Amanda's recent post about not being able to write immediately made me think of this meme that I found a long time ago. In May 2008 I started writing this post about not being able to write, and intended to answer all the questions in the meme to get my creative writing juices flowing. And then I never did. Aaaanyways, now I'm posting it without my answers to my good buddy Roo Roo. May my failure as a writer inspire the crap out of you, or somebody. Or nobody. As we say in France, disfruta:
In the interest of "writing" I have spent the past hour at work not working, but rather wandering the internet looking for writing tips. I came across some interesting writing exercises that are supposed to cure writer's block. I guess the idea is similar to warm-up exercises in sports or drawing or music - like playing the scales or stretching the muscles. Some people say the hardest part of writing is coming up with a topic (which is what these exercises address).
I believe the hardest part is starting to write. I guess the exercises also help the writer start to write, because writing about some random topic that doesn't really matter to you is way easier than writing about something you find important. I always feel like the reason I can't write is the fear that I might mess it up. It's easy enough to go back and edit something you've already started, but the thought of starting is sometimes too...weighty, or something.
Anyhow, here's the single solitary writing exercise I found that isn't meant for writers of fiction:
1. Do you outline?
2. Do you write straight through a book, or do you sometimes tackle the chapters out of order?
3. Do you know how a book is going to end when you start it?
4. Where do you write?
5. What do you do when you get writer's block?
6. What size increments do you write in (either in terms of wordcount, or as a percentage of the book as a whole)?
7. How many different drafts did you write for your last project?
8. Do you let anyone read your book while you're working on it, or do you wait until you've completed a draft before letting someone else see it?
9. What do you do to celebrate when you finish a draft?
10. One project at a time, or multiple projects at once?
11. Do your books grow or shrink in revision?
12. Do you have any writing or critique partners?
13. Do you prefer drafting or revising?
14. What are your favorite writing books?
15. Morning writer, evening writer, or doesn't matter?
16. How do you handle reviews?
17. How do you handle rejection?
18. Do you prefer to work on writing by yourself? Or do you prefer collaborating?
19. Able to work on airplanes?
20. Have you ever abandoned a book or an article that you had finished? When? Why?
21. What writing advice do you really believe in?
Showing posts with label teoria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teoria. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, May 23, 2008
new old post 3: on how I'm getting old
In my random internetty wanderings, I found this letter written by Katra, a blogger on Vox. Her blog is called "Freudenschade," which is a reversal of Schadenfreude (finding joy in other people's misfortune). So Freudenschade is supposed to mean being unhappy at other people's good fortune (see this article about a guy who felt guilty pleasure when they discovered the truth about that girl who plagiarized a novel in her college application).
I think it's a pretty cool concept, and clearly, a feeling I have all the time. It's similar to jealously, but feels more justified. I guess it's because the Freudenschade-feeler is the unhappy one, and we have this idea that gloating at others' pain is bad but self-hatred is kind of noble. Or maybe it's just because of the cool German name.
Anyways, enough about the word, back to the letter. This girl is turning 30, something I am kind of preoccupied with. What if I turn 30 and still don't have a real job? What if I'm never done with school? So her terminal degree and "real adult job" make me feel a twinge of jealousy. But after all, I have almost four more years to sort that out... yay?
I think it's a pretty cool concept, and clearly, a feeling I have all the time. It's similar to jealously, but feels more justified. I guess it's because the Freudenschade-feeler is the unhappy one, and we have this idea that gloating at others' pain is bad but self-hatred is kind of noble. Or maybe it's just because of the cool German name.
Anyways, enough about the word, back to the letter. This girl is turning 30, something I am kind of preoccupied with. What if I turn 30 and still don't have a real job? What if I'm never done with school? So her terminal degree and "real adult job" make me feel a twinge of jealousy. But after all, I have almost four more years to sort that out... yay?
Dear Twenties,
As I am sure you know, the time has come for us to part company. It's been a long, lovely ride, but this is my stop and I am getting off. Goodbye to you, suckas!
Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of things about you that were truly good: I gave up vegetarianism, for one, and every piece of bacon I now eat tastes just that much more delicious for its long absence. I was For Real In Love for the first time, which was also a pretty amazing thing. In retrospect, however, I'd have to say that my relationship with bacon has worked out much better for everyone involved. Except the pigs, of course.
In my twenties I think I also got the friendship thing right: I managed to keep the really important friendships and ditch the toxic ones. Learning to recognize the toxic ones alone was a major accomplishment. For some reason, it took me a while to figure out that if someone's basic function in your life is to make you feel shitty about yourself, then that person is not a friend. An ingenious insight, I know.
On the other hand, a lot about you straight up blew, Twenties. The long-nourished infatuations with people who didn't love me back (so much wasted time!), the exchange of running for sitting at a desk or on a couch, the mounting student loan and credit card debt -- those are fun little mistakes I plan never to repeat.
I hate to tell you Twenties, but I think the Thirties are going to kick your ass up one side and down the other. I'm no longer a student now, for the first time since before kindergarten. I have a terminal degree and a real adult job and a dog. I am at the beginning of my real life now, looking forward to establishing myself professionally and starting to earn a Serious Adult Salary (soon, we hope, right?).
The friendships keep getting better and better and I'm sure the relationships will, too, now that I know what I want out of them. One lesson learned, relationship-wise, for example: It is not okay if your boyfriend thinks that sitting on his couch smoking pot while you watch him play Nintendo is a fun date activity. Not okay.
Twenties, I bid you a bittersweet adieu. I'd love to stay and chat some more, but I have a mission. I am off to meet the Thirties and together we are going to step out and kick some serious ass. Sorry, Twenties, but it's over.
Really, finally over,
Katra
Monday, November 19, 2007
the precautionary principle
henry miller didn't believe in it:
"Instead of asking - 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask - 'How much good? How much joy?'"
but I still think that's kind of nice
"Instead of asking - 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask - 'How much good? How much joy?'"
but I still think that's kind of nice
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
dolla dolla bills
"what I learned in grad school" is popping up all over the place these days. here's an interesting tidbit from an article in the NYT. so interesting, in fact, that I'm not touching it with a ten-foot pole.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
why we banned legos
something fascinating from an article in "Rethinking Schools," check it out:
Carl and Oliver,* both 8-year-olds in our after-school program, huddled over piles of Legos. They carefully assembled them to add to a sprawling collection of Lego houses, grocery stores, fish-and-chips stands, fire stations, and coffee shops. They were particularly keen to find and use "cool pieces," the translucent bricks and specialty pieces that complement the standard-issue red, yellow, blue, and green Lego bricks.
"I'm making an airport and landing strip for my guy's house. He has his own airplane," said Oliver.
"That's not fair!" said Carl. "That takes too many cool pieces and leaves not enough for me."
"Well, I can let other people use the landing strip, if they have airplanes," said Oliver. "Then it's fair for me to use more cool pieces, because it's for public use." (read more)
I think it's great, some people disagree. When I first read this I only found one response to it, written by a fairly reactionary and disingenuous conservative columnist. Now it seems this thing is getting to be a huge deal, and there are so many people talking and blogging and writing about it, it would be impossible for me to choose one or two to put up here. Just Google "why we banned Legos" and you'll get a barrage of opinions.
Anyways, I just think it's interesting that, agree or disagree with the decision to ban Legos, this thing has become exactly what the teachers feared it was - a huge allegory about society. As MRhé might say, it's pretty f-ing meta.Tuesday, May 01, 2007
may!
