Last summer when I received an email from professor Tougaw asking me to join the Honors Seminar I had been tempted to push myself as I never have before. I wasn't going to do it, because in my head I knew I wasn't smart enough, but I have always been intrigued by the subject of Dreams. I spent much of the summer pondering whether I wanted to get myself into what I knew was going to be a lot of work, but in the end I thought "Well, its not going to kill me, so I might as well try." Even now I don't know how I made it through the whole thing, I figured I'd drop out in the beginning like all the others [that dropped out]. Looking back on all the work I've done for this course since August I don't know how I stayed in, but I know why.
I have never worked so hard on an essay as I did on the Honors essay. Usually I just throw something together last minute and the professor, probably drunk at the time, for some reason would give me an A. But this was totally different, there were no grades, and there was no drunken professor grading it. Although my essay still gets revised every once in a while (nothing can be perfect) I have never been as proud of something that I created on paper as I am of "Dreaming and the Psychedelic Experience." For once I really feel that I know what I am talking about.
The blogs have been something else entirely. In the beginning I was really nervous of recreating my dreams in a public forum, I thought everyone would think I was insane. It really helped that the blogs were anonymous, but I was still aprehenisive. As it turns out everyone's dreams are a bit crazy, that is the nature of the dream world. It has been interesting to get the opportunity to look into other peoples dream-mind. I think the blogs functioned as a kind of field-work in our journey into understanding dreams. In the beginning I thought that the blogs were a stupid idea, and totally unneccessary to the course, but now my opinion has changed.
I think we needed the blogs because they weren't published dreams, like Irma's, but our own. The blogs made it possible to put our dream theories to practice!!
Thanks for a great semester everyone!! The classes were insightful and interesting, the trip to MoMA was fun, the Honors Exam was hard and a bit tedious, but the conference was a blast- we got to show it all off!!!
Have a Great summer, and don't stop paying attention to things that go bump in the night!!