Life on the other side of the counter

A small fact about me: I’ve been working at State College’s Chick-fil-A for the past two and a half years. That’s starting to feel like a long time. Somehow, I still really like chicken. I also still really like my job. But staying in one place with the same people for that amount of time definitely changes a person. My acquired superpower is being able to fill a cup of sweet tea, make a milkshake, take a customer’s order on headset, listen to a coworker tell me about the really funny thing that happened to them last night, and respond coherently to both customer and coworker, all in under one minute and all at the same time. (That’s real, guys. This is my biggest career accomplishment thus far.)  Besides multi-tasking skills, I've also observed a lot about people and relationships and life craziness, all at this establishment that now feels like another home. And it’s really funny how the same job makes me think over and over (usually on the same day, sometimes within the same fifteen minutes), “Wow, human beings are such incredibly wonderful things” and “Wow, human beings are horrible chicken-eating maniacs and I never want to speak to another one again.” 

If you know anything about Chick-fil-A, you probably know that being super friendly and accommodating is part of the job description. (I've said the words “My pleasure” more times than I could ever count.) Holding open doors, answering questions, mopping up spills, apologizing for things that aren't your fault (except when they sometimes are your fault), cleaning up little-kid barf in the playroom, smiling, making small talk, remembering the names of the regulars, refilling drinks… this is our life at the front of the house. On good days, it’s the absolute best. Those are the days when you see all your favorite customers and you laugh every other sentence and the whole world seems beautiful. On bad days, it’s the absolute worst. (Those times, you grit your teeth, try to make a lot of jokes, and then pretend that you have to stock things so that you can go cry in the cooler.)

Sometimes, after a long and (occasionally) bad work day, I curl up with my backpack and headphones on the bus and think about all the things I feel like I’m missing thanks to my ordinary job and my ordinary life as a college student, and I soak in this combination of misery and self-pity and angsty folk music all the way home. It’s a good thing this doesn't happen on a daily basis, because it’s quite a terrible state to exist in. But it did happen on Monday. Monday was full of lots of sighing and staring out the drive-thru window and wishing that I didn't have to think about classes when I got home and wondering how I ended up in food service when I could have been… I don’t know, working in a orphanage in Kenya or something? Because sometimes, after the hundredth rude customer of the day has come and gone (along with most of my patience and more of my self esteem than I care to admit), it’s easy to ask myself, “Is there some greater meaning to this beyond handing hordes of grumpy people bags of chicken sandwiches?”

Thankfully, I realized both yesterday and today that the answer is still yes. Somehow, despite wishing for far-off adventure and keeping a running bucket-list in my head, I keep getting surprised by how much life defies the word ordinary and by how the word adventure is so much bigger than my poor attempts to define it. Like walking to the bus stop in the early morning while most of the town is still asleep and realizing that snow and chimney smoke and slow-blinking red lights are kind of magical, like everyone waiting for the bus and yawning and breathing into their hands to keep warm is part of a secret club and only we know what this place is really like before everything wakes up. Getting coffee at the Panera downtown every morning in between buses, and then sitting at the booth behind the coffee dispensers and pretending to journal… but I’m actually listening in to all the hilarious things the employees say to each other when they think customers aren't listening. At work, washing dishes and throwing handfuls of bubbles at each other and belting off-key to whatever’s on the radio, or doubling over with laughter in the drive-thru at the most outrageous thing a customer just said, or dancing through the dining room on slow days when the place is empty. (We did that yesterday. Dancing, that is. Yesterday was the slowest day imaginable, but it was snowing and somehow being able to commiserate about our imprisonment made it much better.)

Today at work a three-year-old and I became instant friends when I smiled at him through the window, he slowly smiled back, and then proudly held up all of his Spiderman action figures so that I could see them. Communication consisted of earnest babyspeak (him) and lots of smiling and waving and goofy faces (me), all while his mom was obliviously digging in her purse for change. And this is exactly the kind of thing that makes me think I wouldn't mind enduring every cranky customer in State College as long as I get to meet tiny humans like him.

