I'm soon to obtain a bachelor's degree in English, you would think I'd be able to come up with more clever titles for these things.

Not so long ago, my thoughts about education were not far from Ebeneezer Scrooge's repeated refrain of "Bah, humbug!" I was going to school because I felt like I needed to, but I was done. As soon as I received my degree, that is. I was tired. I was burnt out. I tried my hardest and I still enjoyed learning, but so many of the attitudes that I found in formal education were such that I found to be exhausting and distasteful: a great deal of arrogance; and pride; expectations for persons to fit in a certain mold and no room for any deviation. Not to mention a continual pursuit of meaninglessness that was wearing me thin. I was determined to finish what I started, but when asked if I would go any further (like so many people seem to expect "brainiacs" to do), I said "no." My bachelors degree is where I would stop.

But my tune has changed in recent times. I've started singing "maybe." I'm not as tired as I was. School has become more refreshing that it was for a while. I've also discovered a new passion for what I study that I didn't have before, or if I did have it, it was buried and underdeveloped. And all of the meaningless that is still out there? It doesn't bog me down like it did not so long ago. I feel empowered to face it in a way that I haven't before.

Graduate school now seems like a possibility. If I go, where will it be? I don't know. Wherever it is I go, what exactly will I study? I don't know that either. This is a brand new consideration for me. But with graduation now so close in my future I'm starting to think, "Hmm, what am I going to do next?" If I do decide to spend further hours of my life in utilitarian rooms with men and women of much learning, making frequent trips to the library, burying myself in sweet-smelling books, I'm fairly certain that it won't be immediately. 2012 at the earliest. So I'm still going to have to figure out what I'm doing between now and then. But that's for another time and blog.

One more thing to briefly consider: Aside from jaded feelings, I again think that I can also blame my go-against-the-grain instincts for making me feel disinclined to continue my formal education. Learning, substantial academic-type learning, is so often considered to be something that only takes place in a classroom setting. But I firmly believe that's not true! Life is a classroom. You don't have to pay tuition and spend three hours a week listening to a man with a PhD to learn something. You can still learn and be "smart" without any level of college degree. How cool would it be (to my mind) to be the super-smart, wealth-of-knowledge guy (aside from the fact that I'm not a guy, nor do I desire to be one...I just tend to default to that particular male pronoun...a product of a far too gender-unequal society?...a feminist's nightmare?...perhaps), quite capable of holding their own in a room of university department heads without having any special letters or titles in front of my name. I'm pretty sure that would rock.