Semester Over Quotes

Last semester was intense,” I said to Dad. “Intense?” he echoed, picking up my file. “Let’s see. On your first day at Hecate, you were attacked by a werewolf. You insulted a teacher, which resulted in semester-long cellar duty with one Archer Cross. According to the notes, the two of you became ‘close.’ Apparently close enough for you to see the mark of L’Occhio di Dio on his chest. I flushed at that, and felt Mom’s arm tighten around me. Over the past six months, I’d filled her in on a lot of the story with Archer, but not all of it. Specifically, the whole me-making-out-in-the-cellar-with-a-murderous-warlock-working-with-the-Eye-part.

Of course the fall semester didn’t start for another eight weeks or so. There was always a chance we were both being overly optimistic in thinking I’d be alive when it rolled around.

Travel is little beds and cramped bathrooms. It’s old television sets and slow Internet connections. Travel is extraordinary conversations with ordinary people. It’s waiters, gas station attendants, and housekeepers becoming the most interesting people in the world. It’s churches that are compelling enough to enter. It’s McDonald’s being a luxury. It’s the realization that you may have been born in the wrong country. Travel is a smile that leads to a conversation in broken English. It’s the epiphany that pretty girls smile the same way all over the world. Travel is tipping 10% and being embraced for it. Travel is the same white T-shirt again tomorrow. Travel is accented sex after good wine and too many unfiltered cigarettes. Travel is flowing in the back of a bus with giggly strangers. It’s a street full of bearded backpackers looking down at maps. Travel is wishing for one more bite of whatever that just was. It’s the rediscovery of walking somewhere. It’s sharing a bottle of liquor on an overnight train with a new friend. Travel is “Maybe I don’t have to do it that way when I get back home.” It’s nostalgia for studying abroad that one semester. Travel is realizing that “age thirty” should be shed of its goddamn stigma.

I can look back and see that I’ve spent much of my life in a cloud of things that have tended to push “being kind” to the periphery. Things like: Anxiety. Fear. Insecurity. Ambition. The mistaken belief that enough accomplishment will rid me of all that anxiety, fear, insecurity, and ambition. The belief that if I can only accrue enough—enough accomplishment, money, fame—my neuroses will disappear. I’ve been in this fog certainly since, at least, my own graduation day. Over the years I’ve felt: Kindness, sure—but first let me finish this semester, this degree, this book; let me succeed at this job, and afford this house, and raise these kids, and then, finally, when all is accomplished, I’ll get started on the kindness. Except it never all gets accomplished. It’s a cycle that can go on … well, forever.

Of course, he showed me this one afternoon when he was skipping class. When trolls cut classes, you think they are losers. When the beautiful and/or reasonably erudite do the same thing to sit on the library steps and read poetry, you think they are on to something deep. You see only deep brown wavy hair and strong legs, well honed by years of Ultimate Frisbee. You see that book of T. S. Eliot poems held by the hand with the long, graceful fingers, and you never stop to think that it shouldn't take half a semester to read one book of poems... that maybe he is not so much reading as getting really high every morning and sleeping it off on the library steps, forcing the people who actually go to class to step or trip over him.

Columbine had one of the best academic reputations in the state; 80 percent of graduates headed on to degree programs. College dominated the conversation now: big fat acceptance packets and paper-thin rejection envelopes; last-minute campus visits to narrow down the finalists. It was time to commit to a university, write the deposit check, and start selecting first-semester classes. High school was essentially over.

It’s the first semester of my sophomore year. Which means I’m Sophomore Grace now. Freshman Grace, God rest her soul, let her best friend make decisions for her and guys walk all over her, but Sophomore Grace? She will do no such thing. She will not be Ramona’s doormat or Logan’s distraction. Nope. Sophomore Grace is the carefree nineteen-year-old who spent the summer gallivanting around France. Does it still count as gallivanting when you do it with your mother? Sure it does, I assure myself. Gallivanting is gallivanting no matter who you’re with

I don’t give a fuck about their opinions on my Bond. I spoke to them when my bloodwork came back and they told me you ran. I’m not a dumbass like the rest of them, you ran because you had to. I know it. I’ll be there as soon as I can and if that isn’t fast enough for you, I’ll come now and start the semester over again.

I decided that I was going to fewer student parties after I ripped part of the sleeve out of my black dress helping a freshman climb a fence. By the end of the first semester, what I wanted to do most in the world was invite a few of my husband’s students over for tea and drop them down the well.

In choosing to be a Psychology major, I decided to learn for the joy of learning for the first time in my life. I'd always been fascinated by human nature. What makes us act the way we do? Why do we make the same mistakes over and over? But I guess my interest is purely theoretical. I'm a Psychology major who has no desire to work with people. This was poor planning on my part, I suppose. My parents definitely think so. But choosing passion over practicality seemed so honorable when I was a first-year student and graduation seemed so very, very far away . . . But now, a semester away from unemployment, I realize how much better off those Engineering students really are. Sure, they're boring conversationalists that make you want to kill yourself because every story begins, “The other day? In the lab?” But people become a whole helluva lot more interesting when they're pulling down six figures, don't they? If I'm going to drag my friends out to my cardboard box, the pressure's on to provide some pretty goddamned sparkling conversation once they get there. And even with all my noble knowledge for knowledge's sake, I'm not sure I can.

