Back to School Again

🎵All summer long I was happy and free🎵

Hey Kids.

Whether you like school, love school, or hate school, it’s that time of year in ‘Murica where students head back to class and teachers and staff leave their summers behind all in the name of education. Sorry Folks, playtime is over. (Or is it? Dun dun dun.)

(You should watch Grease 2 if you haven’t. Want to hear me talk about it? Of course you do. Here I am on Joseph Scrimshaw’s Obsessed podcast 10 years ago talking with him about it. )

So, let’s talk about school. I never hated it, but I was a restless kid and a creative nut who just wanted to make stuff. My grades weren’t terrific, my behavior wasn’t either (hello fellow class clowns), and the concept of applying myself to homework when I did enjoy it was stripped away by issues at home.

"People say, 'You must have been the class clown.' And I say, No, I wasn't. But I sat next to the class clown, and I studied him." - Waiting For Guffman

(What kind of person would I be if I didn’t reference Guffman here?)

Jump to my college days, when I studied astronomy and anatomy outside of my theater major. Was I thinking about being a nurse on the moon? No, not then, though it sounds intriguing now. I was simply interested in both subjects. I let my curiosity lead me. But after taking advance classes in both, I decided that everything that seemed magical and wondrous about the world (our bodies, our galaxies) had now been flattened to just facts and somehow, I felt lost in the learning. I didn’t find the facts…eye-opening. I didn’t connect any dots. Both subjects just felt boring, lackluster, and dry. I missed the magic of the unknown. My curiosity seemed to have evaporated overnight.

And then one day in a poetry class, I read a short poem, Walt Whitman’s WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN’D ASTRONOMER, that captured my exact feeling at the time. Here’s Neil deGrasse Tyson reading it if you prefer the audio.

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
BY WALT WHITMAN

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

What I finally grasped, 25 years after graduating college, is that I do love to learn, but the classroom wasn’t always the best place for me to do it - and maybe it wasn’t for you either. Sometimes learning is looking and listening outside of a classroom and letting your brain slowly futz the puzzle pieces together. (Most of you probably already knew this bit, but it took me a while longer to figure it out.)

So, now I study languages online. I take writing workshops to become a stronger, more thoughtful writer. I exercise my brain by learning new dances. I pay more attention to stories of world history so I can better understand the world today. And in an EXCLUSIVE AND EMBARRASSING REVEAL: I am slowly learning to play guitar. I am tone deaf and have not yet mastered Happy Birthday, Frere Jacques, and Mary Had a Little Lamb, but I’m making progress on each song, pluck by pluck and strum by strum. When I hold a guitar pick, I feel humbled and invincible - a good paradox. Learning is such a vibe, right?

In conclusion, the simple reminder I offer you for the new school semester, even if you’re not attending or auditing a formal classroom, is this: it’s never too late to learn and be playful while doing it, and it’s never too late to take your education seriously to enrich your day-to-day life. Another good paradox, I think.

Okay, this lesson’s over. Now go watch Grease 2 and learn something new!
Kayla