Today I felt so lucky that I work with friends, real friends, not just people that I say hi to at work three days a week. I’m glad that we all like to laugh so much, because otherwise we’d be even more of a dysfunctional family than we already are. Thankful too for the customers who remember our names and stop to ask us how we’re doing (and wait for answers). I’m not sure that all the kind people who come to Chick-fil-A realize how much their words matter to us, even if it’s a twenty-second interaction. I want to tell all of them, “You’re the reason why I just decided all over again that I love my job!” Sometimes I do. I think I should say it more often. Being in a place that requires constant interaction is exhilarating and challenging and dizzying and frustrating and exhausting and sometimes absolutely hilarious and sometimes just plain old discouraging… but getting to share life with so many people, even if it’s only for a minute, is still worth it.

Pause, Listen, Absorb

Here we are, ladies and gentlemen: the very last day EVER of 2014. Never ever in the history of our world will there be another December 31, 2014. Pause to let that sink in, and to appreciate this historic moment.

Photo cred: all beautiful photos here taken by Leah Nissley

I didn't think I'd blog for a while, at least not til after New Year's. But something about the wood-smoke infused, sleepy air of this cabin surrounded by forest (where I'm currently enjoying the first real breaths of fresh air and the freedom to do nothing since Christmas break started) makes me want to sit down and write, half to sort out all the thoughts crowding into my head and half just for the pure enjoyment of putting words on a page. So bear with me in my ramblings. I'm in a rambling mood.

The past two days have slipped past in a whirlwind of late nights and wool socks and snuggles and raucous, honest laughter. There have been several walks in the woods and numerous naps (all the naps I've wanted to take during the semester but couldn't due to lack of time are catching up to me now). I'm soaking up peace like a thirsty sponge. I am so tired. But it's a good tired. A safe tired, like for the first time in a long time my entire body is relaxing. Every time I sit down somewhere warm, I want to purr like a kitten and curl up fast asleep. This morning when I woke up I remembered my dreams, which is funny because I really haven't dreamed (or at least remembered it) in such a long time. Probably because I haven't slept so well since the end of the summer.

Right now it's snowing outside, and it's lovely. Whenever the sun comes out, the air looks like it's thick with glitter. Leah and I are down in the furnace room, contentedly lost in our own inner worlds. She's working on a painting. I'm burrowed in a mountain of blankets and pillows on the sofa by the window. There's something so happy about being able to quietly work in the same space as someone else, without feeling compelled to start a conversation. You know you've found a good friend when you're comfortable with the sound of each other's silence. If I had my old journals with me, I'd probably want to flip through the hundreds of pages and the hundreds of things that happened since January 1st. That's become an end-of-year tradition of mine. But perhaps it's better that I don't. Why get lost in the pages of other days when today is so wonderful in and of itself?

I feel like I've figured out how to step out of time, like I've stumbled upon some mysterious land with no clocks, a land in which we get up when we're not tired anymore, eat when we feel like it, play outside until we run out of daylight, and go to bed when we've thoroughly exhausted ourselves with laughter and ridiculous dancing. I think I might have looked at a clock twice yesterday. I wish life could be like this more often. Present-focused, I guess, without so much worry about rushing to the next thing or getting to places on time. But the fact that it's not is also one of the things that makes me so thankful for days like today and moments like this moment. I'm thankful for bananas with peanut butter, and bed-jumping, and wild tickling matches that turn into wrestling matches, and the freedom not to take a shower if I don't feel like it (which I don't), and Leah's Spotify playlists, and the sound of Anna's laughter, and Lezlee's reading voice, and the way the snow looks when the wind blows it in ripple patterns across the back deck. I'm thankful for the pale-gold of winter sunlight.

And I hope you also find enjoyment in your last day of 2014, as much enjoyment as I'm discovering in mine. Although part of me wants to stay in this blanket cocoon forever, I think it is now time to finish blogging, bid farewell to the couch, and perhaps go for a walk.

Jesus, the Myers-Briggs, and other odds and ends

Oh my, it’s been too long. Not quite sure where autumn went, or how I went from sleeping with my windows wide open on Monday night to slip-sloshing my way home through a snow-muffled world this evening. This fall has been lovely, full of new experiences and friendships and road trips and an overall array of good things. It’s just gone very, very fast.

