All that was special, all that was rare is common here. ~Anne Sexton

“Time now to pack this humpty-dumpty

back the frightened way she came

and run along…”

     I feel like I should confess the blaring obvious, so here goes; “…forgive me readers (whoever you are) for I have sinned the bloggers sin; it has been months since my last blog post…”  Many times I have thought of post ideas, and now I have a backlog of them.  Today, I want to catch you up on my non-traditional student adventures, not with how the second semester of my master’s degree went, but I am going to take you back to almost a year ago-(which will lead you to my spring break of this year).  The time of summer classes at Western Michigan University is where “it” began in earnest.  Oh, “it” had been bugging me, since about January.  But I was way too busy, with classes and working, and traipsing from one West Michigan county to another, to take care of “it.”

     This thing, this “it” was breast related.  And it was concerning.  Not the more tangible lump issues, because frankly that would have been easier, but something much more subtle.  I will spare details, for now.  It was my summer semester, and I was in the final classes of an undergrad minor in writing.  I was taking my second poetry class, and I had been to see both a doctor, then a surgeon.  I had already endured prodding, poking and ultrasounds, and was about to have a full out MRI.  But, I had to get to class the night before.  We poetry students were to meet and head over to Asylum Lake to have a nature walk, and listen to our instructor read poetry and then, write ourselves.  After a bit of writing, we would share a little, and then walk a little more, and write again.  All I could think about really though, was about those three letters, MRI.  Most Ridiculous Incident.  Many Reels Incandescent.  Maybe Right Increments.  Magnetic Resonance Imaging.  Magnetically most, many, maybe.  Maybe.  Maybe it was cancer.

     I wanted to be one of the young girls in my class so badly that night.  I wanted to be traditional.  But I was 44 years old, and beginning to realize that being in your 40’s is a little frightening.  During that time period as I would drive about for work and to school, I was listening to CD’s from a book I have—“Poetry Speaks.”  I had been trying at every opportunity to become inspired to write poetry, and I spent so much time in my car, I would listen to everything I could.  Ann Sexton’s poem ‘The Operation’ was on that CD, and when it started to play in her own voice, I was startled into my first cry about the situation.  My second cry happened while I undressed for the MRI.   

     The results were inconclusive.  They could find nothing significant.  So, on my merry non-traditional student way I went.  But, there was one problem always just tugging on my right sleeve, beneath my right breast.  The symptoms would not go away.  So, nearly one year later-off I am sent to U of M.  Yep, shudder.  The University of Michigan.  How I spent this year’s Spring Break.  Off to have the first cancer center experience of my life.  This time, my daughter was with me.  The experience was disconcerting.  On the early morning of my appointment I, along with about 15 other women, spent the next hours together.

     Breast Cancer and Potential Breast Cancer Patients alike gather together, all very early in the morning in the general waiting room.  One by one, in short increments, we are called in, taken to another waiting room, where we are instructed to disrobe from the waist up, and given a teal blue hospital gown to wear.  There we sit, women together in an L-shaped room, in our gowns. Corralled together in our mundane and obediently decorated neutral-toned room.  I ponder this group, old and young, of practically every race, sitting there in submission.  Most of us have crossed our legs, and I notice everyone’s shoes and socks.  I think about them, how early they got up and dressed this morning, and I wonder about their socks.  What kinds of floors they padded on this morning-hardwood floors in tidy homes…old linoleum floors…plush carpet, worn carpet…tile?  Then I think about their shoes.  Were they waiting by solid core doors on little rugs of golds and browns?  Or maybe tucked away in a hall closet on a shoe rack?  I wondered too, what all of our shoes said about all of us.  It helped to muse about these things, and not think about all of our breasts hanging there under our blue-green gowns.  Breasts held up by our crossed arms tucked neatly above our belly buttons.

