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De-cluttering Old Schoolwork

I went in the attic to locate a buried research paper example for my husband. He has to write a 10 to 12-pager by the end of the semester and doesn’t even know what one looks like. Well, being an English major, I had 10 to 15-pagers aplenty. So I went on a search to find one that I could easily explain to him. A paper deconstructing literature would’ve been much too difficult to break down for him.

I found the paper I was looking for quite easily and then I tried to pry something…anything…out of the box and into the garbage. After all, I know I will never return to those notes or those posters or any of it really. I paged through one notebook and thought about it in the garbage and immediately returned it to the box. I just.can’t.do.it. Short of someone coming in with a pry bar, I cannot let these papers go. The time invested. The real raw blood, sweat and tears. Those four whole gruelling years of full-time school and full-time work to put myself through college. It feels like trying to amputate my own limb.

I marveled at the way I could write. I mean, I know I can write, but sometimes I forget exactly how keen my intellect can be amidst piles of research and analysis. I’ll admit, looking through the papers calms my inferiority complex a bit. Especially coming across all the letters and stickers I got for being on the Dean’s list almost every semester. I don’t mean to boast, because most of the time I’m pretty hard on myself, but sometimes those gentle reminders of our talents and abilities really do give us a boost.

Then, I think about my kids coming across my old papers one day. I came across old papers from my mom’s elementary school days and I was completely enamored. Seeing her handwriting and her grades and imagining her in cute red polyester jumpsuits sitting at her Catholic school desk was just too sweet to miss. I wondered if somehow I time-traveled and ended up in her same class, if we would instantly be best friends. Wanting to immerse myself in that sentiment, I even swiped one of her rad retro leftover folders.

Being the writer that I am, the back page of every one of my notebook was littered with my word graffiti. Story ideas were born there. Poems originated in the margins. My favorite words were recorded there. The beauty of being a harried student and full-time worker is that the best ideas are born out of the overwhelming chaos. My muse materializes during bouts of over-scheduling and information overload. I built a lot of my best work off of those scribbled-up “back pages.”

A friend and I just had a conversation about decluttering old school papers. She just did it with a shrug of the shoulder and her head turned the other way. I told her that I really tried to channel her in my own purge attempt, but it totally failed. I’m convinced that pieces of my identity are tucked inside the folds in there. It’s only one box anyway. It’s not like Hoarders territory or anything. I’ll think I’ll keep them just a little longer.

Is there anything that you still cling to? Your favorite dolly from childhood (oops, I’m guilty of this one too), your collection of Tonka trucks or pen pal letters?

Flashback to a Breakdown

So, I’m sitting in the middle of a boring presentation at work and something triggered a memory of me having a small breakdown. I don’t know what the trigger was. Perhaps the presenter alluding to an over-worked staff on an assembly line that wasn’t allowed to run to the bathroom without someone to relieve them that triggered the memory.

Oh how I love my job! There is not one smidgen of sarcasm in that statement. I really do HEART it. I am so thankful to work in a place that is so thankful. They constantly do little things to improve morale. Even when the economony is reeling, they offer little gifts to make us feel valued. Aside from that, I get paid to write and I can’t ask for more!

So, maybe I was reliving those scary moments in my life when I was beyond overworked and looking for a small pocket of air. One of those moments where I was pushed beyond my normal outward composure was during an Education class in college. The professor broke the class into groups of 4-6 people for a final project and paper. We were all supposed to meet outside of class *gasp* and collectively put together a presentation, a lesson plan, a handout and a final paper (did I mention that I dropped the Secondary Education portion of my major?) Trying to find a time when all 6 people could meet for the amount of hours required to put together that type of project was Impossible, with an upper-case I.

I was working full-time and going to school full-time with little time in between for sleep. I barely knew who my parents were though I lived only a mile from them. Let’s just say, we ended up with a D on the project *gasp again for this Magna Cum Laude* mostly because one person forgot to hand in his handout. With that, we would’ve been bumped up to a B.

As normal behavior for me, I immediately made an appointment to talk this project over with my professor. Now I’m not the type to whine. I’m the type to take a situation like this with a proactive approach and see what could be done to make it better. And every single time, without fail, I made the effort to talk alone with a professor, my grade got a boost. So, there I was, asking this professor what I could do.

I explained to her that, according to the criteria created by her, the entire group should not have been penalized for the shortcomings of one person. One measly handout. One slacker in the group. She said she wouldn’t change the grade. Then I asked her if she’d be willing to offer some sort of Extra Credit opportunities to keep the old GPA in prime shape. She recoiled.

That’s when I lost it.

Right there, in that foreboding professor’s office, I let loose a cascade of tears and barely coherent words, complete with heaving and blubbering. The whole works. I had absolutly no control over it.

It wasn’t just the D, it was what it stood for. I had diligently researched my portion of the project (she basically downgraded me for the depth of my research as well, which, in my opinion, is bad sportsmanship since they teach to delve the depths, but anyway…), completed countless other projects for five other classes in the same period of time, studied, put in 8 hour shifts at a thankless job where I nearly froze to death one day, basically ate crumbs on my way out the door, slept an average of 5 hours a night for early classes, paid my own tuition and other bills, had no free time for socializing with dear friends and this lady was going to tell me I wasn’t doing enough? The weight-bearing activity finally crushed its host. To add insult to injury, she suggested I make an appointment for counseling in the Psychology department. (Truth be told, she did take me up on the Extra Credit suggestion and I think I ended up with a B in the class).

I know I know. Don’t be the victim here. That’s not my intention. I am just thankful to have come as far as I have. Life is a little less degrading and a lot more fulfilling these days. It’s sometimes nice to look back and see how far I’ve come and to see how many bloody knuckles it took me to get here. Ahhhhhh!