Everything.  And nothing.

Everything. In my humble or elitist opinion (take your pick), a good education is both very costly and utterly priceless.  Maybe I am an odd bird, but I loved school.  I loved Dalton.  (And, yes, it is part of the Ivy Preparatory School League in athletics; why would I make that up?)  And I loved Yale.  And I loved Columbia. Yes, these happen to be Ivy League schools, but any good school (and there are so many) will do.  Some of the smartest, best people I know did not go to an Ivy (hello, Dear Husband).  And some of the most maladjusted, lost, and sad people I know did go to an Ivy (not dumb, will not name names).

If you are lucky, an Ivy might teach you:

1. How to write.
2. How to read.
3. How to think.
4. How to tailgate.
5. How to craft a resume.
6. How to schmooze.
7. How to BS artfully.
8. How to drink coffee.
9. How to drink beer.
10. How to hide your deepest insecurities.

Nothing. It is a myth that an elite education is the ticket to utopia, to happiness.  There are things for which no league can prepare you.  Important things. One such thing? Life.

No school will teach you:

1. How to take a risk or take a compliment.
2. How to laugh loudly or love deeply.
3. How to find truth or a good man.
4. How to have a happy birthday or a happy marriage.
5. How to birth a baby or a book.
6. How to survive a bad breakup or a brutal hangover.
7. How to toilet train a toddler or train the toddler within.
8. How to let a child separate or watch a parent die.
9. How to handle vicious criticism in life or on a blog.
10. How to stop lying and start living.

These days, I bill it as research.  But in all honesty, I (like so many of you) am curious about the existential plight of others.  Why?  Because it sheds light on my own.  And, ultimately, on what it means to be human.

So, every now and then, I log onto TruUConfessions and read strangers’ anonymous confessions about their jobs and bodies, about being single, or a bride, or a wife, or a mom, or a military wife.  (Don’t read that last one too often.)

This one made me particularly sad:

I used to be pretty. I used to be smart. I used to be successful. I used to have great clothes. I used to be fun. I used to have friends. I used to feel sexy. I used to travel. I used to read. I used to have energy. I used to dream.

I don’t know this person.  Or maybe I do.

It could have been you with the deep wrinkles and screaming kids at Starbucks.  It could have been you in the pinstripes and sneakers who yelled at me for no reason at the grocery store.  It could have been you sitting at your desk, scrutinizing the story that is life for that inevitable and honest typo. It could have been you over there getting that midweek spa pedicure, your face buried deep in the rainbow pages of a celebrity mag.  It could have been you who reads this now and thinks: that wasn’t me, but it sure could have been.

The sad and simple fact: depending on the day, depending on the alignment of our cosmic clouds, it could have been any of us.

I haven’t been on a real vacation (think: sun, sand, sangria) since before Toddler was born.  But I do go on a number of staycations everyday.  Where?  The Internet.  And on these little trips, I learn things.  And meet people.  And have conversations.  And write little stories. And see new things.

And then I log off and I’m right back in the comforts of my own home. Without a sunburn.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

So, apparently I am the prime example of the isolated, rookie mom, who turns to the world wide web to find a sense of connection, of belonging.  Uh oh.  I am a member of an ever-expanding population of what are being deemed Internet addicts.  Lisa Belkin explores this phenomenon over at the Motherlode in her eye-opening piece New Moms and Internet Addiction wherein she showcases fellow mom and former blogger Rachel Mosteller’s recent Parenting article. Mosteller examines just why young moms are susceptible to that blue glow.  She identifies Three Reasons Moms Are Addicted to The Internet:

(1)  “I feel like I’m going crazy”
(2)  “I can be a different person”
(3) “I have so much to do!”

Do these sentiments sound familiar?  Of course they do.  But you know something?  I’m a Mom and I can make lists too.  Here is my list, admittedly more nuanced, of half-baked points that I think Mosteller and so many others are ignoring:

(1) Spending hours on the Internet is probably like drinking too much coffee;  it is not particularly good for your health. But calm down. It’s not the Swine Flu.  Sure, it might give you that false buzz of belonging that will fade, but so what – it gets you through that day.

(2) Most of us do not — and Mosteller admits as much — resort to drugs to keep us awake longer so that we can surf the web.  Sure, there are those that are truly, and problematically, addicted to the Internet (but per my Internet research (ha!), there are also pour poor souls out there addicted to tanning, and talcum powder, and crunching ice)

(3) So much of the dialogue out there in this seemingly “half-empty” age focuses on the abuses, on the negatives.  The fact that we are zoning our kids out or neglecting our day-to-day duties.  What about the fact that the Internet allows us to reconnect with lost friends, or research a chapter of the book we are writing, or engage in CONVERSATION about things that matter to us — albeit in the nebulous territory of cyberspace.

(4) This Internet v. Reality is not an either-or proposition.  We are not always embracing anonymous buddies on the Net at the expense of engaging with the real world out there.  Plenty of us have friends, the living and breathing kinds with names and families and jobs and problems, whom we speak to and see on a regular basis.  And (gasp) we also like to wander around and gather bits and pieces of serious and silly information, or philosophical insights, or ideas on the Web.

