Great Scott! Great thought!

This was posted to the original Asnuma blog on May 4, 2016.

My seven years as an undergraduate are staggering to a close.

In these five years, I've been whittled into a skeleton of a student. My thoughts creak against one another, heavy and hungry. I love this feeling. It is knowledge that I hunger for, and knowledge is what has been shared with open palms. Knowledge is a hand extending towards me with fingers curled around a date, a skull, and a poem. The date taught me Arabic and instilled a love of the Middle East to enrich the boundaries of my world. The skull whispered to me the mysteries of life and human origins, told me stories of evolution and death and the simultaneous tragedies and triumphs of Homo sapiens. And the poem cried out to me, "I am language. You and I are one." This hand has extended toward me and pulled me off of my knees. Great Scott! What memories it has given me!

I began my undergraduate career in 2009 as a sixteen-year-old fresh out of high school. I had dropped out of school following my sophomore year and a string of pitiful grades. I was depressed, stagnant, drawn in shades of black and gray. That year, I was enrolled by my mother (who constantly planted the seed of education in the ruins of her daughter) in US History I with Dr. David Bramhall. It was a revolution and a revelation. Dr. Bramhall conducted his class not as a collection of bald facts and dates, but as an odyssey of the philosophical development of a nation. I was transfixed. I studied the nature of racism, the triumph of social justice movements, the tragedies of genocidal mindsets. I read articles on the South, the North, the divide that grows ever more wearisome in our politics. I analyzed, with great enthusiasm that I had been missing for years, war and peace, pacifism and nationalism. I was alive with the possibilities of a great education. Dr. Bramhall made this possible, and I will be forever grateful for his sagacious ways.

If my mother and Dr. Bramhall planted the seed, the seed sprouted. I grew into anthropology with Dr. Andrea Cooper and felt the beauty of evolution and science for once in my humanities-focused life. I ran with linguistics with Karla Hackman, hacking apart words and drinking from their cores. I sipped tea with literature and Kimberly Williams. I ran. I was an engine churning with questions and half-baked answers. Kimberly, Karla, and Dr. Cooper extended their palms; in their hands were books, miracles, and ideas. There is no greater gift than these things.

By 2011, I had moved onto the school that has breathed life into me, the University of New Mexico. I lived on campus, ran my hands along the trees that grew between the dorms and the main classrooms. I walked among the flowers and plants. I studied film with Alexandra Nakelski. If she only knew how often her class left me weeping for beauty when the reels ground to a close. Cinema is a religion, I learned, and one that I eagerly worship. In that lone film class, I discovered classics and innovations. I learned how to see a cinematographer in a shot, greet an editor with open arms. Cinema learned me. Cinema unwound me, kissed me, held out its palms. And like the professors before her, I knew that, great Scott, I would be forever lost in the thoughts Alexandra presented to me. What a lovely place to be lost in.

I often say that language is the great love of my life. I repeat this because it is true, and I feel it deep within me. My travels through the study of linguistics have been paved by giants: Christopher Adam, Melissa Axelrod, Jill Morford, and William Croft. These men and women have unraveled the mysteries of the mind, then balled the answers into a knot for me to untangle for myself. We share a love for the DNA of life - communication, information, words. I recall sitting in semantics classes, reading typology books with bulging eyes, clinging desperately to Dr. Morford's every word and sign. Great Scott! I am eternally the student in the eye of the master teachers, reflecting their light into my ruins, learning how to live again through knowledge.

Lastly, I am grateful to Dr. George Luger. There are few words for even a linguist to summon in times of light and darkness, but I would be lost without Dr. Luger's wisdom. I found myself in the folds of respect, profound and unending, when I met Dr. Luger. I will always feel that way.

Thank you for this education. You will never know that you truly saved me.

Onward.