It's time I got back to the good life.
So, I'm back from the writers conference. The whole thing was like a compressed college experience. In the beginning, I arrived unsure of what the program would be like and nervous that I'd be living with strangers. I diligently attended every second of every class, even though it meant that my days started before 9 am and ended around 10 pm. I even think I gained a tiny fraction of the "freshman fifteen" from eating on campus all the time, where desserts are served with every meal.
By the middle of the week, I had the lay of the land. I figured out which classes were the most enriching and which would be better substituted with naps. I used the extra time to get off campus long enough to experience the beautiful Middletown Metro area (hello, Meriden Best Buy), do an ol' two-for-one at Destinta (aka the most sneakable movie theater on the East Coast), and even hang out at Athenian after-hours (no police this time).
At the end of the week, I swear I really had senioritis. I'd skip a class or two entirely because it was too boring, too far away, or too sunny out. I traded in journalism classes for fiction-writing ones because the professor was hotter, even with his beer gut. Fine, his class actually had more good advice for writers-fiction or non-fiction-than any of the others, but that was a secondary concern.
All in all, I'm glad I went. I had a great one-on-one manuscript consultation, and I found some new inspiration for future writing projects. It was great to think in terms of writing and language again-although I'm sure this post doesn't really show it-because even though I sort of do it for a living, I needed a jolt to re-awaken the more literary part of my brain. Mission accomplished.
So, in some ways, Wesleyan was exactly the same. There were the brilliant professors, the utterly dull professors, inspiring classmates, annoying no-inner-filter classmates, and, of course, amazing graffiti on the campus-center bathroom stalls. I made sure to visit all of the places where I used to live-no crying in the basement-and they're all still there. Even the weather was exactly as I remembered it on wanna-do-nothing-but-sit-on-Foss-Hill days.
In other ways, going back felt completely different, even physically-all these gigantic buildings have gone up that didn't exist when I went there. I don't know if those buildings feel out-of-place because I don't have memories of them, or if they actually look out-of-place. The Fauver dorms (which, I found out, are actually for juniors and seniors, so I don't feel so bad) and the new campus center are brick instead of the beautiful brownstone of college row and the Foss Hill dorms, and the new film studies building is gorgeous but doesn't have the weird war-bunker look of the rest of the CFA. They all look nice, I guess.
But it wasn't just the new buildings that made going back feel strange. When I went to Wesleyan for the first time, I really had no idea what I was going to do in the future. I knew what I liked and what I wanted to spend time studying, but nothing beyond that. Now that things are shaping up a little-and in ways I couldn't have guessed or imagined-spending a week back there felt like cheating, like I was re-taking a test that I already knew the answers to. Not that I know everything that's going to happen from here on out, but as I approached the end of the conference and prepared to leave, I didn't have this impending sense of doom not knowing what I was going to be doing next week.
That would've been nice when I was a senior.
By the middle of the week, I had the lay of the land. I figured out which classes were the most enriching and which would be better substituted with naps. I used the extra time to get off campus long enough to experience the beautiful Middletown Metro area (hello, Meriden Best Buy), do an ol' two-for-one at Destinta (aka the most sneakable movie theater on the East Coast), and even hang out at Athenian after-hours (no police this time).
At the end of the week, I swear I really had senioritis. I'd skip a class or two entirely because it was too boring, too far away, or too sunny out. I traded in journalism classes for fiction-writing ones because the professor was hotter, even with his beer gut. Fine, his class actually had more good advice for writers-fiction or non-fiction-than any of the others, but that was a secondary concern.
All in all, I'm glad I went. I had a great one-on-one manuscript consultation, and I found some new inspiration for future writing projects. It was great to think in terms of writing and language again-although I'm sure this post doesn't really show it-because even though I sort of do it for a living, I needed a jolt to re-awaken the more literary part of my brain. Mission accomplished.
So, in some ways, Wesleyan was exactly the same. There were the brilliant professors, the utterly dull professors, inspiring classmates, annoying no-inner-filter classmates, and, of course, amazing graffiti on the campus-center bathroom stalls. I made sure to visit all of the places where I used to live-no crying in the basement-and they're all still there. Even the weather was exactly as I remembered it on wanna-do-nothing-but-sit-on-Foss-Hill days.
In other ways, going back felt completely different, even physically-all these gigantic buildings have gone up that didn't exist when I went there. I don't know if those buildings feel out-of-place because I don't have memories of them, or if they actually look out-of-place. The Fauver dorms (which, I found out, are actually for juniors and seniors, so I don't feel so bad) and the new campus center are brick instead of the beautiful brownstone of college row and the Foss Hill dorms, and the new film studies building is gorgeous but doesn't have the weird war-bunker look of the rest of the CFA. They all look nice, I guess.
But it wasn't just the new buildings that made going back feel strange. When I went to Wesleyan for the first time, I really had no idea what I was going to do in the future. I knew what I liked and what I wanted to spend time studying, but nothing beyond that. Now that things are shaping up a little-and in ways I couldn't have guessed or imagined-spending a week back there felt like cheating, like I was re-taking a test that I already knew the answers to. Not that I know everything that's going to happen from here on out, but as I approached the end of the conference and prepared to leave, I didn't have this impending sense of doom not knowing what I was going to be doing next week.
That would've been nice when I was a senior.