Mother Nature's Son

My literature class at Rock Valley hit me over the head like a ton of bricks, without warning. Most people at school, in the Academy, look down on Rock Valley, and it's kind of sad, because in my experience the professors are great. Of course I can't compare them at all to more prestigious schools, never having been anywhere else, but I've heard that Rock Valley is a king among community colleges. Maybe it's the students people look down on, assuming that they're not good enough for the schools that these people, the creme de la Academy, will be attending. I have bought into this conception, too, though; I assumed that a summer class at Rock Valley would be easy to pass, and that for me, a lit class would be especially easy. English is my thing, right?

I still think English is my thing; I aced the first writing assignment, which was gratifying. I just wasn't expecting this much work. This semester is three weeks long; classes meet for four hours a day, four days a week. We had two books to read, and the professor is cramming the first one into this first week, which has meant over a hundred pages of reading and note-taking a night. I haven't done anything else; tonight I'm taking a bit of a break, because the notes haven't been important to the class so far, and I need a rest.

I do like the book, The God of Small Things. It's extremely dense and ornate and full of description, and jumps around in time so that it can be pretty confusing, but it's interesting, and I love the writing style. I also really like my professor, Molly (as I think of her; she's pretty young, and just doesn't seem like a "Mrs." or "Professor Sides"). She reminds me immensely of Ms. Floming. Both are into creative writing as well as literature; both are young and kind of silly sometimes; both recently got married. Molly goes off on tangents sometimes; she was talking about inbreeding, because the family in the book is very wealthy and proud and there's some inbreeding going on (which has led to instances of madness...just like royal families in Europe), and she was like, "Yeah, you know, Jerry Lee Lewis married his cousin. Winona Ryder played her in the made-for-TV movie. Great Balls of Fire."

There's something about myself that I hate, and I still keep doing it, and it's this: whenever I'm in a new situation, in a class or at a camp or something, I always pick out some guy to build up in my mind and to ogle at random times. Even if he's not that great, I make him seem like it in my mind, maybe out of boredom. There's this kid in my lit class that I've kind of noticed. He's pretty hedonistic but also intellectual-seeming; he's obviously read a lot and has interesting things to say during class discussions. But I know he's just completely wrong. Today at the break, I was standing outside and kind of accidentally fell into this little group of students that were using the ten minutes of free time to have a cigarette (two of the girls had been in my small group for an activity we'd done). The fact that he was smoking was bad enough; I hate when people smoke and all their clothes and everything smells bad, and their teeth and fingernails get all yellow, and it's just disgusting. But he also was talking about rolling joints, and how he went out and got drunk, and stuff like that. I'm probably way too prim and proper; I know guys my age, particularly the class of '05, go out and get drunk and smoke and stuff all the time; I know it goes on. It's probably really normal and common in college. I just can't stand that. Like, it's okay to have fun sometimes, but isn't it better to just hang out with friends than to have to manufacture artificial joy with drugs?

I really want someone to have a party, so I can see everyone from school. I can feel myself looking forward to August, mainly just so I can hang out with these people I haven't seen since the beginning of June. If I see them somewhere else, though, maybe that will satisfy me enough that I won't yearn too much for Auburn.