letters from barabbas

It might have seemed like a rash decision to an uninformed observer, but tonight I quit with the silly ambivalence (which, if you've seen Girl, Interrupted, is the perfect word for what I was feeling) and decided to pick a path and stick to it. I feel like I just finished the second basket at an all-you-can-eat wings night someplace, and I don't have to ask for a third because I've realized that I don't need anymore, and so I don't want anymore. That's a very exhilerating feeling, if you've never felt it--to say "I've had enough," silently taunting your consumerist subconscious in one brilliant moment of independent thought. I feel so relieved, so fulfilled, so pleased with myself (to run the risk of sounding over-excited and a little self-important) at having finally made a decision.

I dropped Spanish Conversation and picked up Later Shakespeare.
I can hear you asking, "What's the big deal?" Well, I'll tell you...
It's the end to two-and-a-half years of vacillating ambitions, grovelling in either/or's with very little concept of The Grand Scheme. It's the release of the idea that I have to pick one passion and run with it and leave all other interests to whither in the walls between pipe dreams and fools' hopes. It's embracing the reality that life is more complex than 1)major 2)career 3)retirement 4)hobbies 5)death. It's admitting that God's plan is FAR more complex than I give Him credit for, and to say I've discovered it and am now enrolled the proper prerequisites is a very foolish and tragic announcement indeed. It's personal permission to live my life haphazardly, outside of the western world's obsession with control and predetermination. It's revelation that God is not an American, and when He took my flesh He took my nationality, so I'm free to do things His way, and say screw-it to Uncle Sam's. It's forgetting words like tuition and curriculum in favor of concepts like enlightenment and exploration.

I'm called into a medical career, so my major is Microbiology. Simple, rational decision. However, ever since I started college I've been trying to pick a minor. A subspecialization.
I love literature and feel I have a gift for writing. I wanted to explore that, so I declared English as my minor during my second semester and signed up for Early Shakespeare in the Fall of '03. It was my favorite class, and, incidentally, the only A I made that semester, amidst three boring sciences and Music Appreciation in an 18 hour academic overload I'll never try again.
But then I took two semesters of Intermediate Spanish in response to my more specific calling into a medical career in Latin America: learning Spanish is essential for my destiny. I've loved the three semesters I've had in Español thus far, and so I was signed up for Spanish Conversation in the spring. I had decided to take three more Spanishes and get a Spanish minor.

But I couldn't stop worrying about whether that was the right choice. Like, seriously: Am I really going to master the Spanish language in three stupid courses that I only half pay attention to, anyway? Why not dabble with the mothertongue while it's available to me, and then spend a year in Peru, learning the language in the only authentic manner: cultural immersion?
And so I took a leap of faith tonight when I saw that there was one spot available in the sequel to my favorite class. Early Shakespeare covered the comedies, histories, and early tragedies and I loved every minute of it. It was such a relief, exploring the meaning of life after Physics and OChem back-to-back, where we didn't care about meanings but only processes. Later Shakespeare will cover the tragedies and romantic comedies. Oh, to truly understand those conundrums we slept through in high school: Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello!
I realize that this will significantly increase my workload in an already time-stressed semester. I realize that I'll now have four more classes to take to complete my minor, instead of the three required for Spanish. But I'm doing it. (And if I wuss out, I can drop within ten class days.) I'm gonna be able to take such wonderful courses as The Personal Essay. Fiction Writing. The American Novel.
So, it wasn't a rash decision. I've been thinking about it a long time. And I think God's on my side with this one. He would like me to learn a bit more about this writing business. It may just come in handy some day......

I'm trying to embrace in real life the ideals that I spout out in coffee shops and journals. Things like: Higher education is not a hoop to jump through, a ticket to a wealthy future, a waste of time that everyone has to go through in order to achieve the American Dream. It is possible to attend university with a heart that is hungry for understanding, and to enroll in classes that spark one's interest and sharpen one's perceptions. I will not be one-dimentionalized into a pre-approved curriculum of science classes with a flimsy peninsula of irrelevant, surface-level core electives like Microeconomics and Music Appreciation.
I am here to discover Truth, not get a job. And when I enter the work force, it will be to improve the world, not build a bank account or bolster the gross national product. I haven't reached the age where youthful idealism dies under the weight of social security, and I hope I'll always be too immature to "plan for my retirement" and "invest smartly in stocks and bonds and lots of capital."
I'd rather give freely to the poor and trust God to keep me alive.

So, in that spirit, I'm going waste my time learning the art of good writing. I'm going to revel in the mysteries of the world's greatest literature. I might even spend a year in the Peace Corps streaking feces onto culture plates and saving people from cholera. I'm going to learn a foreign language or two. Then I'll work on that MD thing.
I hope to "be" a lot of things, including a polyglot. And a doctor. And a writer. And a terrific friend. And a tender father. And a spectacular lover. And a connoisseur of coffee and/or fine wines. And an expert on something--Shakespeare or Moses or E. coli or children. And a humble servant of the Lord Most High.

How will my college transcript factor into all of this?
It won't. But classes like Genetics and Shakespeare and Public Speaking and Gross Anatomy should help out quite a bit.