In honor of May Day, I have several things to protest.
1. Pants. A wise man named Alec Baldwin once said to Canteen Boy, "You know what I hate? Underpants."
While I'm not the kind of girl that blogs about her preference in unmentionables, I'll tell you what I do hate: PANTS. and TIGHTS. and SHOES. I am so f-ing sick of wearing pants every day, and even sicker of having my precious few skirt-wearing occasions tainted by having to wear hosiery and shoes. Mother Nature messed up and gave me a taste of warm weather, apparently before she was ready to make a lasting commitment to it. It's f-ing MAY! My legs and feet are yearning to break free from the oppressive bonds of winter! I want to wear skirts and shorts and sandals! True, I've worn flip-flops pretty much every day since the middle of March, but it's not quite as enjoyable when I'm getting cold rainwater scum on my feet instead of a killer Reef Tan.
2. Stalking. There was a show on NPR yesterday about a football team at a big university (I can't remember where, and I can't seem to find it on the website, but this is fairly similar) that got in big trouble for... wait for it... drinking. As we all know, college students, especially athletes, never drink (well maybe they really don't at Division I schools, but the Trinity ones were pretty OK with it). Long story short, each member of the team signs a contract at the beginning of the year saying they will not use alcohol, drugs, etc., and violating the contract will get you thrown off the team.
Enter Facebook. Apparently, faculty and administrators at this school got access to some players' Facebook profiles, where they discovered a variety of clues revealing that the players had been misbehaving, like wall posts referring to parties involving people drinking something you'd never expect to rear its ugly head on a college campus - beer!
Now I'm not saying that these guys didn't break their contracts, and I'm not saying that they should get to flagrantly violate the promise they made. I'm definitely not saying that anyone should condone the amount of drinking that happens on most college campuses, although I do think these coaches and administrators are just lying to themselves if they think these guys aren't drinking. But this isn't even about the alcohol, or the fact that they are athletes, or even the fact they got caught and might get thrown off the team. It's the way they got caught that bothers me, because it reflects just how much access people have, and how much access people give, to private information.
First of all, these guys, and everyone else who uses Facebook etc. or writes a public blog, ought to know that anyone could read it. For some reason nobody actually thinks about it though. Just a few weeks ago I was shocked when I found out that people from school were reading my blog - it was kind of a wake-up call for me. I got paranoid and decided I wouldn't use people's names anymore, but really, that's not enough to keep me out of trouble if someone really wanted to mess with me.
Last night K_____ (see?) told me that she might be getting expelled from school for posting an assignment on LiveJournal. The assignment was to write a letter, just as a writing exercise, not a letter that would actually be mailed off, to a public official (she chose Deval Patrick). After she finished it she wanted a friend to proofread it but for some reason couldn't send it as an email attachment, so she posted it on her LiveJournal for him to read. The letter didn't include her name but did say which college she goes to. At the end of the assignment she wrote a message to her friend, saying "I pulled this out of my ass at 2am." Not very poetic, but anyways...
After she handed it in, she got a phone call from one of her professors, who was in tears, telling her that the school's web-monitoring person had found the letter and that the dean of her college wanted to meet with her and discuss it. She showed up and found herself in a room with every faculty member in the entire department, plus the Dean and some other administrators. She had to apologize to each one of them individually for tarnishing the college's reputation (as they put it), and now she just has to wait and find out whether that was good enough. If she gets expelled she won't get credit for the entire semester, and she'll have a tough time ever completing her degree because her program is only offered at two schools in the area (one of which she could not get into even before she began her 'criminal' career, and the other being her current school).
I don't think they have any right to expel her - what she did may have been wrong, kind of, but nothing that warrants getting expelled. She didn't have any intentions of actually sending it to Deval Patrick (or anyone else for that matter), and even if she did, who cares if she "pulled it out of her ass"? If the issue is the language, I'd argue that students' use of foul language has absolutely nothing to do with the schools they attend or the quality of their work. And we're talking about the content of what she actually said, it's just like the drinking - professors would be lying to themselves if they thought students didn't procrastinate and write papers at the last minute. They know it happens, and so does Deval Patrick.
More to the point, it's insane that they're considering the letter - because of the language or content of that last sentence - any kind of diatribe against her college. She said nothing about the school besides the fact that she attends it. Even if she did, what would happen if every student who complained about their school got expelled? These are very questionable grounds for expulsion, and a really slippery slope, which I hope they realize.
3. Poetry. This isn't actually a protest at all, just an awesome Leonard Cohen poem I found, called "The Only Poem." My LC obsession has cooled down recently, but he's still an f-ing genius. Stuff like this makes me wish I were born Canadian, Jewish, male...and, you know, a genius.
This is the only poem
I can read
1. Pants. A wise man named Alec Baldwin once said to Canteen Boy, "You know what I hate? Underpants."
While I'm not the kind of girl that blogs about her preference in unmentionables, I'll tell you what I do hate: PANTS. and TIGHTS. and SHOES. I am so f-ing sick of wearing pants every day, and even sicker of having my precious few skirt-wearing occasions tainted by having to wear hosiery and shoes. Mother Nature messed up and gave me a taste of warm weather, apparently before she was ready to make a lasting commitment to it. It's f-ing MAY! My legs and feet are yearning to break free from the oppressive bonds of winter! I want to wear skirts and shorts and sandals! True, I've worn flip-flops pretty much every day since the middle of March, but it's not quite as enjoyable when I'm getting cold rainwater scum on my feet instead of a killer Reef Tan.
2. Stalking. There was a show on NPR yesterday about a football team at a big university (I can't remember where, and I can't seem to find it on the website, but this is fairly similar) that got in big trouble for... wait for it... drinking. As we all know, college students, especially athletes, never drink (well maybe they really don't at Division I schools, but the Trinity ones were pretty OK with it). Long story short, each member of the team signs a contract at the beginning of the year saying they will not use alcohol, drugs, etc., and violating the contract will get you thrown off the team.
Enter Facebook. Apparently, faculty and administrators at this school got access to some players' Facebook profiles, where they discovered a variety of clues revealing that the players had been misbehaving, like wall posts referring to parties involving people drinking something you'd never expect to rear its ugly head on a college campus - beer!
Now I'm not saying that these guys didn't break their contracts, and I'm not saying that they should get to flagrantly violate the promise they made. I'm definitely not saying that anyone should condone the amount of drinking that happens on most college campuses, although I do think these coaches and administrators are just lying to themselves if they think these guys aren't drinking. But this isn't even about the alcohol, or the fact that they are athletes, or even the fact they got caught and might get thrown off the team. It's the way they got caught that bothers me, because it reflects just how much access people have, and how much access people give, to private information.
First of all, these guys, and everyone else who uses Facebook etc. or writes a public blog, ought to know that anyone could read it. For some reason nobody actually thinks about it though. Just a few weeks ago I was shocked when I found out that people from school were reading my blog - it was kind of a wake-up call for me. I got paranoid and decided I wouldn't use people's names anymore, but really, that's not enough to keep me out of trouble if someone really wanted to mess with me.
Last night K_____ (see?) told me that she might be getting expelled from school for posting an assignment on LiveJournal. The assignment was to write a letter, just as a writing exercise, not a letter that would actually be mailed off, to a public official (she chose Deval Patrick). After she finished it she wanted a friend to proofread it but for some reason couldn't send it as an email attachment, so she posted it on her LiveJournal for him to read. The letter didn't include her name but did say which college she goes to. At the end of the assignment she wrote a message to her friend, saying "I pulled this out of my ass at 2am." Not very poetic, but anyways...