By the end of the first semester, what I wanted to do most in the world was invite a few of my husband’s students over for tea and drop them down the well.

A split second later, Sadie-Grace literally bowled me over with a hug. "I love college," she told me, scrambling to her feet and helping me up before resuming her aggressive hug campaign. "I'm majoring in dance and also Russian literature, and combined, Boone and I have only broken two bones!" "Both Boone's," Campbell clarified. "His bones are my bones," Sadie-Grace insisted. "And vice versa. Unless that's creepy? I've discovered I have a really hard time telling what's creepy, but on the bright side, I haven't been kidnapped or kidnapped anyone else this semester, so that's good.

Our work and educational institutions reinforce this preference for later over now throughout our lives. In school we focus on the ends — passing the semester, making the grade, or otherwise getting it all behind us — rather than the present-moment experience of actually learning. As employees, we want the work to be over as soon as it begins. Work culture is driven by quotas, billable hours, budgets, and Gantt charts — bottom lines of any sort. The value is always somewhere ahead of you, rather than here right now, in the room with you. We’re perpetually looking ahead to a payday or a weekend or some other kind of finish line. Virtually every day of our lives, we’re trained to lean towards something we don’t have, which essentially trains us to be dissatisfied with where we already are.

The same might be said of an exceptional friend. If you’re lucky, you might end up with at least a few melded into your life, people who become stalwart and unshakable, the friends who accept you without judgment, show up for the hard stuff, and give you joy—not just for a semester, or for the two years you live in the same city, but over the course of many years. Barnacles are not showy, either, which I see as also true of the best friendships. They need no witnesses. They are not trying to accomplish something that can be measured or cashed in upon; the substance mostly happens behind the scenes.

We were told [as TAs] to pick a Shakespeare play, a contemporary play, two novels, five stories, and a dozen or so poems and spread them out over the course of the semester, issuing regular tests and paper assignments. I picked works that I knew well, but Lucy saw teaching as a great chance to further her own education. With the exception of the Shakespeare and the poetry, her syllabus consisted of things she had always meant to read.

One day, an unusually exciting event interrupted the rhythm of our regular middle-class teenage lives. A Russian woman, the mother of a girl in our class, was run over by a New York City bound train right in the center of town. Our classmate left school in the middle of the semester. The gossip was that the woman must have thrown herself under the train. The adults whispered about reasons, usual ones, but my friends and I were too busy planning what to wear to the prom to wonder about the savagery of adult passion.

His lips parted under hers, damp and soft and warm, and she forgot all of that. Her entire life focused in on the sensations, the gentle pressure that grew more intense the longer the kiss went on. Chaste kisses, then dirtier ones, and man, those tasted good. They tasted better the wider her mouth opened, and especially after his tongue touched hers. She could have done a whole semester of kissing with Shane. Intense personal study. With lab classes. Time really wasn’t happening for her, but eventually Claire realized that there was a soft glow coming from the windows, and she was numb and sore from sitting on the floor. She winced as a muscle in her back protested, and Shane reached out, pulled her up, and settled himself on the couch. He stretched out, and extended a hand to her. She stared, tingling and confused. “There’s no room.’” “Plenty of room,’” he said. She felt breathless and kind of wild, stretching out on the tiny area of sofa cushion available next to him, and then smothered a yelp as Shane picked her up and draped her over his chest and, oh my God, over all the rest of him, too. “Better?’” he asked, and raised his eyebrows. It was a real question, and he was looking for a real answer. Claire felt a blush building a fire in her cheeks, but she didn’t look away from his gaze. “Perfect,’” she said.

Now comes the fun part,” he whispered. His cold hands ran down my calves to my ankles, which he pressed against the side of the couch and into hard metal bands that snapped around them like shackles.  “What was that?” I asked, sitting up. He stood, his muscular frame leaning as he towered over me, his chest sliding over my spread legs.  “Those are to keep you where I want you,” Saxon whispered as his hands continued over my body, gliding or whispering over my abdomen, around my breasts, to my shoulders, and down my arms. The farther up my arms his fingers moved, the closer he came to my lips, to my neck. His fangs were fully exposed.  “Do you want to be mine?” Saxon asked, his nose trailing over my neck. He planted his lips against my jaw, the touch a burning cold. I shivered. “Do you want to be right where I want you?” “Yes,” I gasped, knowing that I did, no matter how terrifying the fact that I couldn't move was making me.  “Good,” Saxon whispered, his hands rough against my arm as he pressed my wrists against the sides of the couch and into the bands that instantly snapped together to lock me in place.  I made a sound that was half fear, half pleasure. As I re-balanced my weight trying to get away from the cold bands only to find that I was captured.  Held against the couch. Caught underneath the Vampire who smiled as he ripped my bra and panties from my soaked and wanting body in one quick motion. “You smell so good, Ivy,” Saxon said, running his nose down my neck and over my bare breasts where his tongue darted out to capture my nipple for a moment. I moaned and he continued down, his hands running down my sides, down my legs, as he inhaled the scent of my stomach.  The scent of my sex.  “My rose,” he murmured, burying his face between my legs, his cold tongue darting out to flick at my clit. I gasped at the contact, a thrill of pleasure shooting up my spine. My body convulsed as he nipped at the tiny nub of aroused flesh, my back attempting to arch, my hips working to press in to him, but I couldn’t move. Judging by the pricks of cold metal that was all up and down my legs and arms, he had bound me by more than my ankles and wrists. A split second of panic captured my breath. “Saxon,” I moaned, shifting as the pleasure began to overtake me.

