Here it is the day after Labor Day, almost exactly a month after I started this blog - so jazzed1 so hopeful! so scared! -- and we've already had more than a week of silence. Not that I haven't started posts; I have a couple thousand words written after three days in Astoria, when I had just met one of the more extraordinary people I've met in a while and interviewed some young women and men who offered windows into Astoria I'd not expected. I was so overwhelmed with trying to get that done, and equally overwhelmed with the flood of information, that every time I sat down to write I grew literally dizzy.
I was also, of course, trying to run away from how horrible and inadequate J was making me feel -- a reaction expected, if not planned, by those who run it. I learned on noon Friday that Robert MacDonald, the director of admissions here, lays it out like this: "September, you're overwhelmed. October, you're depressed. November, you start to suspect that maybe you'll make it through."
I hadn't heard any of that when I was on the train Friday, having had the story I'd slaved over all weekend justifiably popped by Stacy, wondering if it was too late to get a refund of all Uncle Joe's and my dad's money, if I decided I just wasn't up to this. I was already freaked out by the facebook of the class, in which I learn that 22-year-olds here have published books and that other masters' students include Alex Poolos, former managing editor of Women's Enews, and Dina Temple-Ralston, whose book about Rwanda I've already praised in the other blog -- and panicked after meeting the wonderfully genial and terrifyingly no-nonsense Dale, who made it clear that two stories a week were going to be torn apart and renewed. So that those two stories being red-inked beyond easy repair had me crying, terrified.
I guess I
am/was conflating September and October, in MacDonald's schema. The whole concept did remind
me of the old saw about law school -- "first year they scare you to
death, the second they work you to death. the third they bore you to
death." It sounds like we get all three right away.
Talking to my classmate Elsa, just now, I learned yet again that we all feel this way. Elsa said gently: "I think we'll get through it." And the whole thread has made me come up with a new answer, for when people ask how J-school is going. "Oh, it's pretty bipolar."
I wanted to get this intro out of the way before I go back and tell you about the week with Father Brady and the stor(ies) that resulted, let alone the intros to writing about the Mayor's race and other tidbits thrown our way during the second half of orientation. I also know I haven't introduced Dale properly at all -- or talked about Josh Friedman, who gave me (and many of us) a framework for what's happening in New Orleans. But that will be, I think, my next Book of Days piece too.
Meanwhile, as this week blazes forth I'll have Patti Smith/U2 as my soundtrack - just with slightly altered lyrics: "I'm dancing bipolar/In the air I spin/Some strange music draws me in/Makes me come off like some heroine...." Like some heroin/e, indeed.