bridgetkat-blog

[bridgetkat-blog]

Personal Statement

When I was in high school, my dad would tell me, “I think you should be an English teacher.” I was always dismissive of this idea, mostly because I knew a typical teacher’s salary was less than ideal. When college finally came around, I decided to major in Biomedical Engineering—mostly because it made sense considering my aptitude for math and science, but also because health professions run in my family. I quickly realized that engineering didn’t interest me, so I switched to Human Physiology on a Pre-Physical Therapy track. One day, sitting in a windowless lab classroom after three semesters in studying human physiology, I realized that, once again, I didn’t find my studies the least bit enjoyable. I knew I had to change my major again, and it had to be right this time. I stopped caring about the money, the reputation of English as a “cop-out major,” and the stigma around secondary teaching as a profession, and I listened to my dad. I started studying English in the fall of my third year, with a minor in math with the goal of eventually becoming endorsed to teach both subjects. As soon as I started studying English, I knew I had finally found what I enjoyed.

           I didn’t have a great attitude toward reading during my elementary and secondary education. Reading books usually wasn’t enjoyable for me because I would become impatient with my slow reading pace and frustrated that I could read entire pages without digesting any information. The more frustrated I became, the more difficult it was for me to read successfully. In addition, my English teachers never illustrated the ultimate importance of reading the literature we did, so I never felt motivated to overcome my struggles; I didn’t see the point.

           As a secondary English teacher, I want to promote for my students a better relationship with reading than I had during my own elementary and secondary education. I didn’t discover until college the undeniable importance and objective value of reading and of literature. For example, reading is essential in academia; having a positive relationship with reading can help any student be more successful. In addition to that, though, literature can act as a form of social, political, and historical education, giving readers insights into unfamiliar parts of society and encouraging readers to think critically about the world around them. Because of this, I believe teaching English is one of the best ways to positively influence the world’s next generation of thinkers and ultimately impact society as a whole. By selecting an array of texts that tackle relevant issues in a way that is accessible to young adults, I will be able to help students become educated about diversity, become informed about sociopolitical issues, think critically about the world around them, question social norms, and engage in civil discourse. This will prepare the next generation of thinkers to positively impact society as they rise to adulthood.

[bridgetkat-blog]

Set Free

No one ever told me; at least, not explicitly. No one ever said the word to me. Anorexic. And I didn’t want them to. I didn’t want to be one of those girls. I wasn’t one of those girls. Somehow that word would have made me something that I wasn’t. Somehow, I thought that one word would have been a lie.

          14 years old. 600 calories per day. 87 pounds. A body mass index of 17.

          It started around my 14th birthday. I told my parents I didn’t want a cake. I don’t remember why. They got me a cake anyway – a small, round one, probably meant to serve about six people. I sat down with the cake in front of me and a fork in my hand, and before I knew it, half of it had disappeared. Guilt rushed into my gut. I sat there and stared at the half of the cake that remained, and the crumbs and smeared frosting that occupied the other half of the plate. For the first time in my life, I felt completely and truly fat.

          The next day, I desperately researched how to reverse a binging episode. Everything I read said the same thing: drink plenty of water, and keep a “clean” diet for the next couple of days. So that’s what I did, or at least, that’s what I thought I did; I’m sure you can imagine how much a 14-year-old knows about dieting. So I made my naïve attempt at “clean eating”— that is, until my self-restriction resulted in more binging. My life went on as a cycle of fasting and binging for a couple of weeks. After that, I had learned to keep myself from binging, but the problem had gone on too long. I had gained five pounds, which felt like twenty. I looked in the mirror at my protruding, bloated belly. I hated myself for letting it happen. I desperately wanted to take a knife to that disgustingly rounded belly and sculpt it flat again. I wanted all of it gone. So while the binging stopped, the fasting continued.

          I kept my calorie intake below 1400 on most days. But eventually, I got tired of counting my calories. I can probably just eyeball it, I told myself. The less I ate, the more successful I felt. I started refusing to eat at restaurants with my family. I survived on scrambled egg whites and steamed broccoli. I always ate prior to social events to avoid the horror of eating pizza or chocolate chip cookies; that is, if I could gain the courage to go at all. My thoughts were constantly dominated by food – what I had eaten, what I would eat later, what I wished I could eat. I would spend hours baking cupcakes and cookies, only to never eat a single bite of them.