All last fall in Workshop, they’d side-eye each other if he praised my stories. Because surely they’d seen me leave class with him, walked past us chatting together in the hall, observed us exchanging books and vinyl. Caught us sitting together in cafés or in the basement of the Irish pub, having a drink, another drink, one more for the road, why not? They’d noticed him walk over and talk to me at department functions, sit beside me at readings. Then, in the winter semester, they might have observed how quite suddenly all of this stopped—that he no longer sat next to me at readings or talked to me at parties or met me off campus. And then, of course, in spring, on the night of the end-of-year party, they definitely observed me drunk in the passenger seat of his Subaru.

I’ve applied to Brentwood every semester since I was a freshman. My mom fought me on it at first, but I think at this point she’s resigned herself to the fact that I’m never going to get in, so she just signs the forms without arguing. I mean, it’s Brentwood, so to get accepted you not only have to dance like you’re in Black Swan and belt out a B over high C like it’s a middle G and cry on cue through a memorized six thousand lines of Shakespeare, but you have to do it all at once, while having a 4.0 and forking over a hundred thousand dollars and giving the admissions director a blow job, apparently, but once you’re in, you’re in, it’s Brentwood then Juilliard then fame and fortune, and even if not, it’s New York City, baby, and the most important part of this equation is Brooklyn Bridge at midnight and tiny dogs in Chelsea and the Staten Island Ferry and that ex-girlfriend (don’t think about that, should I think about that?) and the answer to the goddamn equation is the absolute value of not Nebraska.

Working on my Ph.D. at the University of Wyoming, I was required to take an advanced statistics course. I had completed the beginning courses several years earlier, but could remember very little. I had no idea how I was going to manage the requirements of an advanced class. Several weeks into the semester, I was floundering. I approached the chair of my committee, Louise Jackson, and said, “This is really over my head. Usually I at least know enough about a subject to follow along. This time I am totally lost.” “Good!” she said. “You don’t know how happy that news makes me.” Her response took me totally by surprise. Teachers are not usually glad when you announce that you are failing. Dr. Jackson continued: “Remember how this feels. Memorize this moment. Don’t ever forget this lesson. This is how many of your future students will feel, and you must be able to relate to them in order to understand and be effective in helping them.” She then gave me some suggestions, including the names of a few possible tutors. She also arranged to meet with me regularly to review my progress—things she assured me she would never have done had she not also once struggled through a few difficult classes of her own.

The Pillowcase" is printed with iridescent fish, each facing a different direction. I bought it for you at the Portland Goodwill our last semester in college. Spring break we brought it camping. I pretended I’d eaten sardines before, pretended I liked them. I don’t remember what you said when the condom broke. Probably ‘Oh, shit.’ The next day we drove into town. I took a pill and another pill and it was over. I couldn’t tell the difference, could have told my friends but didn’t, just made lots of dead baby jokes and went to bed in your dorm room. You’d put painter’s tape on all the edges. With the pillowcase, it was like living in the blueprint of an aquarium. I slept there the night I smoked Sasha’s weed and you stayed up for hours rubbing my back, telling fairytales so I wouldn’t totally lose it. I slept there the night I tried reading you Haruki Murakami’s Sleep but fell asleep. I slept there the night after the day I lost the bet and had to wear a lampshade on my head and your professor said ‘Nice hat.’ Later I learned she owns a lamp in the shape of a woman. I slept there the night you said ‘I think I’m falling in love with you,’ igniting a great unendurable belongingness, like a match in a forest fire. I burned so long so quiet you must have wondered if I loved you back. I did, I did, I do.

