The Laursonian Institute

Well, I’ve been in the Bay Area the last few days, putting in my part of the grunt work at the LSA annual conference.  Not feeling like the conference was much of consequence, so suffice it to say that I didn’t see much in terms of content.  I was scheduled to work during most the things I would have wanted to see, and managed to miss (through my own poor planning) the only talk I had intended on catching, by an old advisor of mine.  Oh well.  The real plus of the whole thing was getting to meet some new friends from other schools, hang out with the Davis crew, and see lots of folks I haven’t seen in ages!  I feel well socialized.  I even had one of the professors from Davis bring a famous linguist-guy over to to introduce me and told him about what a great project (my Russian variation paper) I did and how promising I was.  I’m rather flattered, though that’s not my field or direction.

What was of great note from the last two days are two different things.  First of all, Lewis and I were staying with Nina and Jimmy, and it was really awesome to see them and get to hang out.  It’s always so nice to get to stay with friends!  Especially ones you don’t get to see as often as you’d like.  But even better, Nina had an appointment to try on some wedding dresses this morning, and asked me to come with her!  It was great to get to help out with some of the wedding stuff, since I’m not positive we’re going to make it to New York later this year (though we’ll try out best!) and it’s always nice to be able to offer a sturdy shoulder and meagre advice.   I was so happy to oblige!

My other weirder and less-cool news of the weekend is that I had an occular migraine (without accompanying headache) in the middle of one of the few talks I was able to attend.  It was supremely weird, since I’ve never had one before.  Started as a little smudge in one part of my vision, something like having stared at something really bright for too long, but more smooshy than bright.  Anyway, it expanded to a sort of semi-circle before too long and at times completely obscured my peripherial vision on one side.  It was in both eyes, so it wasn’t an eye thing… anyway, I paniced and bailed out of the talk as soon as it was acceptable to do so.  Ran up to where Lewis was on duty, and he thought it sounded like an ocular migraine, which his mom used to get.  A phone call to the UCD advice nurse on duty assured me I wasn’t in dire trouble (though she said they “didn’t do eyes” so she couldn’t tell me much else).  I talked to Francie for a while and she really calmed me down and made me feel pretty sure that’s what had happened, though I’m gonna hit up an eye doctor in short order to rule out everything else.  Poking around on the internet this evening seems to pretty much confirm it.  I even found little diagrams that look almost exactly like what I saw, so it’s pretty suggestive.  Anyway.. I’m slightly unnearved, but thankful it seems to be nothing more serious than perhaps too much stress, too little sleep, and a little bad luck.  And no head ache, thank goodness.

All in all, a pretty successful couple of days!  January marches on.  I have a big week ahead of me, and then my sister will be here!  Yay!

January 10th, 2009 | Tags: conference, friends, linguists, LSA, migraine, weddings | Category: life, work | Comments Off

This is me, being cranky about classes.  I’m waiting for a professor to email me back and maybe okay a bit of a change of courses for this quarter.  I think this would make me feel less cranky.  I just feel really uninspired so far, and like I’m wasting a lot of my time.  Though to be fair, I’ve only had half my classes so far.  Anyway.  I’m feeling rather strung out and not at all ready to run around this linguistics conference all weekend.  But I know once I get there, I’ll be happy to see everybody, and it’ll be a fun adventure.  And until then… I think I’d better go to bed and hope for a better day tomorrow.

January 7th, 2009 | Tags: grumpy | Category: school | Comments Off

Day two, and I’m already feeling mind-dumb, though not from overwork, which I could be doing.  It’s odd, I only have three classes so far, and one of them is Quechua, which I’m auditing, and is an entry-level language class anyway.  In other words, I have no work for that class and being a warm body in a seat is about all I need for a grade.  I did have semantics today for the first time, and there’s no required reading for that class.  Just problem sets, and a paper at the end.  Maybe I’ll be feeling more nervous after my first philosophy class on Thursday, but right now I’m feeling really underworked.  Even my readership is going slowly – the class I’m reading for doesn’t even have homework due till the 21st, and the professor seems really nice and easy going.   What’s a girl to do?

