NICHOLE VAUGHAN

Lately, when I approach my work, the first line to Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” pops into my head, but I’ve altered it: “You do not have to go to grad school to be good…” 

The OG, “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good. 

You do not have to walk on your knees 

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. 

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 

Meanwhile the world goes on. 

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. 

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. 

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things. 

You do not have to go to grad school to be good. 

You do not have to temper your wild imagination through structure and format, 

submitting yourself to “research protocol,” “academic voice,” and “emotional distance from the subject matter.”

You only have to let your brain and heart be filled by what you read, experience, and love. 

Meanwhile, the world goes on. 

Meanwhile, educators will arrive early and leave late, moving through the day and solving more problems in 6.5 hours than your one paper ever will in its entire, visitorless lifetime. 

Meanwhile, the academic board judges you for caring too much about the subject matter: “Remove yourself even more from this research” or “Your bias is present.”

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, continue to let knowledge inform your imagination as it calls to you to break free from restrictive guidelines, obsession with tradition, and necessary order that keeps its way of thinking perpetuated–over and over, forcing its place in the order of things through control.