Disappointment

Maybe it's the crucible of finals, maybe it's coming to the end of things and wondering what happened to all the time I thought I had to live up to some idealized self I still cling to so dearly, but my sentiments toward PTS crystalized for me tonight. Maybe it was looking at all the awards on the website that I won't be winning. Maybe it was coming to write a paper and not knowing at all what it was I wanted to say, and realizing that I had in fact become stupider while at an Ivy League grad school. The incredulity of it all was pretty astounding. The sentiment that emerged, after gathering all the other disparate negative emotions into itself, was disappointment.
When I got the letter saying that I was accepted here, I was elated and terrified at the same time. The future was pure possibility. What I could achieve was limitless. Though I had a terrible transition from college, nothing could diminish my excitement for PTS.
When I arrived, I was so excited. Everything was new and yet historic, regal and decrepit, in a word, possibility.
But Junior year, something happened. I felt beat down by the system here. I was made to feel stupid by my peers, some of whom had spent the last four years formally studying theology and ready to go to the next level, whereas I knew the Bible, Greek, and lit crit but hadn't the slightest idea about archane theo-jargon. I was made to feel stupid by classes that were at once rudimentary and yet graded as if darts were thrown at a board with different letters pasted about. I was made to feel that it wasn't enough to love God and my neighbor, but that I had to love denominations and a way of doing things that was so much more like jumping through fiery hoops than growth in peace and wholeness. I was made to feel that the power structures in place here did not have a place for me unless I was interested in a narrow set of things I guess I was supposed to be interested in. I had no church community, had little sense of community in class except bonding over how terrible the instruction was most of the time. I made friends that made me very happy. But for some reason I cut myself loose from caring about being accepted by this place. I decided that I would not be made to feel anything, after all - that I was the master of my destiny and would not play the power games that run this place from the ground up.
Don't get me wrong - there are many people here that I love dearly. There are many whom I will miss sorely. There are people here who shaped me, for good or ill, and I can't change that.
But I can't shake the feeling of disappointment - feeling that I expected PTS to be something different (and better) than it is, and that I expected myself to do and be better while here - to excel. I'm just plain pissed about the ways I feel this place limited me - and then in turn the ways I limited myself. Did I do important growing here? Yes. Would I have come here if I had it to do all over again? Probably. But I can't help but feel that I was somehow passed over, forsaken.
I know it's easy to blame systems and other people instead of myself. I do want to take responsibility for what I did to not live up to my potential while here. But the feeling of betrayal runs deep. It's not easy to push away. And it has festered for a while.
I hope time can soften the intensity of my disappointment. I am grateful for all I was able to learn and experience while here. I guess I should just be grateful I survived this place. I'm definitely grateful for finding the love of my life here. I think that's the note I want to end on.

How to Say Goodbye

With each quickly rushing past day, the end of my time here rushes at me from the future. And I'm not doing well with it, frankly. I never have learned how to say goodbye. I hold the past in my heart gripped tightly. I hold my past loves and fears as myself. They hold me.
Sometimes I do better than other times. It's usually first thing when I wake up and late at night that's the worst. It's when my guard is down, when the careful filters my intellect runs every thought and feeling through are lax.
I just can't understand what it means to say goodbye, to love a place and people so much and then move to a new place with new people and new places and people to love. It just doesn't make sense to me. And maybe it's not supposed to make sense. The passing of time will always have for me the sense of the tragic - an unfolding that we all perceive and must silently endure. But it must mean something, right? Time is what it is because it passes; we could not love or be happy or suffer without time. But time is so singularly devastating because it is inextricably bound up with loss. And loss makes even less sense than time. We have to have time but why do we have to have loss?
All that is to say that the thought of not seeing the people here that I love so dearly is unbearable.

PTS Farewell Address - A Dream

I write this in the grogginess of just having woken up. I had a dream I want to remember. I don't remember the beginning very clearly but the end almost exactly. Wait - now I remember some about the beginning. There was a lot of anxiety about my graduation gown. It wasn't the right one. Somehow I didn't have one so I was wearing one from King's College in England. Then it went dark and I wasn't wearing that one either. Anyway...

So for some reason we were all giving farewell addresses to the entire class gathered in a lecture hall - like Stuart 6. I was one of the last to speak. The crowd was very restless, as they had been listening to everyone's speech before mine. I had some problems adjusting the mic, feedback and such, but when I fixed it here's what I said:

"I am thankful for the opportunity to know each one of you!" Thunderous applause. People are standing and jumping around and cheering profusely.

"Each one of you has blessed me these past three years." More wild applause. I guess I was anxious about the sincerity of this effusive praise, so I said with a smirk,

"Are you cheering for me only because I'm near the end?" No! they assured me loudly, with gestures as well. I could sense things were getting a little out of hand so I decided to get to the point and finish quickly. They were wild but I tried to get their attention, and so began,

"Providentia. It's a Latin word from which we get 'providence'. I applied to PhD programs this year but did not get in. So if I ever gave you a sour look this year, I'm sorry, I was dealing with things I didn't quite have the resources to deal with."

At that point my words were swallowed by the noise and raucous activity of the crowd. But I had said my piece, perhaps made my peace. Then the alarm went off.

Website Glory Days

I've been feverishly working on a personal website. It's been quite good for the soul. In fact, it brings me back to those days huddled in my cool basement with a phone cord snaking its way from the wall jack into the back of our Apple. I had heard about this thing called "Compuserve". The idea was that you dialed a special number through your computer that allowed your computer to "log in" and access information. I remember the inordinate frustration of dialing and redialing - the thrill of success when the icon said "Connected!" and the plunge to the depths of adolescent Hades when "Connection Lost" appeared instead. What could one do when connected? Well... lots of things. If you typed the number "1", you could see the latest world news, etc. Basically, the whole thing just excited me in a way I couldn't explain. But I've always been like that. I've always marveled at new technology, as much for the actual application of a thing as of the idea of what it makes possible.
I remember designing my first website. I had bought "Making Your Own Website for Dummies" and thought I knew my way around a little HTML because of the very limited set of commands that book taught. I can still see it now - the trite animated gifs of leaping flames - the scrolling banner that took way too long to figure out - the background image I carefully selected. It was great. I asked my girlfriend Sarah if she remembers "Geocities," and she said no. Sad.
Regarding my new site, my brother asked - what will you use it for? My first thought - unspoken - was, does it matter? Maybe I'm a Platonist or maybe just a dreaming innocent, but for me the idea, the naked possibility of a thing, is always just as if not more exciting than the thing itself. Who cares if no one visits my website. I made it. It exists. Its idea is clearly better than its execution. Pure possibility, potentiality, is dynamic beauty. That's saying a lot about a concerto of 1's and 0's, but I'm okay with that.