          “Hey, will you taste this?” I would ask my little sister. “I wanna make sure you can’t taste the food coloring.”

          “Why don’t you just taste it?” she would ask me. I never quite knew how to respond to questions like that.

          In my neglect to consume food, food began to consume me – my strength, my happiness, my passion. I suffered a kind of exhaustion that no amount of sleep could cure. Whether the exhaustion was a consequence of my malnourishment or my yet-to-be-diagnosed depression, I’m not sure. Honestly, it was probably both.

          After several months, I read something about the dangers of “very low-calorie diets,” or “VLCDs.” I don’t remember how I came across it. Maybe I had googled something like “low-calorie foods” or “how to eat less;” maybe I had just happened upon the term in some magazine article. Like I said, I really don’t remember. Anyway, as I read about this “VLCD” thing, I rejected that I might have been on one of these diets myself, but a voice in my head knew that I was in denial. I went through everything I would eat in a typical day and added up all the calories. The final number I came to was horrifying. I didn’t mean to starve myself. I was only fourteen years old. I thought I was just eating “healthy.” I had no idea that my diet was just as detrimental to my health as a diet of toaster waffles, chicken nuggets, and late-night Taco Bell.

          I was terrified of what I might have done to my body. I came across several sources that suggested that I may have permanently damaged my bones and my metabolism. But I was also terrified of changing. I was still terrified of being fat. So which was worse?

          I was forced to see a nutritionist by my pediatrician. “Disordered eating.” That’s what the nutritionist called it. She said it was different than an eating disorder, but honestly, I call bullshit. It’s literally the same words, just flipped around. Who did she think she was fooling? Anyway, she essentially told me I needed to eat more. I just wanted everyone to stop telling me that.

          Early in my recovery process, I came down with a violent case of the stomach flu. At my next appointment with the nutritionist, I weighed in at 82 pounds – 5 pounds less than my previous visit. The nutritionist brought in some random pediatrician that I had never met before. The asshole scolded me for losing more weight, as if it was my fault I had to live on saltines and ginger ale for an entire week. As if he even knew me at all.

          I knew I needed to gain weight, but I couldn’t bear to imagine how I would look once I did. I looked skinny, and I wanted to keep looking skinny. I had never had a boyfriend, and I never would if I wasn’t skinny. People at school complimented my thin figure. “Oh my gosh, Bridget, how are you so skinny?” one classmate commented. But at the same time, my friends looked at me with puzzled faces when I refused a piece of pizza or a cupcake. But I gradually started to eat more and expand the list of foods I was willing to eat. Eventually, my diet evolved to include ice cream, pizza, peanut butter, Oreos – you know, the things that are worth the calories because they just taste so goddamn good.

          Now, about five years later, I weigh 110 pounds, putting me at a healthy BMI of 21.5. I still struggle with my body image at times, but I have learned to let go of my anxieties around food and not let them interfere with my daily life. I still try to watch what I eat, but with the intention of being healthy rather than skinny. I’ve learned that it’s okay – even healthy – to give in to my cravings every once in a while. I have returned to enjoying birthday cake, snacking on movie theater popcorn, savoring homemade burgers, and devouring campfire s’mores. Food no longer controls my life. I’m finally living again.

[bridgetkat-blog]

Feminist and Antifeminist Values in The Wife of Bath

            As one of the few female pilgrims—and the only female pilgrim who is not a nun—in the Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath provides a unique perspective in her prologue and tale on marriage and gender roles. Additionally, as a literary construct, the Wife acts as a representation of all secular women in Chaucer’s society. Occupying a total of 1264 lines, the Wife of Bath’s prologue and tale contain a huge amount of content to be analyzed, and many scholars have undertaken the challenge of doing so. One popular subject among scholars and across the internet is the question of the Wife of Bath being “feminist” or “antifeminist.” Some believe the Wife of Bath presents feminist ideas, while others believe she is actually not feminist at all. In my interpretation, both statements are true: the Wife of Bath verbally expresses feminist ideas, but she also reinforces negative attitudes toward women through her lifestyle and her character traits. As a literary construct, the Wife of Bath shows Chaucer’s complicated relationship with “feminist” and “antifeminist” ideas.

