{"id":24917,"date":"2017-04-18T11:44:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T15:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/?page_id=24917"},"modified":"2026-01-22T13:44:52","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T18:44:52","slug":"paige-pinto","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/life-in-english-student-blogs\/paige-pinto\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Paige’s Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Welcome to Paige’s Blog\n <\/h1>\n \n \n\n

BHUMS Combined Honours Humanities and English (2017)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a><\/em>Paige Pinto is a fifth-year Humanities and English major and is currently a co-president of the English Literature Society. She is interested in Romantic poetry and has something of a love-hate relationship with Jane Austen. She spends most of her day drinking coffee and thinking about fictional characters. One of Paige\u2019s great passions is the discussion and sharing of creative writing. Follow blogger Paige Pinto as she embarks on her final year of an undergraduate degree in Humanities and English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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\n Table of Contents\n <\/h2>\n
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\n \n 1.\n <\/span>\n\n \n April 18, 2017\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n \n
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\n \n 2.\n <\/span>\n\n \n March 13, 2017\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n \n
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\n \n 3.\n <\/span>\n\n \n January 24, 2017\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n \n
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\n \n 4.\n <\/span>\n\n \n December 14, 2016\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n \n
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\n \n 5.\n <\/span>\n\n \n November 8th, 2016\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n \n
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\n \n 6.\n <\/span>\n\n \n October 7, 2016\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

April 18, 2017<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As I\u2019ve written this blog over the course of the year, I\u2019ve done my best to be honest about my experience \u2014 as a Carleton<\/a> student, as an English<\/a> student, as a fifth-year student<\/a>. Sometimes that honesty has simply been to represent various moments as truthfully as I could. My mother can probably attest that school is, and always has been, a stressful experience for me. I didn\u2019t hide that. But here\u2019s the thing: school \u2013 learning, reading, writing, discussing \u2014 has also always been one of the greatest (in all meanings of the word) aspects of my life. I love it, and, when I\u2019m not stressed, I miss it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graduation has been on my mind a lot this year, perhaps too much, because it means change; it means, eventually, no school. It means I need to define myself by something else. I wonder if that fear (yes, fear) has tinged my writing, making things out to be worse than they are; I wonder if I\u2019ve shown too much of the uncertainty and doubt, and not enough of the good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not a retraction. As I said, I\u2019ve been honest. I stand by the experience of sometimes crippling anxiety that comes with life, and with this time of life. But this is<\/em> an amendment: it\u2019s been wonderful, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure I understood what was really happening to me \u2014 what it really meant to me to be in university \u2014 until my third year, when I received a book for Christmas: The Opposite of Loneliness<\/em> by Marina Keegan. Keegan died in 2012, five days after she graduated from Yale, and The Opposite of Loneliness<\/em> is a book of her essays and short stories, published posthumously. The titular essay, \u201cThe Opposite of Loneliness,\u201d written the day before her commencement ceremony, describes her<\/em> experience at university, which she characterizes with this feeling: the opposite of loneliness. Read this essay. It is beautiful. It captures the strange connectedness you feel when you\u2019re in school, the affinity you have with people you don\u2019t even know, because of your shared experience \u2014 and it captures the fear of losing that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is one of the first times in my life I\u2019m moving on from something I am afraid to lose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as I feel that I will be nothing \u2014 vaporous, unanchored \u2014 without school, I know that isn\u2019t entirely true, for the simple fact that the benefits I\u2019ve received from coming here<\/em> to university haven\u2019t been solely institutional. It\u2019s not the routine \u2014 the periodic essay-writing, note-taking, library-book-returning grind \u2014 that defines me here. It is the people, the learning, the opportunity I have had to grow, change, discover, read, express \u2014 to feel not lonely<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am afraid to lose: the inspiring and talented writing community I have found through the English Lit Society<\/a>, the loose comradery of making small talk before a lecture, the constancy of quietly working in the same spot on campus (approximately every day for four years) and feeling at home there. These are the good things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am grateful for the sentiment and poignancy of a final lecture, for the collection of books I have amassed (which still spills off my shelves, and soon, I guess, will be stored in boxes as I move back home), for the friends I made and the things I wrote. These are the things I am leaving, the things I hope you have had and will have. These are the things that have changed me in the best way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One more: I am grateful for the invitation I received in September to blog my year, which has allowed me to self-indulgently self-reflect on a public scale \u2014 but also to express and share the storm-cloud of emotions stirred up by my final year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

