Update #1: Street Smarts

Somewhere along the way in blog world, I forgot to mention a reason for my recent lack of posting: I started graduate school about six weeks ago. I officially attend Georgia Southern University as a "scholar" of English literature. I also have an assistantship in the University Writing Center where I work twenty hours a week editing papers.

Graduate school has been way more work (read: harder...lots harder) than I had anticipated. If anything, the more I learn, the dumber I feel. While I may read five new books for a given class, I'm also introduced to about 25 more books -- all of which I will likely never read. It's a never ending cycle of amassed knowledge of what I'm not knowledgeable about. Awesome. 

While I was feeling particularly unscholarly last week, Andrew and I took a four hour road trip to IKEA in Orlando. To pass the time, I decided to read aloud a book from one of my courses. The story was entitled "The Missionary," and featured a Portugese Monk en route to India. Intermingled in the text is a whole lot of Spanish-Portugese slash British-Irish politics. Apparently, I had no idea who Philip the Second of Spain was (in fact, I just wrote Philip the Fourth...but fact-checked it -- obviously I meant Philip the Second) and Andrew kindly explained a lot of things to me about Spanish history and colonization. I was grateful for his knowledge. While he was explaining this vital information to me, we happened to pass a series of travel advertisement billboards that read: "FUN. Fun-fun-bo-bun-banana-fana-fo-fun-fe-fi-mo-un. FUN." Andrew had no idea what this jargon meant (being from Spain and all) so I kindly explained to him the delicate inner-workings of the Name Game song and went on to sing it using his name, my name and many other inanimate objects I saw along the way. He didn't say it (in fact our conversation basically ended after that), but I'm pretty sure he was grateful for my knowledge as well. I guess some people are just smart in different ways. But all are equally valuable. Or so I like to tell myself.

More updates to come soon.
(P.S. I apologize if as a result of reading this blog post, the Name Game song attacks your psyche and doesn't let go for several hours)