No Recess.

I've been trying for months to come up with a concise explanation for why it is that I left graduate school after being so completely sure that scholar was the only job for which I am (was?) thoroughly qualified.  I've been able to explain it to myself well enough--the compounding feeling of wanting to be anywhere else whenever I was either in class or doing working preparation for it, the nagging feeling that I was in over my head (not because I wasn't getting the grades, but because I wasn't doing enough to merit getting them.) I felt bad about the As and the compliments scribbled at the bottom of my papers. I'd been phoning it in and I wanted someone to call me out on it, tell me I didn't want it bad enough.

I think (I hope) I figured out a way to explain it. I don't want to be an expert. In literature, in critical theory, in linguistics. I don't want to be an expert at anything because it means I didn't get the chance to try something else. It means I was too single-minded in my pursuit(s). I want to be a dabbler. I want to understand theory enough to explain to my brother that his frustration that his wife doesn't understand him is misplaced. His beef is with the English language, not his wife. Every conversation is an exercise in failure. There's no finite meaning in language. That's not even theory, it's polysemy.  Some words just want to do it all.

I think I forgot how much I loved learning because I was so focused on doing well in school. When I was younger I read about politics voraciously. I knew what was being debated in Congress and how it would affect me. When the PATRIOT Act was hastily cobbled together and pushed through both houses, I read it. I read bits and pieces of the RICO laws that pertained to it. I read what lawyers and Constitutional scholars thought of it it. What made it harmless and what made it terrifying. When I was much younger still, I had a small microscope. I would pull apart leaves and pluck fine little hairs from my head and examine them, making note of what I saw in a composition notebook. I was a terrible student but I was an avid learner. I'd like to back to being a learner now.