Application Status: All Graduation requirements have been met, the degree has been awarded.

… aaannnd exhale.



Ever since I picked up my (empty) diploma folder at the UALR commencement ceremony three weeks ago, I’ve had this nagging worry that maybe I hadn’t completed all of the hours I needed to graduate. This anxiety led me to check the status of my graduation application daily. Up until today, the status has been “pending.” I just knew that because I’d told everyone I was graduating and had my family sit through a two hour commencement exercise, I would be informed that some obscure thing had been overlooked:

“Uh oh, looks like you’re shy three credit hours. Didn’t your faculty advisor tell you about our new  Underwater Basket Weaving requirement? No? Oh, it’s a wonderful course – exposing students to artistic design, wicker, snorkels…”

“Is it a companion course to Seminars in Career Perspectives?”

Today I got the news that I am, indeed, a college graduate. In a few weeks I will get notification that I can come back to campus to pick up my diploma. (Somehow the thousands of dollars I’ve spent on “student fees” don’t cover a manila envelope and postage.)

Having already taken eighty hours in the ‘70s, I embarked on completing my college education in 2007. I didn’t know that was what I was doing; the original plan was to just take a few writing courses. The thing is, you have to meet with a faculty advisor before you are allowed to register for classes every term and these advisors treated me like a real student. I was enjoying the classes and, I admit, the validation so I decided to go ahead and finish. My kids were grown and I got a tuition discount so, why not?

Five years and sixty-two credit hours later, I got my Bachelor of Arts in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. My GPA for those sixty-two hours was a 3.9, but unfortunately the courses I took during the “lost” years of the ‘70s dragged that grade point down too low to graduate with honors. It’s amazing what sobriety maturity can do for one’s work ethic.

My time at UALR was a rewarding experience, one of learning and self-discovery interlaced with regular doses of mortification. I could count on two, maybe three fingers the number of professors that were older than me. I remembered my Speech teacher from when his T-ball team played my son’s.

Friends ask me how I feel now that I’m finished and I tell them, “Semi-retired.” I sleep through the night again because I’m no longer awake worrying about completing an assignment. All I have to do is go to my job and then my time is all my own. I can read what I want without highlighters and sticky notes and not retain a damn thing. I can work in the yard and cross stitch without the guilt of neglecting my studies.

All in all, I’m glad I went back and got my Bachelors, but I’m ecstatic that it’s over.

Arkansas' "Mud"

I finally saw "Mud," the film written and directed by Arkansan Jeff Nichols (pictured with Matthew McConaughey).  The movie is also set and filmed in Arkansas, specifically on the White River and in and around Dewitt, Dumas, and Stuttgart.  As in his previous movies, "Shotgun Stories" and "Take Shelter," Nichols writes and films true to location and character.  The movie may have been a little too true-to-life for some in the way that some scenes did not lead to a big dramatic effect on the overall story.  For example, when Neckbone's uncle, played by Michael Shannon, spies on the boys on the island with Mud, one would expect something to come of it, be it sinister or simply a loud confrontation with Neckbone.  What Nichols gives us however is a quiet exposition of the type of relationship the uncle and nephew have.  I doubt a lesser actor than Shannon could have pulled off the subtlety needed to portray that character.  The same can be said of Ray McKinnon as Ellis' father.  The only adults in the movie that were not fully fleshed out were the bad guys.

Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland, as the 14 year olds Ellis and Neckbone, respectively, were the central characters and turned in outstanding performances.  No doubt due to their own acting abilities guided and honed by Nichols.

I saw Nichols' previous two movies on DVD at home.  I saw "Mud" at a Saturday matinee in a North Little Rock theater five weeks after its opening.  The theater was packed.  I cannot remember the last time I encountered so much audience participation at a movie.  It was impossible not to laugh along with everyone after practically every line out of Neckbone's mouth.  We moaned in unison out of sympathy or distress.  On the screen, it was apparent this was an Arkansas film but not any more so than it was apparent in that audience.  We Arkies love our creative artists and are as proud of them as we are our own children in their class plays and dance recitals.