After she handed it in, she got a phone call from one of her professors, who was in tears, telling her that the school's web-monitoring person had found the letter and that the dean of her college wanted to meet with her and discuss it. She showed up and found herself in a room with every faculty member in the entire department, plus the Dean and some other administrators. She had to apologize to each one of them individually for tarnishing the college's reputation (as they put it), and now she just has to wait and find out whether that was good enough. If she gets expelled she won't get credit for the entire semester, and she'll have a tough time ever completing her degree because her program is only offered at two schools in the area (one of which she could not get into even before she began her 'criminal' career, and the other being her current school).
I don't think they have any right to expel her - what she did may have been wrong, kind of, but nothing that warrants getting expelled. She didn't have any intentions of actually sending it to Deval Patrick (or anyone else for that matter), and even if she did, who cares if she "pulled it out of her ass"? If the issue is the language, I'd argue that students' use of foul language has absolutely nothing to do with the schools they attend or the quality of their work. And we're talking about the content of what she actually said, it's just like the drinking - professors would be lying to themselves if they thought students didn't procrastinate and write papers at the last minute. They know it happens, and so does Deval Patrick.
More to the point, it's insane that they're considering the letter - because of the language or content of that last sentence - any kind of diatribe against her college. She said nothing about the school besides the fact that she attends it. Even if she did, what would happen if every student who complained about their school got expelled? These are very questionable grounds for expulsion, and a really slippery slope, which I hope they realize.
3. Poetry. This isn't actually a protest at all, just an awesome Leonard Cohen poem I found, called "The Only Poem." My LC obsession has cooled down recently, but he's still an f-ing genius. Stuff like this makes me wish I were born Canadian, Jewish, male...and, you know, a genius.
This is the only poem
I can read
I am the only one
can write it
I didn't kill myself
when things went wrong
I didn't turn
to drugs or teaching
I tried to sleep
but when I couldn't sleep
I learned to write
I learned to write
what might be read
one nights like this
by one like me
Saturday, April 07, 2007
dear amanda and scott:
I have been holding back for as long as I could, but I can no longer sit back and watch... I started to write this as a comment on Mike's blog, but it got a little lengthier than I originally planned, so I'm putting it here. fyi, people who don't read Scott's blog or Mike's blog, this is a response to this and later, this
a) Scott, let people comment on your blog so we don't have to bother poor Mike like this.
b) Amanda, that shit will kill you. Equal and 'dietary neutrality' do not belong in the same sentence together. Most artificial sweeteners are made from toxic and even carcinogenic compounds. But you knew I was going to say that. I won't bore you with the 'facts,' this is easy enough to read up on.
c) In reality, I see this as more of a political issue. Guess who owns Equal? Mon-fucking-santo. The same people who bring us radically persistent pesticides and GMOs and sue poor small farmers who have the misfortune to live downwind from them. They have revolutionized intellectual property rights in the worst possible way and represent everything that is wrong about agribusiness. Again, it would take too much space to go into all the reasons why Monsanto sucks, so I will leave it at that.
d) Splenda is owned by Johnson & Johnson, who some might consider to be slightly less evil than Monsanto. Either way, they recently bought up a bunch of negative domain names hoping to quiet the growing number of people who question the health effects of Splenda.
As far as what those health effects actually are, everyone knows I'm not much of a chemist so I won't pretend I'm an expert on this one. But I've read that sucralose is a cholorocarbon, which means that not only is it not as 'natural' as the 'made from sugar' tagline would imply, but also that it's, well, a dumb thing to put in your body. I welcome any corrections on all that.
e) Regarding wheat gluten... Obviously we do produce a lot of wheat here, and it's subsidized pretty heavily so we can get our greedy little hands into every developing economy that used to produce its own wheat, but now cannot due to signing up for some awesome "free" market trade agreement. So we are able to sell it for a low enough price that it ends up being cheaper for say, Uganda, to import U.S. wheat than to produce their own, resulting in food insecurity as well as over-dependence on the global commodity prices for wheat as well as whatever crap they decided to monocrop or manufacture instead. This is a whole other can of worms though.
As far as the competitive advantage is concerned, I can't think of a definitive answer, but maybe it has something to do with what the gluten is used for. A lot of times trade restrictions are meant to be prohibitive for political reasons (e.g. the notorious EU 'banana regime'... banana quality standards made it impossible for some African countries to sell their bananas to the EU, in order to protect prices/profits for corporate/evil plantations operating in Latin America and elsewhere).
Aaaaanyways, I think that this might be an issue of the return we get on food grade wheat gluten (as opposed to feed grade). We can make a better profit processing and exporting food grade wheat for certain purposes like bread and Oreos. Meanwhile, because China has industrialized so rapidly they haven't quite caught up with all the pesky social and environmental regulations that we subject our poor agribusinesses to, making their feed grade gluten pretty affordable (although of questionable healthiness). So to make a long story short, if I had to guess I'd say our food grade wheat is cheaper for them to buy, their feed grade wheat is cheaper for us to buy. The capital is flowing to where it gets the highest return, the agribusinesses win again, and there are a bunch of dead pets laying around.
a) Scott, let people comment on your blog so we don't have to bother poor Mike like this.
b) Amanda, that shit will kill you. Equal and 'dietary neutrality' do not belong in the same sentence together. Most artificial sweeteners are made from toxic and even carcinogenic compounds. But you knew I was going to say that. I won't bore you with the 'facts,' this is easy enough to read up on.
c) In reality, I see this as more of a political issue. Guess who owns Equal? Mon-fucking-santo. The same people who bring us radically persistent pesticides and GMOs and sue poor small farmers who have the misfortune to live downwind from them. They have revolutionized intellectual property rights in the worst possible way and represent everything that is wrong about agribusiness. Again, it would take too much space to go into all the reasons why Monsanto sucks, so I will leave it at that.
d) Splenda is owned by Johnson & Johnson, who some might consider to be slightly less evil than Monsanto. Either way, they recently bought up a bunch of negative domain names hoping to quiet the growing number of people who question the health effects of Splenda.
As far as what those health effects actually are, everyone knows I'm not much of a chemist so I won't pretend I'm an expert on this one. But I've read that sucralose is a cholorocarbon, which means that not only is it not as 'natural' as the 'made from sugar' tagline would imply, but also that it's, well, a dumb thing to put in your body. I welcome any corrections on all that.
e) Regarding wheat gluten... Obviously we do produce a lot of wheat here, and it's subsidized pretty heavily so we can get our greedy little hands into every developing economy that used to produce its own wheat, but now cannot due to signing up for some awesome "free" market trade agreement. So we are able to sell it for a low enough price that it ends up being cheaper for say, Uganda, to import U.S. wheat than to produce their own, resulting in food insecurity as well as over-dependence on the global commodity prices for wheat as well as whatever crap they decided to monocrop or manufacture instead. This is a whole other can of worms though.
As far as the competitive advantage is concerned, I can't think of a definitive answer, but maybe it has something to do with what the gluten is used for. A lot of times trade restrictions are meant to be prohibitive for political reasons (e.g. the notorious EU 'banana regime'... banana quality standards made it impossible for some African countries to sell their bananas to the EU, in order to protect prices/profits for corporate/evil plantations operating in Latin America and elsewhere).
