Sunday, April 17, 2016

Little Story. Little Sign.

Home.

I've got my fountain pen spiffed back up.  Janie (our cat) is in the bathroom - begging for someone to put her in the tub so she can drink the drain water.  Cindy is in Amherst at her good friend Robbie's induction into the UMASS Amherst Sports Hall of Fame (if it's not called that, close enough).  And I am very much avoiding doing some research on either of the two projects I'm supposed to do for school.  Spring is springing.  I'm on my own for a night.  Who wants to do homework?  I started in the late Summer last year, and I've been studying pretty solidly full time (outside, and (who am I kidding?) sometimes inside work at Blue Man too).

But today, I'm so excited and jumbled and lazy-feeling that I'm spinning my wheels - getting ahead on some things, like cleaning the kitchen or paying the bills, but potentially falling behind on other stuff - like doing my goddamn homework.

So, the original plan was to go to school (Pratt's Historic Preservation program) just for fun.  Then I let myself get talked into aiming for a Master's of Science.  I was given a scholarship for full-time attendance, so playing on my genetic pre-disposition to take advantage of a way to save money (thanks, Mom), I took a "fuck it" attitude and threw myself into school.  Full time.

Now I'm within spitting distance of my first year done, and I've taken a close look at the balance sheet.  On the "pro" side, I've found this energizing.  I've gotten much better at keeping myself motivated when I'm home as well as when I'm at work.  And I've learned a fair bit.

But, I haven't learned as much as I thought I would learn.  Or, rather, maybe I'm not getting as much out of this semester as I was last semester.  I should not have let my advisor talk me out of taking the 3 sustainability elective courses in exchange for this one required course in Historic Preservation.  It doesn't suit me.  No knock against the teacher or the class.  I love learning, and a good conversation about "the concepts of heritage" can be fun.  But this isn't what I thought historic preservation was all about, and I feel like I'm just doing busy work.

So, instead of homework, when I got home from work today, I did science in my thermos bottle with baking soda, peroxide, and boiling water - to get the tea scale out of the bottle and off two tea strainers with a fizz volcano.  And I put a new clip on Cindy's clip board.  And while I was at it, I put a couple of coats of Plasti-Dip on a pair of lineman's pliers...  I have not filled out my portion of our outline for our group project: writing an executive summary of a site management plan for the Ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddou in Morocco.  Nor have I read George Nakashima's book, The Soul of a Tree, which I actually want to read, but obviously don't want to read it for research so I can write another site management/conservation plan - this one for a different class and for a different site: the Nakashima place.

So, I digitized an old cassette tape, watched some home reno shows on HGTV, scanned receipts, glued my model canoe where it had been broken...

Yup.  It seems like I'm getting a sign:  Pratt's HP program doesn't have what I'm looking for - at least not if I do it their way.  Because if I'd rather be sewing seeds on the roof than doing my homework (which I would), then I'm not studying the right thing for me.

Door to the Pole Barn (lumber storage) at Nakashima's.  Symbolism.