Vacation for Sweet Saturday Sample

My husband has managed to wrangle a vacation out of his slave-driving place of work (for which we are eternally grateful in this economy). We're escaping Arizona for the least expensive hotel we could find near the ocean. The Pacific, the ocean that saw me grow up! I will get back to all of you on Sweet Saturday when I get back (which will be far too soon).

Here's a sample from a WIP, about a self-centered young lady who grew up in California, went to college in Rhode Island, and has a really special sister. I don't know if this is going to come to a conclusion soon, or if it will become a novella or an accidental novel. Most of it is as sweet as can be, but there is one disturbing image, which could push the whole thing to PG-13.

Here, Emily, the narrator, meets her love interest for the first time.

* * * 

I was leaving a final paper in my professor’s department mail box on the last day of December reading period when I saw one of the graduate students pinning up a flier with a picture of mounds of dirt and happy people smiling amid the muck.

“Hey, what’s that?” I said even as he was turning to leave, a stack of papers crammed into his backpack.

“What’s what?” he replied, wearily.

“That.” I pointed, as if I couldn’t go up and read it myself. It was my right as an undergrad to be taught by these people.

He put his arm against the wall to balance the weight of his backpack as well as underline what the flier said. “Field Studies in Africa. Make the most of your summer. Study archaeology in the field with respected experts while earning course credit!”

“Ooh,” I said, mirroring his half-sarcastic tone. He looked familiar. “Hey, didn’t you TA one of the archaeology classes?”

“Intro to Prehistory, section 4, and Field Arch, section 5.”

I looked into his exhausted green eyes and wanted to drown. I hadn’t taken either of those courses myself, but if I’d known he was the TA, I would’ve signed up.

“Are you going to do the field study?” I asked.

He nodded with as little effort as possible. “Herding all the undergrads, probably getting Professor Marsden his coffee.”

“See you next semester,” I called to him as he trudged away down the hall. No one else was in the room, so I took the tacks out of the flier and folded it carefully into my own backpack.

I hauled my bag downstairs from my dorm room all by myself. As I waited for the taxi to the airport, I clutched the folded flier with gloved fingers. It started the way he’d said:

Field Studies in Africa. Make the most of your summer. Study archaeology in the field with respected experts while earning course credit.

The Middle Awash of Ethiopia is the most persistently occupied place on Earth. Join some of the most important scholars in a unique field study where you can make a real contribution to the newest science being done right now. The fossils are eroding right out of the ground. You could discover an important six-million-year-old specimen yourself!

The photographic collage, arranged around the dustily happy people digging in the ground that had caught my eye at first, showed carefully reconstructed skeletons of Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus, and Homo erectus as well as a scenic view of what, strangely, looked to be Victoria Falls, and for good measure a tribesman of the Afar Desert complete with red, black and white woven clothing and Adidas sneakers.

* * *  

Thanks for taking a look. Let me know what you think. I appreciate all constructive comments, so very much!

Book Club Selection

Great news! Tree/House is the official March 2011 selection for the Secret Society of Literary Divas Monthly Book Club of St. Helens, Oregon. Congratulations, ladies! I hope you enjoy it!

Oddly enough, I completed a large amount of the first draft of Tree/House in St. Helens, OR.

It will be my pleasure to come to any book club group who so desires in order to talk about any aspect of the book. I only require transportation and lodging.

If your book club or classroom is interested in Tree/House, please comment here to get information on discounts and free bookmarks.

And don't forget, it's an economical Kindle single! Also available for Nook at bn.com.

Coming soon: a discussion-starting guide to Tree/House.

Learning in College

A recent article from the AP, "Student tracking finds limited learning in college," reported on a study of university-level learning. The findings ranged all over, but focused on a potentially depressing trend in college students to just not try very hard. Because of this general lack of effort, they didn't learn a whole lot while attending these universally expensive institutions.

Failing to learn anything in college is a terrible waste of time, money, and a spot in a university program. But the only reason the study found trends is that learning is a personal effort. My anecdotal evidence is that there are not a lot of people willing to work hard for any reason, much less for something so intangible as the ability to think critically. The anecdote is supported by two of the findings cited in the article:

• Students who studied alone, read and wrote more, attended more selective schools and majored in traditional arts and sciences majors posted greater learning gains.

• Social engagement generally does not help student performance. Students who spent more time studying with peers showed diminishing growth and students who spent more time in the Greek system had decreased rates of learning, while activities such as working off campus, participating in campus clubs and volunteering did not impact learning.

In plain English: nerds do better. They do better because they have a personal commitment to making the effort to learn. The commitment makes them prioritize learning, thinking, and growing intellectually over all the cited social activities. It makes them read and write more than others, and for that reason many of them can attend more selective schools. 

I was a nerd throughout my schooling, but I never realized it at the time, because my priority was to learn and to get everything I could out of my educational opportunities. I had a few friends with the same priorities as me, and I didn't care what anyone else was doing. I never compared myself, negatively or positively, with the "popular" kids, because they obviously didn't have the core value of love of learning that I had. There was no basis for comparison. 

Whether nerds' personal commitment to learning comes from within or from something environmental is up for debate. I would suggest that, if the government is concerned with producing more smart people, someone should look into what makes those "nerds," who put out the effort to learn, want to do so. Because when it comes to learning, wanting it badly enough to work for it is the only secret.