the yellow wallpaper

In the spring semester of 1993, I was listless. I had just landed back in the midwest after spending my first semester in coastal North Carolina, on an ill-begotten whim to study marine biology. Maybe it wasn't a whim and a viable plan, but there were many obstacles. One, that it was hard to find a place to study marine science in landlocked Illinois. Another was that my terribleness in math would rather quickly mean I was always going to be at a disadvantage in science courses, even the more biological and zoological ones, many of which had chemistry prereqs that depended on math knowledge. I already knew I was good at writing, reading, and English, so in a sudden switch I came back to my hometown and enrolled in a community college that spring, just to keep myself in school until I had reassessed and applied elsewhere. I took a couple classes in current events/news and intro to psych, but it was the lit classes that charmed me most obviously, one called Intro to Fiction that mostly…