Speaking of… I gotta go. I need to be at the field.” His voice rumbled through his chest and against my ear as he spoke. I sighed and stepped out of his arms. I was sad that our couple days together were over and I would be here tonight without him. Classes started tomorrow, and I knew we were going to see a lot less of each other now that the semester was starting. “I’ll walk you out,” I said and followed him to the door. Ivy was still digging through my clothes and called out a good-bye. “Just stay inside,” he said, palming the handle. “It’s cold and slippery out there. You’ll be safer in here.” I grimaced. “You’re probably right.” He grinned. “I’ll call you later, ‘kay?” I nodded. He released the door handle and closed the distance between us with one step. The toes of his shoes bumped against my boots and the front of his jacket brushed against me. My stomach fluttered and my heart rate doubled. The effect he had on me was nothing short of amazing. I tipped my head back so I could look up into his eyes, and the corner of his mouth lifted. He looked at me with so much affection in his gaze that emotion caught in my throat. He didn’t have to say anything because I heard everything just by looking in his eyes. My fingers curled around the hem of his shirt and tangled in the cotton fabric, and at the same time I stretched up, he bent down. The feel of his lips against me was my favorite sensation. Nothing compared to the way his mouth owned mine. His tongue stretched out, sweeping through my mouth with gentle pressure, and I sighed into him and sagged forward. A low laugh vibrated his chest and he pulled back. “Be careful walking to class tomorrow, huh? Don’t fall and hurt yourself.” I nodded, barely comprehending his words. He slipped out the door before reality came flooding back. I rushed forward, caught the closing door, and called out his name. He stopped and turned. The lopsided, knowing smile on his face was smug. “Good luck at practice,” I called, ignoring the few girls who stopped to watch us. “Thanks, baby.” I swear every girl within earshot sighed. I couldn’t even blame them. I shut the door and leaned against it. Ivy put her hands on her hips and looked at me. “I’m gonna need a mega supply of barf bags to put up with you two this semester.” I smiled.

in my name to train young women for global leadership. Wellesley’s twelfth and thirteenth presidents, Diana Chapman Walsh and Kim Bottomly, embraced the idea and, over several years, helped put the pieces together. In January 2010, I traveled to Massachusetts for the inaugural session. The Albright Institute was founded on the belief that a student doesn’t have to major in international relations to have a global mind-set. By giving young women the chance to work in partnership with peers from a variety of disciplines and countries, we encourage them to see differences of perspective as a strength and even as a tool to help solve complex problems. To that end, we provide an intense course of study over a three-week period between the fall and spring semesters, complemented by summer internships. Of the hundreds of Wellesley juniors and seniors who apply annually, forty are selected. In the first two weeks of each session, we offer classes run by professors, former government officials, nonprofit leaders, and businesspeople. During the final seven days, the fellows work in teams to analyze and make recommendations regarding a thorny international problem. At the end, they present their findings, which we pick apart and discuss.

When we reflect on our daily lives, we might look back at a day that was very stressful and think, “Well, that wasn’t my favorite day this week.” When you’re in the middle of one of those days, you might long for a day with less stress in it. But if you put a wider lens on your life and subtract every day that you have experienced as stressful, you won’t find yourself with an ideal life. Instead, you’ll find yourself also subtracting the experiences that have helped you grow, the challenges you are most proud of, and the relationships that define you. You may have spared yourself some discomfort, but you will also have robbed yourself of some meaning. And yet, it’s not at all uncommon to wish for a life without stress. While this is a natural desire, pursuing it comes at a heavy cost. In fact, many of the negative outcomes we associate with stress may actually be the consequence of trying to avoid it. Psychologists have found that trying to avoid stress leads to a significantly reduced sense of well-being, life satisfaction, and happiness. Avoiding stress can also be isolating. In a study of students at Doshisha University in Japan, the goal to avoid stress predicted a drop, over time, in their sense of connection and belonging. Having such a goal can even exhaust you. For example, researchers at the University of Zurich asked students about their goals, then tracked them for one month. Across two typically stressful periods—end-of-semester exams and the winter holidays—those with the strongest desire to avoid stress were the most likely to report declines in concentration, physical energy, and self-control. One particularly impressive study conducted through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, in Palo Alto, California, followed more than one thousand adults for ten years. At the beginning of the study, researchers asked the participants about how they dealt with stress. Those who reported trying to avoid stress were more likely to become depressed over the following decade. They also experienced increasing conflict at work and at home, and more negative outcomes, such as being fired or getting divorced. Importantly, avoiding stress predicted the increase in depression, conflict, and negative events above and beyond any symptoms or difficulties reported at the beginning of the study. Wherever a participant started in life, the tendency to avoid stress made things worse over the next decade. Psychologists call this vicious cycle stress generation. It’s the ironic consequence of trying to avoid stress: You end up creating more sources of stress while depleting the resources that should be supporting you. As the stress piles up, you become increasingly overwhelmed and isolated, and therefore even more likely to rely on avoidant coping strategies, like trying to steer clear of stressful situations or to escape your feelings with self-destructive distractions. The more firmly committed you are to avoiding stress, the more likely you are to find yourself in this downward spiral. As psychologists Richard Ryan, Veronika Huta, and Edward Deci write in The Exploration of Happiness, “The more directly one aims to maximize pleasure and avoid pain, the more likely one is to produce instead a life bereft of depth, meaning, and community.

We have so little in common, but we were both avid readers growing up. I read almost nonstop when I was little, and it saved me in school. I hated classes, hated teachers. They always wanted me to do things I didn't want to do. But because I was a reader, they knew I wasn't stupid, just different. They cut me slack. It got me through. Reading couldn't help me make friends, though. I never got the hang of it. I would talk to kids, and over the years a handful of them even seemed to like me enough to ask to come over, but after that first visit to the house they never lasted. Ma told me what I did wrong but I could never manage to do it right. 'Act interested in what they say,' she said, but they never said anything interesting. 'Don't talk too much,' she said, but it never seemed like too much to me. So it wasn't like people threw tomatoes at me, or dipped my pigtails in inkwells, or stood up to move their desks away from mine, but I never really managed to make friends that I could keep. And I got used to it. I got used to a lot of things. Writing extra papers to make up for falling short in class participation. Volunteering to do the planning and the typing up whenever we had group work assigned, because I knew I could never really work right with a group. And the coping always worked. Up until three years into college, where despite Ma's repeated demands to try harder, I stalled. Every semester since, I was always still trying to finish that last Oral Communications class, which I had repeatedly failed. This semester I only made it six weeks in before it became obvious I wouldn't pass. I think we'd both finally given up.

