University Years

By the time I transferred to California State University at Chico, our grocery budget had gone up to $40 per week.  $10 of that was for my commute.  It was a 90-minute drive to Chico from Olivehurst, where I lived.  I managed to schedule all my necessary classes on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule.  On the other five days of the week, I worked full time as an auditor at Target.  Despite my hard work, I still had nothing to show for it.

I couldn’t express that to anyone, that feeling of having nothing.  We had a decent house and we had bought me a brand new car.  They didn’t understand that Dave had bought the car for himself.  They also didn’t understand that the only reason he supported my continued education was that I wanted to be a teacher and that fit with his ideas of the perfect virtuous wife.  I could be home when the kids got out of school.

Speaking of kids… Along with the budget that Dave kept on that notepad in his shirt pocket were dates that we would be ready to do certain things.  There were several items on the list, but the only one I can remember now is the date that he’d decided that we would conceive our first child.  Yes, conceive.  Not start trying.  I’m not sure how he was so certain we’d get pregnant on that date, but I do remember that it was to be in October of 1998.

University life was like entering the land of Oz.  My life went from simple grayscale to vibrant technicolor.  Since my classes were now more specialized in being a teacher, I was passionate about them.  I considered my school days my days off.  I got to be who I wanted to be.  I could be smart and funny and creative, and my teachers and classmates only knew that about me.  I was Jenna, not “Dave’s wife.”

My second semester, I took a class in the humanities.  We studied literature, art, music, and religion from the Mesopotamian era to the Medieval period.  That class lit me on fire.  Among our first assignments, we were asked to compare some of the ancient myths of Mesopotamia and Egypt to some of the stories in the bible.  Referencing the bible was something I could do, so I generally knew what stories he referred to, and I always had something to contribute to the discussion.

Two things happened.  First, because I had so much to contribute to the discussions, my teacher was constantly telling me that my contributions were excellent.  As you may recall, praise was what made me feel loved.  I felt valuable.

The second thing that happened was that I began to question.  In comparing ancient stories against biblical stories, I began to see how ancient Judaism evolved from earlier beliefs.  I began to consider the possibility that the bible was not the absolute, literal word of God.  I began to get angry.

One day, I was walking through campus, and I saw my humanities professor walking at a distance.  He threw his arms up and said, “There’s my favorite student!”  I was stunned but also thrilled.  I loved his class, and it felt good to know that my input was appreciated.

The next year, I enrolled in the second section of Humanities.  I made sure to get the same professor.  We studied the Renaissance to the present day.  Because his classes were primarily women going for elementary education credentials, he put a feminist spin on the curriculum.  As we studied each time period and the various media of the time, he always had us looking at the portrayal of women vs the portrayal of men.  I wish I could remember the author and work that explained that men are made perfect and women are made imperfect.   It is through sex with her husband that a woman becomes perfect.

I noticed the difference in the panels on the Sistine Chapel ceiling depicting the creation of Adam and the one depicting the Creation of Eve.  In the Creation of Adam, Adam lounges under a tree as God and the Angels strain to reach out to touch him to bring him life.  The panel is approximately 9 ft by 18 ft.  The Creation of Eve, on the other hand, depicts a frowning God looking down on a cowering Eve as if he’s reconsidering the creation of this creature.  Eve’s panel is less than half the size of Adam’s.

Throughout our lessons, I began to see the ways in which women have been oppressed throughout history and the role that Christianity played in that.  I got angrier as we went along, and began to feel resentful of the life I’d carved out for myself.  I’d married at 18 with the naive belief that that was what God wanted for me, and that by doing the right thing, God would bless me with a happy life.  I wasn’t happy, except when I was at school.  And to be honest, part of that happiness was an intense infatuation with my Humanities Professor.

He had become a friend to me.  I had a long break in the afternoons in which I’d sit under an old oak tree and study or nap.  He’d often walk pasts me and squat down to chat with me for a few moments.  My heart began to race when I’d see him whether it was in class or outside of class.  Sometimes I’d see him walking home as I headed out.  I’d offer him a ride, and he always took it.

The next semester, due to be my last semester, there were no more classes for me to take with Humanities Professor.  I did, however, have a class upstairs from his office, so I walked past his office every day on my way out of that class.  Sometimes he’d see me walking by and say hi, and we’d chat for a few minutes or more.   I had begun writing poetry to deal with my feelings of depression and anger.  I began bringing him my poetry, and he encouraged me to submit some of it to the University Poetry Journal.  They published one of them.  One of my poems got published in the local News & Review.

I had so many feelings that I didn’t understand.  I didn’t understand why I was so attracted to Humanities Professor.  I didn’t understand why God hadn’t made me happy in my marriage.  I began to feel like I was damaged.

I could have graduated that semester, but I found out that Humanities Professor was going to be teaching a new course in the fall.  I made excuses to go one more semester so I could enroll in Religions in Literature.

At home, Dave resented my study time.  He’d constantly complain that my reading took time away from us.  I began to hide out in my “sewing room.”  We had a Tandy 1000HX, which was a computer that ran off of floppy disks and CD-roms.  I had a couple of games that I liked to play, and I liked to write my poems and stories on the computer.  We did not yet have Internet.

I graduated in 1996 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Studies.  I kept waiting for someone to tell me there’d been a mistake.  How could I be a college graduate?  Now there was nothing left in life but to have kids and die.