So, its true.

I am indeed a great big nerd. I feel much better today, the fog has cleared and I have had a great day--in class. I taught this morning to a bunch of bright young minds who worry about their rents and their boyfriends and their grades. I love them. Then I went to institute where we discussed the beauty and wonder of the creation. And then, I went to rhetoric.

Rhetoric is this wild field where you get to study Language. You know that is my favorite thing, right? Letters that form words, words that form sentences, sentences that create change. Its an amazing process that I find deeply fascinating. How does language act? Did you know that it does? That it can go out into the world and make things happen? That's what I want to study and talk about and read about. Right now, I'm working my way through the first guys that did that in the Western world. Plato, the Sophists, then Aristotle and the Roman dudes, Quintillian and Cicero. My class is the exciting place where we talk and think about how this affects our society and how these ancient philosophers changed the course of history. And where my professor often puts his hands through his hair and says things like "this is blowing my mind!"

In my weak and sick state, I questioned a lot of things. Particularly my place in academia. I've found myself cycling through the necessity of education on a regular basis since I started college. I know I am a better mother. I know I am a better wife. I don't know if I'm a better disciple but I hope that I am. The reality is that this process of learning has grown me in so many ways I didn't anticipate. Ways that are not financially significant or valuable. One of the biggest ways is that I have the language to express the things I have always thought about and wondered. I know who to read to find more language and I know how to interpret it. That skill has given my life so much depth and complexity in a pleasing and delicious way. So, whether or not I need to get a PhD I don't know. But I do know that I am in the right place at the right time and that the answers will come as they always have--right when I need them.