March 13, 2017<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This blog, like my last, has taken me a while to write because I needed a while to figure out where I stood. Where I\u2019m standing. As I told a friend last week: it seems like every time I\u2019ve come close to identifying what I\u2019m feeling and what\u2019s going on around me, something changes, and I have to start all over. The ground is shifting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think this is what your last year feels like. I want to keep my head down right now, to walk in a straight line, to work hard and finish strong \u2014 but I am being pulled away, constantly, by the distraction of uncertainty. At the beginning of the semester, it was easy to resolve to stay focused, stay humble, keep learning. Not so anymore. The chasm of graduation is more overwhelming the closer you get to the edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What it comes down to is this: in March, less than two months out from my final exam at Carleton<\/a>, stasis is insupportable. I have to begin making decisions, looking forward, accepting inevitable change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How, exactly, does one do that? Can somebody tell me?<\/p>\n\n\n

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Stasis is insupportable. The ground is shifting. I cannot remain any longer where I\u2019ve been. It\u2019s occurred to me that if I don\u2019t go after the things I want, I won\u2019t get them. (I know, right?) So I need to conquer my indecisiveness.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The last time I made a life decision this large, I was in high school. I wasn\u2019t even technically an adult. My parents and I made the decision together. Now, after five years of university, I am in charge of my life in a way that I have never been before (and I suspect that as time passes this trend will persist). I have been doing a lot of hard thinking lately (read: a lot of staring into space), wavering between confidence and crippling self doubt, and I\u2019ve concluded that I must \u2014 again, in an unprecedented way \u2014 take responsibility for my own life<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some people, that will probably be easier than for others, i.e. me. I have been supported by my parents, sheltered from life by my introversion and even my education. I read<\/em> about things; I don\u2019t do<\/em> them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been willing to appease others \u2014 roommates, parents, friends. I have a tendency to avoid confrontation, to be passive, to be safe. That, like everything else, needs to change. I\u2019ve been accepted to graduate studies and so I need to decide where to study. And even after I make that<\/em> decision, I\u2019ve only staved off the real world for, like, a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Am I ready? To move on? To be okay without school, that structural influence that has regimented and defined my everyday life since I was in kindergarten? To face new people, new places, new situations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Am I brave<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to be. If I am honest with myself, I know what I want in my life. I thought, for so long, that I didn\u2019t. But we suppress parts of ourselves because they don\u2019t fit what others expect of us, or because the things we want don\u2019t seem realistic. Maybe you don\u2019t have that problem, but I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stasis is insupportable. The ground is shifting. I cannot remain any longer where I\u2019ve been. It\u2019s occurred to me that if I don\u2019t go after the things I want, I won\u2019t get them. (I know, right?) So I need to conquer my indecisiveness. I may have to be a little bit aggressive, for once in my life. I have to grow up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to be brave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

January 24, 2017<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hamartia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I arrived in January and disembarked, nothing felt new. If you\u2019ve read the blog I wrote in December<\/a>, you\u2019ll remember that my life was stretched with the tension of finality (essays, exams, etc.).  January was like a sunny morning to which I awoke after a terrible, restless sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve spent the past few weeks sitting still, with my feet dangling in the shallow end of the pool, watching, waiting, hesitant. What will 2017 be? What will I be? While I\u2019ve been frantically seeking the ideal day planner and trying to restore some sense of routine to my life, I\u2019ve also been itching with the awareness that this is the beginning of the end. My last semester. (Hopefully. I\u2019m planning to pass all my courses.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since September I\u2019ve been counting my blessings and evaluating my university experience as though it\u2019s already over. It\u2019s tempting to duck my head into my turtleneck and disappear into schoolwork, to keep moving until I\u2019m through and out. But something entirely fortuitous has prevented me from following my instincts and doing so: somehow \u2014 surprisingly, to my egoistic and obstinate mind \u2014 I am still learning<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is perhaps the most significant revelation I\u2019ve had all year, and it\u2019s glaringly obvious. My degree has always been teaching me that our questions will never end, that we will never know all the answers, and that, at the end of the day, we realize how clueless we are. All the same, it\u2019s been a long, long time since I got lost in Carleton\u2019s tunnels. I\u2019m comfortable going to my professors\u2019 office hours, and the process of writing an essay, though never smooth, is a familiar frenemy. It\u2019s easy to become complacent, and I have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no place for complacency in learning. There is no place for boredom, superiority, impatience. There is no place for comfort. I am guilty of all these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, the world has intervened. I\u2019m taking a class in Humanities<\/a> called \u201cScience in the Modern World<\/a>.\u201d (Science? What is science?) I am learning Old English, a new-to-me language. My 18th<\/sup> Century Studies seminar is essentially an exercise in doing real, archival, academic research. This is not read-a-book-write-an-essay. It\u2019s not stare-at-the-wall-and-think-really-hard. I must learn and engage with concepts I have never heard of before and do not understand. I have to develop new skills and new study habits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is uncomfortable<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank God for that. It would be a waste of five years if I\u2019d left here believing myself to be educated, but not remembering my limitations, not having humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the beginning of a new, not last, semester. Before I graduate, I want to once more relish the twinge of anxiety that comes with realising just how much I do not know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paige Pinto (HUMS\/English), has just published an article in Persuasions<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

