"the hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
Not so much the daily grind, as the things that fall outside the scope of academics.
I’m such a bad kitty mom! Lunar has a wound on his left forearm, he’s had it for a while. And I finally got tired of it almost healing, then opening back up again, rinse and repeat. So I slathered it with antibiotic cream, and wrapped the wound with 3M adhesive tape. And then videotaped his reaction. Because I’m a bad, bad person. (The shakiness is because I’m laughing. Hard.)
I’m a bit behind in my blogdom the last few days, for which I apologize. I have things to reply to, things to read, other things to post – my excuse is cloudy lungs. (I’ve had pretty persistent bronchitis for the past month, and there’s some concern I’ve managed to go get myself pneumonia. Again.) Where a week ago I was hiking up and down stairs rapidly and with glee, today, I can’t get from couch to kitchen without serious breathing issues.
The life of a severe asthmatic. I’ll spare you my bitching about the smallness of Albany, which means it takes two plus months to get in to see a specialist (there just aren’t that many). I suspect I’ll do the whole “not breathing in the ER to get their attention” trick that worked so well for me the last time.
Anyhow! Digressing. The point of this isn’t to whine, the point is to save myself typing and YouTube linking, and say instead, “go read Jentery’s latest post. It’s all about the Dove beauty campaign, real beauty, and zombies. And then I dovetail (heh) us into phenomenology, and the decomposition of language.
It reminds me of everything I miss about CHID – people wondering why zombies aren’t used to better effect for the representation of the real, and no one blinks twice, but instead thoughtfully considers the option before replying. People here would look at me oddly for even trying. (For example, the looks I got this afternoon when I explained why faith and science aren’t the same things, and it’s possible for someone who’s religious to be scientifically agnostic… well, I gave up quickly and went back to reading CDC data on the new HIV testing recommendations.)
Anyways, why are you still reading this? Go read Jentery, not me!
I am having a Monday. They’re rather traditional around here, but that doesn’t really make them any easier to get through.
I’ve been doubting lately. Doubting, a lot, that I’m on the right path, doing the right thing. It’s harder than I thought it would be, starting over in a new place, in a new field. I feel so behind, and like nothing I do will catch me up. All the work I did, the effort, all the long and hard hours; it got me here – but I don’t know that it’s enough to keep me here.
The odd thing is, it’s not because of the test I got back today – I knew I was going to do poorly on it, and I was okay with that. I have to give myself some room here, and I know it; I’ve not taken a test in years, I’ve never taken a test with this prof, and I didn’t know how the test would be structured – and I find it near-impossible to study without knowing the basic style of the prof. The lowest test score is tossed, so it’s not like I did anything bad. But I think the prof was distressed, and that combined with everything else…
I’ve not talked about it here, because I don’t feel like it’s proper to discuss, or really my place, but there have been some drastic changes happening with the dual degree program I’m in, and just exactly where all the cards are going to fall is still unknown. So I moved across the country for something that is no longer a set thing. My PhD is still there, but I didn’t come here for a PhD in Philosophy – I came here for a dual degree, for continuing with bioethics, and getting that experience. And people are still working with me on it, and I’ve been assured and reassured that I will be taken care of, and I have no reason at all to question or doubt it, but it’s stressful. My nails? Gone – and I’d done so well, not biting them for almost a year. I consider that, more than anything, an indication of how stressed I’ve been.
On top of that, I feel isolated. My program is mostly men, and they’ve clumped together and are doing things together. They hang out, they’ve developed in jokes – the one’s starting with me integrating in with the older students. There are a couple of women, more than I was expecting, but of the four others, two have children and the other two have long term boyfriends. They’ve lives outside school, and don’t hang out as much as the guys do. So in a lot of ways, it’s just me and the boys, and I apparently have cooties. I was warned about this a long time ago – academia is still male. We’ve got three female teachers in the department; one’s my adviser, and she’s already acknowledged that the gender imbalance makes life hard. And it does.
I spent the morning doing email, leading me to the conclusion that writing email stresses me out to an insanely inappropriate degree, but I’m always concerned my tone won’t come across properly. I’ve one prof worrying about me, and another that I seem to be able to speak the language of, but he doesn’t speak mine.
And yet there are bright spots. Emilie’s email made me smile; I seem to have picked up a couple of readers from a blog I quite admire, and have been reading since its inception. And I find things like this, and realize that those are the small moments that make life living, where the magic escapes the imagination and flows into the world.
