The streets are brimming with hope. School is starting again. And it’s not the children I am noticing, packing their bags full of the promise of a good future. It is the adults.
School, it seems to me, is kind of wasted on the young. They take it for granted. They go because their parents send them. They go because it is the phase of life when they are supposed to go. They go because it is illegal not to go. They go by default.
But it’s different for adults. I don’t mean the youngest adults who come straight out of one school and into another. I mean the adults who thought they were done with school and went out into the world. I am talking about the adults who stayed away for years, thinking maybe they’d go back to school some day, and now they are going back. They are anxious, and tired. They haven’t been able to sleep much, just wondering how things will go, how all the details will fall into place. They are wondering how to find their classrooms, what to take for lunch, how they’ll find time to buy their books. They are wondering if they will be able to study, if they will feel out of place.
These are the people who really appreciate school. Alongside all their doubts and fears they are hoping, hoping in the most hopeful way, the way you are allowed to hope when you have chosen a path and come to the trail head where you can stand with your toe right on the edge of adventure.
They aren’t the students they used to be, back in the days when they took school for granted. Experience has sharpened them, focussed them, humbled them. They seriously consider sitting at the front of the class, even if they can see well enough from farther back. They make appointments to see the teacher. They ask questions near the end of class, oblivious to the fact that the class might have ended earlier if they hadn’t delayed things. In these early days of the term, with exams and papers safely out there on a distant horizon, they feel blessed to be starting school, because this is what they wanted to do.
1 comment:
(this is the first time I've ever sent a message like this)
Hi Wendy,
You were great on CBC.
I was reading your pages despairing you and I could ever reconnect and then I read this page. You touched me in your article on going back to school. Tomorrow I travel 2 hours to Lethbridge for a 6 pm class then back to arrive home at 11. This is my second time heading to a class at the U of L and each day I wonder if I'll have the strength or the brainpower to pass the course or even make the trip safely.
I have a strange sort of hope that refuses to hope. In 1997 I started taking classes at the Medicine Hat College - just one or two at a time. I’ve taken over twenty classes promising myself “just this one more – it doesn’t mean anything”. I try to insist that I don't have a dream. I can't justify the waste of money so I don't. No one is neutral (many are vociferous), on my taking classes at my age and I am quite sure it would be possible to do an exhaustive survey on people's opinions. Now when anyone asks me what I plan on having when I'm done I say "The old age pension".
So why do I do it? My terror of failure seems overwhelmed by my passion to learn. “I thirst". A few years ago I discovered geography. During the first class I could hardly hear the instructor’s words over the excitement in my brain. All these years and I finally found my passion.
Last fall, as I paid my admittance fee at the U of L my eyes filled with tears. What is this hope, this joy that creeps in when I have so firmly forbidden it entrance?
As you predicted tonight I will try to finish note taking from the text. Tomorrow I will leave home early, and I will try to get the best seat in the class so I can hear every word. I will try to force myself not to blurt out the answer every question the instructor asks and not to stand at his desk after class asking questions.
I will be surrounded by wonderful young people who will treat me kindly and that’s a reward just in itself. Then I will drive home and sometime after 11 pm crawl into bed with my husband who frequently doesn't approve but has come to the understanding that I have got to do this. I sure hope I pass!
Janice
PS Do you remember white water rafting on the Maligne River. I remember you said "I thought I was done with you affecting my life." Your story about the table tennis. I hoped that that wasn't about our family but really it would have been something we would have done. I try to be much more civilized now. J.
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