I Never Let School Interfere with My Education...Or Almost Never, Anyway

School has been interfering with my education the past two weeks. Spanish and music lessons are on hold, Kerouac novels are collecting dust on my bookshelf, and cooking experiments are nonexistent. Instead, I've been busy putting in hours at school, writing papers, and finishing tests. Luckily, now, I have successfully completed a year of graduate school!
In the midst of sitting calmly in a desk, furiously copying down notes from Powerpoint presentations, I have managed to gain knowledge both on and off campus this past school year. Here’s a brief list (if anyone would like a day to day log, please email me):

1. Olympic weightlifting. I’m not going pro anytime soon, but I get it.
2. No matter what you read or anyone tells you, vermicomposting is not “super easy”.
3. Flatpicking on the guitar. Doc Watson is my middle name.
4. Working in a kitchen is fun. A good sense of humor and a basic level of competence are the best requirements.
5. Johnson City is not as cool as one might initially believe. (Asheville, on the other hand, is awesome).
6. How to cook tofu (decently).
7. Oats combined with the Avett Brothers provide the best start to a day.
8. Dryers are not a necessity.
9. Coffee is a necessity.
10. A very basic understanding of the Spanish language.
11. Anticipation is half the fun.
12. Life goes on.

Who knows where I’ll be a year from today (or even a week from today, let’s be honest), but as long as my education doesn’t interfere with my learning, everything will be ok!

"The sky's our limit!" from Chicken Little Goes Too Far by Margaret Atwood

I Used to be a Chicken, but Now I Play Rugby

This past weekend was the annual WVU Chicken Tournament, potentially the most exciting event of the year for a WVU rugby player. This was my first year back as alumni and the anticipation and excitement I felt in returning to Morgantown and hanging out with old friends is indescribable. It was a jam packed weekend filled with excessive amounts of fun and beer drinking. Luckily the extra beer calories were burned off from extreme amounts of laughter. (An alumni victory and the funniest game of rugby you've ever seen easily added to the fun.)

While catching up with old friends and former teammates we often asked the same questions, “How are you? What are you up to these days?” Our responses were told with a straight face, sometimes with a sigh mixed in, and the answer “I’m working at….” or “I’m back in school at…..” Very few of us could answer this question with a smile or with happy tones of inflection in our voices. There was almost a general consensus of defeat. We are in the real world.

Which leads to the simple conclusion that most young adults know today: We are forced to specialize in one area of study from a young age. Without a general basis in education we can never truly develop our interests or passion for a field of study. Instead, we float aimlessly around worrying about paying back student loans and dreaming of better days to come. All we can do is stay afloat and not get sucked into the routine of “work, produce, consume.”

See the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures. - Jackie K