I have visited 14 colleges in the last ten days, acting as cicerone for my son and his friend as they begin their college search. Some I have been to before, some were new to me. I found my mind wandering as the admissions people described the academic approaches of the particular school and after a while all of the residential options sounded the same to me. I focused instead on architecture -- trying to articulate to myself the differences between gothic, Beaux Artes, high Victorian, New England stone and New England brick.
But there was one constant. Every chance I got I picked up a course catalog and flipped to the English department. I mostly skipped through the intro courses to get to the meat of it. OK -- show me what you got. A seminar on feminism in the Harlem Renaissance, another on women in Faulkner, another on Updike, Cheever and Roth. I felt my heart beating faster, I could see the pile of clean, fresh books I'd need to buy, I could anticipate the useless notes I would take during class and wanted to know what secrets the professors would unfold for me.
I started to plan out curriculum in my mind. I considered the order in which I'd take classes. But there were too many. I'd never had time to take them all in just four years.
I experience all over again my disbelief and joy when I realized I could get a degree just for reading books. And I'm so glad that it looks like you can still do that.
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