the last blog.....

I will admit i have been waiting... not too patiently for this day to come. the day that i would write my last blog for my capstone class taught by Dr. Sexson. but, i feel a little sad today. The groups that presented were great... and both made me think a little harder about what is about to happen. ill finish my last two papers that need to be written .... ill take my two tests next week... and then next saturday i will walk across a stage in the field house and be done with my schooling... For a while there i didn't know if i would be able to make it through college. I had such a hard time when i wasn't doing well in school and i hated all my classes, and then i even had a bit of a rough patch being an English major as well this semester. ( Mainly because i suffered from extreme senior-itis which i though was only an excuse for seniors in high school but this semester i definitely suffered from it far more intense than i did 6 years ago) I really had never given much thought to how it was going to FEEL to be done with college. I had always just thought of what i was going to do, what plans i would want to make, how i was going to spend all this free time that is coming my way now that i wont have to worry about school anymore.......

As excited as i am to venture off into a world that is unknown, i feel a loss of some kind. The last group that presented today made me realize that there is a small death happening in me right now. There is an end and i cant see what is in the next beginning, yet that doesn't scare me too much. Im ready. Im ready to be done. Im ready to leave this english major (although i will always be one!) behind and start a new chapter of life. There is so much that can happen in just a day... let alone a minute of life. And TS Eliot has definitely opened my eyes to pay attention to these little moments. Listening to all of the 'best blog moments' from the first group i also felt a loss. I am now not going to be around such interesting, intelligent, funny, people that i have surrounded myself with in my english classes. SO thank you groups 3 and 4 for making me realize i am losing quite a bit in this moment. Not only myself as a student, and english major, but also the company i have around me, that i have learned so much from these past few months.

while writing those last few sentences i teared up... i had to stop writing... but the tears aren't of sadness but joy... i have come to the end which is my beginning. I remember thinking a few years ago in my more crazy years of being a college student thinking that i would NEVER EVER want to leave bozeman.... not only were all my friends around me, but the town is in a beautiful location, the mountains, the rivers, the snow, the sun... all of it is here. But now i know that 6 years ago was yet another end and beginning. An end to an innocent, naive young girl and the beginning of a life that taught me lessons, good and bad, brought me friends good and bad, and ultimately got me to yet another end and new beginning.

a few weeks ago while i was driving home for the weekend and sitting back thinking about all the years that i have been in school i put my ipod on shuffle and come upon a song. Now this song that played has been a song that i have listened to for years, and i have always loved it, but the words didn't mean too much to me until then. Ill set the scene to at least try to captivate the feeling i had while i heard the first words of the song....

I should have known what was about to happen because the setting was perfect for one of those 'chill down the back' kind of epiphanies. As i was driving, all by myself i should add, the sun was out, the sky was clear, and i was reminded once more , like many times before, why Montana is called 'Big Sky Country'. I was just about out of the pass right before hitting Livingston, and the road starts to twist and turn. As i went around the last bend in the road Tom Petty's song 'Time to move on' came on over the radio. the first words hit me like a brick! :)

It's time to move on, time to get going

What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It's time to move on, it's time to get going

I started to cry... i couldnt even listen to the other words of the song so i continued to replay it over and over again.... it was perfect. The words of the song made me realize that i was ready to move one, that it was time for a change in my life, that it is time for me to start my NEW BEGINNING.

My last words will be Tom Petty's Lyrics because well i think that all of us can take away from the song some new thoughts on our lives of English Majors coming to an End....

It's time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It's time to move on, it's time to get going

Broken skyline, movin' through the airport
She's an honest defector
Conscientious objector
Now her own protector

Broken skyline, which way to love land
Which way to something better
Which way to forgiveness
Which way do I go

Time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It's time to move on, it's time to get going

Sometime later, getting the words wrong
Wasting the meaning and losing the rhyme
Nauseous adrenaline
Like breakin' up a dogfight
Like a deer in the headlights
Frozen in real time
I'm losing my mind

It's time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It's time to move on, it's time to get going

Final presentation of my college life!

Today was the last time that i will stand in front of a class and present.... anything! its odd to think that next fall i wont be coming back on to campus to go to an english class in wilson hall.... but i am also very very VERY excited for this to come to and end... Im completely ready!