I can always tell it’s nearing the end of the fall semester when…

1. Somehow everything seems to blur together. I’m still not sure how this always happens. Within the past three or four weeks, my psych, philosophy, and 20^th century women’s lit courses (three VERY different classes with very different professors) have touched on so many of the same themes and concepts that in my mind they've almost become the same class. (This is both a pro and con – being a big-picture kind of person, I love discovering commonalities between my classes, but sometimes I end up forgetting details like, ahem, which professor goes with which class and emailing the wrong ones… awkward. Lack of sleep may or may not have played a part in this confusion.) Speaking of sleep…

2. Hibernation starts to sound really nice. (Seriously, why can’t people do this?) There’s a reason why I eat more food in the winter. It’s also why I take more naps. Maybe my body’s trying to tell me that I’m secretly a bear?

3.  Homework and other class-related bits of knowledge begin creeping over into strictly non-college areas of life. Last week in psych class, we studied personality theories, which I LOVE because I love thinking about people and wondering what makes them tick and analyzing everything. Sometimes probably too much. Case in point: in the middle of church this past Sunday, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out Jesus’s Myers-Briggs type. And then wondered how Jesus would feel about being typed…

Besides trying to keep my classes straight, wrangling various family members into taking too many personality tests in the name of psychology, and lamenting the fact that I can’t hibernate through this winter, I've somehow found time to read a few wonderful books, the very best of them titled My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman. This book is absolutely the best thing I've read all semester (possibly all year, with the exception of an equally lovely and profound book of poems by Madeleine L’Engle). Anyway, I have been meaning to write some of my thoughts about it here for quite a while.

All jokes about end-of-semester-struggles aside, I've been wrestling with a lot and processing a lot this semester. Especially things concerning faith. I came home at the end of the summer with a mind full of questions and a heart longing not necessarily for answers but to be at peace with doubt and not knowing. The question became, “How can I learn to know God and love Jesus while still harboring doubts about my own beliefs?” And this hasn't been easy to figure out. I confess, a lot of the time I feel like I’m doing a bad job of it and just want to give up.

Sometimes the timing of things is really funny. Who would have thought I’d be taking a philosophy class this semester of all semesters? Philosophy studies over the past three months have unearthed such a mine of ideas and questions in me that some evenings all I can do is rest my head on my desk and feel completely overwhelmed. But oddly enough, I think it’s a needed thing. Feeling small is unpleasant and sometimes frightening, but not unhealthy. Maybe it’s a good thing to recognize how little I actually know. Victor Frankl, a philosopher and psychologist I read about just last week, wrote, “We need to learn to endure our inability to fully comprehend ultimate meaningfulness.” I almost cried when I read that, more out of relief than anything else.

So I started reading My Bright Abyss late last month and couldn't stop. Christian Wiman writes about Christ and that tension between faith and doubt in a way that’s raw and beautiful and honest. It was both comforting and unsettling, and there’s so much that could be said about this book but I’d rather just quote you my favorite parts and then beg you to go read it yourself. Please do. But here, some bits and pieces taken from my now very much underlined and doodled-in copy, starting with the paragraph that struck me the most (and still does every time I read it):

“Be careful. Be certain that your expressions of regret about your inability to rest in God do not have a tinge of self-satisfaction, even self-exaltation to them, that your complaints about your anxieties are not merely a manifestation of your dependence on them. There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that never quite finds its true force or direction, or as fuel for ambition, or as a kind of reflexive secular religion that, paradoxically, unites us with others in a shared sense of complete isolation: you feel at home in the world only by never feeling at home in the world.”

“It is a strange thing how sometimes merely to talk honestly of God, even if it is only to articulate our feelings of separation and confusion, can bring peace to our spirits. You thought you were unhappy because this or that was off in your relationship, this or that was wrong in your job, but the reality is that your sadness stemmed from your aversion to, your stalwart avoidance of, God. The other problems may very well be true, and you will have to address them, but what you feel when releasing yourself to speak of the deepest needs of your spirit is the fact that no other needs could be spoken of outside of that context. You cannot work on the structure of your life if the ground of your being is unsure.”

“Even when Christianity is the default mode of a society, Christ is not. There is always some leap into what looks like absurdity, and there is always, for the one who makes that leap, some cost.”

