Any Advice Appreciated
 

What a week.

1999 Saturn SL, 144k miles. Recently developed a bit of a coolant leak (not the issue, yet). Burns a LITTLE oil (don't they all, from my understanding, again, not the issue). Other than that, my little war pig has been through a lot, cosmetically, but still has been very faithful and dependable.

Just had to replace the bushing that connects the stick (yes, manual, for future reference) to the transmission cabling underneath (after tying the stick to the linkage with handy wire in the Georgia summer at 1:00pm). That was easy. Then the starter poops out. Again, two bolts, easy. The check engine light is on for an EGR valve, apparently, so sayeth AutoZone (which may very well be relevant to the following, but I don't know very much, so...).

What started right before I had to replace the starter (by ~2 weeks) is under acceleration, in gear(s), the car lurches, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. At first, it was happening mostly in the low gears, but once I got it in to 5th it'd even out, but now, it's almost like it's reversed, with the low gears being fine and 5th giving me the most trouble. When it's lurching, the RPM needle will sit there and bounce around right wherever it started having trouble, say 2100.

I need ideas, input, advice, whatever you got.

Any input appreciated.

Oh, also, if relevant: it seems like, when it's lurching, if I disengage the clutch, it'll rev all the way to redline without giving me the same engine or anything from the engine like it's stalling or anything.

Trying to second guess something like this is a bit of stretch. There is a lot going on to make the engine run, and along with mileage, a few things that are not right which will mess with you. Been there a bit myself, war stories will not help you.
But
EGR things can really screw with you. I have not had a proplem with my Saturn and I'm not sure if I had whether it would do you any good or not, but have had EGR problems on different cars comming up with different symptoms to mess with my mind.
But, if the car ain't running right
and you have an EGR error code
I'd be inclined to figure out what was causing it and fix it.