I know it was just a rough day, with a lot of things piling onto one another. I know this, but I still doubt. What if there’s a better way for me to get to my goal? Is this really the right path? Or should I be taking another route – it’s not like this is the only one. This is the only one, though, with the opportunities presented. It’s not that I doubt myself, I know I can do what I want to do. I shine when you put me into anything involving bioethics. It’s the rest that’s in question.
Winston Churchill said that if you’re going through hell, keep going.
I don’t mean to complain, or make life sound bad. I’m so grateful to the people who’ve supported me so far, taken time out to answer my emails, or go to lunch with me, or to contact me via the web form and give encouraging words. But I just feel this huge weight on my shoulders, and the moments of magic are fleeting. It makes them special and cherished – but I could use a little more of it in my day to day life.
My Saturday night, in pictures:
A ticket to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood!
Why, what’s that piece of paper?
That looks kind of notecard shaped…
What does that say? Adulterous whore?
Yes, my front row, first chair seat got me several interesting experiences this evening. First, I was next to a very nice, very chatty young boy… who, when Brad asked for a third child of about the age he was, I very sneakily pointed to and got the kid on stage – to his parents delight (and gratitude), and the kids near-ecstacy. He got to be one of the three kids playing a version of “Change Line” – they honked the horn every time they wanted them to say something new. Brad nearly killed them – it was most fabulous.
Other awesome things were the game If Ya Know What I Mean, which is well-played when teaching someone how to play poker. Just imagine all the innuendo with Queens, hands, lows, beating men with hands,… they barely kept it together, and at one point, Brad just… went, breaking everyone up.
Sound Effects was also just incredible, with the girl doing the sound effects for Brad doing the sound effect for the megaphone… and saying something like “I need to remove this object from my anus.” Til then, she’d been doing fabulous sound effects – and then this. And it broke Brad. Hard. Colin was right behind, but managed to keep it together much more, and goad the girl to say more, and worse things. (They were chasing a sheep. Take your imagination where it wants to go – she did worse, I guarantee.)
I verified, for Brad, that indeed I could not see through the blindfold being used for mousetrap. He said something like I wouldn’t tell them if he could see, anyhow, and I asked why he said that – after all, it wouldn’t be nearly so funny if he could see what he was doing. He blinked, agreed, and then we watched them play The Most Dangerous Game in the World – barefoot, across the stage strewn with 100 mousetraps. But that’s not hard enough, so they also played the Alphabet Game, singing it opera-style, about nanotechnology.
I laughed so hard I needed my inhaler.
After the break, they collected our suggestions for the game Whose Line (“yes, Whose Line is it Anyway has a game called Whose Line – go figure!” ahem), and proceeded to run through them. The scenario was mountainclimbing in the Himalayas, searching for the rare Himalayan giraffe.
The above card was my suggestion. I cannot explain the smiley. I don’t know why I drew it, I just did. And oh, was I mocked. Brad drew my card, read it (attributing it to advice from his father), folded it into his pocket, pulled it back out, and noted how happy and optimistic his father was, showing everyone the smiley. And I folded over in laughter, and he stood over me: “Oh, I wonder who wrote this!” Since I was folded over laughing, I missed him handing the card down to me, but the kid next to me grabbed it and gave it back to me.
The rest of the show, they’d come back occasionally to make fun of me… including singing it in the show finale. Which was taped. They mentioned my being embarassed about being teased, standing over me and pointing grandly. It was awesome.
The last game played was Crime, in which Brad had to guess that he did the following:
while dressed in toe socks, velvet bellbottom overalls, and a cast iron jock strap, sold comic books illegally while giving a chicken steroids, in Chictawhaga (I’m spelling it phoenetically, and yes, Brad GUESSED this), where he left behind a raisin and a sticky bun.
I can’t believe the seat I had – I was maybe a foot from the stage. Colin walked out and stood right in front of me, making direct eye contact, winked, smiled, and was simply charming. Brad, once he’d centered in on me, made a lot of eye contact and faces my way the rest of the night. And since I kept reacting to his left field philosophy-esque jokes, he kept making them, and looking to me after each one to watch me crack up.
It was glorious. I had an amazing time. I’m so, so glad I went. I’m going to be chuckling quietly to myself for weeks.
