An Unlonely Number

Our greatest accomplishments require time alone.  If the young Einstein had been chatting with his buddies on that city trolley around a century ago, we still might not have the theory of relativity, and E=MC(squared) might be just another meaningless bit of formula that never attached itself to a concept. The Williams sisters have spent a lot of quality time with the ball machine, perfecting those killer shots. St. Augustine, Thoreau, Marx, and even the party boy of the 20th century, F. Scott Fitzgerald, used solitude to think, to dream, and to write ideas that shook the world.

If you're considering going back to school at whatever level, and you fear being cut off from your social life, bear in mind that in order to become the person you really are, you need to spend time with yourself.  That old cliche' about loving yourself is fine, but what real accomplishment requires is that you really know yourself so you can open your heart and your life. Then your true self can been seen in the world around you through your work, not just your voice.

So many people worry about being alone.  They fill their days and nights with movement and casual friends, labor and workmates, hobbies and trips to the gym, the beach, the hardware store, Acapulco, the sushi bar . . . And when they finally get home, they fill the air around them with their music, and the surround sound from the TV and the phone calls to more and more people as they try to fill every hour in the days to come.

Alternatively, why not turn off all the noise? Stop answering the cell phone for two days. No email for a whole weekend. Turn off the stereo and the iPod. Cancel a few social events and put the gardening and hot yoga aside for a while, and just see what you really think. Listen to yourself when you are thinking about something more important than your credit card balance, and get familiar with that voice.

That's the voice you'll hear a lot once you're back in class, because you'll be spending more time alone than you do now, studying, thinking, planning, and executing. Eventually in the educational process, each student discovers that solitude is both a treasure and a key that unlocks even more delights than those noisy people can ever imagine.

Suzie Homemaker Doesn't Live Here

As I worked on the cleaning and tidying of my apartment over the past two days, I realized that the housekeeping gene has deserted my DNA. It must have been on the same strand as the math gene, which is also gone without a trace. While an epigeneticist might be able to explain what happened, I suspect the housekeeping gene simply died of atrophy.
The place hadn't been cleaned since mid-terms, so the dust bunnies were taking over. Given a choice between scrubbing the bathroom and writing a paper, I had to choose chaining myself to the computer every time. After all, the dust on the hall floor would not show up on my GPA, no matter how I treated it.
Once upon a time I was a scrupulous home maker. I polished, I scrubbed, I ironed, I made and hung curtains, I vacuumed and dusted every morning, I laundered, I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for ten mopey young sailors, I washed windows inside and out, and I was really, really bored. Now that my evenings are more likely to be occupied with ideas than television, I spend a lot less time on housework, and even less on feeling guilty about not doing it.
It is nice, though, to have most of the house looking like it's ready for inspection by a supervisor from the Disney company. I guess a girl could get used to this, if she had enough to think about while scrubbing the floors.

Oriented

The Class of 2013 has been convened and taught its first few lessons of college life. Parents have been oriented, fed barbecue and sent home, and depicted in skits as wanting to hover a little too much. The students who live on campus are settling in. As a commuter student, I could have elected to spend orientation weekend on the St. Martin's University campus, but I suspect the settling-in process probably is entailing some late hours.

The orientation guides, all upper classmen, are giving the new students a good taste of college life and making sure they have the contacts they need to be successful. This four day process is in huge contrast to my freshman year centuries ago at Big State U: my parents dropped me off at the dorm, we had a convocation for the several hundred freshmen and were given a handbook with a bunch of rules that no one ever read. Before you ask, yes, boomers could read in those days -- we often chose not to, though. We were having too much fun at the back of the crowd.

I think my father's contemporaries might have gotten restless if Big State had put on a farewell barbecue after a day-long parent orientation like St. Martins did. Boomer parents, though, really like these things. People love to watch Mad Men on TV, but it may not have been such a thrill to have those guys as parents.

Yesterday the students went out to clear a walking trail in Lacey, the city surrounding the campus, as part of the Saints in Service program. I stayed on campus and lined up some ongoing volunteer work for myself and did some studying: The Crucible is as challenging as I remember it.

Last night, as the orientation guides put on a skit about making choices regarding drugs, drinking, sex, study habits and getting along with roommates, I kept myself from giggling at first by trying to put myself in the younger students' shoes. During our group discussions, they keep mentioning how excited they are to be independent, on their own, meeting new people. They look a little nervous, too. Some of them are thousands of miles from home, and all of them are taking steps that will mark their entire lives. That gives me the shivers.