December 14, 2016<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This blog has been the most difficult to write so far, and for a simple reason: I\u2019m not inspired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What to talk about in December? Christmas, obviously; exams and final papers, if I want to hit home the bucketloads of stress which right now are pouring down on all of our heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday I handed in my last essay, and then I went Christmas shopping. It was a lovely feeling because I wasn\u2019t wearing a backpack for the first time in a very, very long time. Last night I slept<\/em>, without the dread of a due date lingering on the backs of my eyelids. But in spite of all that, I haven\u2019t hit the reset button. I\u2019m not magically stress-free and energized. No, I am still exhausted, and I still have writer\u2019s block. Can you tell? Do my sentences feel a little sloth-like? They do to me.<\/p>\n\n\n

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But, Paige. You\u2019re in English (sort of)! Didn\u2019t you come to university to write papers<\/em>?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This is the reality of this time of year. Maybe once I\u2019m no longer a student, I\u2019ll still be suffering burnout, but instead because I\u2019ll have time to do all the holiday activities and I\u2019ll drive my body to the breaking point with baking, shopping, visiting friends, planning gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t make that sound bad. It sounds so much better than writing papers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, Paige. You\u2019re in English (sort of)! Didn\u2019t you come to university to write papers<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. Yes, I did. And I don\u2019t know what I was thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this blog seems like a downer, you should see my first draft. It drips with bitterness. It seems that being uninspired also makes it difficult to be inspiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I should be inspiring, because I know that around the corner from now, all the emotional and mental drainage of these two weeks will be a distant memory. I go through this every year<\/em>. Shouldn\u2019t I be treasuring this, my last December as a Carleton undergrad? Shouldn\u2019t I be waxing nostalgic about the last sleepless nights and the curative red Starbucks cup?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t. This is the part of university that I will not miss, but it\u2019s also (I suggest) one of the more universal experiences. Every time I think I\u2019ve hit my limit, I see the circles under someone else\u2019s eyes and know that I\u2019m not alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you have an existential crisis if everyone else is, too? Asking for a friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy Holidays! I\u2019ll see you on the other side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

