NEWSFLASH: Everything they ever told you about college finals week is TRUE.

Well. Maybe not everything. (I don’t know what they told you.) But the ramp up to my very first finals at Gutenberg College was an entirely singular experience—I have never been through anything quite like it before.

It’s not that I’ve never been under a major deadline before. It’s just that throwing a stew made of my own tendency to procrastinate and my perfectionism into the pressure cooker that is Gutenberg during dead week… well, let’s just say that free time, sleep, and peace of mind ran dangerously low while surliness, procrastination, and worrying ran dangerously high.

I had some pretty dark moments this week—moments when I felt sure that Gutenberg should never have accepted me and that I was going to fail the whole program. Now that I’m on the other side, I can see how irrational I was being. (Although, no promises on the “not failing” part—I haven’t gotten my grades yet. ) My tests went better than I expected and, although I am not satisfied with my papers, I did get most of them turned in.
Unfortunately, I do have a few late papers that I have to finish in the next day or so. So I’m not even completely done yet. But I am a lot closer than I ever thought I would be this time LAST week.

And, of course, once I AM done I will still be busy. But right now, juggling Christmas shopping and web and photography jobs and hours at my undisclosed retail location sound a lot more attractive than writing another paper about Plato.

(Oh, and I appreciated the break from blogging, too. From now on, I hope to blog, if not every day, at least more often than… ‘never’. How’s that for a promise? )

Thank you for visiting Eugene this evening. You brought some much needed excitement into one girl’s humdrum evening.

Love,

Erin.

(This afternoon in discussion, David, the PRESIDENT of Gutenberg College, told us that if it snowed overnight school would be cancelled in the morning. When we asked him how much it would need to snow before that happened, he said, “Enough to play in.” Let it be known that Gutenberg has the coolest. president. ever. )

All of the tutors at Gutenberg College are worth getting to know. In addition to being people of substantial moral fiber with a firm dedication to the truth, they are just plain interesting. Listening to our tutors tell stories about their past is a time-honored tradition here at Gutenberg, and is generally considered an excellent way to spend one’s time.

Charley Dewberry is one of those tutors. He is one of the most unassuming people you will ever meet—but behind his friendly demeanor you will find a treasure trove of knowledge and experience.

One of the great things about Charley is that he doesn’t often come out and tell you about himself; he just kind of lets details about his life slip. You might not know when you first meet him, for instance, that he often gets to school by flying his own small plane from Florence to Eugene. But he does. Or you might not know that he spends much of his time as a research scientist, “diving and counting salmon throughout the Pacific Northwest.” (source) But he does. But even once you know those things, you are only scratching the surface of interesting things that you could know about Charley.

But anyway. Every year, Charley and his wife Susie have a tradition of inviting a group of students who sign up ahead of time to come out to their home in Florence the day after Thanksgiving. This year was the first time I was able to go.

We started off our morning by visiting a stream, where Charley pointed out some large, dark shapes swimming upstream in the water: Chinook salmon. Then we took short walk in a drippy, beautiful Oregon forest, while Charley stopped to explain things like “nurse trees” and lichens to us.

After our walk, we were all thoroughly cold and wet, so we journeyed back to Charley’s house for a wonderful warm lunch and some chatting.

In the afternoon, Charley made good on a promise he had made to take us flying! We drove out to the Florence airport and waited our turns in the homey little office building (complete with resident cat) next to the landing strip.

When it was my group’s turn to go up in the plane, I was honestly a little bit apprehensive. I am not, in case you haven’t noticed, a naturally adventurous person. (Last easter can attest to that.) Flying up into the air in a little tiny airplane is the kind of thing that would usually require large amounts of coercion by friends that I really like for me to even consider doing. But, once again, the idea of being able to take pictures in a place I had never been before convinced me. Maybe this whole photography obsession has been a good thing after all.

I think it probably goes without saying that I am glad I ended up going up in the plane. There was something immeasurably thrilling about soaring over the tiny little cars and seeing the waves breaking on the beach far below. After the first few seconds I forgot my fear and was just able to enjoy myself. (And, of course, I took pictures )

Thank you again, Charley and Susie, for opening your home to us and sharing these experiences with us!

If you are a Gutenberg student, and if Charley and Susie offer this opportunity again next year, I highly recommend you take them up on it. You won’t regret it.

The Scene: I and two of my friends are walking back to Gutenberg in the steady, blustery, gray rain that has characterized the whole day. I’m enveloped in my puffy blue raincoat (be quiet) and clutching my hood, which keeps threatening to blow back off my head.

(Paraphrased)

N: I think we might actually have a white Christmas this year!

Me: Oooh, I hope so.

J: I talked to my mom last week. She said it was 93 degrees back home.

Me: Wow!

N: We went to Disneyland around this time last year, and they were already getting ready for Christmas. They had these Christmas caroler characters wearing wool coats and scarves out in the bright sun.

J: Yeah… that’s why, in California, we don’t sing “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” we sing, “It’s beginning to feel a lot like it should be Christmastime.”

We all laugh as we continue walking. J and N both have soaked wool coats. Their hair is dripping wet, too. I’m still clutching my hood. You’ve gotta love Oregon.

Wes, our art teacher, started class off on an unusual note today.

“Okay, class,” he said, “I want you to get out a piece of paper. Now I want you to write down one to three words that describe an idea, a belief, or a feeling that has been really important in your life recently. Either something you’re struggling with, or just something that matters to you.”

We were all a little bit bewildered by this.

Wes left the room to let us ruminate. I pulled out a piece of paper and almost wrote down “photography” before I stopped myself. Wait, no, I realized, That’s something that matters to me, but it’s not the kind of “matters” that Wes is looking for. Besides, it’s not an idea, a belief, or a feeling.

