a little overdue...
YESTERDAY
My mind is blank today. It’s really not working very creatively. Days like today I think I need for the world around me to freeze so I can gather my thoughts, organize my time, and then resume life. Too bad that’s not an option. I think my mind is just overwhelmed with stuff – thoughts, ideas, plans, lack of thoughts, lack of ideas, lack of plans….
Overwhelmed. That’s what I think today has been – overwhelming. Not that today was particularly stressful in any way whatsoever. Actually, it was not stressful at all, not even slightly. I think that things have been in my head and I haven’t spent a proper amount of time thinking about them or reflecting on them so that I can just let them be. I feel like I have this shadow constantly following behind me, and it serves only as a constant reminder that I DON’T know what I want to do next … that I DON’T know where I will be in a year – and honestly, a very large part of me is glad that I do not know. But nonetheless the pressure to “know” and to “figure it out” is still present and it’s driving me crazy.
SO, on top of that, I am learning something new every single day. New doors are opening, new opportunities are put before my face, new ideas, new thoughts, new realizations, new desires… and I wouldn’t have it any other way. BUT guess what? It only complicates the vast expanse of openness and blankness that I see as my future.
I know what’s important to me. I know the things that I value and the ways in which I want to spend my time. That is good enough for now. It’s time to let this matter be.
TODAY
In this space and following I am supposed to write about what I learned from Claiborne Barksdale and Tucker Carrington. I’m not I can adequately sum up even half of what either of them had to say… so I’ll will just start with the things the have stuck out in my mind and the connections that are being made.
-You pay for what you get. Whether it’s teachers, superintendents, or elected officials, the saying remains true. I’m beginning to think that electing these people is not the best idea.
-It all comes back to poverty. I wish more than anything that this was not the case – that the poorest areas in the state did not have the highest crime rates and were not lowest on the educational scale. The solution seems simple on paper: give these areas the BEST educational experience and the crime will take care of itself. IF ONLY it was that easy.
I am interested in law school so I found Tucker’s talk very interesting. I am always interested in learning about different areas of different professions of which I was previously unaware. I think in anything that anyone chooses to do, there is always the opportunity to make the world a better place if only by making one person’s life a little easier. I’m thankful that my eyes are being opened to these opportunities. AND I’m looking forward to Amanda’s presentation on the Innocence Project.
It’d be nice if Barksdale’s statistics were a wild exaggeration, or maybe even a joke, or maybe if they were only true for one isolated school that was somehow overlooked for years. But they’re not, and facing the reality of Mississippi’s literacy condition is like waking up to a bad dream – over and over again. I wonder if there are ever times where he is so completely overwhelmed that he just wants to give up. Hearing Dr. Mullins say that he is so passionate that sometimes he is moved to tears, I do believe that he must have those desperate moments where you kind of wonder if you’re even doing any good at all. But HE IS. And where would Mississippi be without people who possess that kind of passion? I’m scared to know the answer.
I’ll end with this song – that kind of choked me up when I read it for the first time last night…
Learning is good
We have found it so,
Learning is the best
We have found it so,
I will not leave the school
I am a man
I have liked it;
I will not leave the school.
I am a gentleman of the future.
Those children who run away
They have no hearts
They do not even bid their masters farewell;
Those children who run away
They have no hearts.
Even if we tire
We shall endure.
We shall find its sweetness later on;
Even if we tire
We shall endure
We shall endure
To find its sweetness later on.
“Gentlemen of the Future,” a song sung in the 1940s by some of the first children in southern Sudan to receive a formal education.