     An older Jewish woman keeps us all going.  She converses with women describing the adventures they had getting to the hospital.  Another describes using her GPS, one woman talks about flying, and soon the conversation swings to overseas travel.  All the while, women are called into a little room (well, I imagined it was little, I was never called into there), and some return to be seated again, and some emerge looking teary.  It subdues our conversations for a bit, respectfully for each woman.  Then, a couple of words spoken, and soon the conversation flows again.  No one talks about the C-word though, nor does the word ‘breast’ emerge from anyone’s lips.

     I am called in and out from a different door-clearly my first visit; the others almost seem to nod the recognition of this.  I am put through first a series of questions, a manual exam of pressing and poking (just the beginning of the pressing, poking, squeezing, and manipulation) then sent back.  Called out again, this time, for an ultra-sound.  It is uncomfortable, as one part of this ‘thing’ is, there is some general discomfort most of the time.  Just when I have had enough, it is over.  Sent back again.  Next call out- mammogram.  More comprehensive than any I have ever had before.

     I especially love the part, during the mammogram when the technician finally has your breast in the most unbelievable pancaked-ness, and she slips behind the little partition and says: “Now hold your breath.”  I want to laugh if I could- a physically impossible task at the moment-because this is assuming that I am actually breathing!  My real breath, well-it was squished out right along with my breast, and I begin to worry about the possibility of ever breathing fully again!  By now, I am really feeling it—pain, and when I am finally allowed to leave, it is to now head up to the surgeon’s office.  More poking, more prodding, more conversations.  More mysteries, about what it is.

     Here is what it is not: cancer.  For now anyway, I can breathe and read Ann Sexton poems.  Next Spring Break, I am going away somewhere far from Michigan.

     But for now, until I can actually fly away, I did the next best thing.  I got my first tattoo- a feather.

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To the Parents of Traditional Students~ Dedicated to My Peer Group

University of Oxford Library

And, before my dreaming eyes
Still the learned volumes lay,
And I could not close their leaves,
And I could not turn away.       ~ Anne Bronte

 

     Your kids are amazing.  Well, there are a couple who are probably drinking a little too much, but I’m sure they are not any of your kids—and it is probably a passing phase.  Oh, and not the ones in my actual peer group!!  (Sorry guys!)  I want you to know this is hard work, what your college students do every day.   If you were here you may be worried, so it is a good thing you are not.   Instead, I am here worrying about a few of them for you.

     Your students have stressors, much financial, but others too.  Working and going to school seem to be the norm for many of them.  If there are any true traditional students, the ones who just come to school, attend classes all day, and return to their dorm room or apartment to study for the night with no concerns about working or juggling other issues, I have not met any of them yet (or they just don’t talk about it). 

Me in an Oxford Doorway

     Instead, what I see are students who are struggling to stay awake in class, not because they have been out partying, but because they work late.  There was the student in the hall trying to work out her bills on the cell phone, on a short break from class.  There are the students who are trying to make it to class from across campus, who haven’t eaten anything since the morning, and have only time for a soda if they are lucky, from the vending machine.  One very endearing girl from a class I had last semester figured out it was only 50¢ to buy a chunk of plain bread from the local sub shop, and she wasn’t just trying to be frugal—she really only had 50¢. 

     College work does not let up, even when you go ahead and try to pretend you can get away with being a normal person, and try to do regular non-school related things all weekend.  It just catches up to you.  Many instructors will not tolerate you choosing to ‘skip’ an assignment or two (a choice some of us have to make and weigh grade point versus breaking point)—they have figured out a way to make every assignment mandatory, by not accepting any if you miss one.  And yes, for those of you who like to say: “…why, back in my day, we had to really memorize this or that, you kids have it easy”, I am here to assure you they don’t (have it easy).  There is still plenty of memorizing, but in addition, there is so much more technology, new research, real life applications, and group work.

