Lin Christie

That’s right, kids. College has ruined my life. Not in an overt, out in the open way. More in a sneaky gotcha and I ain’t letting you go way. Don’t believe me? Pull up a chair and allow me to elucidate.

There. That’s a prime example. Elucidate. I could have just said explain. But no. I had to use the fancy $3 word. Why? Because I paid good money for my education, and dammit! I’m going to use it! That vocabulary cost me upwards of $10K! And while I know that doesn’t seem like much when compared to today’s ludicrous price tag for four years at a state institution of higher learning, it was a hefty amount when my salary was $8K annually.

Aaaand I did it again. Ludicrous. As in ridiculous, foolish. Not as in the rapper.

But I digress.

I haven’t been in a college classroom in—well, let’s just say more years than many of you have been alive—and in spite of that, college is continuing to ruin my life. My vocabulary is colossal and I feel compelled to use it at every opportunity. I chase every stray thought that blips into my mind down the internet rabbit hole. At this point in my life, I should be forgetting more than I know. And I probably have.

Until bedtime.

At bedtime, my mind will find one little idea. One little fact. One little something that I didn’t think of in the daylight. And it’s like the green flag dropped on a NASCAR racetrack and now we’re pedal to the metal. The synapses are firing at breathtaking speed and they won’t stop until they’ve circled the track the full 500 miles.

For example, while drifting back to sleep after a late-night stroll to the bathroom (don’t laugh. Your bladder will be old one day, too.), I found myself thinking back on my early college days. I was a happy little theater major, living a happy little life, going to class during the day—though never too early—and attending rehearsal all evening. We followed play practice with our customary rendezvous at Denny’s for coffee and pancakes, which lasted until midnight or later most nights. Which is why I never had early morning classes. Denny’s with my cast mates was more important than College Algebra any day of the week.

Yep. I took a mental ramble through the classes of my junior college years. Government and General Physical Science. English Composition and Literature.  History of Costume and Ballet for Drama Majors. Vocal Lessons for Drama Majors.

And suddenly, I was in that classroom on the day my vocal coach broke it to me that, yes, I was going to have to take part in the recital at the end of the semester and that she had selected the pieces I would be singing. Would I be gracing the audience with “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music? Or maybe “I’m Just a Girl Who Cain’t Say No” from Oklahoma. Or the hysterical “Adelaide’s Lament” from Guys and Dolls, complete with Brooklyn accent. Oh, tell me tell me TELL ME which showstopper I’ll be singing!

“Bali Ha’i.”

The sound of the crickets chirping in my head could not begin to drown out my disappointment.

“And—”

Oh! The second song must be my show stopper!

The words that next came out of my coach’s mouth were in a language I do not speak. I recognized them as German, but was absolutely clueless as to their meaning. When I protested, asking why I needed to sing anything that wasn’t from a musical, she told me that was just how it is. I needed to sing something in either German or French, or maybe Italian. All music majors studied either German or French, she informed me.

As my memory flitted on the merest mention of German and French, my mind stomped on the breaks and spun out in a whole new foreign language-adjacent recollection. After the loss of my younger brother, I was a bit at sea, bobbing around in an ocean of emotion. Theater no longer seemed like a significant enough major, so I began exploring other fields of study. I spent an entire year exploring the idea of being an artist and, to that end, took many classes in the field. For one semester, I considered changing my major to history and took upper-level classes in that field. I fleetingly considered science, but I didn’t math well enough to make that work. When time came for me to really pin down my major, Art was one of the possibilities that really spoke to me. More specifically, I decided that if I went down that path, I would specialize in Museum Studies, with a view to working as a museum curator.

As I prepared to enroll at the University of Central Oklahoma, I pulled the degree sheets for Oral Communications Education and Museum Studies. Oral Comm was much as you might expect: classes in Debate, Directing for the Stage, Methods of Teaching classes, as well as the practicums. Museum Studies included such things as Renaissance Art History, Business for Museum Studies Majors, Grant Writing for the Arts. And two years of either French or German.

I lay in my bed, playing all of these memories in my head. My singular focus was: Huh. The study of either French or German must be a holdover from the days of classical art education.

But why French and German? Why not Italian? And that’s when it hit me. Two different language families. If you read French, learning Italian is probably easier. German buys you entrée into the history of Flemish, Dutch, and other northern European art.

But why French and German specifically?

The answer slapped me in the head. History. War. The pillaging and removal of Europe’s great works of art from their homelands to Paris by Napoleon and to Berlin by Hitler.

So that is why I’m up at 5:30 in the morning writing this blog entry. College has provided me with enough rabbit holes and goose chases to keep me from sleeping for the next 50 years.

But it’s also made me one helluva trivia player.