Isn’t it interesting the different paths our lives can take? I recently received an invitation to dinner from a girl I haven’t seen since I graduated college…the first time. We studied archaeology together. I know, right? There was more than one of us? For your information, there were at least 4 – four of us sitting around the dinner table taking cracks at dinosaurs so…yeah.
I was excited, though admittedly a little fearful – we all know how awkward these things can be. “So…uh…what have you been up to?” And there was plenty of that.
But in the interim of 6 years (though I maintain it’s only been 5), despite the fact that we’ve all moved on and have nothing to do with archaeology anymore, we haven’t changed that much. Sometimes you get together with people and realize why you were never really friends in the first place and other times you sit and talk and laugh and laugh and laugh. This was an other time. It’s nice to know that a passion for old buried things isn’t the only tie that binds.
But it wasn’t all goody goody gumdrops and licorice sticks…or chocolate puff pastries with delicious raspberry crème fraiche… … … Ahem, but I digress. I remembered something I had long forgotten – cast out of my memory, rather. I remembered that I had a chance to go to Italy. My last semester at BYU I took a classical archaeology class with the girl who invited me to dinner, shall we give her a name? Let’s call her Clare since that’s what her parents named her. The professor of this class was taking students to study and excavate in Italy...but there was a caveat. You had to be a student. Clare went. She went three times. So why didn’t I put off graduation? Why, why, why? I asked myself that a lot that night. Then I remembered…I had earned scholastic achievement. One I wasn’t sure would wait for me. Ah, Scholastica, nefarious supervillain!
So I graduated. I sat on the front podium, had a brief biography in the program, met Elder Hales, and then went home and lived with my parents for the summer (Why, why, why?). I have an additional sentence on my resume and a large medal collecting dust in a box (it almost sounds like I actually earned some noble distinction, doesn’t it? I think you may be disappointed to find out what it actually was) but I’ve since gone back to school…and I’m not even on a scholarship.
I also have yet to make it to Italy.
I'm still trying to convince myself it's better this way.
7 comments:
Bless you for sharing this post with your faithful readers. You may not have made it to Italy, but there is always Spain.
It's better this way.
Sko-last-ick-a? What means this?
I've never heard of a person who achieved "scholastica". I'm going to guess that it means "Congratulations! You are super awesome at school!"
Because you are.
Am I right?
Wrong...scholastica: made up Latin-based word used to represent the notion that I valued scholarship and scholastics more than other things thus preventing me from saving the world/going to Italy. Therefore, supervillain.
This reminds me a conundrum that I have. When I work really hard and get good grades, I get excited for about half an hour...then I realize that they're just some dumb letters on a piece of paper. But when I get crappy grades, it disappoints me for a long time and I feel like the letters actually represent me. I'm still trying to get past this dillema.
Tell me if I am reading this wrong, but the moral that I got was that I only went to Italy because I was always dumber than you...right? Glad I finally got to reap some benefit from my stupidity. Jokes on you smarty-pants!
Yeah, I'm glad you understood what I was really trying to say. This post was not about how dumb I was but about how dumb you were, despite your having made infinitely wiser choices than I.
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