Outside the lights were shining
On the river of tears,
I watched them from the distance
With music in my ears.

--(from) Went to See the Gypsy (by) Bob Dylan

I do believe it. I do believe it's true.

So I met a woman about my future, and she looked into my transcript like a crystal ball and told me she saw no 5 year plan in my future. She did however see me traveling to foreign lands following my intuition and becoming a great teacher. Why is it that all the professors I meet, and teachers I meet tell me that? I mean, it's encouraging but how do they know I'd make a good teacher?

Heh, though I did try my best to make a good impression. I changed out of the jeans with a hole in the ass and made sure not to apologize for interrupting her day, but tell her I appreciate her time. I'm such a funny little girl.

She asked me to expand on my reasons for remaining with Comp Lit. She said she was always interested in the reasons why the education program would lose prospective students. So I told her that I'd thought alot about it, and how invested I am in the program, how it seems to be taking me in a direction I really want to go.

Through the comparative literature program I have found an exciting way of wrestling with the problem of translation, an encouraged interest in understanding thought that isnt psychological in method, but literary. I explained that the english program at rutgers was full of periods. At that point she smiled and said, "you aren't a period person, you're an ideas person". That seems exactly right.

I told her I was feeling alright about the courses I'd already taken in the education program, because they provided me with valuable experiences that I know I'll build on later in life, when I turn to teaching. Sure this comp apps class is a pain in the butt requirement for the education program, but once again... it'll be useful to me yet.

More than anything, I'm glad that the fog has drifted and now my life, the plans I made senior year of high school, though shattered in some respect, are not invalidated.

I told her how the reality of college is that it is expensive and for most, it it the environment of youth. This means that during this wonderful and foolish time in my life, when I'd just as soon spend an afternoon eating kit kats and reading Ulysses than go to comp apps class, it is a time when the lessons I'm learning and the decisions and plans I resign myself too, carry so much weight, that to make the wrong concession would be to deny something unique that drives me.

So to switch major to english, to get my masters in education just does not value higher to me than to pursue a masters in comparative literature and become the woman of knowledge, thought, and insight that students demand, and schools pay. lol

I feel good right now. I feel like I've affirmed something important to me, and thus affirmed myself.

She offered to write me a recommendation letter if I choose to apply to an international teaching placement program that she herself once participated in.

I'm glad I didnt wear the jeans with the holes in the arse.
Even though I look damn good in them.

;-)