Gotta be startin' somethin'

My friend Chris is an instigator. If you mention an interest you've considered in passing, he challenges you to pursue it. "Why not? What have you got to lose?" He is pursuing his own dreams and interests and doesn't take no for answer when obstacles are placed in his way.

He recently came back to Mercer after a four-year absence, working directly with me, while going back to school for a degree in classical languages, and talking of school got me thinking of my own half-assed attempt to go back to school as a post-baccalaureate pre-med student when I was 30. The thing is, I'm almost ten years older now, and it's ten years more impossible, yet this weird little urge never quite goes away. Watching Scrubs and Grey's Anatomy lately, both shows that focus on interns, I feel like I'm missing something vital by not having that experience. But is that all I want out of it? Do I really want to be a doctor, or do I, for some inexplicable reason, only want to go to medical school? Because that's the part I imagine doing, not the doctoring. That's the part I imagine loving: the learning, and the proving myself.

Yet on Wednesday morning, Chris almost had me signing up to take a full-time classload of General Chemistry at City College starting immediately. The idea is absurd; it truly is. Going back to school at 40 to become a doctor at 50? Who am I kidding? And what, pray tell, would become of my true passion: my writing? Is it discouragement over not getting published that makes me yearn for something else, something I know I could do, rather than this capricious field that doesn't care whether you're good or bad or how much blood and sweat you pour into it? Is it because going back to school makes me imagine that I'm still young and life is still ahead of me, not half behind me? The funny thing is, the last time I was in school I got so inspired to write that I finally finished my first novel, blowing off my chem class after spring break and deliberately getting a D so I could take it again sometime if I ever decided to and work for an A. I think there's something wrong with my brain.

But before leaping back into chemistry, I thought I'd pursue another interest that I've never gotten around to, one that is tangentially related to Arkhangelsk: learning Russian. After renting Russian Ark last week and watching one of the extras about people living in St. Petersburg and working at the Hermitage, I wanted to learn the language even more. And it just so happened that City College was offering a beginning Russian class starting this week, one night a week, at the jr. high just down the street from me. I mentioned it to Chris, and he said, "Take it! Sign up right now!" When I mentioned it to my friend Jon at tea, he exclaimed that he'd always wanted to learn Russian too, and might be persuaded to take the class with me. So I wrote to the instructor to find out if we could still add it, even though classes started this week, but sadly, the class was already full.

When I told Chris that the Russian plans had fallen through, he said, "So take something else!" He uses that same "won't take no for an answer" attitude when I try to make excuses for why I want to put it off. He tells me to go look and see if there's anything else I'm interested in at the campus near me. I look, and discover Russian Culture and Civilization. There's no good reason I should take this other than Chris is prodding me, and I've just been admitted to City for the spring semester, so I feel obligated to take something. Well, there is one other reason, which is that it might be good research for Arkhangelsk. So what the hell. I've written to the instructor to see if I can add it next week. And in the summer semester, Jon says he definitely wants to take Russian. (An interesting side note: the instructor of Russian Culture and Civilization takes a group of students to St. Petersburg every summer to live with Russian families for a month and experience the arts and culture while being immersed in the language. Wouldn't that be cool? But that costs money, and money is increasingly something I haven't got.)

One final offhand comment to Chris, and I've ended up committing to take Hatha yoga twice a week with him starting Monday. I can definitely say one thing: working with Chris again won't be boring.