First week of classes…

Couldn’t resist going home for the holiday. Because, well, my mom’s barbecue and potato salad. And family. ‘Nuff said.

We celebrated Zella’s birthday and while we showered her with love and gifts, I showered everyone else with my journey in Boston so far. (A journey that started with thousands of steps and led to me thinking I had a meniscus tear in my left knee. But an X-ray said otherwise.) In two weeks time, my lower back pain is no longer. Progress!

The fear of missing out is still strong though. When a full course load is 4 classes, I’ve selected nine–yep, still working on the no aspect of my self. But c’mon, there’s an actual class on speechwriting, other classes that will take you to Belize to do research and Milan to study urban ethnographies. Who can say no? I mean really? But I have gotten it down to a class on power, that considers theories of power in America and how to measure and use these theories to understand political choices. Another class that examines the strategic challenges of reckoning with history–one that offers frameworks that help diagnose “living history” to understand how groups (choose to) remember the past. An MIT course that focuses on writing short stories, another one that thinks about writing through the lens of science, and get this–a playwriting course taught by Phillip Howze. In our first class, we spent a portion of time just looking at one another, saying nothing, after which Howze said: “It feels good to be seen.” The universe is practically screaming at me like Laurence Fishburne in “School Daze” … to hear what I was too busy to hear. But I’m getting it, letting it sink in.

As Nieman alumna Jenee’ Osterheldt of the “Boston Globe” told us at the start of this adventure: “The thing is not to find balance. It’s a farce. It’s about finding harmony.”

So here’s to finally finding harmony. Maybe I can get the number of classes down to six…take more walks along the river. Who knows? In the meantime, folks are dropping gems everywhere. Case in point, Anthony Abraham Jack, Boston University professor and author of “Class Dismissed,” spoke at the Harvard Bookstore and my head was nodding so much, I looked like a bobblehead. He said, “I’ve never been seeking status, but stability,” when referring to his trajectory from elite campus to career. Amen, brother. I hope to sit down with him at some point to talk inequality on college campuses. Next week, I get to talk with Pushcart/Kirkus Prize winning poet/writer Saeed Jones. Things are shaping up nicely.

Anywho, I’m gonna run–things to read, assignments to ponder and write.

I’ll start making my check-in calls soon once I get a routine in place.

Until then, all the best.

Fun fact: Apparently there are wild turkeys walking around Cambridge. Photos have been captured–them, not so much.