A Think-Write.

A Think-Write for a couple of minutes.

I would time it but I don’t want to bother. I can’t remember what you call it when you write exactly what you're thinking for a set time but a Think-Write-So-It-Flows seems to work. I know what I’m talking about anyway.

I just read and looked through the college yearbook Grinnell College--1966. Did you know that they used to not offer credit for working on the publication of their very own yearbook? Crazy. Two of the student staff flunked or were put on academic probation just because their classwork suffered due to their hard work on this yearbook. Then it wasn’t approved by administrators, so it wasn’t published until 20 years later. 20 years! My host father gave it to me to read this evening and it’s made me thoughtful.

Black and white photos, every one. [The photos in this entry are mine.] Controversial because of stating opinion that wasn’t shared by faculty or administrators nor all of student body. Controversial because not everyone in the senior class is shown, and no head and shoulder shots are given. It is a roughly chronological, photographic-masterpiece of a year at Grinnell.

I don’t know anyone who has gone to Grinnell, but the college and town name are familiar to me. I’ve never seen the campus, but I wish I had, because then I could compare it to the photos I saw in this book. I’m sure lots of things have changed tremendously.

Controversy over boys and girls visiting each other after hours, etc. So much call for change, for the ability to change things… but in the end, the admins have the say and the money. They actually sent out letters to parents discouraging student drug use, student sex, etc.... but these pictures tell the (alleged) majority student opinion: Mary J isn’t so bad (my peers still say the same today! Does anything ever change?), couples are fact of life, and boys will always be the slackers compared to women, at least in big groups.

So all this subversive journalism and photography in a yearbook that was banned makes me think. Makes me wish that my peers and I were living for something that means something, in a political-academic-cultural way. I don’t mean the religion part right now, but I do mean the good humanitarian part. I’ve never even seen my university's yearbook—was there one?—but I’m sure it is nothing like this one and it looks nothing like what I knew of it. Granted, it’s hard to sum up for each student what they did and lived and felt in college. But still. Did the student government do anything? Did the student newspaper—high quality though it is—put an urge in me to stop sitting around and to think hard about what I’m doing with my life?

Oh, believe me there was plenty of drinking and lazing around pictured in those pages. But these were people who also felt deep in their gut that they wanted to mean something, and be able to cause change. Be able to cause change.

Yeah, that’s it.

Dramatic paragraph with [Enter Key] because this warrants it.

No wonder people don’t change things; no wonder because my peers don’t even know enough to change things. We have to know first that it’s possible! That if we have a cause that lights our fires; that we have a way to go about it. We are the students, after all, the ones who are the lifeblood of a university.

Sure makes me hate rich admins all the more. Sure makes me hate bigger and bigger classes each year, and those fundraising campaigns. What is that money for? I suddenly feel like I’ve been scammed. Like the university life is one expensive way to give more money to someone else than back to me, the one in need of a degree to do something with my life. What was the point of the liberal arts college experience—besides put me into debt and my many friends into much greater debt?

…Where was I going with this? I’m just kinda nostalgic and kinda upset. But I can’t pinpoint why or how exactly.

I wish I had tried to photograph the sunlight that filtered through trees into the piano practice room in the basement of Music Hall at my own university. That would have summed up much for me and my experience.

In fact, I wish I knew enough about photography to produce pics that I actually like… and not just of people or random snow scenes that don’t convey any emotion.

Why was that moment (or was it moments?) in Music Hall so crucial to me? Because it meant that I was thinking on life, becoming someone rich and deep, that I loved life and it’s natural beauty… that I was in tune with campus, not trying to escape from it, yet not in one of the commercial, “sellable” aspects of it.

I’m so glad I found a piano on campus. Ha, no, rather, pianos. Many quiet friends in protected basement rooms with beautiful, leaf-filtered sunlight for years to come.

“There are some things in life that money can’t buy,” comes the commercial motto of MasterCard. Or is it Visa? No, MasterCard. That’s what I’m feeling right now. Just what did my money (or rather, my parents’ money) buy when I signed up for roughly 4 years? And are those years in context of the rest of world history for me to reflect on later? Just as the Grinnell yearbook had many hints to the Vietnam War going on, I want my memories (which will apparently have to replace a yearbook since I never bought one and probably can’t justify the money to buy one now even if I could) to be in context. President Obama was elected, I remember that. Michael Jackson died. …Um…

Kirk went and came back from modern war in the Middle East. People came to Christ. Students died, from explained and unexplained causes. I learned that I know almost nothing about financial things and I am soon going to need a credit score in order to really make it in life… By the way, I think financial class should be required for freshman and/or seniors, ALL of them, at all colleges. Ha.

One last comment. Near the end of the yearbook, I thought it was very honest and realistic for the editors to write that graduates sleepily got through the commencement ceremony, said some goodbyes,and then “the class of ‘66 scattered.” How anti-climactic yet honest is that? “Scattered.” That’s exactly what we’ll do. Just like in high school, but even more, because we didn’t come from the same place in the first place. But how bitter. All that joy and change and boredom, and all those smirks and kisses and interesting lectures and pretty photos to capture it all… and they scatter. An unplanned force came together in 1966 to actually realize that something isn’t right and things need to change at Grinnell College, but things didn’t because they couldn’t and everyone leaves anyway because college isn’t a lasting thing. So we scatter.

That leads me to this thought: what am I going to do in this life? Yes, I want to encourage people toward Jesus. But I also want to improve this world practically, to show my respect for the good in it. I want to be a relevant, thinking Christian who made it through a 4-year, secular liberal arts college with a degree, and cares about the world around her because she cares about the scattered people around her. What am I going to do? What will my niche be? Or not one, but multiple seeds cast be?

For some reason, I think of the futility brought up by the song “Fix You”:

When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

That’s about how I feel right now. That, and Ecclesiastes’ reminder (or is it a warning?):

“Nothing is new under the sun.”

Nothing is new. Grinnell Yearbook – 1966 taught me that. Not the pot smoking nor the liberal attitude felt by its users. Not the generational gap on moral/sexual beliefs and practices. Not the pocket-lining administrators who live in a different world than the students on their campus. Not the beauty of the experience of acting even though it's just an extracurricular activity, nor the desire to change things that’s common among publications crews. Those things aren't new.

Oh, ha. You know, the chorus lyrics say “Tears stream down on your face” but before reading the lyrics, I thought they said “It’s history there on your face.” I liked the latter better, and that makes more sense right now. It’s history, Grinnell, right on your face, finally published, and you can’t fix it. 

I can’t fix you…

but I’ll damn well try.

—Ellen—

“When you're too in love to let it go…
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth”