Quest Schema
Let us follow the story of our hero, Bright Young Military Brat...
In the ORDINARY WORLD of military brat life, an American living in Europe is no big thing. Our bright, young military brat grows up thinking her multicultural, widely-traveled life was the norm. However, when the bright young military brat finishes college, finding a place to call home becomes her OUTER PROBLEM. She believes in her ability to succeed and has never experienced the kind of grief that leads to a crisis of faith. Her INNER PROBLEM is to discover intrinsic motivations for success and goodness.
A major University offers her a fellowship. She willingly accepts this CALL.
She meets a professor of literature, the department's THRESHOLD GUARDIAN, who drills her in the importance of parsing and passing along literary tradition. To continue her literary studies, she must gain signatures from a professor of rhetoric, who unexpectedly becomes her SHADOW MENTOR. To learn further from the SHADOW MENTOR, however, she must gain access to the SPECIAL WORLD of rhetoric and composition. The hurdle to access is a TEST: reading and discussing Aristotle in a class of four students, none of the rest of whom give a crap.
In a bold APPROACH, following her passing of the test, she secures the rhetoric professors assent to lead her M.A. committee.
To earn the M.A., she must endure the 4–hour ORDEAL of a closed-book, 4–question essay exam. In a move to RESURRECT herself after the exam, she downs coffee with her SHADOW MENTOR at a local Starbucks. In her state of emotional exhaustion, she confesses her young-adult ORDEAL of failing out of engineering school, and thereby losing her driving passion of becoming an astronaut.At this, the SHADOW MENTOR advises her to get the heck out of dodge and join like–minded folks at another University.