             Many negative stereotypes of women circulated in the Middle Ages. Women were commonly seen as contentious, demanding, uncontrollable, and insatiable, among other things (Bloch, 3). In other words, society saw women as always arguing, always wanting something from others, unruly, and unable to be satisfied (sexually or otherwise). Anyone can see that the Wife of Bath possesses at least some of these traits, complicating any argument that her character, as a literary construct written by Chaucer, is “feminist” in nature. Additionally, regardless of what stereotypes were in play at the time, a lot is at stake with how the Wife is written because of the fact that she effectively represents all secular women. Any and all of her characteristics—negative or positive—can be seen by the reader as universal to this group of people. Whether it was Chaucer’s intent or not, the Wife as a literary construct makes a statement about Medieval secular women as a whole.

             One way the Wife of Bath portrays women in a negative light is through her marriage habits and lustful lifestyle, although she does attempt to provide a defense for this. In the beginning of the Wife of Bath’s prologue, the Wife mentions that she has had five husbands (in sequence, rather than simultaneously) (6). She argues that there is nothing wrong with marrying multiple times, referencing men from the Bible who had multiple wives at once—namely Solomon, Abraham, and Jacob—to support her argument (35-58). She also argues that there is nothing wrong with having sex, saying that if we have the body parts for it, we surely are meant to use them (115-134). She says that there is nothing wrong with virginity, but if everyone was a virgin, there would be no way to produce new virgins (71-72). Besides, at least she is not having sex outside of wedlock— “Bet is to be wedded than to brinne” (52). Biblical ideas of procreation are the basis of her arguments, referencing the passage from the Bible that says, “Be fruitful and multiply” (28).

             However, there is a flaw in her “procreation” argument: she has no children—or at least no textual evidence would indicate that she does have any children. As someone who has sex all the time but has no children, how can she use procreation as a supporting argument for her lifestyle? Additionally, her portrait in the General Prologue may even suggest that she was an abortionist. Judging by the Wife’s discussion of sex and her multiple husbands, it seems odd that her lifestyle has not produced a single child; abortion seems like the logical answer. The last two lines of her portrait in the General Prologue read, “Of remedies of love she knew per chaunce, for she koude of that art the olde daunce” (475-476). This passage could be interpreted a few different ways, but it seems likely that the “remedies of love” refer to abortions. Love leads to sex, and sex leads to pregnancy, so it seems logical that “remedies of love” would be a euphemism for ways to terminate pregnancies. It seems odd that someone who has had five husbands has no children; logically, the amount of sex she has had in her life should have resulted in at least one child. The logical explanation for this seems to be abortion. With this in mind, the Wife’s “procreation” argument becomes even more flawed; not only has she never had a child, but she likely has even intentionally terminated pregnancies. This suggests that the Wife really only has sex as much as she does because she enjoys having sex, and not for any other reason. In this way, the Wife of Bath as a literary construct supports the attitude that women are lustful and sexually insatiable.

               The Wife of Bath also is written as greedy and superficial. In reference to her five husbands, lines 44a and 44b in the Wife’s prologue read, “Of whiche I have pyked out the beste, bothe of here nether purs and of here cheste.” The words “purs” and “cheste” are of particular interest. The Middle English Dictionary provides various definitions for “purs” or “purse.” Among them are two particularly interesting meanings: a money bag, or a scrotum. Additionally, as we know, “purse” is used today to refer to a handbag for carrying money and other belongings. “Cheste” also has several meanings in the MED: “1. A trunk, chest, casket, box, etc., (for storing or safekeeping); a strongbox (for valuables, documents, money); 2. Coffin, sarcophagus; also, tomb, grave. 3. Of a person, the body, the chest, the heart: repository or abode (of the soul, grief, secrets, etc.).” The Oxford English Dictionary provides similar definitions from before the 15th century: “1. a. A box, a coffer; now mostly applied to a large box of strong construction, used for the safe custody of articles of value. 3. A coffin.”