Aaaaanyways, I think that this might be an issue of the return we get on food grade wheat gluten (as opposed to feed grade). We can make a better profit processing and exporting food grade wheat for certain purposes like bread and Oreos. Meanwhile, because China has industrialized so rapidly they haven't quite caught up with all the pesky social and environmental regulations that we subject our poor agribusinesses to, making their feed grade gluten pretty affordable (although of questionable healthiness). So to make a long story short, if I had to guess I'd say our food grade wheat is cheaper for them to buy, their feed grade wheat is cheaper for us to buy. The capital is flowing to where it gets the highest return, the agribusinesses win again, and there are a bunch of dead pets laying around.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
editorial note
Monday, March 26, 2007
deterioration and reframing of the plan
I hadn't had an e-crisis in days, then this morning I woke up from a thesis nightmare of epic proportions. I've been pretty much bipolar all day, vacillating between ridiculously happy and relieved and ridiculously depressed and hopeless as I seriously consider, for the first time, the fact that I probably won't finish on time to graduate in June, but more importantly, that I can consciously decide not to. April 19th, the day when master's theses are supposed to be submitted to the library, is paralyzing the crap out of me - I have the power to change that, but the repercussions could be very damaging.
If all I had to do was write my thesis, April 19th might not be so scary. I could make myself just sit down and write for the next 22 days and end up with something - it wouldn't be as good as I want it to be, but it would be done and I could get on with my life. Unfortunately, I have a few other obligations hanging over my head: my RA, my TA, a paper I'm supposed to be helping to write and present at a conference, and a looong-overdue project from the fall. While my boss/chair has given me permission to pretty much slack off on everything except the TAing, I can't help but feel guilty that I'm still getting my exorbitant (ha) RA paycheck and not doing much.
Soooo, I had a crazy thought this morning... What if I just decided to be honest with myself and admit that this isn't going to happen? I could concentrate on the other stuff, feel good about actually getting something, anything done, and write my thesis over the summer. I'd have to justify my reasoning to a lot of people, and feel like I'm disappointing my parents and professors (whether or not it's true).
Would it be the end of the world? No, but I hestitate to give myself permission for something like that, because I'm notorious (in my own mind) for giving myself an inch and taking a mile. I know that if I make the decision to extend my deadline, I'll be taking one more step towards the precipice that is never finishing. Summer could easily turn into fall and then winter, etc., and the next thing you know I'll be 40 and still trying to finish my thesis. It's going to be especially dangerous if I get a job.
I just want to do a good job on this thesis though, I care so much about the topic that I couldn't fathom handing in something I'm not at least 75% proud of. I know I have to let go of some things, I know it's never going to be as perfect as I'd like, but I just can't help thinking that a few extra weeks would change everything.
It's probably nuts to think that, and I'll probably end up getting talked out of all this by the end of tomorrow. A part of me wants to get talked out of it, to be encouraged and told, even if it's a lie, that I can and will finish by the 19th. The other part of me wants to be told what I really want to hear, that everything will be fine if I take some extra time and concentrate on other stuff for a while. I guess either way, I just want someone to tell me that everything's going to be OK, and I want it to be true.
I've been running this seemingly lose-lose situation by various people today, basically looking for reassurance, because to be honest, I'm a very confused emotional weakling right now. A girl at school told me "No one will be disappointed in you" if I don't finish on time. It might not sound like much, but I was unbelievably touched by that, and if there hadn't been so many other people around I would have let myself burst into tears.
The only thing that gave me hope was a nugget of wisdom from a friend who has proved to be the most unfailing moral compass I know (and I seek advice, shall we say, pathologically). He has talked me through many an ethical dilemma, from what to eat to how to frame my thesis, and talked me down from many a ledge, whether he believes it or not. I will now stop being wishy-washy. Anyhow, I told him about all of this and as always, he had some good advice. I wrote it down:
Things to do:
The issue, I guess, is not whether I have a finished thesis by April 19th, but whether I commit myself to finishing at all. In my head I am committed, but without some actual product to back it up, mental committent will not be enough. The actual product doesn't have to be perfect or polished or even a whole chapter, but I realize I have to produce something. I've definitely decided to produce things before, with varying degrees of success, but I think, and sincerely hope, that this Crap Thesis idea might be concrete enough to work.
So I'm off to do, um, that. If I can get out of this funk, everyone will benefit. I'll have a better outlook on life and everyone else will get a break from reading this solipsistic crap I keep writing.
If all I had to do was write my thesis, April 19th might not be so scary. I could make myself just sit down and write for the next 22 days and end up with something - it wouldn't be as good as I want it to be, but it would be done and I could get on with my life. Unfortunately, I have a few other obligations hanging over my head: my RA, my TA, a paper I'm supposed to be helping to write and present at a conference, and a looong-overdue project from the fall. While my boss/chair has given me permission to pretty much slack off on everything except the TAing, I can't help but feel guilty that I'm still getting my exorbitant (ha) RA paycheck and not doing much.
Soooo, I had a crazy thought this morning... What if I just decided to be honest with myself and admit that this isn't going to happen? I could concentrate on the other stuff, feel good about actually getting something, anything done, and write my thesis over the summer. I'd have to justify my reasoning to a lot of people, and feel like I'm disappointing my parents and professors (whether or not it's true).
Would it be the end of the world? No, but I hestitate to give myself permission for something like that, because I'm notorious (in my own mind) for giving myself an inch and taking a mile. I know that if I make the decision to extend my deadline, I'll be taking one more step towards the precipice that is never finishing. Summer could easily turn into fall and then winter, etc., and the next thing you know I'll be 40 and still trying to finish my thesis. It's going to be especially dangerous if I get a job.
I just want to do a good job on this thesis though, I care so much about the topic that I couldn't fathom handing in something I'm not at least 75% proud of. I know I have to let go of some things, I know it's never going to be as perfect as I'd like, but I just can't help thinking that a few extra weeks would change everything.
It's probably nuts to think that, and I'll probably end up getting talked out of all this by the end of tomorrow. A part of me wants to get talked out of it, to be encouraged and told, even if it's a lie, that I can and will finish by the 19th. The other part of me wants to be told what I really want to hear, that everything will be fine if I take some extra time and concentrate on other stuff for a while. I guess either way, I just want someone to tell me that everything's going to be OK, and I want it to be true.
I've been running this seemingly lose-lose situation by various people today, basically looking for reassurance, because to be honest, I'm a very confused emotional weakling right now. A girl at school told me "No one will be disappointed in you" if I don't finish on time. It might not sound like much, but I was unbelievably touched by that, and if there hadn't been so many other people around I would have let myself burst into tears.
The only thing that gave me hope was a nugget of wisdom from a friend who has proved to be the most unfailing moral compass I know (and I seek advice, shall we say, pathologically). He has talked me through many an ethical dilemma, from what to eat to how to frame my thesis, and talked me down from many a ledge, whether he believes it or not. I will now stop being wishy-washy. Anyhow, I told him about all of this and as always, he had some good advice. I wrote it down:
Things to do:
- Write a crap thesis
- Edit it
The issue, I guess, is not whether I have a finished thesis by April 19th, but whether I commit myself to finishing at all. In my head I am committed, but without some actual product to back it up, mental committent will not be enough. The actual product doesn't have to be perfect or polished or even a whole chapter, but I realize I have to produce something. I've definitely decided to produce things before, with varying degrees of success, but I think, and sincerely hope, that this Crap Thesis idea might be concrete enough to work.