“Christ speaks in stories as a way of preparing his followers to stake their lives on a story, because existence is not a puzzle to be solved, but a narrative to be inherited and undergone and transformed person by person. He uses metaphors  because something essential about the nature of reality – its mercurial solidity, its mathematical mystery and sacred plainness – is disclosed within them. He speaks the language of reality – speaks in terms of the physical world – because he is reality’s culmination and key (one of them, at any rate), and because ‘this people’s mind has become dull; they have stopped their ears and shut their eyes. Otherwise, their eyes might see, their ears hear, and their mind understand, and then they might turn to me, and I would heal them.’”

Needless to say, I am still absorbing a lot of this. It’s probably fair to say that I’m still absorbing ALL of it. The best books usually take a long time to sift through. I would venture to say more, but it’s getting late and I still have quite a mound of homework to plow through (Thanksgiving break, you say? What’s that?). Anyway… hopefully I have given you something to absorb as well (and a possible addition to your reading list). Here’s to those last three weeks of classes before the real break. Deep breath. Here we go!

On Wednesdays and rain

Today has been a most rainy Wednesday. I like rain. I don’t like Wednesdays.

To be fair, this one couldn't have gotten off to a lovelier start.  What’s better than waking up at five a.m. to the steady pounding of rain outside your open window and the realization that you have one more hour of sleep?  Just after seven I bolted out the front door, somehow forgetting to grab a jacket in the thrill of walking to the bus in an October monsoon, half tempted to ditch the umbrella and go war-whooping and puddle-jumping down the hill.  Downtown, the streets were awash with tiny rivers and streaks of reflected red and green.

But then it was cold. And wet. And I was wearing short sleeves. I clung to my umbrella, along with a vehement optimism (“I WILL love this day!”) that began to fade by the second bus.  By the time I got to work, the world had shifted from “Wheeee!  Puddles!” to “My bones ache.  I feel ninety years old.”

The rain slowed to a drizzle sometime in the late afternoon. The rooftop of the empty building across from the Chick-fil-A drive-thru turned into a gray lake dotted with scarlet and orange leaves. I fell asleep on the bus home, hugging a library book and jerking uncomfortably awake every few minutes because I’m always afraid I’ll miss my stop.  (One of these days it really will happen -- I’ll probably just circle around State College for hours, curled up happily in a back seat.)

Perhaps the whole I-don’t-like-Wednesdays thing stems in part from my love of beginnings. Mondays are  my favorite day of the week. New stories, new ideas, new possibilities, new projects, new sights, new sounds, new colors – this is a Monday. If Monday is the gunshot at the start of the race, Wednesday is a-- I don't know, a charley horse or something. Starting things, often leaving lots of messy trails and discarded ideas in my wake, is what I’m good at. Endings are great too. Those are usually the cause for much leaping and rejoicing, as well as anticipation for the next beginning waiting to be discovered. The middle though… the never-ending middle, like that part of a car trip where your butt falls asleep and you can’t stop asking, “Are we there yet?”… that’s the hard part. At least for me.

To be fair, the middle is the best part of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the most delicious thing about an Oreo, but they're not the first things that leap to mind. The middle makes me think of being stuck in between siblings in the back seat of a packed car. That part of the movie in which I always fall asleep. The hardest part of writing a story. Midterms, which have descended with a vengeance. Oh, and Wednesdays of course. The idealist in me wants every day to be an adventure, often resulting in a passionate avoidance of blah days… or at least, refusing to acknowledge that a blah day is, in fact, blah. But life is filled with ordinary days and quiet moments. Like today. Today was a sleepy, drizzly, monotonous day (plus a terrible hair day – thanks for that, weather). So maybe the true challenge is learning to acknowledge those gray, achy-bones kind of day, and to recognize that stillness is good for your soul. That the slow, steady middle is as valuable as a beginning and an end.

It has been a most rainy Wednesday, a never-ending day, an “Are we there yet?” day. But I like rain. I like October. And I like that it’s still warm enough to keep both windows open on wet, peaceful nights like this.

Sooner or later all vehicles develop minds of their own (and that's where the trouble starts).

A momentous event in the life of the Martin children: today they drove home from church backward and nobody was killed.

But seriously, it’s a good story.