             In this part of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the Wife is talking about how she picked her five husbands very carefully, paying close attention to their “nether purs” and their “cheste.” The more obvious meaning of “purs” here is “scrotum” due to the preceeding “nether.” The scrotum is highly associated with sex and reproduction, so the Wife is probably saying that she looks for men with appealing genitals and quality genetics. However, there is certainly an additional connotation of the word “purs” with money. Concerning the “cheste,” she could mean many different things. She could mean that she made sure to marry men with a lot of money (with “cheste” meaning a strongbox), supporting the money-related interpretation of “purs.” She could also mean that she was sure to marry men who would die soon (with “cheste” meaning a casket or coffin), presumably in order to get money. She could also mean that she made sure the men had good souls (using MED definition 3). This ambiguity by Chaucer was probably intentional. It’s almost humorous, because the first two interpretations strongly contrast with the third.

             This use of “purs” and “cheste” seems to be an instance of Chaucer’s famous irony that we see throughout the Canterbury Tales. Both the first and the second interpretations turn out to be true of her three “good” husbands—she describes them as rich and old—so “cheste” probably refers to both a strongbox and a coffin (196-197). Chaucer even uses the word “cheste” to explicitly mean “casket” in lines 501-502: “Lat hym fare wel; God yeve his soule reste! He is now in his grave and in his cheste.” This shows that Chaucer was aware of the multiple meanings of “cheste” and most likely intended for multiple meanings to be at play in line 44b. By the end of the prologue, we learn that the Wife was very driven by money, using sex as a tool for manipulation. So, ultimately, the third interpretation is probably not true and could be a source of irony, indicating that the Wife actually didn’t care about the souls of her husbands at all, only their genitals and their money.

             However, one may argue that the Wife actually did marry her fifth husband for his soul and nothing else. Lines 525 and 526 read, “My fifthe housbonde -- God his soule blesse! --which that I took for love, and no richesse […]” The Wife says that she married her fifth husband, Jankyn, for love and not for money, suggesting that maybe she did marry this one for his soul. However, “love” also has connotations of sex. Perhaps what the Wife really means here is that she married him for his youthful beauty and vigor, yielding a satisfying sex life. This seems like another instance of the irony we see so much from Chaucer. It sounds like the Wife means that she married Jankyn for his soul, but that’s really not what she means at all. The way the Wife chooses her husbands shows her greed and superficiality.

               The Wife of Bath also admits to being manipulative of her husbands and doesn’t seem at all ashamed. She says, “I wolde no lenger in the bed abyde, if that I felte his arm over my syde, til he had maad his raunson unto me” (409-411). The Wife would withhold sex from her husbands until she got what she wanted from them—namely, money. Not only does this show her manipulative tendencies, but it also reinforces the idea of her greedy and demanding nature.

             All of these characteristics of the Wife of Bath—lust, insatiability, greed, superficiality, and manipulation—portray women in a negative light. As a literary construct, the Wife acts as a representation of all secular women of medieval English society, so any negative characteristics associated with her will be seen by readers as extendable to this entire category of people. In this way, Chaucer’s writing of the Wife of Bath’s character can be seen as “antifeminist,” or supporting the negative attitudes toward women that were the norm in Chaucer’s time.

               On the other hand, the Wife of Bath expresses plenty of ideas and values in support of women in society; namely, she is an advocate for gender equality and women’s agency. The main theme of her tale is that women most desire “maistrie” and “soveraynetee.” In Modern English terms, she says that women most desire to have control and agency over themselves and their husbands. Although having “control” over one’s husband may seem problematic, the standard marriage dynamic of the time involved the husbands controlling their wives; the Wife’s ideas are simply a reversal of this standard. While a simple reversal of a problematic standard isn’t an ideal solution, it still shows the Wife’s passion for problematizing societal norms and changing the oppressive attitude toward women that was standard at the time.

