Inspiration Saturday: Fantasy Registration 2013

Where's the line between nostalgia and masochism?  Because I just can't help but look at the course catalogue for Sarah Lawrence College around this time each year, even though I know very well that I have used up my punch card for the number of times I can take the list of every interesting class and cross-reference it with the schedule and come up with a shortlist for interviews.  And yet I still make the list.

Here's my list this year.  It isn't complete, because I knew I was creating it for this blog rather than for an upcoming academic year (hey, it's shorter than last year!), but it's sprinkled with all of the fascinating subjects that make me long for independent wealth and limitless time:

• Abbreviated Wisdom: How the Short Story Works
• 18th-Century Women of Letters
• Workshop in Photoethnographies
• Women, Culture, and Politics in US History
• Picturing Nature
• Gender and Nationalisms
• Lineages of Utopia
• The Source of Stories: Writing From Your Own Experience, Mixed-Genre Workshop
• Writing, Radio, and Aurality
• Nonfiction Workshop: Recollected in Commotion
• Essay Workshop
• Media Sketchbooks
• Artist Books

I think the class which is torturing my particularly is Writing, Radio, and Aurality.  I've become quite the NPR nerd over the past few years, and I would love to do some writing specifically with spoken performance in mind.  I did a reading or two of my fiction while in college, but I suspect like most writers I've tended to think of my words as being read far more than being heard.  Also, the instructor is Sally Herships, and I've heard her reporting on NPR numerous times.  Including Marketplace, which means she could know Kai Ryssdal.  I want to know Kai Ryssdal.  I would squee like a giddy schoolgirl if I met Kai Ryssdal.

But I'm not a schoolgirl anymore.  That doesn't mean I can't be giddy, though.  So rather than let this list make me sad for all of the round table discussions that I won't be having, I'm going to take it as a guideline for a little self-study.  Because there are no rules against teaching yourself.  I'll just channel all of this energy into the 400+ pages I have left of Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom', and planning my writing for this year's NaNoWriMo efforts.

See, I managed to pull the inspiration out of that in the end, right?  For more inspiration, go to Alicia's new and improved Woolen Diversions.