It is the time of year that students get antsy in class anticipating the end of the work for the term, Christmas lights go up in my little town, and the holiday music drifts across the radio waves of my little car. As I pulled into the parking lot at Granite State College in Conway Monday night, I found myself singing at-the-top-of-my-lungs, Dan Fogelberg’s song, “Another Auld Lang Syne.” I can remember singing along with this song when I was maybe nine or ten. I was under the impression that it was a romantic holiday song when I was young. After listening to the words again I realized how sad the story was. It is funny how our interpretation of a text can change over time.
I once had a teacher that told me that we look at life through our own “window of experience.” The longer I consider this theory, the more truth I find in it. We have all heard the saying, “Walk a mile in my shoes” but we can never really do that. Our own experience with the world infiltrates all of our perceptions. This is something that my Children’s Literature class at Granite State College discussed in length while examining the texts. We understood we couldn’t go back and see the work as a child would, and that each child may have a different experience with the text. We could agree that there were basic lessons in the stories.
This holiday I have been trying to come up with idea for hand-made, or hand-crafted gifts. I decided on gift baskets…I think…but in honor of the Children’s Literature class and the discoveries we made I decided that it might be fun to do themed baskets. Hopefully these will be something fun for the whole family.
Right after the holiday hubbub is over I am going to the Modern Language Association conference in Seattle, WA. I was fortunate enough to receive a MLA grant to go. This combined with the generosity of Plymouth State University in matching the grant, will allow me to go to the conference. It will be a busy time, but I am looking forward to the intellectual stimulation.
More grading is calling me for the time being. One more week of classes!