ten years ago...

i heard on the radio yesterday that it was ten years ago that the columbine tragedy (i was gonna link to it on wiki, but i can't really bring myself to do so) happened. i have a clear memory of standing in a little studio apt. on the north side of chicago, watching oprah talk about it with tears in her eyes. just as it did then, it feels remote from me now. i can't even relate. it's incomprehensible to me and so far from anything i can imagine. i feel for those people, but i cannot even wrap my head around it.

but what it does make me remember is that ten years ago, i was teaching a course in 20th century russian culture at the U of C. i made the mistake of proposing the course together with a fellow graduate student who was taking his exams that quarter. it was a mistake in the sense that taking your Ph.D. exams at the U of C brings you to the brink of a nervous breakdown. and by to the brink, i mean over the brink into a full blown nervous breakdown that you yourself don't notice, but everyone else does. so i ended up teaching alone, which was ok, it just wasn't what i expected.

since i lived in denmark, i also foolishly accepted my fellow graduate student's offer that i could live with him at his place, since it was only 3 months. but living together with someone who has had a nervous breakdown that he doesn't really notice himself is, to describe it lightly, not healthy, so i got my own temporary apartment on campus.

that turned out to be a good thing, because it was in that little bitty apartment, within a block of The Reg, that i learned to make risotto, which is a skill i still enjoy. tho' it took several tries. i had no t.v., which was also wonderful. i also ate a lot of paté on crackers. because that's what i imagined that a graduate student at the U of C should eat. i still haven't decided if that was true or not, but it was decidedly part of my own engagement in bourdieu's cultural capital (attempting to raise mine, undoubtedly).

as for The Reg, i spent so much time there in my study carrel, that i began to glow in the dark. (that's the standard U of C joke, since The Reg was built over the bit where they did the Manhattan Project.) but seriously, being left alone teaching a course (albeit undergraduate) at the U of C, is no small project. luckily, we had modeled it around matei calinescu's five faces of modernity, which meant that we covered modernism, avant-garde, decadence, kitsch (my fave) and postmodernism (my REAL fave, at least at the time), which was an ingenious idea (even if i do say so myself). but my very, very favorite was sneaking in alcoholism, because of its importance in russian culture. vodka is a diminutive of the word for water, which illustrates its importance as a life force in russia and russian culture, because what is language if not the manifestation of culture?

it was both a great time and a stressful time, and i'm sorry that it took columbine to remind me of it, but sometimes you have to take the good with the bad. i'm grateful for the opportunity to say i taught at the U of C, it's not everybody who has done that. but i did. and so did obama. he's, of course, done a little better than i have, but i'm cool with that.

#5 - what if?

this week i'm writing each day about a person, place or thing that has had a big effect on my life. i'm going to be leaving aside parents, sister, husband and daughter because those are a given for having had a big effect and writing about that effect would be way more typing than i should do with the angry nerve in my left hand.

this is the last installment. it has been a very interesting assignment and i have even discovered a few things along the way (the thing about reagan) and confirmed others (the iPod posting proves what we have long suspected--i have a very deep shallow streak). i think i'll try to come up with some other writing assignments for myself in the coming weeks. if there are any ideas/suggestions out there, please do leave a comment!

this last of the 5 people, places or things that have had a big effect on my life is another professor. as i pondered this one, i found myself thinking how different my life would be if i'd never met her.

if i'd never signed up for a graduate course called intro to comparative literature during my first semester at playboy magazine's #1 party school, i might not ever have met elizabeth horan. 

i was interested in comp lit because i thought i eventually wanted a ph.d. in it. in fact, i had applied to a ph.d. program (only one, silly me) and didn't get in because i had had only russian lit and thus nothing to compare, so i found myself seeking another master's degree, in humanities, to try to get something to compare to the russian stuff.

if i hadn't taken that course, i wouldn't have:

• had my first exposure to magical realism.
• or reception theory.
• or had my first thoughts on the implications of translation on the literary work.
• met two fantastic and interesting people who i am still friends with to this day.
• had a truly fantastic discussion about the poetry of osip mandelstam and anna akhmatova.
• found my voice and thus my confidence in the graduate classroom (despite already having a master's degree when i started, i wouldn't say i'd really found my graduate feet).
• met the professor who would head my thesis committee.

and i certainly wouldn't have signed up for another of prof. horan's courses:  nobel prize winners from north and south america. and if i hadn't done that, i wouldn't have:

• made the completely hilarious and annoyingly consistent mistake of referring to the swedish academy as the "swiss" academy throughout the bit i wrote for a group assignment! (in fact, i still haven't lived that one down!)
• suggested that a figure like camille paglia might eventually win a nobel prize for literature (i was a bit off there, but i intentionally wanted to go for a longshot and my arguments were good).
• i wouldn't have stuck my foot in my mouth about annoying high school teachers who thought they could fit in in graduate courses, saying it TO one of said annoying high school teachers. (sigh...we learn from these experiences).
• had the chance to prepare in depth and teach a session on octavio paz.
• read a whole lot more gabriel garcia marquez and pablo neruda and gabriele mistral.
• gone out to casey moore's for beers and wings twice a week with the gang after class.

i adored prof. horan's teaching style. she was very laid back and very much let the course be student-driven. we took turns presenting the assigned readings and it went a long way towards preparing us both as researchers and as teachers, which is more than most graduate programs do.

but the most important thing she did for me was point out a poster for meetings regarding applying for fulbright scholarships. she said, "you should go, they'd be crazy not to give you one." i was blown away. i hadn't even been considering it. what would i research? where would i go? how would i pitch it? would they really give one to me? but those are prestigious! how could that be?

so i went to the meeting. it seemed that the #1 party school year after year wanted to shed that image and raise their academic reputation (and in all honesty, at the graduate level, it was awesome--very engaged teachers and students all around!). they saw helping their students gain fulbrights as one way of doing that. and help us they did. there were 7 or 8 of us receiving a fulbright that year.

and prof. horan was probably the biggest help to me of all, not only by suggesting i apply, but in helping me shape my application (she'd had at least one herself, so she knew how it all worked), but also writing me what my dad called the mother of all recommendation letters. it was like having a letter from god that would open any door. and although i hardly recognized myself in it, i was and will be eternally grateful for the kind words that were there.

but the biggest "what if" in this is that if it hadn't all gone as it did, i wouldn't have been in the right place at the right time to meet that lovely danish boy who is now my husband (and has been for nearly 10 years!) and i shudder to think about that. i would have lived a completely different life without elizabeth horan. so i am forever grateful to her for all that she taught me--both in the classroom and about myself and even more so for the guidance she gave. she definitely steered me in the right direction.