choices.

Like everyone, I've been faced with a lot of choices in my life.  Viola, cello, or violin?  Running or dance?  Spanish or German?  Push through, take a semester off, or transfer?  Work or play?  Ireland or Germany?  Even deciding in the morning whether to pack a lunch or try to go without is a choice I make, usually hurriedly, and, not surprisingly, all these choices and decisions I've made over the years have spawned an ocean of 'what if's.  You see, when I'm forced to make a decision in life, I usually freeze or, despite any intense longings for friendship, take the easy, familiar, safe (often lonely) way out.  I've been sure about very few things.  (Would you believe me if I said Oberlin was one of those sure things?)  Maybe I'm a chronic over-thinker to the point of being paralyzed by it, but these past few days have proved a few things to me that I'd like to enumerate below for future use.

Firstly: That, regardless of how many times I have cried, felt intellectually inadequate and lonely, Oberlin was the right choice.  Look at what I've learned about myself, what I've accomplished for myself.  I went in as a freshman with big dreams, no work experience, and no friends.  I left last semester as a junior with five jobs, a lovely group of best friends, and a whole new (free!!) wardrobe.  I feel comfortable in my skin (aka: cherished man-flannel) at Oberlin.  I can make people laugh and I have a family there, and, yes, that includes General Shurtleff.  It really is like home.  I didn't think I'd miss it, but I guess I do.


Secondly: That I picked the right major.  Sure, there are times when people will come up to me and ask me why on earth I'm not studying to be a field biologist, and there are times when I will stroke my chin and wonder that myself.  The truth is, I love plants and animals.  I love to know why they grow here and not there, what different kinds look like and sound like, what's this called, what's that called, how to take care of stuff, how things work, and I absolutely love finding things when I can manage it.  But, like I like my alcohol, so too do I prefer my science lite.  I like looking at pictures and petting animals and going on hikes.  I like making connections and memorizing things.  The truth is, I'm awful at everything else.

It's really hard for me to describe what I really like about history, but it's kind of for the same reasons I love biology.  I love making connections, flipping a page and finding someone else's character smeared all across it in little black type, telling stories.  Numbers and dates are important, but in the fact that they inform the story, lending dimension to the characters and their world.  When I can close my eyes and hear the soft rustle of fabric as cravats are tied, feel a sympathetic smear of ink on my fingers as I take notes on a primary source document... It all means the world to me to feel connected to something.  I couldn't tell you which I love more--biology or history--but I can tell you that I know I'm doing something right.

Do you all need tissues yet?  I'm not finished, but I'll stop being a sap for a second to tell you that I had my first Irish history tutorial on Friday, and I'd like to announce to the world that I participated.  It was fascinating, actually.  We're focusing on the 18th century, and we were assigned this piece on Jonathan Swift and the development of Anglo-Irish patriotism.  Last semester, as many of you know, I was in a pretty fantastic class on the American Revolution and the Early Republic, and the parallels!  Oh, I was practically drooling in my seat.  Does this sound familiar?  "Am I a Free-Man in England, and do I become a Slave in six hours, by crossing the Channel?" Swift was all for economic rebellion--boycotts, self-sufficiency, industriousness.  He hated being taxed and seeing all of Ireland's capital being used to develop England's economy, and he hated hated hated feeling like a second class citizen just because he happened to live in Ireland.  Really, basically, he sounds a hell of a lot like every self-proclaimed Patriot in the American colonies, and it was all brewing around the same time--1763...ish.

But here's the interesting part!  I wrote a paper in my last history class defending the Founding Fathers.  I agreed that they were probably, by our standards, land mongering freaks, but I also argued that it was unfair to apply these standards (and our innate distrust of eloquence) to their grand, sweeping, dripping-in-glitter-and-romance rhetoric, which really did mean a lot to them and everyone else, even if it excluded about 98% of the population.  In that paper, I was extremely lenient towards walking contradictions like Thomas Jefferson, but when discussing Jonathan Swift I just...couldn't...handle it.  I was angry that his reform ideas didn't include native Irish Catholics and the poor.  I turned into one of those cynical, I'm-only-a-history-major-so-I-can-say-you're-wrong people.  I was shocked by myself, squeezing all the romance out of Swift and giving him no free passes.  Why is it okay that Jefferson was a jerk and not okay that Swift was a jerk?  Is it because I grew up with Thomas Jefferson and I hate to see a hero die?  I need to think about this some more, but it's an interesting development...

One more thing I thought about on my walk home was what if (here are the 'what if's again) we had lost the Revolutionary War?  Would we have had a Great Famine?  Would we have been employed building useless walls up mountains, just so that we'd have something to do other than plan another rebellion?  (They didn't employ the Irish building useful things like good roads--no, no, that would be developing infrastructure, and might help future uprisings!)  Would it have been known as the American Rebellion instead?  Would we be a divided nation today rather than the freakish behemoth we became thanks to good ol' Manifest Destiny?  Would Jefferson and Henry and Franklin and all those guys have become disillusioned in failure and, like Swift, have faded into trite?  What thoughts!!  They really make my brain tingle with delight!

And now, before this entry stretches quite from Sea to shining Sea (haha, get it?), I'll hit you with one more realization.


Thirdly: That I made the right choice coming to Ireland.  I could have gone to Germany, and in an alternate universe, I'm probably writing a blog about how studying in Germany was the best choice ever.  I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I'm having a real real Robert Frost moment.  The ~*road less traveled by*~ didn't make all the difference because it was rugged and a path most people wouldn't take.  It made all the difference simply because it wasn't the other road.  I'm not learning things in Ireland because it's better than Germany or something weird and out-of-the-blue.  I'm learning things and making discoveries in Ireland because I'm here, not there, and it's time I make the most of it.