Tough Week

The week didn't start out well. 

On Sunday I got the call I had been dreading for days--my wonderful, intelligent, humorous friend, Anita, had left us. After decades of fighting the fragility of her body with her tremendous strength of will, she finally succumbed. Even now, nearly a week later, I'm still in some disbelief that she's gone. I have gone to classes and studied and worked on setting up my tiny flat, but I constantly find myself learning new bits of information I know she would enjoy. It was always that way with she and I. We would learn something new and immediately want to share it. 

Anita never lost her curiosity, her wonder, her love of learning, her sense of humor, and her incredible wit. I was so lucky to have enjoyed her friendship while I did. And I'm comforted to believe that she'll never be that far away as long as I take a page from her book and be a life-long enthusiastic learner myself. 

I wish I could tell Anita about today. My classes had to turn in their first papers of the semester, an analysis of a pretty thin book on the Salem Witch Trials.  And yesterday, the excuses began clogging my email. "I'm sick," "my computer crashed," "I can't print," and "I lost my book."  As the emails kept rolling in, I began to see the humor. I'd heard from other TA's and teachers about this phenomenon, but seeing it for myself simply tickled me. Seriously, there's nothing new under the sun. Anita would have laughed with me over these undergrad antics!

This weekend will find me all caught up in more school stuff. I've got papers to grade, books to read. A wonderful discussion with Dr. H. this afternoon about the paper I'll be writing for his research-writing seminar proved to be quite eye-opening. I'm not an M.A. student any more and UT is no CSUS. It's time to really stretch the limits of my historical imagination, to dig deeper into my sources than ever before, and to craft arguments that are so much more sophisticated than anything I've done in the past. Just how far can my brain stretch?  I guess I'm going to find out.