Right! You see me as superhuman! That’s some serious pressure.” Amelia laughs a little. “Sometimes it feels good, yeah, that people like how I look and act. But sometimes it’s just so much. I already have a ton of pressure on me from my parents and from myself, so it’s extra hard coming from you. Because we’re equals, me and you. Imperfect equals. And you’ve seen my struggles and you’ve been there right alongside me for the ride. I mean, I was a hot mess when I was trying to figure out if I wanted to have sex with Sid. I couldn’t face my parents over a dinner with my new girlfriend. I sometimes don't have the courage to stick up to people or for myself.” “But those are just normal human things.” “Yeah, exactly! This is my point! You look at me and you see me struggle through things and you root for me regardless, thinking I’m, like, killing it out there in the world, but when it’s you, you don’t cut yourself any slack and you beat yourself up. But I’m a regular person, and so are you,” she says. “And a pretty badass one, too. You’re so good at everything. You get amazing grades and you’re an incredible writer and you’re so smart-sometimes so smart that teachers assume I am, too, just because I’m around you. When I nearly failed my bio test earlier this semester, Mr. O'Donnell told me I should try to be more like you. And you know what? Maybe that’s a shitty thing to say to a student, but I do find myself wishing I could be more like you all the time. Not because I’m inadequate as a person but because humans yearn! Humans want to be better than they are! Humans feel jealous! And I think it’s okay if sometimes I want to be more like you. Who wouldn’t? You’re smart and hilarious and fashionable and fierce and you would do anything for the ones you love. You put up with a lot of shit and you let it light a fire in you and I admire the hell out of that, babe.

For God’s sake, Anders, your pacing is driving me wild,” Leigh said with exasperation. “Sit down.” Anders paused with surprise and turned to peer at the brunette curled up in the corner of the couch with a book in her hands. “I’m not pacing, I’m . . .” She arched her eyebrows, waiting, and he sighed. “Pacing,” he acknowledged and sank onto the nearest chair. He rested his elbows on his spread knees, allowing his hands to dangle between them, and stared out the window. After several minutes, he dropped back in the chair with a heavy sigh, then straightened and asked impatiently, “What the devil is she doing up there?” “She’s checking with her academic advisor to ensure that missing the first two weeks of classes won’t bugger her up for the term,” Leigh reminded him patiently. “Yeah, but that should have been a five-minute conversation. She’s been up there over an hour,” he complained. Valerie had helped clean up the kitchen after breakfast, then had taken Roxy with her and escaped upstairs on the pretext of calling the veterinary college to be sure she was still welcome after missing the first two weeks of the semester. “Yes, well, perhaps whoever she needs to speak to wasn’t available and she’s waiting for a call back,” Leigh suggested. “Or maybe they had work for her to do to keep from falling behind and she’s up their reading her textbooks and studying.” “Or maybe she’s hiding,” Anders said unhappily. Leigh tsked with irritation. “Why would she be hiding?” Anders didn’t respond, but in his mind he was remembering their kiss that morning . . . well, kisses. Or maybe one kiss. He wasn’t sure how to classify it. Did you have to come up for air to classify it as more than one kiss? Or was it counted in minutes or seconds? Because it had been a constant devouring of each other’s mouths for several minutes. “Oh my, yes. I see,” Leigh murmured. Anders glanced up at her murmur and noted her narrowed concentration on him. She’d read his damn mind. “Yes, that might have made her want to hide out,” she said sympathetically. “It wasn’t that long ago when I had my first encounter with life mate passion. It was pretty terrifying. And she didn’t have any idea what was happening. I mean, as an immortal you had heard about it, had some idea of what to expect, and yet you were still overwhelmed by it. Imagine how she must feel. She got hit by a nuclear explosion of passion out of nowhere.” Anders sighed and ran one hand wearily over his closely cropped hair. Leigh wasn’t saying a damned thing he hadn’t already thought of. Which was why he suspected Valerie was hiding out. The question was, how long would she hide? And how was he supposed to get her to know and trust him if she wouldn’t come out of her room?

