a quick breath

This term has flown, flown by. For once in my life I would like to try a semester system, as I think 10-week quarters are insanely brief. Still, I’ve learned quite a bit:

1. Students are, and will be, the soul of my intellectual career. I have been blessed with a wonderful group of freshmen who have energized my academic work. I leave our discussions feeling alive and happy, and sometimes, if I’m very lucky, useful. Feeling useful is not something that occurs much in the ivory tower. I’m a little embarrassed by how much they seem to trust me, and humbled by their effort. I can’t say that I was ever so diligent. Of course, I have my fair share of barely-conscious GE seekers, but nonetheless…I am impressed and humbled by my students.
2. Graduate school is not a refuge from the 9-5. These days, I am on campus often from 9-6 attending to my TA responsibilities and 2nd job, and then come home to read my own books from 8ish to midnight.
3. Procrastination devours. The old beast pursues me still.

One thing I realized over the refreshing Veteran’s Day weekend was that I need to connect with art. History can be a painful discipline, and the arts renew. So, Mr. P and I determined to read a poem together before bed each night, something I think I can keep up even when he’s not here.

Here’s yesterday’s poem, a Robinson Jeffers excerpt taken from one of my favorite (sadly defunct) blogs, the Scrivener:

Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise
If power and desire were perch-mates.

-Robinson Jeffers, from Tamar