in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. We wore uniforms,
dark green skirts and white blouses, with the boys in green blazers and ties. I
played in the school orchestra and when the school put on a musical version of Tom Sawyer,
I played the prosecuting attorney in the courtroom scene. I still have my diary from
those years, but I could remember the feeling of being 12 and 13 even without it. I
had the biggest crush on one of my best friends, Andrew, although of course I never did
anything about it. He and I worked together in the school library at lunchtime, and
that was the high point of my day. The angst of junior high crushes remains one of
my strongest memories of this time, though I also learned to speak some French and can
still understand it a little. My friend Michelle turned me on to New Wave music and
I'm still grateful. :-)
In my first year of high school I ended up in Alabama at
Stanhope Elmore High School in rural Millbrook, Alabama. Talk about culture shock.
Big hair and bright makeup everywhere, and a weird girl from English school had no
chance of fitting in with the mainstream. Thank goodness for the high school band.
That's where I met Ellen and Joey, my best friend and boyfriend respectively.
(He was her boyfriend first, but she didn't mind.) What an innocent time that
was -- Joey and I went steady for three months and never even kissed.
The next fall I was in Athens, Georgia, where I really hit my
stride as a social being. ;-) Band camp was the beginning -- marching out that
program over and over on the asphalt in the hot August sun, meeting the rest of the kids.
Church, school, and band introduced me to some of the best friends I ever made --
Doug, Phil, Hal, Marty. I remember the first time I saw Marty, a 5' 3" kid with
glasses, booking it across the parking lot with his Sousaphone on his shoulders. We
were what, 14 years old? I discovered kissing (but not with Marty) on an
October church trip to Six Flags over Georgia . . . someone else reading this journal
might remember that day, too. :-)
In the middle of my Junior year I was off to Valdosta,
Georgia (by way of a month in Germany in another AF base school). In Valdosta, at
Lowndes High School (my twelfth school!), I continued in the band and met Laura, my sole
friend in South Georgia. :-) I sure was lucky. The band was a great
activity -- we were one of the best in the state. Too bad I never actually learned
how to play the clarinet, but you don't really have to know how to play, to march.
Sometime in here my parents got divorced, I got my only C in high school (chemistry), and
I learned to drive. Marty was my long-distance boyfriend until right before high
school graduation (1986) when we broke up, never to see each other again (we thought).
Then I headed back up to Athens for college at the University
of Georgia. Fall at UGA was an incredible time, every single year. I loved
going into the college bookstore and buying a huge pile of books . . . I loved checking
out my new classes, seeing who I recognized, what we'd be reading. What a great
time. Plus I met Pervin and Celeste in the dorm. I remember dragging Celeste
to an Arlo Guthrie concert one October (is it possible she really did that for me?) with
me in Minnetonka moccasins (soft sole, of course!) and a broomstick skirt. Poor,
poor Celeste. ;-) Marty showed up again after a couple of years and we got to
be friends again, then more.
Grad school at Penn State could take up another whole entry
-- in fact it has already, back in June I think. It was a real up and down
experience for me, but mostly it was good. The short version is that I learned a lot
there, from classes and teaching and life. And it was also a great place to meet
friends. Other grad students, and then all the people I met over the internet as I
got plugged in to email and the web.
So I like school. It's been a happy trip.
And starting September without starting school is a weird feeling for me. The
change in the weather makes me want to go out and take a class. You know, there's
always more to learn. |