I thought that the first group of the day had a beautiful presentation... and i say beautiful because it was... the lights low, the candles, the music... everything seemed to fit so well. i really enjoyed when the entire group read aloud different words and the entire room filled with a music note.... a small hum of noise..i couldn't distinguish what was being said or what it meant... but hearing the words overlap each other and hearing the music of the words gave me a chill... and it brought me back to that night in the baxter hotel... listening to Dante and Eliot... all the words blending into one sweet low hum of a music tone.

our group had a lot of fun coming up with the script we used.... i know we all felt that it was at times quite cheesy but i think its point got across. we are all at the end of a road and some may have plans... but no one can know for sure what will happen in the future.. and really... if someone told you today what was going to come your way, would you believe them? i know that i wouldn't... i don't want to know what is in store for me that will ruin all the fun!

Last day of paper presentations!

i didn't blog about the presentations on Wednesday so ill start there.... Mick had a great presentation! While he was reading off his words i felt like i was listening to not only a poet but a poet alike eliot. His words made me think and question... like so many words of Eliot's. Adam also did a great job, i really enjoyed how he explained the background of the book that he had read all semester and used that to write his capstone. When i presented i was so sure that my paper was quite wonderful... since it was still a work in progress. As i went to the library wednesday morning to finish the editing i read it over and started adding new parts to it and realized i was taking the paper in a whole new direction. i had started writing not only about why i love literature and where it takes me but the lessons i have learned through reading the novels, poems and stories that i have through the years. While i was trying to fix my paper i realized that all of the big life lessons that i have learned in the past few years have all stemmed from the reading that i had been doing in my classes. One might think it slightly cheesy to learn life lessons from literature but i feel that the lessons that characters learn in their are all lessons that readers can learn too, as long as readers step back and try to hear the unheard music of the words.

Now i feel bad that i didn't read any of my paper in class today.... but i have never been one to be very happy with the way that i write... and of all the lessons i have learned by being an english major that is one area i feel that has not improved so much. when writing my paper i found myself trying out techniques of creative writing... and i guess i am just not too comfortable with how my 'creative' writing came out.

I have to agree with Nick when he said today that he doesn't feel that he has every been in a class with so many incredibly intelligent people. one thing i know for sure is that English majors on this campus have to be some of the most intelligent people i have come across. not only do they know how to express themselves through prose, but everyone in our class seems to have a higher understanding of life.... and i really think that all of us can say that through the literature that we have all read.. there are lessons buried deep inside those words.

Anyway.. i am sorry that i didnt read any of my paper aloud... i just dont feel that i am as eloquent with my words as so many others in our class are! again with the anxiety of influence....

I feel as though i sound like a broken record, but everyday of presentations i am blown away with how great all the papers are! its refreshing to know that i am not the only one feeling somewhat lost... after listening to Lisa's presentation i realize even more that i am soo ready to be done that i am not even paying attention to what is going on around me. These next few weeks are the last weeks that i will be in bozeman... i am leaving... dont really know where i am going... but i am closing a chapter of my life that never seemed possible to close. I have so many wonderful memories of my years spent here at MSU (although most of those memories are not ones of actual class time) that to think its all ending is unbelievably scary. What seems even more scary is that i have to finish my paper and present it and i cant imagine that it can even amount to what has already been done! i find myself letting everything yet nothing distract me while trying to get all the final assignments done for this semester. i can see the end at it is blinding me from what is in the now.... thanks to lisa i have realized this... so i guess thats just one more thing that will most likely be quite bothersome for me while trying to get through these next few weeks!

im nervous but ready to present my paper on wednesday... the part that makes me the most nervous is that sexson listed of the people presenting on wednesday and my name is at the end of that list.... again im probably going to suffer from a bit of 'anxiety of influence' because i can only imagine how wonderful the papers will be that are presented before me! ha i just cant think of that and think about the now and get the 'best paper of my life' written !

the second day of presentations and again i am taken back by how great i think that everyone is doing! its causing me to have some 'anxiety of influence' while trying to write my own paper but at the same time listening to everyone present their ideas i am having little moments of 'ooh' epiphanies. i am finding more moments in my time as an english major to put into my paper and so in that sense i am feeling pretty great about how my paper will turn out.