So I'm off to do, um, that. If I can get out of this funk, everyone will benefit. I'll have a better outlook on life and everyone else will get a break from reading this solipsistic crap I keep writing.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
ode
you may recall that while I was working on my thesis proposal in the fall, I procrastinated for a few hours one night by blogging a lengthy list of songs that I've adopted as anthems of school-related stress. if you don't recall (and honestly, why would you?) and don't feel like procrastinating yourself/reading that whole thing, here's a summary:
5. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen): thesis proposal
4. Only Living Boy in New York (Simon and Garfunkel): quantitative research methods
3. Wooden Ships (CSNY): "What is Psychedelia?" paper
2. Trouble (Ray LaMontagne): Honduras Incident
1. Naive Melody (Talking Heads): undergrad thesis
I've been sitting here for hours working on a stupid f-ing column about stupid f-ing community university partnerships for a really stupid f-ing newspaper. today was a beautiful day and there were certainly more fun things I could have been doing. Craig and Lydia went hiking, Roo Roo et al went to a St. Patrick's Day festival at the Harpoon brewery, but I'm not bitter. much.
But I digress. I've been listening to The Arcade Fire a bit obsessively lately, in the car, in the house, at school. I've even found myself wearing my iPod while I wander around aimlessly from place to place, which I something I never do (let me clarify: I almost never listen to my iPod while wandering, but I wander all the time. I also enjoy puttering, meandering, idling, lazing, and putzing.) This one song "Wake Up" has been really speaking to me during my most recent existential crises. A few choice lines:
someone told me not to cry
but now that I'm older
and my heart's colder
I can see that it's a lie.
children wake up
hold your mistake up
good stuff, I think this song is well on its way to acheiving a top spot in the list of songs of painful significance. I don't know if it will stand the test of time and become my master's thesis song... There's a lot of time left until it's due, and surely a lot of new and painful experiences that will happen between now and then, a lot of new songs that could potentially overtake this one. so I don't really know what they "meant" to say in this song, but I've been assigning it my own meaning, as I like to do, in order to assign meaning to my own existence, whose meaning I'm always doubting. I have now said the word "meaning" so many times that it's beginning to lose its, uh, meaning.
again, I digress. so I'm currently working on holding my own mistakes up, as in recognizing them and trying to learn from them. For example, should I be writing this right now, or should I be transcribing interviews? Past experiences would indicate that I'll be a lot happier tomorrow if I can go to the beach and wiggle my toes around in the sand. However, if I continue blogging and not working, I'll be forced to spend tomorrow wiggling my toes around in my slippers while I do schoolwork at home and look out the window, all bitter like I am now. So I have held my past mistakes up, and now I'm holding my current mistake up and recognizing that I totally suck? and doing something about it?
I wish it were that simple, but I think there's some other variable beyond holding up my mistakes. I know pretty much exactly what they are, and exactly how to act so I don't repeat the same mistakes over and over, but something is missing. It's not that I don't have the motivation to do anything, because there are certain things I can finish right away. But when it comes to the things that are most important to my future happiness, like finishing my thesis on time to graduate, I'll find any distraction to avoid it.
In college I had a very similar issue with my undergrad thesis. It got to the point where I went to see the school psychologist, who theorized that I couldn't seem to finish, or really even start, my thesis because I didn't "really want to graduate." I liked my life in college so much that I was subconsciously trying to prolong it, not understanding that in the end it was a self-destuctive plan. That explanation would have seemed pretty sensible, had he not followed it up with the recommendation that I get laid more often. F-ing creep.
In the end, I didn't get laid, but I did finish my thesis. And it SUCKED. ASS. I shudder to think that it's printed and bound, available to any human being who walks into the Trinity library. I thank the Lord every day that I wrote it in Spanish, thus reducing the number of people that would be able to read it if they tried. While I only spent a few months really invested in that thesis, however, I've been obsessed with my master's thesis topic for well over a year now, and up until now, it's the biggest and most important project I've undertaken on any topic.
Beyond the time I've already invested in researching, talking about, and practicing green cleaning, it's something that I'm fairly certain I could devote the rest of my life to. This is going to sound extraordinarily lame, but I care about green cleaning too much to let my first published writing about it to be crap. Yes, I actually think that my weird-ass love for green cleaning is what's holding me back. I'm reminded of an awesome but little-known Talking Heads song called "Sax and Violins" (yes, they could have made the title's allusion a little less flagrant, but whatever, they're the Talking Heads and they don't subscribe to 'subtle'. Plus, there really is a saxophone playing in the song. Kind of. Anyways...)
wooden heads
furniture with legs
for sale
love keeps us together
love will drive us insane
So yeah, the jist of it is that I love green cleaning too much to ever let it go, to ever 'finish' writing about it. And this love is, as it were, driving me insane. The funny thing is, there are people in my program with the exact opposite problem: they are so disillusioned with their topic that they also find themselves unable to finish writing, whether because they think the topic is a problem with no solution or because they have come to think it's something that just doesn't matter.
While I'm certainly disillusioned with the process, with having to write and prove myself and all that, and I'm certainly not getting anywhere by writing about it instead of writing about IT, the essence of my problem is that I'm too obsessed with my thesis and too optimistic about my topic, not too indifferent. In the end, while it might be self-destructive or psychotic or just plain weird, I think I'd much rather keep it that way.
5. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen): thesis proposal
4. Only Living Boy in New York (Simon and Garfunkel): quantitative research methods
3. Wooden Ships (CSNY): "What is Psychedelia?" paper
2. Trouble (Ray LaMontagne): Honduras Incident
1. Naive Melody (Talking Heads): undergrad thesis
I've been sitting here for hours working on a stupid f-ing column about stupid f-ing community university partnerships for a really stupid f-ing newspaper. today was a beautiful day and there were certainly more fun things I could have been doing. Craig and Lydia went hiking, Roo Roo et al went to a St. Patrick's Day festival at the Harpoon brewery, but I'm not bitter. much.
But I digress. I've been listening to The Arcade Fire a bit obsessively lately, in the car, in the house, at school. I've even found myself wearing my iPod while I wander around aimlessly from place to place, which I something I never do (let me clarify: I almost never listen to my iPod while wandering, but I wander all the time. I also enjoy puttering, meandering, idling, lazing, and putzing.) This one song "Wake Up" has been really speaking to me during my most recent existential crises. A few choice lines:
someone told me not to cry
but now that I'm older
and my heart's colder
I can see that it's a lie.
children wake up
hold your mistake up
good stuff, I think this song is well on its way to acheiving a top spot in the list of songs of painful significance. I don't know if it will stand the test of time and become my master's thesis song... There's a lot of time left until it's due, and surely a lot of new and painful experiences that will happen between now and then, a lot of new songs that could potentially overtake this one. so I don't really know what they "meant" to say in this song, but I've been assigning it my own meaning, as I like to do, in order to assign meaning to my own existence, whose meaning I'm always doubting. I have now said the word "meaning" so many times that it's beginning to lose its, uh, meaning.
again, I digress. so I'm currently working on holding my own mistakes up, as in recognizing them and trying to learn from them. For example, should I be writing this right now, or should I be transcribing interviews? Past experiences would indicate that I'll be a lot happier tomorrow if I can go to the beach and wiggle my toes around in the sand. However, if I continue blogging and not working, I'll be forced to spend tomorrow wiggling my toes around in my slippers while I do schoolwork at home and look out the window, all bitter like I am now. So I have held my past mistakes up, and now I'm holding my current mistake up and recognizing that I totally suck? and doing something about it?