November 8th, 2016<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On learning, re: my life in pieces<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Snip, snip<\/em>, go the scissors of the Fates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes, my life lies in pieces around me. Consider my apartment: books everywhere, post-it notes with lists of readings, essays to edit; literal pieces (of literature) splay my education languorously across minimal square footage. There is a papered materiality to studying English that I cannot escape. My schoolwork surrounds me in fragments. Loose paper, all my pens four-fifths out of ink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I begin to think that this is how life works: perhaps it is that everything of import has been sent through a shredder and then lies around you, waiting for reassembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Near the end of reading week, I was standing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/a>, staring at Georges Seurat\u2019s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte<\/em> \u2013 you know the painting I mean, the Pointillist one, with the woman on the right side who has a pet monkey. I\u2019ve liked it since I\u2019ve known it, which dates to my art history class in second year. I never thought I would see it in real life. I don\u2019t know what it is about the Met, but it pulls together disparate things. There I am, in 19th century European Paintings, reliving art history. Then, downstairs, to Greek and Roman art, where I find stelae from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis and the gymnasium at Pergamon, places I visited in a study abroad class with the Greek and Roman Studies<\/a> department in Summer 2015. And so the windy day on the Pergamon acropolis is before me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you \u2013 suddenly and obliviously, and in a strange city no less \u2013 find yourself confronted by the missing pieces? In the case of the stelae, I mean that literally; they were pieces missing from the places I\u2019d gone across the globe to see. Does it happen often that a poetic and cyclical pattern shapes your life? How do you ever find yourself in this position you\u2019d never thought you\u2019d be in, a position of ecstatic recognition and overwhelming privilege, as though the world literally revolves around you, for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I write an essay, I have to wander around the space I occupy and find the scraps of paper on which I\u2019ve written my thoughts \u2013 single words, exclamation points, long block quotations. I gather, compile, assess. This is the puzzle I\u2019ve made for myself, whence the thesis emerges. I draw it out slowly, tease meaning, solve the mystery. Somehow, over the course of five years, my life has worked itself into something similarly cohesive, emergent, and true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I blame my education, the thing that has taught me to un-puzzle the pieces and to puzzle them further; the thing that has inspired in me a desire to see<\/em>. I\u2019m not sure when I became willing to travel in spite of fear, when I put the desire to know more about the world over the desire to be comfortable and safe in my own home. Perhaps it\u2019s been lying latent, but recently \u2013 in the rooms and halls of this university \u2013 the careful hands of brilliant teachers, the ideas and adventures bound up in pages and pages that have passed through my eyes\/fingers\/brain have drawn it out, teased the meaning out of me, begun to solve the endless mystery of my own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

October 7, 2016<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Introduction – In the Interest of Full Disclosure<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a strange experience, writing about myself. My name is Paige.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing I probably love most in the world is reading. I mean, my family and friends, and then reading. And writing. Books, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the interest of full disclosure, I\u2019m not entirely an English<\/a> student at Carleton; English is my second major, but it\u2019s the department where I feel at home. This is the place where the world has opened up to me in so many ways, and I regret my snobbish self-involvement in my first years here when I didn\u2019t get involved. At the moment, I\u2019m one of the co-presidents of the English Literature Society<\/a>. That means that I run events and generally do cool things for English students. One of those things is a weekly writer\u2019s circle. In\/Words<\/a> (our student\u2013run magazine!) has a great one as well, but ELS wanted to do something that might be less intimidating to new students and new creative writers. And what I realized at our circle this past Tuesday is that I have an incredible love for this other book-related thing: talking about writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to say that my experience in university has been constantly inspiring, that I am a conscientious, motivated student and wake up every morning eager to soak up all that book-learning. And for me, that is true sometimes \u2014 even a lot of the time \u2014 but not all the time. In the interest of full disclosure, sometimes it gets exhausting\/stressful\/overwhelming\/rough. Life is like that \u2014 you know that \u2014 not composed solely of perfect moments. The good is interspersed with writing assignments you\u2019d rather not write, studying an author you can\u2019t stand, waiting for what seems like forever for a late bus in the Ottawa winter.<\/p>\n\n\n

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In the interest of full disclosure, sometimes it gets exhausting\/ stressful\/ overwhelming\/ rough.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

But then:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dunton Tower<\/a> on Tuesday, early evening and the eighteenth floor, so you can see the sun setting. The window in the English Department lounge overlooks the experimental farm<\/a>. And cozily, excitedly, you settle into that circle and know that these people \u2014 your cool, talented peers \u2014 are about to share with you something they\u2019ve created, with their own hands and minds, perhaps in their bedrooms in the early hours of the morning or strung out on coffee between classes\u2026 and you get to read it<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That, to me, is precious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is life in English: it\u2019s school, but it\u2019s also peppered with those instances of inevitable wonder \u2014 a perfect phrase in a poem, an insight that makes the world clearer, sharper, more sensible, even just for a moment. It\u2019s inspiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m grateful for the privilege to share my thoughts with you over the course of my final year. Happy Thanksgiving!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paige Pinto is a fifth-year Humanities and English major and is currently a co-president of the English Literature Society. She is interested in Romantic poetry and has something of a love-hate relationship with Jane Austen. She spends most of her day drinking coffee and thinking about fictional characters. One of Paige\u2019s great passions is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26735,"parent":18417,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cu_dining_location_slug":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_page_type":[],"class_list":["post-24917","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24917"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27834,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24917\/revisions\/27834"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/18417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_page_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_page_type?post=24917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}