             More importantly than her advocacy for women’s “maistrie” over their husbands, the Wife advocates for women to have control over themselves. It is a well-known fact that men controlled women in many ways in the Middle Ages; women had very little say in anything. The Wife shows that she is passionate about making a change in this dynamic. Lines 321 and 322 read, “We love no man that taketh kep or charge wher that we goon; we wol ben at oure large.” To paraphrase these lines in modern English, the Wife is saying that a woman will not love a man who is concerned with where she goes or what she does; women will do as they please. She is saying that women should be treated as free and able to make their own decisions. This shows her passion for women’s autonomy and overall social progress.

             The peak point in the Wife of Bath’s tale could easily be read as demeaning and offensive; we will call this the “antifeminist” reading for simplicity’s sake. At the climax of the tale, the knight is given a choice of his wife—a “witch” of sorts—being either loyal or beautiful. After he submits to her and allows her to choose, giving her “maistrie,” she says that she will be both loyal and beautiful. The “antifeminist” reading would say that this implies that all beautiful women are unfaithful, and that all loyal women are unattractive; only by magic can a woman be both loyal and beautiful. However, I disagree with this reading. In my interpretation, the transfer of “maistrie” symbolizes an agreement of equality. If men are oppressive toward women, they haven’t earned the right to a perfect wife. But if a husband treats his wife as equal to himself, allowing her to have agency, he has earned a wife that is both beautiful and loyal. I would dare to say that this tale is meant to show an incentive for changing the dynamic between men and women, showing the passion that the Wife of Bath has for social progress.

               Now for the hard part: what can we infer about Chaucer’s values from the Wife of Bath and her tale? This is where there could be many different, but equally valid, answers; no one can really say for sure what Chaucer’s values were at the time of writing this tale, but we can make educated inferences based on textual evidence. The Wife of Bath is arguably the most interesting and intricate character in the Canterbury Tales; she is spunky, controversial, outspoken, and unashamed. It’s hard to tell what Chaucer’s views of women were, considering the wide range of values represented in the Wife of Bath and her tale. However, I think it’s safe to say that Chaucer saw women as complex creatures. It seems that he saw women as not just a body existing for the purposes of sexual pleasure and reproduction, but also an intricate mind full of complex thoughts, beliefs, and desires. I think it’s safe to say that, regardless of his views, Chaucer sparked a conversation among his readers about gender dynamics and social norms.

 Works Cited

Bloch, R. Howard. “Medieval Misogyny.” Representations, no. 20, 1987, pp. 1–24., doi:10.2307/2928500.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Edited by Jill Mann, Penguin Group, 2005.

“Chest(e.” Middle English Dictionary. University of Michigan, n.d. Web.               https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-              dictionary/dictionary/MED7498/track?counter=1&search_id=952716

 “Chest.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, n.d. Web.  http://www.oed.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/view/Entry/31402?rskey=AAA4BT&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid

 “Purs(e.” Middle English Dictionary. University of Michigan, n.d. Web.               https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-    dictionary/dictionary/MED7498/track?counter=1&search_id=952716

[bridgetkat-blog]

Imposter Syndrome

           “You should be an English teacher,” my dad used to tell me.

           And I would respond with something along the lines of, “English teachers get paid shit.”

             I sat in a blue, plastic chair in the front of my Calc AB classroom—one of the only air-conditioned classrooms in my budget-conscious Catholic high school—as my teacher projected a piece of paper onto the front wall. Written on the paper was a distribution of scores earned on the most recent test.

           “One person did get a hundred,” my teacher said as he gave us a run-down of the score distribution. “This is the first time someone has ever gotten a hundred percent on this test.”

           After he had finished discussing the scores, he began passing the graded tests back to the students. After anxiously awaiting the news of my score, he finally handed me my graded test. Bright red ink was scribbled on the top of the paper:

100

           Math was my niche, my safe haven, where I always knew I would succeed. Where I never feared failure.

             I’ve never been good at reading. It was always my lowest-scoring section on standardized tests. I read slowly, and sometimes I realize that I haven’t been paying attention for the last two pages. My eyes scan through the words, but they kind of just go in one eye and out the other. Not only did this make reading difficult for me, but the frustration it caused made reading utterly unenjoyable.