i have decided to not really write much about my time here at MSU before becoming an english major.... i feel that i didn't really enjoy any of my time spent in classes before my english classes started so I'm looking back at just the four years that have gotten me to the place i am now... which is completely in love with the four quartets! since sexson suggested that i name my paper 'Stations along the way' (actually i cant remember if it was stations along the way or stations on the way but either way its titled stations along the way) i thought that structuring my paper into four small chapters would work best. with each chapter i have gone through and found a quote from each of the quartets that will be the titles of each chapter.

as of now my paper has most of its introduction, some of its conclusion and a little bit of the middle .... but i am having a little bit of a hard time trying to figure out what exactly i want each chapter to say ..... what is helping me though is reading through the four quartets... because each time i do i have another memory of a class in the past... or at least another small 'ooh' moment where i have yet another idea for the paper. Hopefully it goes as well as it is going in my head... i just need to start typing it!

First day of Presentations

Wow.... i am slightly scared to start writing my paper after hearing the 5 the were presented today! Kevin, Abby, Joan, Katie and Ronald all did a wonderful job. What i thought was rather interesting was even though no one really wrote about the same topic... all seemed to have the same feel to the papers. It was like all the papers started at one place and ended at the same place they began with. 'in my end is my beginning...' they were all very circular...

while listening to everyone present their papers today i obviously start thinking about mine and i know that my paper will circular.... after talking to Dr. Sexson about what i am to write about... Stations along the way.... i found that what made me want to be an english major is what i discovered at the Baxter last week. the music in literature... the art of the words that are written down and read. Although i hadn't thought of this until i took the weekend to really think about what i am going to write about... all the classes that i have taken and all the professors i have encountered... good and bad... and all the lessons i have learned through my years here at msu. i didnt realize at first that what i have come to love about literature was there all along. i feel as though through the years of 'learning' how to read like an english major, and being a critical reader rather than a reader just for the joy of reading... i lost the music of literature.... i have gotten to a point where when i pick up a book for class i seldom get totally lost in the words because i am thinking about what is 'really' going on in the text. especially this semester... all that i have been reading i feel like i have a protocol of how to read and what to write about. but there is one text that i don't feel i have to read a certain way or get a certain meaning from... and its the Four Quartets.

i love the fact that the poem was written in the form of music... because for me literature is music.... and it seems just natural that i end my english classes with a piece of work that not only moves me in words but moves me musically if that can even make sense... like i had said in my last blog... listening to the words of eliot is even more moving than reading them.... at times i don't really know what eliot is saying in his poem... but isn't that the point? aren't we as readers and listeners just supposed to find the music in the words?

The Anxiety of the end.....

first off, sorry for never blogging..... i just cant seem to type anything when i get onto my blog spot. nothing want to come out....

i have had trouble writing all semester.... i have been dealing with this anxiety of writing all semester . the moment i sign on to blog nothing happens when my fingertips hit the keyboard.... and thats pnly the beginning... papers are even harder for me to write! when i sit down to do any type of writing i feel like its a huge mountain that i need to climb but i dont have the strength to do it. i just feel like im all out of words to write down. but i think i have figured it out... the anxiety is purely coming from the fact that in a few short weeks a chapter of live is closing (that is if i can start catching up on my blogs!) and graduation is jsut around the corner. i have been waiting for this last semester of school to happen for two years now and now that it is here....i dont know what to do with myself.

on top of the fact that i need to make sure i get through this last semester i need to write my capstone paper... but again... have no idea what i should write about. in class on wednesday lisa talked about writing on what she knows now that she didnt know before. i thought to myself well theres a start i should try to go from there since it is such a broad topic... but again with the anxiety... i just cant even think about what i have learned and havent learned. i feel like throughout the past 6 years of school here at MSU i have learned more life lessons then anything.... thank goodness im meeting with sexson this morning to firgure out what the heck i am going to do!!

on a totally different note, i went to the baxter for the recitation on tuesday night and it was so great! it was really quite beautiful to hear everyone recite their lines one after another in no particular order. Eliot's four quartets is becoming one of my favorite things to just pick up and read. at times i just pick it up and open it to a random page and start reading from there.... i wish my mind was working as it should so i could get an idea for my paper from just doing that... but the second i think about writing that paper my mind shuts down...