Today at school I ran into my friend Jeanette. She is a history major and was telling me all about a class she is taking, Southern Colonial History. It sounded really interesting when she first told me she was taking it this semester and I really wanted to take it but I couldn’t fit in in (plus I am not a history major but I do love history).
The class is turning out to be extremely interesting for her. The instructor had them read a book, The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown, and write paper on it. The instructor even had the author of the book come in and give a lecture. Jeanette, like me, needs to look at the big picture instead of having a narrow focus or just concentrating on a small incident so she started doing some research. A bunch of extra research really. She is finding all kinds of interesting things about the founding of the colonies and what was going on during that time. She was telling me of all the discrepancies she has uncovered in the original story (not necessarily the book she has to write about) of the founding of the colonies. Some of them I had heard of before or had kind of surmised for myself but it was a very interesting discussion which led to talking of the connection between Shakespeare and the story of Jamestown. Supposedly Shakespeare wrote his play, The Tempest, based on this whole shipwreck/Jamestown story. Now I wanna’ know more! I told Jeanette to keep me updated on her discoveries.
So cool!! I love talking with Jeanette, we always have such interesting conversations but…
As I was sitting there talking with Jeanette, I was somewhat jealous because I want to take that class, I want to do that kind of research, make connections and learn about history in depth. I was jealous of her scholarship. It seems I get focused on completing assignments and memorizing theories and rules and I often forget to be a scholar, to take part in the joy and wonder of discovery. Perhaps part of it is that I am a psychology major and there is so much to learn, memorize, and so many rules to follow that I have just gotten bogged down. Oh there is research but so much of it is based on stats (numbers) and research design, UGH!
Part of it is my lack of energy (Damn CFS!) and part of it is being pulled in too many directions – student, wife, step-mother, daughter, aunt, and friend. Go here, go there, got this to do, pick up this, the house is a mess, paper due, on and on and on…. It is hard for me to do everything that is expected of me let alone what I want to do. I don’t often have the time to extra research I want to do. And I squander time. For shame. I need to quit that and remember to feed my hunger for knowledge, (haha) – to feed my inner scholar so to speak.
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