Then I got to thinking about what I have been struggling with recently. Images of the mornings that I am always late for school, of the nights when I just can’t get ready for bed, of all the countless times that I just refuse to say “no” to myself flashed through my head. I wrote down “Self-control.”

Five minutes later, Wes walked back in carrying two large brown paper bags. “Do you all have your idea? Good.” He grinned as he began pulling packages of modeling clay out of the bags. “Alright. Now I want you to sculpt that idea.”

So we cleared space on the classroom tables, and for the next half hour or forty minutes we all plied our clay in quiet concentration.

At first, I did not know how to capture “self-control” in clay. But all of a sudden, this image popped into my head: A person standing in front of some larger than life, tempting object blocking his path. I wanted to capture a thin, teeter-tottering slice of time that would leave you wondering: Is he going to move towards the object? Is he going to move away from it? Is he going to reign himself in or let himself go? And I did not want the piece to give any indication as to the answer. As I envisioned it, it would be like a balancing act—a stare down between a person and the decision he has to make.

Now, I don’t pretend that this is the greatest piece of art that ever existed. We only had a limited amount of time, and I am no sculptor. But here is what I came up with:

Part of our assignment in class was to talk about our piece after it was finished. I stumbled through my explanation, feeling frustrated because I did not think I really got across the gist of what I was trying to say.

Classmate Joel, who was sitting across the room from me, spoke up: “From this angle it looks pretty funny.”

“Why?” I asked, worried that he couldn’t see the perspective correctly, and ready to move the figures so he could see them better.

“Well, it just looks like he’s thinking, ‘Man, there’s that damn apple again.”

We all burst out laughing, and my tension was immediately relieved.
I couldn’t have put it better myself.

In addition to a number of habits, I seem to have picked up a set of accouterments for productivity this quarter:

Now, whenever I am studying or writing or doing basically any kind of work that has to do with paper, I feel incomplete without my lovely colored pens and my iPod and my reading glasses. Shallow, I know, but these items actually make me feel more like studying. I liken their effect to that an actor feels when he puts on a costume and becomes that character. I put in my earbuds and put on my glasses and I am studious.

Which, incidentally, is what I should get back to being right now. Cheers.

• Thinking
• Walking
• Talking
• Living out of my backpack
• Drinking coffee
• Wearing reading glasses
  
• Still periodically behaving like a five year old

And… heck! The quarter’s not even quite over. Who knows what might happen in the next two-ish weeks.

Tonight Gutenberg held a meeting with some architects to discuss the possibilities for a hypothetical future campus. I say hypothetical, because the school does not currently have the resources to realize said campus, but they are recognizing the need to plan because the school is bursting at the seams.

We talked about lots of qualities that Gutenberg has that we would like to carry on and emphasize in any new facilities—a homeyness, a sense of togetherness and community, good nooks in which to study, a total absence of boring sterility… stuff like that.

We also suggested that it look like Hogwarts and have gun turrets.

If that doesn’t sum up Gutenberg and its student body, I don’t know what does.

Yesterday was perfect Halloween weather here in Eugene. Actually, it was just perfect weather, period. There is something enormously uplifting about cold, crisp, sunny autumn afternoons. I wish I could bottle up that feeling and bring it out on overwhelmingly gray days like today, when all my brain wants to do is shut off and go back to sleep.

When I was little, Halloween was a big deal. I still remember the palpable excitement I felt, rocking back and forth on my chair at the dining table, unable to finish my pizza because I COULD NOT WAIT for it to be dark so my little friends would arrive in their little costumes. Then we would canvass the neighborhood with our parents, searching for those elusive king-size candy bars and daring each other to go to that one house that was SO SCARY.

I am no longer a Trick-or-Treater; in fact, I was only eleven or twelve when I joined the ranks of the lame people who stay at home doing homework and don’t even carve Jack-O-Lanterns. Some crotchety part of me really objects to teenagers Trick-or-Treating. Come on, folks, leave the candy for the kids!

But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy Halloween. In fact, to be perfectly honest, right next to that crotchety part of myself there is an eternally youthful part that will never get tired of playing “Dress-Up.” I love costumes. So I was stoked to wear one for the Gutenberg Halloween party last weekend.

This year I decided to turn my love of photography into a party activity. Using some gorgeous red curtains I borrowed from my mom and an awesome light that I borrowed from a friend, I set up a makeshift photo studio in a room off of Gutenberg’s foyer. The resulting photos of everyone in their costumes are every bit as dramatic and fun as I had hoped they would be. You can see all of the photos from the Halloween party in a Flickr set here. I highly suggest you go look at them; there are a few gems.

Oh, and me? I went as Rita Skeeter, the “Enchantingly nasty” reporter-woman from Harry Potter.

… I will let you draw your own conclusions about the fittingness of that costume choice.

The stairwell leading down to the basement at Gutenberg is one of the few (usually) truly quiet places to study at the school. Today, as I sat at the head of the stairs reading The Odyssey in preparation for this afternoon’s discussion, my friend Jackie passed by.

“I wish I could take a picture of you, Erin! The light and colors right here look so good right now.”

Sounded like a challenge to me. So, being the undying photography geek that I am, after I finished my reading I spent five or ten minutes figuring out how to prop up my camera at the bottom of the stairs so the shot would be framed JUST SO… then I hit the self timer and ran back up the stairs to pose before the shutter clicked.

I really like the peaceful feeling this photo ended up having. It seems to represent the way that I am slowly but surely settling into life at Gutenberg College.

Or, as Noah put it: “That picture is so emo.”

So anyway. I’ve had my burst of creative energy for the day; now it’s time to settle myself back into schoolwork.