Head in the Clouds/Wordles of My Life

I have (again) been failing to write any sort of real blog post, but the Wordles below are revealing of things that I have been writing and thinking about outside of the blog.

Current Draft of MA Thesis



English 101 Syllabus



Teaching Philosophy



Resume and Cover Letter for an Academic Advising Position



My Blog



I am SOO happy that "interesting" is biggest! :-)

Nostalgia

I feel nostalgic. I guess that I have been feeling this way for a while now, but it really hit me when I was walking home from the grocery store this evening. I have always been fond of the word nostalgia. I like both of its meanings--its literal description of the pain associated with the desire to "return home" and its more typical usage to refer to a sentimental yearning for a return to some idealized past. I think that I feel both of these right now. I do very much wish that I could be home, but I think that my general desire to return to an earlier time is for the exact same reason that I want to hide at my parents' house. At this moment, I crave security because right nowI feel more unsure about things than I have in a long time. Yes, it is likely a result of the approaching graduation date. I will have my MA, and I do not know what I will do. I have been rejected by six of the seven Ph.D. programs that I applied to, and despite the e-mail from the final school letting me know that my application is "ranked highly and pending further consideration," I have no idea what an offer of admission would even mean. I wish that I could return to a point in my life where I felt confident. Surely no time has ever actually existed in my life, as I am an incredibly anxious and insecure person, but from this vantage point, it seems like every other point in my life was marked by some sort of certainty about where I was and what I was doing. And besides missing certainty, I find myself missing things. I am really interested in cataloging things and in making lists recently, and below is a list of things that I miss right now.

• Having a cat, and I really miss having Ernest
  
• My Fall '08, Spring '09, and Fall '09 English 101 Classes
• Various students from the Winter '09 and Winter '10 classes
• Interning for English 239
• Late nights in diners.
  
• Riding a 4-wheeler
• Long drives
• 2am trips to the grocery store.
• Picking flats and flats of raspberries and making jam.
• Listening to the BBC while driving home from my first fast food job.
  
• The comp tickets always on the table when my roommate Shayla was active in the local theatre.
• Singing Cher songs with Brandon
  
• The secret certainty I felt about being accepted to a Ph.D. program.
  
• Cooking large meals.
  
• Lady parties
• Being an undergraduate.
• Marcus
• Having someone to watch TV with.
• Listening to new music.
• Reading for pleasure regularly.
• Going to the movies.
• Taking photographs.
  
• Thunderstorms

Because I have been thinking about the past, memory, and nostalgia, I made a little play list (see below) of songs that deal with those issues in some way. It is not a good mix because the songs don't quite work together, but they have all been floating through my mind, and I guess that is sort of what memory is; it is in many ways the juxtaposition of random bits.