I wish it were that simple, but I think there's some other variable beyond holding up my mistakes. I know pretty much exactly what they are, and exactly how to act so I don't repeat the same mistakes over and over, but something is missing. It's not that I don't have the motivation to do anything, because there are certain things I can finish right away. But when it comes to the things that are most important to my future happiness, like finishing my thesis on time to graduate, I'll find any distraction to avoid it.
In college I had a very similar issue with my undergrad thesis. It got to the point where I went to see the school psychologist, who theorized that I couldn't seem to finish, or really even start, my thesis because I didn't "really want to graduate." I liked my life in college so much that I was subconsciously trying to prolong it, not understanding that in the end it was a self-destuctive plan. That explanation would have seemed pretty sensible, had he not followed it up with the recommendation that I get laid more often. F-ing creep.
In the end, I didn't get laid, but I did finish my thesis. And it SUCKED. ASS. I shudder to think that it's printed and bound, available to any human being who walks into the Trinity library. I thank the Lord every day that I wrote it in Spanish, thus reducing the number of people that would be able to read it if they tried. While I only spent a few months really invested in that thesis, however, I've been obsessed with my master's thesis topic for well over a year now, and up until now, it's the biggest and most important project I've undertaken on any topic.
Beyond the time I've already invested in researching, talking about, and practicing green cleaning, it's something that I'm fairly certain I could devote the rest of my life to. This is going to sound extraordinarily lame, but I care about green cleaning too much to let my first published writing about it to be crap. Yes, I actually think that my weird-ass love for green cleaning is what's holding me back. I'm reminded of an awesome but little-known Talking Heads song called "Sax and Violins" (yes, they could have made the title's allusion a little less flagrant, but whatever, they're the Talking Heads and they don't subscribe to 'subtle'. Plus, there really is a saxophone playing in the song. Kind of. Anyways...)
wooden heads
furniture with legs
for sale
love keeps us together
love will drive us insane
So yeah, the jist of it is that I love green cleaning too much to ever let it go, to ever 'finish' writing about it. And this love is, as it were, driving me insane. The funny thing is, there are people in my program with the exact opposite problem: they are so disillusioned with their topic that they also find themselves unable to finish writing, whether because they think the topic is a problem with no solution or because they have come to think it's something that just doesn't matter.
While I'm certainly disillusioned with the process, with having to write and prove myself and all that, and I'm certainly not getting anywhere by writing about it instead of writing about IT, the essence of my problem is that I'm too obsessed with my thesis and too optimistic about my topic, not too indifferent. In the end, while it might be self-destructive or psychotic or just plain weird, I think I'd much rather keep it that way.
Monday, February 26, 2007
opium of the people
it's 4am, and I'm eating lofthouse cookies, listening to "bluegrass mandolin extravaganza," smoking cigarettes, and reading Bertrand Russell. if grad school is wrong, I don't wanna be right. try this on for size:
"We are sometimes told that only fanaticism can make a social group effective. I think this it totally contrary to the lessons of history. But, in any case, only those who slavishly worship success can think that effectiveness is admirable without regard to what is effected. For my part, I think it better to do a little good than to do much harm. The world that I should wish to see would be freed from the virulence of group hostilities and capable of realizing that happiness for all is to be derived rather from co-operation than from strife. I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than at imprisoning the minds of the young in a rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence. The world needs open hearts and open minds, and it is not through rigid systems, whether old or new, that these can be derived."
yes.
"We are sometimes told that only fanaticism can make a social group effective. I think this it totally contrary to the lessons of history. But, in any case, only those who slavishly worship success can think that effectiveness is admirable without regard to what is effected. For my part, I think it better to do a little good than to do much harm. The world that I should wish to see would be freed from the virulence of group hostilities and capable of realizing that happiness for all is to be derived rather from co-operation than from strife. I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than at imprisoning the minds of the young in a rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence. The world needs open hearts and open minds, and it is not through rigid systems, whether old or new, that these can be derived."
yes.
Friday, February 16, 2007
what's so funny about peace, love and understanding?
thank you, elvis costello, for getting this question out on to the airwaves. it's been bothering me for years now that people think there's something odd about three of the five of the things I stand for (the other two would be fairness and community).
when I heard this song on the radio this last night, I happened to be enjoying some of the delicious pasta I made on tuesday night with some friends. I'd give you the recipe but we don't "do" recipes, and that's kind of where I'm going with this - bear with me. OK, you really want to know?
- roast some walnuts
- and some green beans
- mix some feta with some olive oil, lemon zest, salt and pepper
- boil some linguine and throw it all together.
delicious. at the last minute we also threw in some leftover spinach from an equally delicious, and equally recipe-free spanakopita. that one is way too complicated to describe. it's all up here (imagine me pointing at my head). OK, so anyways, back to "where I'm going with this."
I have two super-awesome friends, Craig and Lydia, with whom I have three big things in common: 1) love of homemade food; 2) love of pooling resources, being communal, etc.; and 3) more-or-less abject poverty. One night a month or two ago, I looked into my fridge and nearly shed a tear when i saw it was full of once-appetizing food that was on the brink of going bad. I have two roommates with very enigmatic eating habits. One isn't around much and the other, I'm led to believe, just doesn't eat. So I'm always buying fresh fruits and vegetables but I rarely get around to eating them before they go bad. and although I do love to compost, I don't have the kind of disposable income where I can be wasting much food.
so I called Craig and Lydia and said, "Hey, I've got a bunch of crap that's about to go bad. Want to come over and help me cook it?" They came over with their crap that was about to go bad, and the rest is history. We've made some delicious food, including but not limited to various spanakopita renditions, meat pies, spinach pies, breads and pies, chicken stir fry, the aforementioned pasta thing, etc. etc. The first spanakopita we made, inspired by a bitchload of ground lamb I happened to have on hand, lacked nearly every single ingredient that's normally in spanakopita, except for the phyllo dough and eggs. It had a ton of ingredients, just none that are actually used in regular spanakopita recipes. Frozen asparagus? yeah, i'm never going to cook that shit - let's throw it in! spring mix? why not?
I just can't say enough about the virtues of our "cooking crap that's about to go bad" tradition - it's the manifestation of everything I live for - frugality, cooking, sharing, improvising, and making something out of nothing. I highly recommend that everyone find some friends who share these passions, and get a "cook crap that's about to go bad" club going. It's immensely satisfying and I think, getting back to the Elvis Costello song, it makes the world a little bit of a better place.
when I heard this song on the radio this last night, I happened to be enjoying some of the delicious pasta I made on tuesday night with some friends. I'd give you the recipe but we don't "do" recipes, and that's kind of where I'm going with this - bear with me. OK, you really want to know?
- roast some walnuts
- and some green beans
- mix some feta with some olive oil, lemon zest, salt and pepper
- boil some linguine and throw it all together.
delicious. at the last minute we also threw in some leftover spinach from an equally delicious, and equally recipe-free spanakopita. that one is way too complicated to describe. it's all up here (imagine me pointing at my head). OK, so anyways, back to "where I'm going with this."
