Seeking the Great Perhaps

I'm going back to school! First there was this post from 2008 and then this one from last May. And now there's this one. The one where I get to say: I'm going! I'm starting with my first class in July and then 2-a-semester beginning in the fall. YAY! To honor the moment, I thought I'd post my essay for admission to the program.

--------------------

I’m a bit like Miles in Looking for Alaska, and I’ve been out seeking a Great Perhaps for most of my life. I’ve called it different things at different times, but when I recently read John Green’s novel, I got this new vernacular to describe what I’ve been doing all along. Through all the seeking, all the roads, all the choices, all the adventures, and all the work, there’s one central thread. One thing that never changes. Books. They are always there with me.

I did the traditional route. I went to high school, applied early decision to Simmons and headed to the residence halls in 1991 as an 18-year-old who had never spent more than a week away from my parents. I finished in four years with a double major, sociology added to communications after a distressing first-semester-junior-year discovery that I didn’t want to be a journalist after all, having ethical issues with the expectations in the field as I understood and perceived them. I held editorial positions on the student paper, was secretary of student government, and served as senior class president. Through my involvement in student activities and leadership development, I applied to go directly to graduate school for higher education administration and student development. I was admitted to the University of Maryland’s program, the best in the nation, and went straightaway. It was something I understood, something I cared about, and something I convinced myself would be my path for life – after all, that’s what we do, right? We find a career and stick? Recent studies confirm this isn’t so, but in the early 90s, there was still the idea that this was the expectation. Throughout my college and graduate school careers, I made time to read for pleasure, astounding pretty much everyone around me. I knew that if I didn’t read for me, I would lose something essential in my identity. So I made time. My graduate school roommate recently reminded me that she lamented not having time to read in grad school and I suggested she read children’s books as they were less of a commitment, but equally as good. She began with my collection and then headed for the library. She remembers me giving her this double gift – reading for pleasure and discovering children’s literature – during a stressful academic time.

By 1997 I’d successfully completed my graduate degree in the requisite two years and held the distinction of being the only member of my cohort to defend my thesis in time for May graduation. I’d taken a job at Occidental College in Los Angeles and moved across the country to work at one of the most diverse small colleges in the United States. Work was good, life was good, and I was creating programs, teaching leadership courses, building an on-campus ropes course, and advising a seemingly unending list of student groups. It was perfect.

It was here that I revisited Children’s Literature. I’d been so focused on other academic pursuits for so many years that I’d not looked seriously at this area for a while. I was still moving my books around with me – Charlotte’s Web, Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, Harriet the Spy, Phantom Tollbooth, Trumpet of the Swan, The Trouble with Jenny’s Ear, Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Heidi books and more. And I was adding new ones – No, David (signed by David Shannon when I went to a gallery in LA featuring his artwork when the book came out in 1998), Series of Unfortunate Events when Snicket hit the scene, James and the Giant Peach when I realized I didn’t own a copy. I took a survey course at Glendale Community College in 2000. I always knew I liked to read, but I was an adult now, experiencing children’s literature as an academic experience. I had no kids in my life, so I wasn’t reading for anyone’s benefit other than my own. I would go to Storyopolis in L.A. and just browse. I started trying to discern what was good and why.

By the time I took that survey course, the Great Perhaps had already called to me again. Just as it did when I decided to go to a college for women. Just as it did when I moved all the way out to L.A. This time, it took the form of travel. Leaving. Going to see a world I was completely unfamiliar with, having never been further than L.A., assuming Toronto doesn’t count. So I recruited a friend and we planned for 18 months and we headed out on a one-way ticket to Beijing, with the intention to circle the globe in a westward manner until we arrived once again on home soil. The Perhaps got the better of me again when I decided, after 6 months on the road (China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal and Thailand again) to stay on Koh Tao, a tiny island in the Gulf of Thailand and learn to be a divemaster and then a SCUBA instructor. I lived there, in a community akin to a model United Nations for 20 months using my counseling and leadership skills to teach diving to strangers (many of whom were learning in a language not their own) and help run a busy dive shop in a developing country.

While travelling, I kept children’s literature on my radar screen. I bought Adventures of a Nepali Frog by Kanak Mani Dixit in Kathmandu and read the Harry Potter books as they came out (the UK versions, which was great). Books are a commodity when travelling; meeting other travelers is imperative for many reasons, not the least of which is to trade for a new book.

Two things led me to leave Thailand and head back stateside. First, while I cared about my colleagues and students greatly, I was working in a hedonistic paradise with no intellectual curiosity or challenge. I found I was hungry for discourse – about anything, really. Second, I was relatively sure that if I stayed out of my profession – higher ed – longer than I’d been in it to begin with, I was going to lose it. And so I headed home and found a proper job again. One that required shoes. After a while longer in higher education, I translated my skills over to the non-profit world. And a while after that, I went back to higher education in a different capacity.

