I'm going back to school, and for once I'm going to do it right. I've had an interesting academic career, I didn't follow the model, was shifty and to be honest I did it all wrong, but I still feel as though I have found for myself an amazing education, more than going the usual route could have ever provided. Still I am without the one thing that matters about going to college and that is a degree, it's been the great shame of my twenties, the reason I feel uncomfortable when I meet peers or have to talk about my life with others, it's a glaringly incomplete part of myself. People who know me expect that I should have already completed it a while ago because I seem like the type that would, I'm smart and I pride myself on my wit and passion for the thing I studied, English. I may have fallen out of the school structure but I never stopped learning, never stopped teaching myself, because at some point along the way I discovered how to do that, in so doing I've given myself a masters in comic books and storytelling with minors in film, philosophy, and comedy. On paper that isn't true, on paper I'm a failure. I would like to change what's on that paper.
My start was at a seminary at a very nice school in Minnesota, the University of St. Thomas. I had convinced myself in High School that I was never going to be good enough for marriage or love and so therefore should stick to the one thing I saw myself as good at which was church. Upon arriving there I discovered that somewhere buried in my low self esteem was a desire to be loved and have a family which I was ignoring, and so I eventually left the school. That school wasn't so much about schooling as it was about discerning my vocation, but I did love the academic part of it. I loved writing papers and was astounded that I was in school at all, college seemed like such a cool place and I liked the pretension of the ideas and professors and the chance that I might write something big and meaningful.
I had to leave there once I decided that I wasn't going to be a priest, and ended up going to Louisiana on the invitation of a friend. At this point I thought that all schools were the same, my professors would prove that wrong almost immediately, not that it mattered since I arrived there 10 days before Katrina hit, so the school year was a thrown into chaos anyway, but also because at that time I had the existential dilemma of not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up anymore. I knew I liked English in high school and comic books so I just started there, I wanted to write comics, but that's not an easy profession to find yourself in and I knew that. I was just studying for the love of it, and living in post Katrina Lafayette was enough adventure to keep my mind busy. Still I ended up leaving after only a semester because I knew I wanted a higher level of learning than that school was capable of offering.
Benedictine College is where I did the best part of my learning and where I was truly a student. It was a small school in Kansas, had a decent English program and offered a strong campus faith life, "the college experience" and also the chance to make my first comic books. I was truly challenged there, both educationally and in my faith. I got along very well with the English department there and was even head of the English club, which wasn't much of a club but I did organize some events. I immersed myself in the classes and readings there, and outside of classes worked on a project that I received funding for through the school, the first ever comic book music video. I said I was also challenged in my faith and that is true too as taking a class there on proving the existence of God caused me to lose my faith and I found myself a non believer in a world built by believers. So I left. I admit this was a mistake.
I came home to Colorado depressed. All things which I had thought true, which were the bedrock of me had been disproved. I felt defeated, and yet still had to finish my degree, and so I turned to the University of Colorado Denver, as my sister was going there and I didn't have any better ideas. I thought at the time that the comic I had made would get me noticed. It didn't. I still didn't really know where my major was headed, or what my future exactly was. So at that point I was just going to school for schools sake, for the sake of the degree that would help me do....I wasn't quite sure. People had told me I should teach, but I felt that was giving up on a dream of being a writer, that to teach was a cop out for greater things, I felt I could be more than just a teacher. I went to school and in the process found a full time job, did the thing I was supposed to do. Then I had a bad semester, I had a girl friend, the first really meaningful relationship, and she left me suddenly and without warning on my birthday. This was heartbreaking. Then a woman at work fell down some stairs and I ended up getting all her hours. Then the economy crashed. I tried to save my semester by doing something big and important, because I thought that would be impressive but I buckled under the weight of everything and it was all terrible. I felt like I had to choose between school and my job and at that point, with the economy where it was I wanted to keep my job. I still have that job like a noose or yoke around my neck. Anyway, that dropped my GPA like a stone and it took a couple years to get back in.
My problem so far has been this. I was walking towards nowhere. I had no purpose to what I was doing at school, and so I underperformed, or would try to over perform in a spectacular way so as to be noticed in the hope that would spur on some kind of opportunity but would fail at it because that's not what they were asking for. So there is the second lost semester, though not as bad as the last. Then came more time in the wilderness. I made a short film, in that time, which has so far predicted all of what the Marvel Film universe is doing. It was a short for Agents of SHIELD, which at the time wasn't a show and hadn't been announced yet. The villain I picked for the piece is going to be the bad guy in the next Avengers film. It also went nowhere thought and hasn't really been noticed. What that film was, was an final attempt to break into film. After it went unnoticed I fell into a depression again and finally found my way out of it with the help of a friend and spiritual director, who eventually said the same thing that other people had been saying but I had steadily ignored, I should teach. I had never allowed myself to consider that before, because I super focused on storytelling and basically wanting to be Joss Whedon. Once I allowed myself to consider that as a possibility my brain exploded with ideas of how I would do it, what it would mean, and I liked the idea.
So now here I am, with a strange history and a goal of becoming a teacher. I used to sit and think about how to tell a story that I would never get the chance to tell, and now I sit and think about how best to teach the things I love. I'm a lot happier, but now comes the hard part, I have to get that degree and I'm not sure who is going to allow me to do that. So basically prayers are something I'll take now.
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