Page 234 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
recommendation and signed up to take Modern Poetry (with William Pritchard) and Shakespeare 1 (with Benjamin DeMott) in my second semester. (If you have not already realized it, it should be made clear that my choice of fields obviously had no connection to the idea of making a living, something that I doubt that I even thought about until I was married with children and was a practicing attorney.) Both Pritchard and DeMott had reputations that stretched far beyond the borders of Amherst.
That left me with few remaining required courses in English in order to satisfy the department’s minimum requirements: Shakespeare 2, Chaucer, and an advanced seminar, usually open only to seniors who were writing their theses, also taught by Cole. I would sign up to take these three courses in the first semester of my junior year. And that decision, combined with my decision to take S.P. in junior high school and other factors that are hard to identify, much less articulate, contrib- uted to a very difficult time in my life.
Junior Miss
Junior year is supposed to be, and most often is, the best of the college years. You know what you are doing, you know how to have fun, and you’re not yet looking ahead and feeling somewhat jaded and superior to that which surrounds you. That was not, however, how it was for me.
As I recall it, junior year started very well. I had decided to live in Phi Gam and was happy to be away from the main campus by a distance that was defined by the Amherst Town Commons. Phi Gam was housed in a beautiful and large white building that had first been a girls school. It sat on a hill, seemingly all by itself, and had a long lawn running from its impressive colonnade down to town. Close by the house, on the side of the same hill, was the Emily Dickinson House, now a museum, where she had apparently spent her entire life and in which she wrote all of her poetry (which was discovered there after her death). My primary
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