Tis the season for the groove type thing

Tis the season for freaking out, and I feel like I should be...but I'm not. This week should be super stressful, and maybe I'm not working hard enough, but so far it's been pretty decent. (I should probably get to that 15 page paper soon...) It's strange, or maybe not so strange, but I tend to find my zen place when I have a lot to do. Perhaps it's more of a groove-type thing.

I feel pretty snobby sitting here at work, listening to a Mendelssohn string quartet, reading critiques of Samuel Beckett, sipping coffee. (The picture is definitely brought a bit back to earth by the fact that it's cafeteria coffee mixed with chocolate in a plastic mug, and I'm sitting in a cubicle making minimum wage, and the Beckett critique is for a class I have a final in on Friday.) The thing about Beckett is that it makes me feel kind of bummed about life. He's such a downer...all this "you're born, you live a meaningless life, you die" stuff. College has a tendency to be depressing when you actually think about things.

In other news, I had decided to go to India for study abroad, buuuuuut not so sure about that now, what with all hell on the loose. I'd still really like to go to Scandinavia. Doubtful that I can convince my advisor that the whitest place on the planet is the place for me to do research for my senior honors thesis, though. I just don't feel drawn to somewhere where I might get blown up or shot or taken hostage or die of malaria. I appreciate that things suck a lot and need help, really I do. But I don't know how my dying to see that is going to help anything. I'm also coming to see a lot about how "the academy" works. To get credibility, to get a teaching job (of which there are few in the anthro field), to get published, and to get known, one has to go to the Third World to do research. My interests have always lied more (is that proper grammar?) in the realm of studying the oppressor or something like that. I have mixed feelings about being the world's savior. We definitely need to make reparations for effing it over in the first place, but at the same time, we meddle too much in other people's business.

Also I really hate small talk. A lot. Don't ask me how I am if you don't actually care how I am. And I will do the same.

"Hi, how are you?"
"Good. How are you?"
"Good."

If you actually tell how you are, people go glassy eyed, because they didn't actually want to know. A simple hello will suffice. The worst thing is when both people say "How are you?" and "Good" at the exact same time. And I have it on good authority that Europeans think our fakeness in greetings is dumb. Except we do it in French class too, so I don't even know.

Soooo I need to get back to my work...