It started this weekend when Mom and Dad left for a high school reunion in Lancaster and we had complete charge of the house for forty-eight hours.  There were squabbles about who would fold the laundry, who would cook the meals… heaven forbid someone doesn't do their share of the dishes… etc.  If you have siblings of your own, YOU know what I mean.  Anyhow, chore-duty got all sorted out and we survived, the only mishap being the van breaking down.  Which was quite an event.  (Readers, please take note: this was NOT the new one just purchased earlier this week, it was the big red-and-white dinosaur bus that’s served us well for quite a while.) 

After we left church and piled into the van, Jake shifted into reverse, pulled out of the parking space, and prepared to exit the parking lot… only to be met with the vaguely crunchy sound of grinding automobile parts and a vehicle that absolutely, positively would not budge.  We sat there for the next five minutes, creating an obvious roadblock while Jake fiddled with the gear stick and the rest of us yelled helpful hints from the backseat.  At last it was clear that the van would drive in reverse, and only reverse.  So we set off slowly, trying to ignore the puzzled stares from people in other cars as we inched out of the parking lot backward and pulled onto the street.  For the rest of the drive (only about a mile), Jake steered while the rest of us peered out of the windows and shouted advice like:

“Watch it!  You’re veering!”

 “Try not to drive on top of the yellow line!”

“Don’t run over that man!”

…and other such helpful tidbits.  We did make it home in one piece (props to Jake for some impressive driving) and left all pedestrians unscathed, as promised.  The van is now parked in an empty lot on top of South Allegheny hill, its fate to be determined.

    

The rest of the morning and afternoon included a crazy three-person game of basketball at the YMCA with Jake and Charlotte, culminating in Char literally ripping a sleeve off Jake’s T-shirt (much to everyone’s astonishment) and both of us falling to the floor in hysterical laughter while he examined the ragged remains.  To be fair, it wasn't really a basketball game – more like a lot of flailing, flinging, jumping on backs, and war whoops that happened to also involve a basketball somewhere in there.

These are the kinds of days that seem more rare and noteworthy lately, especially because it’s becoming quite obvious that I’m not the only one at home learning to grow up and live an adult life.  Or, you know, something at least resembling that.  Jake’s graduated, Charlotte is embarking on her second-to-last high school voyage as a junior, and Abby’s testing the waters as a freshman.  The older two have jobs during the week, and the youngest can usually be found behind mountains of homework.  (I don’t remember the mountain being quite so big when I was fifteen… hmm).  So it’s a bit strange, getting used to my younger siblings being all over the place, living their own lives, driving their own cars, working real jobs.  Coming home to find the house empty and wondering, “Where did they all go?”  I know that’s the nature of families, that independence is something that happens slowly and I guess you get used to being around each other less and less.  But sometimes I miss when we were little kids.

This will be my third year living at home since I've graduated high school.  Every year I've been telling myself it might be the last.  Not in a can’t-wait-to-get-out-of-here kind of way (though let’s be honest, who doesn't feel like that sometimes?).  More of a I-honestly-have-no-idea-what’s-coming-next kind of way.  It’s exciting to imagine what might be waiting up ahead.  But something I've been trying to learn and relearn over the past year or so is not to hold onto any of my plans too tightly.  Things are always changing.  Especially when you’re eighteen… nineteen… twenty…  Take this past January for example, when I was struck with possibly the worst bout of wanderlust I've ever experienced and started seriously thinking about buying one-way plane tickets to far-off places.  (Ahem… I say “seriously” but this particular strain of wanderlust ripped through my system in about two weeks before I was back to a normal spring semester of college).  Then about a month later, I applied to Millersville University, got accepted, and had high hopes of starting there as an English education major this fall.  So if you would have asked me where I’d be come September, oh, seven or eight months ago, I wouldn't have said here.

Yet here I am.  Once again thinking it might be the last year at home.  But who knows?  Here’s to crazy basketball and temperamental vehicles from the dark ages.  This is the stuff of life as of this semester, this month, right now.

Some scribblings from the bus...

Funny, how you can find potential story characters absolutely EVERWHERE once you start looking for them.  I’m back to paying attention on the bus again, disguised as your everyday passenger absorbed in headphones and the occasional book… but inside I’m taking mental notes, plucking idiosyncrasies here, interesting facial features there, a snatch of dialogue eavesdropped from a conversation just behind my seat, a pair of astonishingly beautiful eyebrows…  And I feel like I know all these people that I’ve ridden this bus with for the past two years, though it’s really just crisscrossing, sharing the same space for a little while before we all scatter to our separate lives.