It’s a perspective on story that may also shed light on why you and I and everyone else spend a couple of hours each day concocting tales that we rarely remember and more rarely share. By day I mean night, and the tales are those we produce during REM sleep. Well over a century since Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, there is still no consensus on why we dream. I read Freud’s book for a junior-year high school class called Hygiene (yes, that’s really what it was called), a somewhat bizarre requirement taught by the school’s gym teachers and sports coaches that focused on first aid and common standards of cleanliness. Lacking material to fill an entire semester, the class was padded by mandatory student presentations on topics deemed loosely relevant. I chose sleep and dreams and probably took it all too seriously, reading Freud and spending after-school hours combing through research literature. The wow moment for me, and for the class too, was the work of Michel Jouvet, who in the late 1950s explored the dream world of cats.32 By impairing part of the cat brain (the locus coeruleus, if you like that sort of thing), Jouvet removed a neural block that ordinarily prevents dream thoughts from stimulating bodily action, resulting in sleeping cats who crouched and arched and hissed and pawed, presumably reacting to imaginary predators and prey. If you didn’t know the animals were asleep, you might think they were practicing a feline kata. More recently, studies on rats using more refined neurological probes have shown that their brain patterns when dreaming so closely match those recorded when awake and learning a new maze that researchers can track the progress of the dreaming rat mind as it retraces its earlier steps.33 When cats and rats dream it surely seems they’re rehearsing behaviors relevant to survival. Our common ancestor with cats and rodents lived some seventy or eighty million years ago, so extrapolating a speculative conclusion across species separated by tens of thousands of millennia comes with ample warning labels. But one can imagine that our language-infused minds may produce dreams for a similar purpose: to provide cognitive and emotional workouts that enhance knowledge and exercise intuition—nocturnal sessions on the flight simulator of story. Perhaps that is why in a typical life span we each spend a solid seven years with eyes closed, body mostly paralyzed, consuming our self-authored tales.34 Intrinsically, though, storytelling is not a solitary medium. Storytelling is our most powerful means for inhabiting other minds. And as a deeply social species, the ability to momentarily move into the mind of another may have been essential to our survival and our dominance. This offers a related design rationale for coding story into the human behavioral repertoire—for identifying, that is, the adaptive utility of our storytelling instinct.

There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things. OLIVIA VANDERGRIFF SNOW IS THIGH-HIGH and the going slow. She plunges through drifts like a pack animal, Olivia Vandergriff, back to the boardinghouse on the edge of campus. Her last session ever of Linear Regression and Time Series Models has finally ended. The carillon on the quad peals five, but this close to the solstice, blackness closes around Olivia like midnight. Breath crusts her upper lip. She sucks it back in, and ice crystals coat her pharynx. The cold drives a metal filament up her nose. She could die out here, for real, five blocks from home. The novelty thrills her. December of senior year. The semester so close to over. She might stumble now, fall face-first, and still roll across the finish line. What’s left? A short-answer exam on survival analysis. Final paper in Intermediate Macroeconomics. Hundred and ten slide IDs in Masterpieces of World Art, her blow-off elective. Ten

Laughing with blood relatives amidst memorable melodies in the background, styrofoam plate in hand, topped with foods that restaurants can’t duplicate, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Staring at an unbelievable sunrise from a balcony villa in Tanzania, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Recognized and awarded for notable news journalism, a few semesters away from achieving a prestigious degree decorated with promised opportunities, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Hoping quietly for the best, to “win my husband over” with traditional submission, more frequent sex, and minimized speech, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Walking down a dusty Egyptian street filled with the welcoming laughter of carefree children, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Sitting in a church pew notating another good message, clapping to some of my favorite songs, and then exiting to talk with familiar faces, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Communing with those who know who the “real chosen” are, beholding their unknown names unmasked, and secret knowledges revealed to ponder incessantly, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Placed underneath the wanting body of a rare man who showed me unprecedented love, it hit me: I don’t belong here. My soul. My mind. My body. Each malnourished. My community. My life purpose. Both misplaced. All starving for home. So, I moved. Not to what looks and feels good for them, but to what

Laughing with blood relatives amidst memorable melodies in the background, styrofoam plate in hand, topped with foods that restaurants can’t duplicate, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Staring at an unbelievable sunrise from a balcony villa in Tanzania, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Recognized and awarded for notable news journalism, a few semesters away from achieving a prestigious degree decorated with promised opportunities, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Hoping quietly for the best, to “win my husband over” with traditional submission, more frequent sex, and minimized speech, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Walking down a dusty Egyptian street filled with the welcoming laughter of carefree children, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Sitting in a church pew notating another good message, clapping to some of my favorite songs, and then exiting to talk with familiar faces, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Communing with those who know who the “real chosen” are, beholding their unknown names unmasked, and secret knowledges revealed to ponder incessantly, it hit me: I don’t belong here. Placed underneath the wanting body of a rare man who showed me unprecedented love, it hit me: I don’t belong here. My soul. My mind. My body. Each malnourished. My community. My life purpose. Both misplaced. All starving for home. So, I moved. Not to what looks and feels good for them, but to what

Aside from hijacking people’s abilities, stereotypes also do damage by making people feel they don’t belong. Many minorities drop out of college and many women drop out of math and science because they just don’t feel they fit in. To find out how this happens, we followed college women through their calculus course. This is often when students decide whether math, or careers involving math, are right for them. Over the semester, we asked the women to report their feelings about math and their sense of belonging in math. For example, when they thought about math, did they feel like a full-fledged member of the math community or did they feel like an outsider; did they feel comfortable or did they feel anxious; did they feel good or bad about their math skills?