             I come from a family of health-care providers. My father is a physician, my mother is a PA, my uncle and his wife are both physicians, my grandfather is a surgeon, and my older sister is in medical school. My dad could always tell me if I had strep or not. He once used his stethoscope on me at home because I thought I was dying[1]. On another occasion, I had the stomach flu, and he called in a prescription anti-nausea tablet for me—it was that easy. When I had cramps, my mom would tell me, “the prescription dose for ibuprofen is 800 milligrams, so you can take four.” I couldn’t go to the grocery store with my dad without running into four different people that he either worked with or treated. When I got the stomach flu again in college, by parents were able to tell me everything from the best position to lie in to the best over-the-counter medicine to buy.

           There was never any explicit pressure for me to follow in my family’s footsteps, and I never felt any implicit pressure either; health care was just all I ever knew.

             Before I was an English major, I had some pre(mis)conceptions of “The English Major”: obsessed with books, wears big hipster glasses, spends free time reading The Great Gatsby while drinking tea in locally-owned cafés. Has read the entire Harry Potter series three times. Mildly, endearingly socially awkward, but otherwise unremarkable. At one point, I thought people chose to major in English because they weren’t good at anything else. That’s why I was hesitant to become one myself. Why would I be an English major when I’m good at other things – “more useful” things, “more impressive” things? Why would I give people a reason to think I was unremarkable?

             As I approached high school graduation, I never felt confident about what I wanted to do in college. I never felt like thinking about it. I told myself that I knew what I wanted to do just so I could stop worrying about it. I knew I was confident in math, and I was above average in science, so I decided on biomedical engineering—the same major my older sister had already been studying. It just made sense—I could use my talents in math and science, I could be involved in healthcare, and best of all, I could make good money. It made sense, didn’t it?

             I vaguely remember one day in 3rd grade when my class was having silent reading time. My teacher—who I did not particularly like—came over to my desk and told me that I shouldn’t mouth the words while I’m reading. I didn’t understand why doing that was bad, and I still don’t really understand now. I’m not sure if it was solely for that reason or if other evidence was involved, but my teacher ended up making me do one-on-one reading practice with a volunteer parent. This is the earliest memory I have of feeling stupid.

             I went into the semester optimistic—lots of people on my floor were in engineering, my older sister was a tutor in the College of Engineering, and I expected to enjoy all of my classes. But within two weeks, I decided I hated engineering and Engineering Problem Solving I[2]. “Everyone hates EPS 1,” they all said. “It doesn’t mean you hate engineering.” How exactly does one not hate engineering? was my only thought. I stuck with my engineering math class because it was basically just Calc II, and I wasn’t against advancing my math expertise.[3]  

           At this point, I was back at square one. So what the fuck do I do now? I decided to jump right on something else I had considered in the past: physical therapy. I had been interested in it since my senior year of high school[4], so the next semester, I began my work as a major in human physiology on a Pre-Physical Therapy track. It made sense, didn’t it?

             You know those fat literature books you get in middle school? I always read the dumb little stories but hardly could remember what they were about. In high school, I Sparknotes’d my way through Huckleberry Finn and Of Mice and Men. I think I actually read about 50% of To Kill A Mockingbird. And I still got an A in American Lit, presumably because I’m good at bullshitting[5]. I got a 2190[6] on the SAT because, unlike the ACT, there is no reading portion.

              One day — after a year in Human Physiology, a week of shadowing, and semesters full of bullshit classes — I had an epiphany: I fucking hate this. Maybe it was the professors; maybe it was the three-hour labs in windowless rooms; maybe it was the fact that every class made me cry on at least one occasion. But I knew that I hated it. And besides that, how does a painfully shy five-foot-tall girl work as a health care provider, anyway?

           So for the next couple of weeks, I panicked and obsessed over what I was going to do. There I was, a second-semester sophomore, looking to completely start from scratch as I went into my junior year, and the self-reprimanding thoughts began. Can you pick something you actually enjoy for once? This is the rest of your life we’re talking about. Stop letting other people’s expectations make decisions for you and get your shit together.