The man in the cardigan and pressed slacks, the one with the warm eyes.  He looks like the kind of person who notices things.  His name is Ernie, I just found out today.  It suits him.  Before that, I’d been thinking of him only as The Gentleman because of the way he always waits at the very back of the line for everyone else to board before getting on the bus himself.  A few times I tried hanging back, wondering if he’d possibly get on before me… but no, each time he’s nodded oh so graciously yet insistently.  Go on.  Find a seat.  I’ll wait.

The… I don’t know what to call them individually… it’s practically impossible NOT to think of them as a group… the… oh dear.  This delightful gaggle of women (some of them might be professors, almost all of them work at the university), they sit behind me in the very back every morning and are the absolute loudest people on the bus.  I can turn up my music as high as I want and still hear everything.  Sometimes it’s outrageous.  Sometimes it’s just plain old funny.  Always lots of raucous laughter.  One time they got into a spirited discussion about the evils of antibacterial soap, and (unbeknownst to them of course) I jotted the whole thing down then and there… I wish I could find those notes.  They are a blunt, sharp-humored bunch.  VERY smart. 

Then there’s Ponytail Man.  Well, he used to be Ponytail Man until one day he boarded the bus with that long blondish ponytail missing and a normal, everyday haircut in its place, but to me he is and always will be Ponytail Man.  I’ve sat behind him and next to him a couple of times, close enough to glance at the books he always carries with him in that beat-up camouflage backpack.  Lots of Japanese manga, not translated.  The cute schoolgirl and giant robot kind.  More Japanese books.  It makes me wonder if he’s learning the language or is perhaps already fluent.  He reads those a lot, and sometimes Louis L’amour paperbacks.

There’s a new boy who gets on the bus in the evenings, at the stop right after we pass the grocery store.  He’s lithe and thin, with muscular, tanned arms and a pair of the skinniest legs I’ve ever seen (pants a little too short, rolled up; boots a little too big, the leather work kind).  He looks like he grew up running through cornfields and playing baseball.  Lanky blonde hair, impossibly dark eyebrows.  The other day he pulled out a newspaper and read it the entire way into town, half-smiling, utterly absorbed, like the newsprint was telling him secrets.  He’s a cross between Peter Pan and Almonzo Wilder, with (I think) a touch more of the former.  I’ve started calling him Peter Pan in my head.

The beautiful black baby (well, not really a baby anymore, probably two or three – and not really black, more like chocolate – but “the chocolate toddler” sounds quite strange indeed) who I see occasionally in the mornings with her mom.  They get on at the stop just after the train tracks, the mother loaded down with diaper bag and stroller, baby in tow.  She (baby) is now big enough to sit in a seat of her own, chubby legs outstretched, body bent forward in an effort to take it ALL in – passengers, the view from every window, the driver.  All with that wide-eyed, solemn gaze.  When they get off just before we reach the mall, the crowd in the back of the bus gets a little quieter, waiting.  Mother and baby disembark, the baby straining to hold onto the diaper bag while still peering around to get a last look at all of us on the bus.  She has no idea she is queen of the XB.  And they get off… we’re all still waiting.  Will she?  Will she do it?  And, without fail, just as the mother hoists her onto her hip and slings the diaper bag over the other shoulder, she does, she strains back toward the departing bus and waves regally with one tiny hand.

Two Weeks In

(Not actually my library, but I wish.  It looks like heaven.)

It’s officially starting to feel like college season.  Textbooks scattered across the floor; notes to myself strewn over the desk like falling leaves (most of which don’t make sense after I write them); a lone coffee pot sitting expectantly beside my math folder; a page full of fragments, doodles, and beautiful words (if I ever scrounge up the money for another tattoo, I’ll have TONS of ideas); and my perpetually overstuffed green backpack slouched against the chair.  This, all mixed in with remnants of summer: a box of seashells bought on a whim from a flea market (what I’ll do with them I have no idea), my now-broken Chacos lying in a heap beside the fan, a paper bag of tea from Central Market on the bookshelf, and letters and photos from camp.  Lots of them, everywhere.  I like my clutter.  I think it reflects a healthy sense of creative chaos. 