I have two super-awesome friends, Craig and Lydia, with whom I have three big things in common: 1) love of homemade food; 2) love of pooling resources, being communal, etc.; and 3) more-or-less abject poverty. One night a month or two ago, I looked into my fridge and nearly shed a tear when i saw it was full of once-appetizing food that was on the brink of going bad. I have two roommates with very enigmatic eating habits. One isn't around much and the other, I'm led to believe, just doesn't eat. So I'm always buying fresh fruits and vegetables but I rarely get around to eating them before they go bad. and although I do love to compost, I don't have the kind of disposable income where I can be wasting much food.
so I called Craig and Lydia and said, "Hey, I've got a bunch of crap that's about to go bad. Want to come over and help me cook it?" They came over with their crap that was about to go bad, and the rest is history. We've made some delicious food, including but not limited to various spanakopita renditions, meat pies, spinach pies, breads and pies, chicken stir fry, the aforementioned pasta thing, etc. etc. The first spanakopita we made, inspired by a bitchload of ground lamb I happened to have on hand, lacked nearly every single ingredient that's normally in spanakopita, except for the phyllo dough and eggs. It had a ton of ingredients, just none that are actually used in regular spanakopita recipes. Frozen asparagus? yeah, i'm never going to cook that shit - let's throw it in! spring mix? why not?
I just can't say enough about the virtues of our "cooking crap that's about to go bad" tradition - it's the manifestation of everything I live for - frugality, cooking, sharing, improvising, and making something out of nothing. I highly recommend that everyone find some friends who share these passions, and get a "cook crap that's about to go bad" club going. It's immensely satisfying and I think, getting back to the Elvis Costello song, it makes the world a little bit of a better place.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
power is a great aphrodisiac
Henry Kissinger, who I FUCKING HATE, said that. I guess that means he was lucky with the ladies, and although I weep for my entire gender if that is true, I wonder if he had a point. Personally, I think power corrupts, and I also think power tends to coincide with money, another characteristic I find generally unattractive. It's one thing to make a good income, but it's another thing to have a lot of money hanging around - that means you either make way too much and you're contributing to the ridiculously wide gap betwen rich and poor, and/or you need to give some away (i.e., you're selfish).
But I digress, back to power. I found that quote on an egregiously sexist website about Ladder Theory. I first heard about Ladder Theory at a friend's party - the girl who mentioned it was one of those highly-manicured types who feigns "edge" in such a nauseating way. She talked endlessly about how useless men are, moments later sucking face with another girl just to get a guy's attention (not that she needed to go to such lengths considering the gratuitous amount of tittie popping out of the corset-y thing she was wearing). But again I digress, and also I'm starting to sound bitter. I'm not, she was just gross is all. And she subscribes to Ladder Theory, which comes as no surprise.
Anyhow, since I looked up Ladder Theory it has been nibbling at my brain - it seems like total bullshit at first glance (as well as second glance, third glance, etc.) I especially disagree with the pie chart breaking down why some women are attracted to jerks. I disagree both with the ingredients in said pie as well as with the statement that "women dig assholes". I think it's kind of a sexist generalization that encourages men to be jerks and women to think that masculinity is equal to jerkiness. That's a whole other story though, and the God's honest truth is that over the past three years or so I've witnessed a majority of my girl friends dating JERKS. After college, at least 75% of my closest friends settled into long-term relationships with incredibly lame boys - from the innocuously lazy to the maliciously jealous, cheating and lying and verbal abuse and everything in between.
Three and a half years later, I'm happy to report that at least half of that original group has broken up with their Mr. Lame, and learned some valuable lessons along the way. I think the biggest lesson I learned was that "all of your friends can't be wrong". For some reason people think "Oh, I don't care what Suzie says, Johnnie is a wonderful person on the inside and he's just misunderstood". But when Suzie, Mary, Steve, your parents, and the Suffolk County District Attorney ALL think your significant other is bad news, perhaps you ought to listen. This is not to say that I'm adept at taking my own advice - trust me, I'm not.
OK, I have digressed beyond the point where I could strategically transition to the point I was originally trying to make, so I'm just going to go for it. To make a long story short, I just got off the phone with a friend who shall remain nameless. She wondered how to politely avoid making plans with a guy she just met, a guy she is not interested in a romantic relationship with. Here's where Ladder Theory may or may not come into play: the tricky part about this situation is that of course, the guy did not call and say "Hey, female, would you like to go out for a drink sometime? We can develop what you think is a beautiful friendship, while I strategically gauge how long it will be until I can bang you."
Now Ladder Theory would have us believe that every guy who ever meets a girl, no matter how attractive or not, compatible or not, etc., definitely wants to sleep with her. The difference between actually sleeping with her or not depends upon two factors: 1) whether or not she's interested and 2) her position on "the ladder" (i.e. is there a way hotter girl standing two feet away?) I hate hate hate this! But back to the story; she's not 'interested' in the guy but of course can't presume that the only reason he wants to get together is because he is 'interested' in her. That would be, in her opinion, not so much conceited as just...dangerous?
Ladder Theory has me all worked up now, and I have dishes to do. I'll await other peoples' opinions instead of obsessing over it myself, at least for a few hours. Today I'm off to Winterfest, which if all goes well, will be a little less ridiculous than last year.
But I digress, back to power. I found that quote on an egregiously sexist website about Ladder Theory. I first heard about Ladder Theory at a friend's party - the girl who mentioned it was one of those highly-manicured types who feigns "edge" in such a nauseating way. She talked endlessly about how useless men are, moments later sucking face with another girl just to get a guy's attention (not that she needed to go to such lengths considering the gratuitous amount of tittie popping out of the corset-y thing she was wearing). But again I digress, and also I'm starting to sound bitter. I'm not, she was just gross is all. And she subscribes to Ladder Theory, which comes as no surprise.
Anyhow, since I looked up Ladder Theory it has been nibbling at my brain - it seems like total bullshit at first glance (as well as second glance, third glance, etc.) I especially disagree with the pie chart breaking down why some women are attracted to jerks. I disagree both with the ingredients in said pie as well as with the statement that "women dig assholes". I think it's kind of a sexist generalization that encourages men to be jerks and women to think that masculinity is equal to jerkiness. That's a whole other story though, and the God's honest truth is that over the past three years or so I've witnessed a majority of my girl friends dating JERKS. After college, at least 75% of my closest friends settled into long-term relationships with incredibly lame boys - from the innocuously lazy to the maliciously jealous, cheating and lying and verbal abuse and everything in between.
Three and a half years later, I'm happy to report that at least half of that original group has broken up with their Mr. Lame, and learned some valuable lessons along the way. I think the biggest lesson I learned was that "all of your friends can't be wrong". For some reason people think "Oh, I don't care what Suzie says, Johnnie is a wonderful person on the inside and he's just misunderstood". But when Suzie, Mary, Steve, your parents, and the Suffolk County District Attorney ALL think your significant other is bad news, perhaps you ought to listen. This is not to say that I'm adept at taking my own advice - trust me, I'm not.
OK, I have digressed beyond the point where I could strategically transition to the point I was originally trying to make, so I'm just going to go for it. To make a long story short, I just got off the phone with a friend who shall remain nameless. She wondered how to politely avoid making plans with a guy she just met, a guy she is not interested in a romantic relationship with. Here's where Ladder Theory may or may not come into play: the tricky part about this situation is that of course, the guy did not call and say "Hey, female, would you like to go out for a drink sometime? We can develop what you think is a beautiful friendship, while I strategically gauge how long it will be until I can bang you."
