Sunday, September 21, 2008

Takin' a spin through the neighborhood the neighbors scream “whatchya talkin' bout?”

I think one major part of my demise in graduate school was the culture shock.

I had spent four years in a Communication program that tended to treat each other as family. The students worked side by side on numerous projects, the instructors were tough but fair and approachable, and in the end you sort of knew who you could rely on for assistance, be it in or out of the classroom. Each of the instructors had their ticks and quirks, true, and we respected them in the classroom, but we also had the chance to see them outside the Communication Building at events or once-a-semester department social functions. That’s when we really got to see what they were like outside a classroom; sometimes it was pretty, sometimes not.

That spirit seemed to be lacking when I went off to graduate school. Granted, I had spent three or four years with these people and was now far away and as new as a Freshman on their first day of college in my role of graduate student and station manager. I knew I wasn’t going to fit in with either students or faculty on my first day. The problem was that it was nearly impossible to want to fit. Sure, the students were the easiest to work with; I was close in age to many of them and could relate to some of what they were going through as far as being college student (grades, graduating, etc.).

The faculty was another matter. Schmoozing has never been my forte and so I may have come off a bit aloof. Still, I did try to meet everyone and assist whenever it might be needed (such as proctoring a test or assisting a professor in the classroom). But it was hard to want to work with some of these people. Like Dr. Goliard, who would call you aside just to tell you he was busy and couldn’t talk to you about your degree plan but then would sit in his office with the lights off. Or Mrs. Shelly Yarbrough, the radio station faculty advisor, who dismissed my write-up of the student who mouthed EBS tones instead of running an EAS test because the student “plays such good music.” Or Theodore Siamun, the kindly but tired department head, who I perceived as ready to retire at the drop of a hat. Yes, maybe if I stuck around longer than a year I would have gotten to know these people better. Perhaps I would have figured out how to overcome their oddities and allow them to see me excel.

Another problem I had was the excess baggage from my undergrad years. In four years I had built myself up to be a respectable and trusted member of the radio station staff and through this trust was named Program Director for my final semester. I also had gotten to be pretty good at editing (both analog tape and digitally) and I thought I might be able to apply some of this talent in my role as station manager.

Wrong. I knew going in to this role that I would be on the opposite side of the chasm than I had been the previous school year. Students would still be running the station and doing all the things I had done, but now it would be me standing stand back to monitor and guide them along the path. I didn’t get a regularly scheduled news or music shift; I sat in an office and worked at the public file or coordinating event with the school or public. I didn’t get to go out on remotes and make wry observations about the people I saw; I taxied the equipment from my office to the remote site and made sure the students didn’t have any problems. I didn’t have office hours to sit in room and listen to new music; I had office hours to read and formulate thesis topics that would be of interest to graduate instructors that seemed cold and disinterested in everything else I did.

The whole town of Allaphellan seemed cold and distant or just plain bizarre for my own liking, too. It was smaller in population than where I was as an undergraduate, but yet students stayed in town for the weekend. And what was there to do? Driving around there were a number of strange sights to behold: the phallic-shaped Veterans monument across the street from the courthouse; an old Rock Fort that had been a mercantile, hostel, church, jail, speakeasy, trading post, post office, and now some sort of museum; and a bulbous water tower you could see from campus with a series of strange blinking lights on its top and statue of Omphale at its base. And that’s not even taking in the campus itself. Plus who could forget that high school rock band that was all the rage that year...ugh.

This town was a strange place and I was all but glad to fly away after the school year was completed.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Last Stop: This Town
(Eels/Michael Simpson)
Eels
From the album Electro-Shock Blues
1998

You're dead, but the world keeps spinning
Take a spin through the world you left
It's getting dark a little too early
Are you missing the dearly bereft?

Take a flight
and you could be here tomomorrow
Take a flight,
well, you could get here tonight

I'm gonna fly on down for the
last stop to this town
What?
I'm gonna fly on down and fly away, well alright

Get down

Takin' a spin through the neighborhood
The neighbors scream
Whatchya talkin' bout?
'Cause they don't know how to
let you in
And I can't let you out

What if I was not your only friend
in this world
Can you take me where you're going
if you're never coming back

I'm gonna fly on down for the
last stop to this town
i'm gonna fly on down then
fly away on my way

Get down

Why don't we take a ride away up high
through the neighborhood
Up over the billboards and the factories
and smoke

i'm gonna fly on down for the
last stop to this town
Yeah
i'm gonna fly on down then
fly away on my way
Fly away
Get down