Dad’s out and Chico’s in, I’m like, fuck this. And she’s like watch your mouth and show adults respect. I pay the rent here. So I start staying out with my friends and skipping school just ’cause I feel like it and my teachers say, oh yeah, well here’s to your grades plummeting, and then I’m like, so what, and then they say one more semester and it’s over, you’re so out of here, and I’m like shit, no, they’ll send me to school with remedial kids. My little brother Peanut is gloating cause he’s at Bronx Science and thinks he’s the next Steve Jobs. That’s when I hit the books and school again. I cannot, will not, be showed up by Peanut. And that’s when I see the poster about the playwriting contest and Professor Bass, who is too old to be teaching high school but the damn union can’t fire him, says, you could probably write something decent if you weren’t so arrogant. He says half the students in the school don’t deserve to be here. And I roll my eyes and say well what, if you were

Over the course of many years of teaching, I have noticed that there typically seems to be a rash of deaths among students’ relatives at the end of the semester. It happens mostly

In general, poor PFC function leads people to make repetitive mistakes. Their actions are not based on experience, or forethought, but rather on the moment. The moment is what matters. This phrase comes up over and over with my ADD patients. For many people with ADD, forethought is a struggle. It is natural for them to act out what is important to them at the immediate moment, not two moments from now or five moments from now, but now! A person with ADD may be ready for work a few minutes early, but rather than leave the house and be on time or a few minutes early, she may do another couple of things that make her late. Likewise, a person with ADD may be sexually attracted to someone he just met, and even though he is married and his personal goal is to stay married, he may have a sexual encounter that puts his marriage at risk. The moment was what mattered. In the same vein, many people with ADD take what I call a crisis management approach to their lives. Rather than having clearly defined goals and acting in a manner consistent to reach them, they ricochet from crisis to crisis. In school, people with ADD have difficulty with long-term planning. Instead of keeping up as the semester goes along, they focus on the crisis in front of them at the moment—the next test or term paper. At work they are under continual stress. Deadlines loom and tasks go uncompleted. It seems as though there is a need for constant stress in order to get consistent work done. The constant stress, however, takes a physical toll on everyone involved (the person, his or her family, coworkers, employers, friends, etc.).

Black students at a predominantly white university, for example, might be particularly prone to feel that they don’t fit in or belong at that university, especially if they experience an academic setback, as many students do in their first semester. If so, then an intervention designed to redirect their narratives from “I don’t fit in here” to “Everyone experiences bumps in the road” might increase their sense of belonging and improve their academic performance. To find out, researchers conducted a study with black and white first-year students at a predominantly white university. In the treatment condition, the students received statistics and read interviews with upper-class students indicating that most students worry that they don’t belong when they begin college, but that these worries lessen over time. To reinforce this message, the students wrote a speech illustrating how this lesson applied to them; that is, how their own worries about belonging were likely to be temporary. They delivered this speech in front a video camera, ostensibly so that it could be shown to future students at their school. Participants in the control group underwent the same procedure, except that they learned that social and political attitudes change over the course of one’s college career—they heard nothing about changes in one’s sense of belonging. The entire session lasted only an hour. Yet, as with other story-editing interventions, it had dramatic long-term effects on the black students’ performance and well-being. Those who got the message about belonging, relative to those in the control group, believed they fit in better at college, became more engaged in college academically (by studying more, attending more review sessions, and asking more questions in class), and achieved better grades in the rest of their college careers. Not only that, but on a questionnaire they completed right before they graduated, black students who had received the “belonging” intervention reported that they were in better health, had visited a doctor fewer times, and were happier than did black students in the control group. The “belonging” message had no effect on the white students, because most of them already felt that they fit in at their university.22

While we sat at the bar, Dave told me the most important advice about talking to women I had ever received, and that was to be as relaxed as possible and not fear rejection. Dave then began hooking up with some girl who looked like a hybrid of Rosie O’Donnell and Miss Piggy, leaving me alone to ponder his words.” “When I was in 8th grade, there was this girl named Sandra who I used to ride the school bus with. Sandra was about 5’2, 120 lbs, and looked like the Hamburglar. She was the prettiest girl in my class.” “In my mind I was the life of the party and felt as though I could do no wrong when it came to interacting with the opposite sex. That was until Marissa caught me red handed hooking up with some girl who looked like a combination of John Madden and Andre the Giant, tapping me on the shoulder and kicking me square in the nuts.” “I was starting to feel bad about how I treated women. Oh wait, no I wasn’t. The girls at Binghamton were nothing more than a bunch of dumb sluts that just wanted to get drunk and suck dick, and besides, they were all going to make a lot more money than me in the future. So I may as well catch brains while these bitches were dumb enough to blow me.” “Out of all the people I could’ve stumbled into blackout drunk, why did it have to be THE MOOSE? As son as she saw me her 300 lb frame waddled over, and she jammed her tongue down my throat, devouring me as though I were a Big Mac. This was embarrassing. Here I was making out with some girl who looked like Eric Cartman in a dress, and everybody was watching. My life was effectively over.” “After annihilating Ruben’s toilet, I looked over my shoulder for some much-needed toilet paper, when to my shock and dismay there was not a single sheet of paper in sight. There’s no way in hell I was rejoining the party covered in poop and I would have wiped my ass with anything. That’s when I noticed his New York Yankees bath towel.” “I spent the rest of my week off getting completely shitfaced with Chris, and that’s when I realized I might be developing a drinking problem. At Bar None, hooking up with some girl who looked like the Loch Ness Monster; this shit had to stop. Alcohol was turning me into a drunken mess, and I vowed right then and there to quit drinking and start smoking more weed immediately.” “I got a new roommate. His name was Erick and he was an ex-marine. Erick and I didn’t know each other, but he knew Kevin, and he also knew that I didn’t shower and that last semester I left a used condom on the floor for two weeks without throwing it away. Eric therefore did not want to live with me.” “Believe it or not, I got another job working with the disabled. See, Manny was nice enough to hook me up with a position as a job coach at the Lavelle School for the Blind. The kid’s name was Fred and he was blind with cerebral palsy. Fred loved dogs and I loved smoking week. Bad combination, and I was fired with 3 days left in the program after allowing Fred to run across the street into oncoming traffic, because I had smoked a bowl an hour earlier. Manny and I never spoke again.” “My life was a dream and a nightmare rolled into one. Here I was living this carefree existence, getting drunk, boning bitches, and playing Sega Genesis in between. Oh wait, what am I talking about? My life was awesome. It’s the rest of my life that’s going to suck.

