Books and Professors

I am in a class called The History of British Literature II. To most people, I think that the name itself sounds daunting—not even daunting just straight up boring—and before I set foot in the classroom, I was a little unsure. I like history and I like literature, but that British thing was a whole different story. I’m American why should I care about British lit? Well, as it turns out I have this super cool, brilliant Irish professor and English Romantic literature is my long lost love. In other words, I’m obsessed(obsessed enough to annotate a poem in a letter to my boyfriend and tell him what it means to me…NERD in action) and want to spend my life studying Europe and its literature. Not really…..but possibly.

Anyway, that long (mostly unnecessary) introduction was to set context for a book club I joined. Yes, nerd in action again, but my too-smart-for-his-own-good Irish Brit Lit professor told me I should join it and my fascination with professors and their intelligence wouldn’t let me say no. So I picked up the book, Cloud Atlas, by David Mithcell, from the English department on Tuesday, and went to the first meeting yesterday.

I walked into the room rather certain, but as I took my seat in a circle among English professors, Philosophy professors, graduate students of both studies, and undergraduate students of both studies, my confidence dissipated. The atmosphere of that circle screamed “scholarly” and I was most definitely at the bottom of the present academic totem pole.

I think the only words I said during the whole hour and a half discussion were “Hi my name is Allison and I’m an English major.” I mostly just sat and marveled at the wisdom bouncing about the room. Literally, these people’s words rocketed effortlessly off their tongues eloquently and accurately, and landed gracefully in the center of the room ready for someone else to add their share of flawless intellect. The acute knowledge shared between the people in the room was truly inspiring and as I walked out of the English Village humbled and inquisitive I felt….excited.

I know excited isn’t exactly a typical emotion after an overwhelming experience but I was stoked! It was the first time I really, truly realized that the world is filled with endless knowledge. Sometimes I stress out about cramming as much knowledge into my brain as I can because I want to know everything about everything—especially literature—but in reality, I’m never going to know everything. I could spend my whole life in school getting hundreds of degrees, traveling, talking to people, researching, and working, but I will never reach the full capacity of learning potential.

So for now, I am comfortable being my fairly uninformed, inexperienced, curious, 19 year old self, enthusiastic about higher learning and infatuated with professors. In fact, this may be one of the only times in my life where I can be a blank canvas to life’s teachings without too much prior opinion or knowledge skewing pure forms of learning. So call me a nerd, or a teacher’s pet, or a try hard, or whatever, but I am overly passionate about learning and there is nothing that can stop this growing fire.