Well, I did sew curtains for our bathroom yesterday.  And I’ve been cooking nice dinners.  And I did do the laundry today.  I’ve been trying to knock back the optional reading for semantics today, but it’s a little draining.  It’s the intro chapter to our book and it’s a bit meandery and broad.  I’m already missing the excellent source reading I was getting to do for structuralism…. even sociolinguistics!  (Consequently, I got an A+ on my socioling paper, and the professor thinks I should use (an expanded version of) it for my first qualifying paper.  A bit of a brag, I know, but I can’t think of the last time I got an A+ on a paper!).  Anyway… there’s really nothing worse than dry, optional reading.

January 6th, 2009 | Tags: bored, quechua, reading, semantics | Category: school | Comments Off

Ooo, school starts tomorrow!  I’m rather excited about that this evening.  I just got my bag prepared for tomorrow, and packed with all the books and pens and things I need.  I’ve got a pretty easy day, I think – just Quechua and a meeting with the professor I’m TAing for.  I’m looking forward to it for sure!

Today turned into that relaxing and great day I was hoping for.  Got up pretty late after a debacle with our smoke alarm (chirpping, running out of batteries) at 4 am.  Had a nice lie in, a quick breakfast, and then we headed off to Vacaville to get some stuff done.  Lewis needed new pants that fit better, so we hit up the Eddie Bauer outlet and proceeded to spend waaaay more money than we probably needed.  But when all pants are like 15 dollars, and nothing you own fits any more… it’s time to sink some money in for the name of comfort.  We even ran into our Davis friends Ann and Joaquin there!   We had a nice lunch at Mels and then went and picked fabric for our bathroom curtain which maybe I’ll have time to pin and sew tomorrow.  Dinner with the Lawyers tonight was very relaxing.  We had some mixed drinks and talked through our LA plans (whew!) and a very tasty dinner.  Life is good.

Now I just need to try and get myself into bed before 1 am, so that I’ll actually make it to class on time in the morning.  Thankfully I don’t have any 8 am classes this quarter.  10 am will seem like a blessing!   And here’s to hoping that this quarter will be a better balanced, but equally enriching and stimulating experience.  Last quarter was a little out of control in places, and this quarter has a lot of potential for getting out of hand.  But as of tonight, I’m feeling relaxed and hopeful that this quarter will be a happy time full of friends and fun and adventure!  How’s that for a last-night-of-break cap?

January 4th, 2009 | Tags: crafts, family, plans, school, shopping | Category: home, school | Comments Off

Last of the holiday parties today, which went off pretty well.  Always nice to see those folks, though lately I feel like I’ve been failing at hanging out properly.  I don’t know quite what it is, but I feel like I’m having a really hard time opening up to or feeling close to anyone but Lewis and my sister.  I’m not sure if it’s expecting too much of people, but there’s a familiar place in my mind that I feel like I spent much of high school and such in – the place where I know that no one cares what I do, say, or think, so I’m really better off not doing or saying anything.  I’ve grown to realize that this actually makes me a very difficult conversationalist and only serves to make people actually not enjoy talking to me or being around me, and that all just makes it feed on itself.  And somewhere deep down I don’t think it’s as serious as all that, nor should it be terribly important whether my acquaintances have some sort of personal investment in my life.  They shouldn’t, and I should be more okay with talking about myself and about the world with people who are only temporary figures in my life.  I’m not sure what drives me to be taciturn at times and not at others, but I guess I’m in one of those slumps, and I’ll surely have to get over it.