     

Anyhow.  College.  As I might have mentioned in a previous post, my college experience is a bit different than the norm.  I’m taking online classes through a community college three hours away.  I’ve been to the actual college once, over a year ago, and that was to register for my first semester.  Haven’t been back since.  My reason for deciding to do college this way is pretty simple: it’s what I can afford.  Yeah.  That’s really all.  Online college is full of both blessings and curses.  Honest confession: I’ve been feelin’ the curses a lot more recently.  Here are some general tidbits about my school experience:

1. I spend a lot of time in front of a screen, obviously.  To the level where I can sometimes feel my eyeballs drying out.
2. Even though my classes are not “do it at your own pace”, they’re not real-time either.  So as long as I meet my deadlines, I can read/watch lectures and do my homework whenever I fancy.
3. Sometimes when I say “I take online classes”, I feel like I have to make up all these really big, fancy reasons as to why online college is just as real as… well, real college.  And then I get annoyed with myself for being so insecure.  So I won’t give you any big, fancy reasons.  Take my word for it: you do as much work in an online class as you would any class on campus. 
4. A speech class online is probably one of the worst things you could do to yourself.  I gave my first speech via webcam in a magnificent thunderstorm.  Then the power went out.
5. For someone who likes to learn with all five senses, being mostly limited to a stationary setting is enough to make me want to leap out the window sometimes.
6. One time in a conversation about college, a well-meaning person told me, “I could never do online classes.  I’m a verbal processor.”  This verbal processor would like to respectfully disagree.  It’s not my first choice, not by a long shot.  But hey, you do what works.  And you find ways to compensate.
7. Learning online is not as simple as I assumed upon starting this whole gig a year ago.  Self-motivation is the key.  Unfortunately, I’m still looking for this key.  If you ever find it, let me know.  I’ll most likely be barricaded in my room, pounding out a research paper the night before it’s due.

I hope that those few snippets have given you a glimpse into the world of virtual higher education.  For my part, these past two weeks have been quite a struggle for me.  Lots of days spent missing people, craving diversity and a change of scenery, wondering what it would be like to sit in a classroom with other students and have the luxury of talking face-to-face with my professor if I wanted.  Don’t get me wrong, there are many things about my situation that I appreciate so, so much.  Not having a rigid schedule is great.  Being able to pick my own hours at work is great.  Living right next door to Penn State and being able to make use of the enormous libraries and take the bus everywhere is great.  Having the flexibility for things like road trips and spending time with friends is wonderful.  After all, it’s not like I spend all my time locked away in my room, staring at the computer with a glazed expression (just sometimes).  And when that does happen, the rule is this: go play.  Go for a walk, get a snack, explore, see something new, read a book I actually like, listen to some music, have a private dance party, meet up with a friend, grab the sisters and go running.  But still… sometimes a girl gets stir-crazy.  Part of it also has a lot to do with transitioning from such an adventure-filled summer away from home.

      

This week I spent loads of time daydreaming about traveling and concocting crazy schemes about things I’d like to do after college.  Also… tattoos.  ANYWAY.  Friday into today I ended up taking a much-needed trip to Elizabethtown to visit some very dear friends from camp.  Seeing them again did my heart so much good (guys, I hope some of you are reading this – I love you more than I can say).  Laughter, stories, firelight, playground adventures, a bare-handed cake-eating contest, soccer ending in a broken garage window, creek explorations… it was one of those weekends that left my soul overflowing with good things.  On our way back from the creek, all of us thoroughly soaked and happy as thunder rumbled in the distance, Anna grabbed my hand, smiled, and said, “I’m completely content right now.”  I realized so am I, and it was a wonderful feeling.  I am so grateful for friends that I can be childlike with.  Friends that I can laugh with.  Friends who love to dream big dreams.

     

I should be grateful more often, and I’m not.  I wish I knew the secret of being content in every situation, and I don’t.  This semester is what it is, and online college still frustrates the heck out of me on bad days, and I’m still longing to go explore faraway places and my heart is homesick for things I can’t even name… but here I am.  And… honestly I’m not sure if I feel okay with that or not.  Right now contentment is a bit of a day-to-day thing. 

     

Today I was, though.  And it felt really good.