               But I’ve loved writing since I took my first creative writing class in high school. As soon as I was formally introduced to it, creative writing became my coping mechanism for any and all things. It was my way of sorting out the jumbled thoughts in my head into something I could translate into words. And my composition teacher was constantly astounded by my flawless grammar. So, despite my less-than-ideal track record in reading, I chose to be an English major. Am I actually, diagnosably insane? Probably. But more than a year later, do I regret it? Not even a little bit.

             I need to make one thing clear for those who have the mindset I used to have: English is not easy, or useless, or unimpressive, or unremarkable. STEM students see English as a cop-out major, but ironically, those are precisely the students who are most likely to fail miserably in an English class. STEM is numerical, logical. English is subjective, creative, and abstract. Throw a stereotypical Engineering student into a Chaucer class or a creative writing class, and they are bound to have difficulties. But they don’t think so. They think it’s easy. I’d like to see a STEM major write a three-page paper on four lines of The Canterbury Tales. I’d like to see a STEM major read one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and even have a clue what it’s talking about. I’d like to see a STEM major write five pages on the symbolism of fire in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’d like to see a STEM major read five novels in four weeks. I’d like to see a STEM major take a class entitled “Chaucer” and even make it out alive.

             I don’t read for fun, but maybe I would if I had the time. I don’t read or study in cafés because I can’t concentrate if I can discern nearby conversations. I wear glasses, but only because I need them to see, and contacts make my eyes itch. I’m socially awkward, but neither mildly nor endearingly. I’ve never read The Great Gatsby, or Gone with The Wind, or Great Expectations, or any books of the Harry Potter series[7]. I do drink tea, but only to calm my clinical anxiety.

           I always thought I had to go into math and science because I was especially good at those subjects. To me, there was never even a question of what I enjoyed; what mattered was what I was good at. People always asked me, “Why do you want to be an engineer?” or, “Why do you want to be a physical therapist?” And my answer was always based on the fact that I excelled in math and science, not that I enjoyed those areas. It only dawned on me that I should enjoy my career when I was halfway through college and it all suddenly became real.

           Why had I never considered a career in English, you ask? Because in 21st Century America, a successful career in English[8] is “unrealistic,” a “fantasy.” Doesn’t pay well[9]. Most people don’t even consider pursuing a career in English because it’s generally accepted that it’s not even a valid option, unless you want to be “stuck” teaching or working as a full-time barista, sharing a four-bedroom apartment for the rest of your life. And so what if someone does want that?

           Sometimes I worry about how I’ll be able to teach English if I’m not particularly gifted in reading – literally half of the subject. But then I realize that that is exactly the reason I will succeed as an English teacher. Some teachers are so gifted in their field of study that they don’t know how to help people who don’t understand it immediately. When you’re naturally talented in an area, it’s hard to explain it to someone else. It’s when you actually have to work to learn the material that you understand how to teach it to someone else. The best teachers are the ones who understand how it feels to struggle and know how to help. I’m going to be that teacher for someone.

           But yeah, I’ll probably get paid shit.

 [1] I was not, in fact, dying.

[2] Engineering Problem Solving I, or EPS I, is a core introductory course for all engineering students.

[3] I ended up getting an A.

[4] Throughout high school, I had a chronic muscle knot near my right shoulder blade—a result of cheerleading, show choir, and bad posture. Eventually, it got so bad that I started going to physical therapy. In my efforts to relieve this massive knot, I became infatuated with muscles and how they functioned. And that’s how I got interested in the field of physical therapy.

[5] A lifetime of mandatory religion classes in a Catholic school system gets you good at that kind of thing.

[6] Out of 2400. This is approximately equivalent to scoring a 33 out of 36 on the ACT.

[7] I have seen all of the Harry Potter movies, though; I don’t live under a rock.

[8] Besides teaching.

[9] Includes teaching.

[bridgetkat-blog]

In Light Brassiere

Based on the song entitled “Skinny Love” performed by Bon Iver

You know when you go a while without a haircut, and you don’t notice your hair growing until one day you’re like, “When did my hair get so long?” Or, if you’re of the female population, when you didn’t notice that you were getting boobs until one day you were like, “Shit, I have boobs!” There are a lot of things in life like that – things that happens slowly and inconspicuously. You go about your life not noticing until one day you do, and you ask yourself, “When the hell did this happen?” And I think that’s what happened to me.

