The older I get, the more I discover about me. Believe it or not, I like me more than I ever did, laugh lines and all. I spent my school years shy and always worried about what other people thought about me. Today, I don't really care. I only care about what I think about me at the end of the day (and, yes, sometimes that means saying I'm sorry).
One thing I've discovered is that I love to conquer my fears. It's my new hobby. There is this thrill that fills my heart after a challenge is overcome. I don't jump out of planes, bungee jump or any other dangerous diversion. Instead, it is the Janene-style conquest. I've felt the heart-pounding zing in turning in a difficult project to a difficult teacher and receiving an A, in learning a new photographic technique that I previously found intimidating, and in stretching myself physically or mentally. That's what the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is for me. My personal triumph over fear, overwhelming stress, and a crazy, self-imposed dare.
About four years ago, I decided to take a modern art history class from Johnson County Community College. There, on the schedule, was a 3 hour class, which would be taken in 5 weekends, Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday afternoon. That sounded great because I wouldn't be driving to Kansas City all semester. Then I noticed where it was located -- at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Where else to learn about art than right there in front of it? Then came the FEAR: the other two times that I had driven to the museum in the past 25 years, I'd ended up on the side of Kansas City with bars on the windows. I'd be getting off on a Friday at my day job, heading into 5 o'clock traffic in Kansas City and coming home late at night. I Googled and Map Quested until I felt that I had the perfect route. I even drove it in broad daylight a couple of times before class began as a final check.
Then came the OVERWHELMING STRESS: The teacher was Ann Wiklund. I just checked online and she is still teaching if you want to get your own thrilling ride. She absolutely LOVES art and is committed to filling your brain with as much information as it can contain on techniques, historical context, information on the artists' lives and millions of other facts. Even the text book was intimidating -- with a binding 3 inches wide, it was by far the heaviest text book I'd ever carried in all my 25 years of attending college (yes, that will be another blog, another day). We had tests every day, wrote papers due every weekend, gave presentations every Friday, etc. We had daily quizzes, weekly tests on particular eras, then bi-weekly tests covering several eras. People dropped like flies. One night, I was to partner with another student for an oral presentation, and she never showed up. All by myself, I had to present two works of art by memory, some in French. To top it all off, I was the first to give a presentation that night. So sweating and shivering, I survived and had the fear of oral presentations knocked out of me for all time.
By week four, my brain couldn't hold a single new thought. Looking back, I was pretty glad of that because the modern art world in the 60's was getting pretty disgusting in their attempts to push boundaries and provoke public reactions. By the final on the 5th week, people were crying in the bathroom at break time. I was sure that I'd failed, but heaven-bless-her, Mrs. W was grading on a curve!
So yesterday, when I was lazily drifting around the magnificent paintings with my fellow wedding photographer friend, I was secretly celebrating my triumph once again. I'd driven there without a single navigation problem, I'd remembered some of the history and funny quips about major works of art, and I'd felt at home in a place that previously was intimidating and foreign.
I wanted to make the Rocky run down the south stairs with my arms raised in triumph, but undoubtedly the guards would have hunted me down to give me a tongue lashing. I should have just done it. Maybe I'll do that next time. Okay -- I'll add that to my new dare list.
