Apocrypha (original) (raw)

Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile." I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity. Update your journal with the answers to the questions. _Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions._These are questions left by gilligankane

1. What book has made a serious impact on your life?

Asking a Lit major this question is like asking a mother to pick out her favorite child, you realize. This is a story I've told more than once or twice. :) I have always been a very advanced reader and student. I was reading at an adult level by fourth grade. I don't mean to toot my own horn, it's just a fact. So when I was about ten or eleven I read Scott's Ivanhoe for the first time. Have you read it? It swept me away, almost literally. I wanted more stories about knights and ladies and castles and the like, and I came across Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. The edition the library had used an antiquated version of English, and so it was very difficult to read, and I didn't finish it. But I never forgot it. In college I rediscovered my love of that story, and that time period, in a class with the most pompous ass you can imagine as a professor. And that book, those two books, really, that I held in my hands fifteen years ago, set in motion a string of events that led me to meet the best friend I've ever had, learn from professors who would inspire me to share with others what they had shared with me, and spend a year of my life studying for my Masters degree in England. I guess you could say they made a serious impact on my life. :)

2. What's your guilty pleasure music?

My music listening is so mood-based that this is a pretty difficult question to answer. A guilty pleasure? I guess you mean something that I won't admit to my closest friends for fear that they'll point fingers and laugh at me, right?

But my biggest guilty pleasure music is Mary Chapin Carpenter. I love her. And until my hard drive died, I had everything she's ever done--my cds have long since been worn out. But it's a guilty pleasure because no one else where I work likes the slow, very-Country, and kind of sappy music that she makes. They're all very Alternative - Top 40 - Rock. And I love that music too, but every now and again you need music to set your heart to, right? And she's that for me. She's soothing and inspiring and brings this warm and fuzzy feeling to my chest.

3. You come to a fork in the woods. Do you pull a Robert Browning and take the road less traveled, or are you the average Joe?

You know, I'm going to save this question to torture undergrads with someday, because it's a great one. Everyone wants to be Robert Browning and say that they'd take the road less traveled, no problem. Because that's the road of the unknown, the path of danger and excitement and adventure. Who doesn't want to forge paths for everyone else? Who doesn't want to be the discoverer, the explorer, the adventurer? That said, I'm an average Joe. Don't get me wrong, I've had my moments of roads less traveled--I wouldn't have a Masters in Medieval Studies or have spent a year living on my own in England if I didn't--but at the very core of my being, I'm more likely to take the safe and sure road than the one with the unknowns. It's something that was built into me early. I have not often been a risk-taker, I inherited my mother's worrier nature (though I do my best to tamper it down most of the time), and the fear of failure looms always ahead. So I take the well-traveled road, and have moments of brave tromping off into the unknown every now and then.

4. What on Earth possessed you to become a Lit major?

Well, first and foremost, I love to read. A lot of Lit majors that I've met in the past seven years (since I started college) don't seem to love literature like I love literature. And I always felt sorry for them (Education majors aside, because their real passion was education) because in a world that seems designed to fuck with your life and make you unhappy at least 70% of the time, shouldn't you do something that you love?

But more than that, I love history too, and stories are just a different way of studying history. My specialty is British lit from 500 - 1500 CE, pretty much, and so I love studying how the literature of the period changes over those thousand years, and how it reflects who people were then, and what they believed, what they feared, and what they loved. Turns out, they weren't that different than us (this is a point I like to make in my "2 Day Whirlwind Tour of Medieval Brit Lit" that I give to about 100 high school seniors each year). They loved their wives and children, loved God, feared taxes and war. They wanted a better world for their children, and liked to laugh as much as they liked to lecture. The more I read about them, and the more I read the stories they told, the more I understand myself and the world that I live in.

5. What is your way to unwind after a long day?

There are a couple of ways. Some days it takes music. I'll pop the ipod in and listen as the music smooths away the rough edges the day has left behind. Some days it's with family--a hug from my little sister or teasing a younger brother. A lot of times it's reading or a movie and escaping into someone else's story. And on the really bad days (in decent weather), it's a walk with the ipod and my thoughts. I suppose the common thread is that I like to distract my head from whatever events made the day so long and horrible.