             We met at a bar in Seattle. It was a Tuesday. I had had a rough day at work and needed to take the edge off. He was a regular there; he would stop for a Guinness every day before heading home. Anyway, I ordered a mimosa, and he immediately looked at me with condescending eyes.

             “Are you trying to get drunk, or are you having brunch with Jennifer on the boathouse?” he said mockingly. And I guess somehow that “pick-up line” worked. It started raining while we were in there, and the idiot didn’t think to have an umbrella in the middle of Seattle, so he convinced me to walk him home with mine.

             Two weeks later, we had made it “official.”

             Three months after that, I was meeting his parents.

             A week after that, we both said the “L” word.

             One Sunday afternoon, we decided to watch a nerdy nature documentary. I sat next to him on the couch with my head snuggled up to his chest and his arm pulling me close. We both watched in nerdy fascination. At one point, I felt him kiss the top of my head. That was the moment I learned what true contentment felt like.

             Things continued as such for a while. We binge watched Bob Ross, he cooked me dinner, I had my own toothbrush at his place, and honestly, we were happy.

             Until we weren’t. And the line between the two is fuzzy to say the least. Suddenly, the way he chewed his food made me want to leave the room. The way he breathed in his sleep annoyed me. His goofiness became immaturity without him changing at all. So what did change?

             I think he felt it, too.

             But we pushed it to the side, swept it under the rug, because we didn’t want to accept that something wasn’t right. And we went on that way for four months or so.

             Ignoring.

             Pretending.

             Forgetting.

             I remember, one evening in February, we were lying in my bed updating ourselves on social media. He set down his phone and turned to face me. I looked at him, and soon he was touching my breasts over my blue knit sweater.

             “Babe, not right no

w,” I told him.

             “Seriously?” he whined.

             “I’m sorry, I’m just not in the mood right now.”

             “Let me make you in the mood,” he said seductively.

             “No, babe. I just really don’t feel like it right now,” I insisted.

             He paused for a moment before responding. “Do you even love me?” he questioned with a sudden harshness in his voice.

             “Babe, of course I do.” Did I?

             “When was the last time we did anything?”

             “I don’t know, like last week?”

             “It’s been a long time.”

             “We don’t need to have sex all the time,” I argued.

             “Baby, please,” he persisted.

             I sighed. “Okay, fine.”

             I let him pull off my leggings and underwear; he always wanted me to wear thongs, but I never did. He rubbed up against me, and a forceful shove followed.

             “Babe, you can’t just, like, put it in. That doesn’t work,” I said, annoyed.

             “Oh, right.” He rolled his eyes.

             So he rewound a bit and resumed, this time with his hand. Suddenly, I felt a conflict between body and mind. It’s an evolutionary instinct to physically enjoy sex and the like. You can’t change how sexual contact makes you feel physically. But emotionally, that’s a different story. And it’s a strange feeling when the two conflict. Your body says yes, but your mind says no. But I tolerated it for his sake. For our sake. I ignored that little voice in my head saying that something wasn’t right. But eventually, I didn’t want to tolerate or ignore any longer. I pushed his hand away.

             I could see the disbelief in his eyes. “I don’t get it,” he said, frustrated, maybe even a little angry. I rolled over, silent. I felt him get up from the bed, and I heard the rustling of his backpack. I turned to look at him, and he was retrieving his shoes.

             I felt an ache in my throat. But I was silent.

             I turned away again and felt him sit back down on the edge of the bed. I could hear the faint zip as he pulled his shoelaces tight. The small thump of him setting his foot back on the ground. A second zip. And the slight shake of the bed as he stood up.

             I struggle to remember much after that, but I somehow ended up in the bathroom, tears falling one-by-one into the eggshell-white sink. I looked in the mirror at my puffy eyes, splotchy cheeks, and smudged mascara. Was I crying because I loved him, or because I knew I didn’t?

             I heard my phone buzz on the night stand in my bedroom. It had to have been around thirty minutes since he left.

             Babe, I love you. Can we just forget about this?