Colorado is not like Arkansas. In Colorado, if you use an elevator and you clearly don't need to, people stare at you. Mean, cold stares that lead to mean, cold stairs.

Grad school is busy busy busy. I'm in the middle of midterms.

More later, someday. Maybe after I get this degree.

During my Research Methods class the other day, I sat in my place in the circle we form with our desks, one of fourteen students discussing the ways in which we can learn to ask better questions.

In the stunning poem "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot, the speaker laments that he has been only a minor player in his own life:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I've been thinking of this poem frequently because of the feelings I get when I'm in class, sitting in my place in the circle as in Research Methods. The seating arrangements in all of my classes, actually, places each of us as equals. No single person in Prince Hamlet. (As a matter of fact, we seem to trade off being the Fool.)

I don't know that J. Alfred Prufrock has anything to be upset about. I catch myself looking at my fellow students and thinking of them as props in my, Karyn's, education. From their perspective, I am probably a prop.

This attitude isn't right. Human beings aren't props, regardless of how little I know them. Every person in the circle probably has a mother who proudly says, "My child is studying literature at CSU!" After class, every person goes someplace and experiences a day that is no less real than my day.

Pretty much I just want to love people. What a shame that I see these particular people only for a couple of hours a week, that we all judge each other based on small, forced comments we make during classes.