Right now, my heart just feels a little cold and inaccessible.  I’m in need of joy, and release.  Relaxation.  Something of this order which gets me either out of my own murky head.  Though school will thrust me back into the all-too-clear present, which is another good place to be.  It’s as though I either need to be thinking far more deeply about something, or far less.  I wish it were easier to pinpoint what it is that’s on my mind, that makes me feel so isolated and preoccupied.  Going through life feeling like there’s something wrong about my life that I just can’t quite put my finger on is a little maddening, and a little depressing, and all this failed introspection doesn’t help the situation whatsoever.  Maybe all I want is to know where I’m going in life, and that I’m not making huge mistakes with my education and career and life plan.  I can’t count the number of times my idling brain has pulled me out of school so that I can work a steady 9-to-5 while Lewis gets his PhD and I recede into the tried-and-true working woman and mom combo.  And then the though of myself as a mom makes me temporarily sick and a little angry that the next stage in my life might be something that seems so unfulfilling and that I haven’t figured out yet how to raise children to feel loved and cared for and stable.  Everything about the future is simultaneously promising and frustrating.  I know I’m only 25 and I’m not supposed to have the answers, but it feels like until now that I’ve had a plan, and now my plan is so nebulous and quixotic.

Sigh.  I have another one of these dually unachievable plans in place for tomorrow.  I both want to get a bunch of tidy chores done – taking down the Christmas tree and getting some errands run – and to throw myself to the winds and somehow have an life affirming adventure that unwinds me.  Every day feels like this.  With any luck, I’ll at least sleep well.

January 3rd, 2009 | Tags: future, grumbling, grumpy, taciturn, worried | Category: life | Comments Off

I love the way my room smells.  Sitting in here gives me comfort.  It feels so real, so present, so manageable.  Timeless, in a way.  Regardless of the day I’ve had, this is the room I come home to, this is the bed I sleep in, and this is the last thing I see before I sleep, and the first thing when I wake.

It is very difficult to reconcile this immediate reality with the multitude of possibilities of my future lives.  Tonight I made the mistake of realizing the internal fellowship application is due in two weeks, and that I might need letters of recommendation and all that.  There was a comfort in thinking (though falsely) that getting in to graduate school was the last proving of myself that needed to be done.  Instead, here I am, faced with again trying to convince someone that I’m a worthwhile student who ought to be given something now for the promise of belated glory upon our fine institution.

Sadly, fellowship applications are really a minor worry on the road of an academic career.  I read the suggestions and guidelines for applying for academic positions in my field tonight and the journey sounds long and difficult, but in some small way, also enticing.   Applying for academic jobs is such a long way from my comfortable bed in my calm home that it’s impossible to think some day that might be what I’m striving for.  There’s not a lot between being a first year graduate student and being a last year graduate student hoping for a job.  That job might take years to get, might involve several successive one-year appointments in a variety of schools, and may in the end be a frustrating and unfulfilling exercise in realizing academia is not where you want to spend your life.

At some point you must learn to believe in yourself and your work to such a degree that you could spend years shopping yourself and your doctoral project around and get nothing but rejection after rejection.  I hope I reach that point.  I have a hard enough time writing a statement of purpose and pretending that I’m a worthwhile graduate student.  I know a few things about myself:  I’m an enthusiastic learner, a good student, and a dedicated teacher.  Truly, teaching is what gets me all fired up.  I enjoy reserach, but the vision of my future is not the ego-wielding research jewel in some school’s cap, but a beloved professor who loves and understands the subject and inspires her students, and who gets to do research on things she loves on the side.  I’m not sure this is the right focus for someone who hopes to make a go of academia.  I’m seriously considering what other educational opportunities might be out there for me to participate in.  Could I teach at a community college?  A prep school?  A high school?   Who knows.

I do know that I should really get this fellowship application done, though like all applications (except this UCD one) I know in my bones it’s all for naught.  I just do not come off well on paper, and I’m sure it’s at least partly a function of me feeling that way going into it.  This is a thing I do not know how to fix.  Tonight, I’m going to take refuge in my bed.  And tomorrow I’ll wake up ready for my last holiday party, on my last free weekend before the start of a very busy quarter.  Good night.

January 2nd, 2009 | Tags: academia, applications, fellowship, future, jobs, room, smell, worry | Category: life, school | Comments Off