Having accepted a graduate fellowship in the Department of Philosophy at Cornell, I duly presented myself to begin studies for a Ph.D. One of our assignments during the first semester was to read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason from cover to cover, along with Norman Kemp Smith's commentary thereon, which was almost as voluminous. Pondering this literature, it did not take me long to conclude that these Kantian ratiocinations, brilliant though they may be, have little to do with that Sophia—that more-than-human Wisdom—of which authentic philosophy, by its very designation, is literally the love. And so, three weeks into the semester, I resigned my fellowship and left Cornell University. "I had always been attracted to the natural world, to forests and mountains especially; and so I resolved to proceed to the great Northwest, henceforth to earn my keep as a lumberjack. No doubt I had an unrealistic and overly romanticized conception of what this entails; but in any case, at that point fate abruptly intervened. I had made my intentions known to my brother, who at the time was studying chemical engineering at Purdue University. He immediately proceeded to the chairman of the physics department to tell him about my case, going so far as to put my letter in his hands. The verdict was instant: 'Tell you brother to present himself in my office Monday morning to assume his duties as a teaching assistant.' It seems the voice of Providence had spoken: despite my very mixed feelings regarding the contemporary academic world, I was destined to pass most of my professional life in its precincts—but not in departments of philosophy!

Thing is, I’ve decided what I’m going to do next. I have to go back to the university, of course. Next semester, I’m cutting back my schedule. I need more freedom. I’m going to transition out, sneak up on retirement. I’m going to get myself one of these!” he exclaimed, smacking the steering wheel. “Mary’s sons are married and have children—they’re great kids, superior stepsons. One lives in Texas, one in Florida. I’m going to put my house on the market and retire by the end of school, just in time to begin traveling. I’m going to see this country one state at a time, and I’m going to drop in on those boys. They both have amazing wives. One has three children, one has two—and even though I’m a stepfather, they call me Papa instead of Grandpa. I’m going to visit them occasionally while I’m traveling, then move on to other sights, then check back in. What do you think of that idea?” Her smile was alive. “It sounds wonderful. You’ll enjoy that. Maybe I’ll even see you now and then in Virgin River.” “Or, you could come along,” he said. “You have all those military boys all over the place. We could check on them, as well. And believe me, once a couple of them get married and have children, the others fall in line. I’ve seen it a million times. As soon as I get an offer on the house—which is a good house and should bring a nice price even in a depressed economy—I’m going to start shopping for a quality RV. I’ve been looking at pictures online. Maureen, you have no idea how high tech these things have become! They now come with expandable sides, two people showers, freezers, big screens in the living room and bedroom, Whirlpool tubs—you name it! How’d you like to have a hot tub on wheels, Maureen?” She looked over at him. He was so excited by his idea, he was actually a little flushed, and she found herself hoping it wasn’t high blood pressure. If the moment ever presented itself, she’d ask about that. But after all his rambling about his future RV, all she could say was, “Come along?” “A perfect solution for both of us,” he said. “We’d have time together, we’d have fun together. We’d see the families, travel…” “George, that’s outrageous. We’ve had a few lunches—” “And we’ll have a few more! We’ll also e-mail, talk on the phone, get together occasionally—in Virgin River, but also in Phoenix and Seattle. We’ll spend the next six months figuring out if we fit as well as it seems we do.” “Long distance? Occasional visits?” she asked doubtfully. “It’ll give you time to look over my accounts to be sure you’re not getting conned out of your retirement.” He laughed at his own joke, slapping his knee. “Of course, with five brawny, overprotective sons you’re relatively safe from a dangerous guy like me.” He glanced at her and his expression was playful. “We’re not young, Maureen. We should be sure we’re attracted to each other and that we get along, but we shouldn’t waste a lot of time. Every day is precious.