Now Ladder Theory would have us believe that every guy who ever meets a girl, no matter how attractive or not, compatible or not, etc., definitely wants to sleep with her. The difference between actually sleeping with her or not depends upon two factors: 1) whether or not she's interested and 2) her position on "the ladder" (i.e. is there a way hotter girl standing two feet away?) I hate hate hate this! But back to the story; she's not 'interested' in the guy but of course can't presume that the only reason he wants to get together is because he is 'interested' in her. That would be, in her opinion, not so much conceited as just...dangerous?
Ladder Theory has me all worked up now, and I have dishes to do. I'll await other peoples' opinions instead of obsessing over it myself, at least for a few hours. Today I'm off to Winterfest, which if all goes well, will be a little less ridiculous than last year.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Sunday, November 05, 2006
I have a fever, and the only thing that can cure it is MORE COWBELL.
So now I have a blog. "Why?", you ask? As a way of practicing for the Great Thesis Proposal Defense, let me boil it down to a few key Bullet Points:
- Amanda and other blog people tell me that this is National Blog Posting Month, in which all people are required to blog, and I'm the kind of person that follows the rules.
- Because everyone else is doing it, and I'm the kind of person that would jump off a bridge if everyone else was doing it.
- I ought to be doing something else, like schoolwork, and I'm the kind of person that will do anything to avoid work, even at great personal risk.
- I sometimes tend to suck at keeping in touch with people. Maybe those people can read my blog and pretend they are talking to me.
- Save trees.
- Proselytize.
- I have been going through innumerable crises of conscience within the past few weeks, mainly due to my thesis (henceforth, my "Albatross"). Someone wise pointed out that writing about it could be therapeutic. It's worth a shot, especially considering I am "between health insurance plans" right now and have no money to buy drugs in the informal economy.
Friday, May 05, 2006
a piss-poor day on the farm
This blog entry is really only of interest to true Anne Devotees. It's not going to be creative, it's not going to be funny, so if you're just being Anne-curious, look elsewhere because you're about to be bored out of your skull. Unless, of course, you have a passion for epic tales of woe that have nothing to do with love or human relationships, but rather focus on qualitative research methods. If that does describe you, you're weird.
Thesis proposal
Torn to little tiny shreds
One more albatross
For those of you who haven't already heard the three-hour psychotic tirade behind that haiku: today I was supposed to defend my reserach design proposal for my thesis... It didn't go quite as well as I had anticipated. I seriously thought my design was bulletproof and impervious to criticism, yet like I insinuated, it was torn apart. My professor found holes in my research question big enough to walk through. And of course the rest of the design, having been based on that central question, was totally invalidated. Phrases like "totally not feasible," "you're not an epidemiologist," "this is not a RESD thesis," and "you just can't really do this" were tossed around the room like so many spiny wiffle balls. It was not a good scene. I didn't know whether I wanted to cry or throw up or just scream "BUT WE DISCUSSED THIS!!! BUT I'VE BEEN WORKING WITH THE SAME RESEARCH QUESTION ALL SEMESTER AND ONLY NOW YOU'RE TELLING ME EXACTLY HOW BAD IT IS?"
Jesus Christ on a bike. I just couldn't help feeling like it was somehow personal. I feel like I got punched in the stomach repeatedly for an hour... I just f-ing HATE actually putting effort into things and having them suck. It just goes to show that my traditional formula of not putting any effort into schoolwork is actually the most effective.
I also f-ing hate the fact that I drank 3 cups of coffee at like midnight because I got a new coffeemaker and I just haaaad to try it out. This combination of seething anger, the resulting adrenaline, and being physically wired is just not helping me get to sleep. I have more pointless phone interviews to conduct tomorrow. Perhaps I should tell my interviewee, "Hey, its really nice of you to agree to talk to me, but unfortunately my research design is so lame that it's really useless for me to ask you any questions. Yeah, my whole thesis topic has ebola. Apparently. Thanks for your time!"
Why did I come to grad school? What in the good green earth was I thinking? I sucked at school before; I had no logical reason to believe that three years of waitressing would have given me that unstoppable impetus to learn that I had been lacking when I was in college...
I heard this amazingly beautiful John Lennon song today that I had never heard before, "Working Class Hero." According to John, "a working class hero is something to be." Please indulge my crisis of self/purpose in life and consider how this leads me to two possibilities:
1. I should go to New England Tractor Trailer School, get a real job, and get over myself.
-OR-
2. I am doing this for all the wrong reasons. I read a study or something that argues that people who go into social work, non-profits, social justice work, etc., do so out of a subconscious need to be taken care of themselves. That is, anyone who does something nice for someone else (but NOT as a means to an end - rather because they think they are just being nice and "caretaker-y") is actually hoping that someone will take care of them in return. I don't really know what to do with that theory, I just thought it was interesting to consider that maybe I don't actually want to help people - in which case I REALLY ought to just go to NETTS...
By way of ending
I know I'm totally nuts
It's something to be
Thesis proposal
Torn to little tiny shreds
One more albatross
For those of you who haven't already heard the three-hour psychotic tirade behind that haiku: today I was supposed to defend my reserach design proposal for my thesis... It didn't go quite as well as I had anticipated. I seriously thought my design was bulletproof and impervious to criticism, yet like I insinuated, it was torn apart. My professor found holes in my research question big enough to walk through. And of course the rest of the design, having been based on that central question, was totally invalidated. Phrases like "totally not feasible," "you're not an epidemiologist," "this is not a RESD thesis," and "you just can't really do this" were tossed around the room like so many spiny wiffle balls. It was not a good scene. I didn't know whether I wanted to cry or throw up or just scream "BUT WE DISCUSSED THIS!!! BUT I'VE BEEN WORKING WITH THE SAME RESEARCH QUESTION ALL SEMESTER AND ONLY NOW YOU'RE TELLING ME EXACTLY HOW BAD IT IS?"
Jesus Christ on a bike. I just couldn't help feeling like it was somehow personal. I feel like I got punched in the stomach repeatedly for an hour... I just f-ing HATE actually putting effort into things and having them suck. It just goes to show that my traditional formula of not putting any effort into schoolwork is actually the most effective.
I also f-ing hate the fact that I drank 3 cups of coffee at like midnight because I got a new coffeemaker and I just haaaad to try it out. This combination of seething anger, the resulting adrenaline, and being physically wired is just not helping me get to sleep. I have more pointless phone interviews to conduct tomorrow. Perhaps I should tell my interviewee, "Hey, its really nice of you to agree to talk to me, but unfortunately my research design is so lame that it's really useless for me to ask you any questions. Yeah, my whole thesis topic has ebola. Apparently. Thanks for your time!"
Why did I come to grad school? What in the good green earth was I thinking? I sucked at school before; I had no logical reason to believe that three years of waitressing would have given me that unstoppable impetus to learn that I had been lacking when I was in college...
I heard this amazingly beautiful John Lennon song today that I had never heard before, "Working Class Hero." According to John, "a working class hero is something to be." Please indulge my crisis of self/purpose in life and consider how this leads me to two possibilities:
1. I should go to New England Tractor Trailer School, get a real job, and get over myself.
-OR-
2. I am doing this for all the wrong reasons. I read a study or something that argues that people who go into social work, non-profits, social justice work, etc., do so out of a subconscious need to be taken care of themselves. That is, anyone who does something nice for someone else (but NOT as a means to an end - rather because they think they are just being nice and "caretaker-y") is actually hoping that someone will take care of them in return. I don't really know what to do with that theory, I just thought it was interesting to consider that maybe I don't actually want to help people - in which case I REALLY ought to just go to NETTS...
By way of ending
I know I'm totally nuts
It's something to be
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