(5) Have we ever thought that we might be smarter, savvier, better-informed parents and people because of the Internet? We are not all online seeking up-to-date news on celebrity baby names (although that is sometimes fun).  Where else can I research potty-training and dairy allergies and preschools and Plato?

(6) I learned how to write a novel on the Internet.  After spending a short time at a law firm and realizing quickly that that was not the life I wanted, I took a risk.  I decided to dream big.  I said: I am going to write a novel.  I took online courses at Gotham Writer’s Workshop where I interacted with students from all over this great nation and world.  One of my Gotham professors Russell Rowland, himself an esteemed published author who lives in Montana, became my fiction mentor.  And my beloved novel BLACKBERRY GIRL would not exist without the encouragement and e-editing of this Montana man (whom I have never met in real life).

Now if there is truly an addiction to surfing the Internet that is spreading like wildfire among new moms and old moms and non-moms out there — and maybe there is because I am quite adept at fooling myself and cooking up rationalizations for my own actions — this rookie blogger secretly hopes you have it.   Or get it very soon

[A quick disclaimer: This stunning ultrasound? It's neither Toddler nor Baby.  I'm not that crazy.]

I am clutching my BlackBerry extra tight these days.  Why? A couple of my very best friends are about to go into labor.  One with her first baby and one with her second.  And just as I craved the odd egg sandwich or glazed donut or Tootsie Pop during my latest pregnancy, I find myself salivating for details.  The more, the better.  And maybe it is a bit odd, but I want to know numbers, about dilation and effacement and softening.  I like to hear about contractions — the Braxton Hicks and the big-time.  I like to hear about what’s in the hospital bag. Maybe this isn’t so weird?  I’m a writer after all.  I love details.  The more obscure, the better.  I love to see the poetry in the everyday.

You know what is a bit weird?  That I am envious.  Of the profound fever of anticipation.  Of the glorious mystery.  Of hearing that first primal cry.  Of seeing what the creature looks like for the very first time.  Of changing that first tiny diaper.  Of swinging that car seat over the threshold for the first time and saying, “welcome home, baby.”

And six months out from all of this, I wouldn’t go back.  So maybe envy is not the right word.  I’m happy to be right where I am. Baby is sitting and babbling and as of today eating (okay, spitting) oatmeal.  Toddler is a sassy spitfire, in love with her sparkly sunglasses and a stone lion on our sidewalk named Steinway.  It doesn’t get better than this.

But I guess I am excited for my friends (and sister) and frankly every pregnant woman I see waddling by my Starbucks window.  Because for each of them, in a matter of minutes or hours or days or months, life’s best adventure will begin.  Or begin again.  And when I allow myself to dream big (and shouldn’t we all?), sure,  I imagine published novels and book signings and good reviews and maybe a motion picture.  But if I squint hard and envision the most beautiful future, I see something more.  I see bellies and births and babies.

But now, entrenched in this poetic, borderline pretentious, present moment, I will make do with the beckoning buzz of my BlackBerry and the blissfully good news it brings me.

“Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning,” declares Columbia University’s Religion Department Chairman Mark C. Taylor in his NYT Op-Ed End The University As We Know It.  In this provocative piece, Taylor bemoans the impracticality of the contemporary mass-production university model, noting that it produces a product (smart, specialized souls who are candidates for teaching posts that don’t exist) for which there is no market and burnishes skills for which there is dwindling demand.  Furthermore, Taylor highlights that this inefficient system costs us (sometimes in excess of $100K in loans).

Taylor offers six steps to begin the reinvention of the wheel of graduate education.  These steps are intriguing, often insightful, approaches to shifting away from an entrenched status quo of professor-cloning and complacency.  I particularly like the advice that Taylor gives his students: “Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.”

Now my admittedly emotional response to Taylor’s practical prescriptions:

(1) Yes, the bottom line is always beckoning.  But aren’t there some things — like passionate academic inquiry, however obscure — that are priceless? And should remain so?

(2) People have never gone to graduate school for practical reasons.  They are not under the illusion that there will be a bevy of teaching spots to pick from at the other end.  They devote years to studying their subjects because they feel they have no other choice, they are passionate, they often wouldn’t be happy doing anything else.

(3) A precious few of us spend our days thinking creatively.  Overhauling the university system, making it more streamlined and efficient and collaborative, might very well stifle the little inventive thought that is going on.

(4) Perhaps we should focus our attention on the arguably more practical forms of higher education.  The ones that produce “products” for which there is a “market” and “skills” for which there is consistent “demand.”  You know — the systems that are spewing out dozens of corporate lawyers and plastic surgeons and investment bankers?  Now, I’m not sure who’s to blame for this fierce financial crisis, but I’m pretty sure that grad students studying the nooks and crannies of literature and philosophy and history didn’t sink the ship.

(5) I know this is a bad economy.  I know that we are becoming accustomed to conceiving of almost everything in terms of the Market Metaphor.  But we are not talking about Detroit.  We are not talking about assembly lines and cars.  We are talking about people.  And ideas.

(6) Professor Taylor is a smart and accomplished soul who has enjoyed the freedoms and inefficiencies of the very system he now attacks.  Or, more fairly, re-imagines.  Now I hate cliches (almost as much as I hate practicality), but I can’t resist: What happened to not biting the hand that feeds you? Okay, maybe he’s just nibbling.  But still.