Thankfully for me, the installation of some of my self-discipline in this regard began three summers ago. Actually, no, it really set in the spring semester of 2009. It was my second semester of college, and I was taking my first English class at Calvin. I had taken English classes at UGA, and felt confident in my ability to do well at a university level. But on my first day of English 215, a Survey of British Literature, I began to feel my lack.
"Lack of what?" you might ask. "You seem so cosmopolitan, full of social graces and witticisms beyond measure."
Ah, the illusions with which I entertain myself.
Humor (mostly) aside, I felt my lack of AP courses. I went to a tiny, private high school, which boasted a grand total of 400-500 students K-12. I wore an ugly khaki kilt that liked to kick up its hem at the slightest provocation (unlike Marilyn Monroe, I found great comfort and modesty in a protective pair of bike shorts), a thick polo impervious to any stain (as I discovered by promptly having a nosebleed all over my white one freshman year), and knee-high socks that left textured rings just under my knees every weekday afternoon. I left this tiny school with great friends and an assortment of interesting stories destined to entertain the curious Yankees of my college years.
But I did not leave with AP experience. I won't lie and say I didn't care about the credits; it would've made my life a lot easier. But what really galled me was my lack of reading experience.
"Heavens no!" you interject. "How can this be?"
You see, English education wasn't the highest priority in my high school. Some of my required reading? The Trial (the Christian murder mystery by Robert Whitlow, not the existential meltdown of Franz Kafka), The Old Man and the Sea (since it was read to me in the fifth grade, I exchanged it for A Farewell to Arms), The Last Sin Eater, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Scarlet Letter. Aside from some poetry and a heckuva lot of Edgar Allan Poe, I'm 90% sure that these seven texts comprised the entirety of three years of my high school education in literature.
Five books and two plays. Many of my classmates didn't even bother. Why should they? When our teacher told us to read Spark Notes so we could better to follow the plot of The Last of the Mohicans, most of the class didn't even read those! I got to sit through the lecture, wanting to tear my hair out, as people around me rolled their eyes. But now, I can be honest with myself: this was the same teacher who was making 17-year-olds build dioramas. For an English class. I'll let that sink in.
Has it sunk?
So my junior year, I took the SAT's and applied to the University of Georgia for joint-enrollment. I didn't feel out of place or less well-read in my introductory courses. In fact, I thrived in the setting, rising to the challenge. Most of my classmates had no idea I was 17.
When I went to college as a regular college student, however, I had to have actual, out-of-class conversations with other college students. (Shocker, I know.) Well-read college students with oodles of AP credit. And then professors, used to these kinds of students by now, would throw away comments such as, "We won't be doing Hamlet, because everybody's read that one."
No. Everyone has NOT read that one. But how could I say anything? I didn't need anyone's pity. My education wasn't the same as theirs, but I was (and still am, as a matter of fact) far from stupid.
So the summer after freshman year, I resolved to change my stars, as it were. I began giving myself a few texts every summer, classics I felt that I should read. That first summer, I read Anna Karenina and Gandhi's autobiography. The next summer, I read War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities, and Crime and Punishment. The summer after that, I tackled Les Miserables and Tess of D'Urbervilles. It made me feel less self-conscious in the classroom, and it began instilling the discipline necessary to be a self-taught student.
When I graduated, I gave myself time off, as I have always done in the beginning of the summer. After a few light reads, however, I knew it was time to get back in the game. After all, I've had Vanity Fair sitting on my shelf for a year, and I want to move on to Brothers Karamazov. But I also knew that it wasn't enough. I needed something more. Something different. A new discipline for my new life. Then the Hamlet incident came to mind, as such humiliating moments are wont to do.
And then the Bard Project was born. What a build-up, huh?
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| The reconstructed Globe. I promise, this post wasn't just an excuse to look at pictures from my time in England. |
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| His wife's cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon, now surrounded by roses. |
It's quite simple. I'm trying to read one of Shakespeare's plays every week or two. I began, appropriately, with Hamlet, finally assaulting the ivory bulwark that had impeded my literary progress for so long. I've since read Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice as well. It's not easy; with my schedule, getting through an act can be a battle with rapidly closing eyelids. But I love the power I feel, reading his lines. I love that, for the first time in my life, I can share in a literary context that transcends centuries.
I don't know when the project is going to end. I'm not sure if I want to read all of his plays, or if I want to venture into his poetry, but I know that, for now, the Bard Project is keeping me in my rightful place: in a desk chair, forever a student.