Oxford Library and Cathedral

     I know college is harder than it used to be.  I have shared my experiences with others my age that went to college back in the day (the day I should have been going).  They are surprised, and grateful they are not doing what I am trying to do now.  I think that a true learning community would be hard to establish anymore on any college campus.  In a way, almost all students are non-traditional.  When I visited Oxford, England on a college trip, we toured the University of Oxford  (pretty neat because some of the Harry Potter scenes were filmed there—okay I have not actually seen a Harry Potter film, but I imagine that would be neat for someone to know), and learned how students stay in halls with their instructors, and day and night, they live their studies all together.  Can you imagine?  You would have to essentially leave family, homes, work and loves behind.  To be immersed in learning like that—wow.  I can’t even imagine!  To me, that would be sheer luxury; I have a feeling it would be to any other WMU student I attend college with!

     To my current English peer group, I admire what you are doing!  How unique you are, how hard you work, and what futures you have to look forward to!  As W.H. Auden (who lived in Oxford at one time) said:

“You owe it to us all to get on with what you’re good at.”

PS: I’m hoping you guys will help this non-traditional student finish her website this week, since I dedicated this post to you! 

Oxford Courtyard

 

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“Because the story of our life becomes our life…” a.k.a. The Cost of Returning to College

    

Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.         ~ Anne Sexton

 

     When I graduate, I will be the first (at least that I know of besides a couple of cousins) from both my father and mother’s side to hold a bachelor’s degree.  My maternal grandfather was the closest to a complete education, though his training was not in a college, but at the Henry Ford Trade School, where he studied to be an engineer before he served in the Navy during World War II.  He continued on as an engineer at Caterpillar in Illinois until he retired and moved to Florida.  On my paternal side, my grandfather worked for Detroit Edison, actually shoveling coal, on the St. Clair River.  After my own father served in the Navy, he went into sales, attending trainings and the occasional community college class, but he never completed a degree.  My mother attended ‘beauty school’ as it was called back in the day, which she did complete.  Growing up, college was never discussed.  My parents were of the mind that we girls (I have a sister) would pretty much graduate from high school, get married, and move on as they had done.  So, that is what we both did, in our own way of course.   My sister completed an associate’s degree, and then settled into her married life.

     There are times I still resent the choices available to us in the late 70’s and early 80’s, and my parent’s lack of preparing us for the future we were to face.  To be fair, life was different then, jobs were available that required less education, and still paid pretty well (at least for men anyway).  The decision to return to college caused tension in my personal life, and friendships also suffered.  My children, even though they were old enough to be on their own and had their own schooling to attend to, struggled as the time I spent with family became less and less.  Though as a society we appreciate more than ever the need for education, a decision to return to school as an adult can be a costly one, one that affects more than just the pocketbook.  So, while other may tediously keep track of the total cost of returning to college in dollars, I am painfully aware of the cost to my former personal and family life.

     Dr. Ruby Payne, in “Bridges Out of Poverty” says that to make a decision to move out of poverty, you have to leave behind (in some fashion) your former life, such as loved ones, family, etc.  I have just greatly paraphrased this, because I do not have her book in front of me, but that is the general gist of this belief.  Now, I wasn’t exactly living in poverty, but if I were to try to live on my own income without schooling, then I would have been right at the line (and certainly in poverty for many years leading up to now).  This is what I am striving to leave behind.  It means leaving behind an old life, and unfortunately a few friends.

     Being a full time non-traditional student, and working full time besides, leaves barely any time to foster friendships beyond your immediate family cell.  One of my close friends at the time was very put off with my lack of communication and time to spend with her, and she was actually mad about my decisions to immerse myself in this goal.  I think that was the hardest part of heading off to university life.  It was also the moment I realized my life was completely changing, and I would not ever be the same again, nor would I be returning to anything resembling life before school.  I was hurt initially; I expected understanding and support.  Now, while there is admittedly some sad moments, I have moved on, and I love the idea of the ever changing possibilities this new life after school will have to offer.

     I like thinking of how every time you read something new, you are changed forever.  This means, almost every day for the past three years in full time college, I have changed (of course, before that too, but you get the point).  The same scenery off the back deck that I looked at all those years ago is still there, but what I actually see has a richness of depth and detail that only comes from this experience of education.  So, the cost of this degree and those beyond, high though it is, well… it’s…priceless.  And my next dream is to watch my children receive their own bachelor’s degree.

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