Because proficiency in another language is preferred the M.A. in Children’s Literature program, I’ll add that in the middle of all this was my pursuit of Spanish. I tapped out Brookline Adult Education on their offerings, spent two weeks in Sucre, Bolivia one summer doing intensive study while living with a host family and then three months in Paraguay doing the same thing. Between 2005 and 2010, I chose Spanish-speaking destinations for my travel with only one exception (Spain, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, and Turkey, the exception). The last time I was orally tested, in 2006, I was high intermediate. I never reached fluency, but I can hold my own in varied situations and places and I can read enough to get a full grasp of what I need to know.

And so here I am, at 37, back in the U.S. for nine years and in Boston for seven, trying to find my way professionally and figure out how all this seeking the Perhaps weaves together and how the constant of books fits in.

In 2008, when Simmons announced the dual degree with Children’s Literature and Library Science, I finally began to think seriously about how to finally make this thread into something. The constant of books and the hum of books for children that had been coursing through my body for almost 10 years needed attention. But I dismissed it after some brief fantasizing as too expensive, too crazy, too late. Here I am in 2011, and I’ve cycled back to it again. It’s not going away. It doesn’t matter how old I get or how crazy anyone thinks I am for knowing about Walter and Gossie and Martha and Katniss and Keesha and Jerry. This is what I’m supposed to do; supposed to study.

For the past six months, in preparation for applying and matriculating, I’ve delved back into literature academically again. I attended the Horn Book Simmons Colloquium on October 2. Because I work at Tufts and have access to free courses, I took Slavery’s Optic Glass, a 19th century literature course looking at slavery through the writing of authors such as Thomas Jefferson, Lydia Maria Child, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frederick Douglass. I am registered for Children’s Literature with Marion Reynolds for the spring semester at Tufts. I sat in on a session of CHL410 with Megan Lambert in October, doing the reading and participating in class. I get the Horn Book eNewsletter. I have read close to 75 picture books and young adult novels in this time, both new titles and classics I’d not read before. I read most of the reading list for the freshmen at Lowell High where my mother works after she passed the list along.

Yes, I will be 38 when I begin. And 40 when I finish. And no, I don’t know what’s next after I earn a liberal arts masters. That’s part of what excites me. What could I discover? What might I find out I care about that I don’t even know exists right now? What talent might emerge that will surprise me? What internship might I try out that scares me? As a life-long seeker of the Great Perhaps this kind of unknown is okay with me.

This essay is meant to be partly about how this program fits into my professional goals. I did some math. Let’s assume I will work until I’m 70. (This seems increasingly common, and I’m single and healthy.) That is another 32 years. And I’ve already worked 14 (not even counting graduate school). That’s a total of 46 years for my working life, of which I’ve worked 30 percent so far. That, of course, means that I have 70 percent to go. When I figured this out about 6 months ago, I was first horrified because I wondered how would I ever make it through the rest of my work life with no real career path or clear focus– the state I’ve been in for about 3 years now. Then I was elated because this was the justification I’ve been looking for to make pursuing another degree at this stage in my life less crazy than one would think.

I want, in the end, for books to be not only my center thread, but my career. I will better understand them; be an expert in them. I will work in publishing, or buying, or an agency or somewhere I cannot yet imagine and will work with other people who share my love. I will not be the weirdo with the book in her bag or talking about some book she just finished to a bunch of people who could care less. I am tired of saying “I love children’s books.” Who doesn’t? But, loving them versus making them my work and my passion and my Perhaps? Those are two very different things, and this degree will act as my bridge from one to the other.

I will give Simmons and the Center for Children’s Literature everything I have. All my focus, all my brain, all my heart. One thing about me as a seeker, I’m not a lazy one. I set my mind to things and do them, and do them well. I am a fantastic colleague and classmate and am a thoughtful and dedicated learner. I am organized and interested. I make mistakes and learn from them. I write what I think is a great paper and get a B- and diligently work to understand what happened and improve the next time. I get frustrated sometimes, and disappointed, but filter that energy as positively as possible and inquire to figure out how to avoid it in the future. I know and care about Simmons; I started my intellectual and professional career with you and hope Simmons will help me continue that journey.

I believe strongly in the idea that “when you want something, the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it,” a theory I’ve appreciated from Cuelho’s The Alchemist for many years. I also believe that …”when you really love something, it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love,” one of Phineas’ theories in Knowles’ A Separate Peace. I am sure that today, as I write this, the universe is telling me it is time for me to seek the Greatest Perhaps and to honor the love affair that children’s books and I have been having for many years. I can’t wait to get started.