The thing is that I think I hated math and science so much when I went to traditional public high school ( and middle school, and elementary school) because it really didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything. I didn’t care about the big biological terms in the textbook, or the pages and pages of numbers and signs. I didn’t want to memorize these things so that I could spit them out later on a test and then never think about them again. It just seemed so very very pointless.

Evergreen, on the other hand, is very good at making things relevant. Last summer I took a class called Plant Medicine Traditions, and this foray into the world of botanicals and biology was so much FUN! Everything I learned about plants was from the days we spent at local farms, nature centers, and the Evergreen teaching gardens (which are all over campus). We drew pictures, talked about the spirituality surrounding plants, and learned how to make medicinal preperations. It was wonderful. Not only did I learn so much about “science” but I put it to real live use, right away!

With this experience in mind, I am excited for the remainder of credits I have left. This is especially true of math, which I know will take on a profoundly deeper meaning to me when I learn in class this summer about the ways that children understand and process numbers, and what the logic underneath mathematical functions is all about. Because of all the opportunity I have to actually work in an elementary school setting, I will probably get to see this in real live action also. Hopefully if I maintain this enthusiasm than children learning math with me will maintain it too..maybe this is the beginning of changing the world forever and making math and science supremely UN-scary things…(!)

I think its such an Oly-esque exprience to see Arts Walk for yourself – beyond the children and dancing and animals that take the mainstage during Procession, there are all those little on the side things that just kind of happen-that cute happy feeling you get clapping and stomping around to the impromptu show down at the Well, the kind of spur of the moment dance party late at night that takes over the downtown streets. That adorable eccentric community-loving community doesn’t exist just anywhere.

Similarly, its easy to get used to the way you can walk through the back of the parking lot into a magic rainforest land with huge pretty trees and babbling creeks and treehouses and teepees and other such fun found objects hidden in the forestry. Bringing my friend down to the beach through the forest path really reminded my how crazy it is that all this is right in my back yard.

The thing about Olympia is, sometimes I’m just overwhelmed by how much I love it. The industrial pockets by the port and the Farmers Market even when it isn’t open- all the sleepy coffee meetings through big glass windows walked by mid-morning-and the antique stores and certain big intersections I love where the Dash drives through-
and the little punk children, the overgrown Greener townsfolk, the old ladies with hemp hats and the teenagers that are Alternative.

All I am doing right now is planning my big grown-up life in the big wide world,

But I realize that if i really do leave Olympia,
I really will miss it

The Procession has a studio that is open to any of the public that wishes to design some sort of Species-wear; they have batik and wing-making and paper mache and huge float-like constructions of things. This studio is in a little door with colorful banners all around it that one finds in an alley-way downtown. There are animals all around and constant music to match. This sounds a little make-believe and though I’ve been there many times I think it kind of is.

So I went to the Procession Studio and made a whale shaped hat (picture Free Willy all about my ears) that I painted purple and put a glittery Prince symbol upon. All the supplies to do this, mind you, were free and accessible and ridiculously fun. This part mostly because I was doing my whole project in the Children’s Room with a mass of semi-supervised six-year-olds.  And OMG My hat is so very very beautiful.

I brought this hat to Darby’s to show it off to my friends that work there. And as I was blathering about my purple-painting experience, who shall I see at a table but this man I am semi-certain is a Prince impersonator. Now my certainty is only semi because I have never seen him in the act nor dress-however, once many moons ago he scootered by in very tight white jeans and my friend Ben hissed in my ear “THAT GUY IS A PRINCE IMPERSONATOR!” And this guy has got the ‘tude, and the coif, to make it happen. So I am somewhat convinced. But I would like to know for sure. If there is a Prince impersonator that lives and loves in Olympia Washington I most certainly need to know about it. And when I saw this fateful man on this fateful day at Darby’s Cafe, do you think he noticed my Artist-Tribute Whale hat? Do you think he understood that we are meant to be cosmically connected?! I’m not sure. But hopefully I will come upon him at the Procession next weekend and these answers shall become more apparent. Even if I have to, like, force it.

Evening and Weekend Studies at Evergreen are helpful in this way because they are set up in a more traditional style, with a focused subject and smaller credit offering. I am taking two four-credit courses, Abnormal Psychology and Art: Process and Theory. There are also 8 and 12 credit Evening and Weekend options that offer a more interdisciplinary approach. The one I am enrolled in, Reproduction, Birth, and Power is a unique class of which there has never been anything quite like before at Evergreen. It is absolutely amazing. And, on top of both these options, we have Extended Education classes, which are leisure education classes open to the community. Sometimes these classes can be taken for Evergreen credit, as with the 2-credit class I am in, Rendering the Figure.

On top of all of this, I am helping with the partnership the Gateways program has for the first time working with girls, I am still working at the Elementary School and The Evergreen Admissions Office, I still aspire to be an accomplished banjo player and garden grower. Its all a little overwhelming. But, so is graduating college. And strangely enough, I have nearly made it!

I’m done with the Gateways program, at least for enrollment’s sake, and this is pretty crazy. We spent a large portion of the final week presenting the individual research projects we had been working on all quarter, and this was so interesting! I was amazed at the different directions my classmates went in- from public schooling and criticisms of the nation’s education system, to mental health and ablism/extraordinary individuals, to hip hop and theater…it was all very exciting and thought provoking, especially in seeing how it all tied back to the political economy and popular education that make up the foundations of our class.

My project was working on a film with three of my classmates, and showing the rough draft 35 minutes we had at quarter’s end was very gratifying experience, after the hours and hours of footage we went through and numerous interviews and taped round table discussions we set up. The project was meant to document what the Gateways program is, how it was developed, and how other organizations in our community are doing similar work all in vision of a greater movement of prisoner advocacy and social change. We interviewed Books to Prisoners and the Birth Attendants, which both do prisoner advocacy work in Olympia. We also interviewed past and present Gateways staff and participants, including a number of the guys at Green Hill.

The founder of the Gateways program, dreamer and schemer Carol Minugh, gave an interview that was very inspirational in re framing what the work we do is, and the reasons for doing it. I get chills whenever her voice comes on. I am sad to be done with the class, by excited for what I experienced while doing it, and for all the ways in which this amazing program can continue to grow and develop. And, I’m not completely leaving- I will be working next quarter to help the growth of a new partnership we have with a facility working with GIRLS.

Anyway. Its spring break. I’m going to try really hard to not think of school at all for the next seven days, and concentrate solely on working full time at Y-Care for conference week. After all, Pretty Pretty Princess takes some pretty heavy concentration.