Six hours, an entire bag of Chex Mix, a hamster named Fluffernutter, and only 4 hours of sleep later, my last anatomy class exam is over. Time to pull out the big guns for the final...haha on me...Never again will I attempt science.

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...

How Ursula got her groove back

General rule of my life: When it rains, it pours.

But the good news about that is that this time it's pouring happiness. I feel like me again! Yesterday I socialized with more skeletons (in the biomechanics lab) than people throughout the day (until nighttime), but I got my groove back. I probably should actually be more stressed than I am, but I'm feeling under control. (I have 4 meetings in a row tonight, but it's ok!) I also love Southwestern again and am satisfied to be here. I've also finally learned how to be ok not being in a relationship and honestly-- get this-- don't want to be in one. That's not to say I am opposed to dating, I just really can't do serious right now. And it's ok!!!!

Also, the career plan du jour is Teach for America for 2 years post-SU to get some money and to get the teaching bug out of my system. Then UT law, which I hear is actually a lot more fun than I thought. Then: world domination. By which I mean running a non-profit or NGO or working for da government. Or the trusty backup plan of writing things.


"Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
-Nathaniel Hawthorne

I really enjoy that it took me this long to realize that the reason I'm so sluggish and deranged is that I'm not actually allowed to work out.

Existential crisis part deux

Actually, it isn't really very existential, but someone PLEASE remind me why I thought taking Anatomy was ok? Why? I mean, I have reasons, but they obviously aren't good enough ones. Why didn't I take Environmental Science like I knew I should? Today they are hearing a talk from a beekeeper for their lab. While I hear a 45 min lecture on muscle articulation and learn the entire musculature for the elbow, wrist, and hands. HAAA. This class is killing my beautiful GPA and making me feel stupid. And at this point there is nothing I can do about it. I did try to do my research last year, but I got such sketchy answers from people on the hardness of anatomy...lots of "ooh..eeee" and even "that's what made me decide to be a kines major" and now it's "holy Jesus why would you take that?" Where were those naysayers when I was asking last year????? I've made the dumbest scheduling decisions this year, and I can't do anything about it now except forge on for 3 more months and hope I don't deeply regret my stupidity come transcript time. It is entirely possible to get through this school without actually taking anything all that hard while still learning things; in other words to leave with a nice inflated GPA and a decent bank of knowledge, but apparently I derive some perverted pleasure out of taking needlessly difficult classes. Microeconomics is a case in point. I honestly can't say I remember very much or that I'm very glad in retrospect that I took that class. It was the downfall of my 4.0 with one little minus, and I don't even think I got much out of it. Except maybe I kind of know something about how houses made the economy suck.

Also, I am ridiculously sleepy but not tired. My body is antsy mcantspants, but I can barely keep my eyes open. I was literally beating my face in class to keep my eyes from crossing. I even went to bed before midnight last night! (Thought I did get awakened to open the door for someone and was very confused by the fact that I'd been asleep...I can't really explain it. I also had a lot of very vivid dreams about naming body parts. Yeahhh.) I do not want to become addicted to caffeine!!!

Vices:
Chai
Dark Chocolate
Panicking
List making

Time to go stare at my inspirational rodent screen saver.

Ok this is getting kind of obsessive, but when I'm stressed, I organize things, even my brain. Soo, fueled by liberal-arts inspired critical thinking skills, here is an organized version of my existential crisis.

About every 3 years I have one of these crises, and every time it rearticulates the same ideas in a more analytical context. Basically, it grows up with me and my vocabulary. It also grows inversely to my knowing who I am. I know myself very well. It's more a matter of what to do and how to think.

There is nothing I can do about some of it. I am impatient to be somewhere, actually doing something, having a "real" life, not stuck here putting in the grunt work. Time, however, can't be changed, no matter how hard I try. The rest of my problem is a matter of binaries (thank you, Levi-Strauss): useful vs. enjoyable, fun/less "achievement vs. work/more "achievement," exploration vs. domesticity, idealist vs. realist, put on the happy pants vs. give myself a break. I don't know how to just accept that a lot of things are BS (i.e. the college lifestyle), but that's ok. Now that I write this down I feel a little less abnormal, because I sound like half the people in the universe who have taken a semester off, dropped out of school, joined a convent, etc.

Action plan:
-Write. Anything, everything, all the time, whenever. Please God, help me find my creativity again.
-Humor. My constant fallback companion, the monologue in my head. Self deprecation puts everything in perspective.
-Continue my personal mantra of: think good things, say good things, do good things
-Accept that I will probably never reconcile the desire to achieve the most with a need for fun, so do very best but don't freak out over "failure"
-Forgive myself.

I move closer to the person I want to be through these crises. I think it's ok to have this period of time in which I'm just not entirely ok, because I'll come out of it even more ok than before. I already feel like I've reached a new place. Change is just hard. The only thing I possibly can do is move forward. I didn't live today like I meant to, but I can leave tonight like I want to. Every personal leap needs somewhere to leap from.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world... as in being able to remake ourselves.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Immediate personal response to last post:

I don't get myself. I can't even just feel some real emotions without explaining them away as some stupid, unimportant, self-wallowing thing. Why do I make fun of myself for thinking deep things? It's one of those contradictions...don't take life too seriously but life is deep. Blah whatever.

Psychobabble

The last month has been like a big, charcoal gray cloud looming just a bit over my head, occasionally punctuated by a few timid rays of sunshine. A lot of the feelings I have now are almost sickeningly familiar and are almost perversely enjoyable, that old sense of queasily contented self-containment, in particular. I always alarm myself at how well I hold up to things, probably mostly due to my terror of deep sadness. It's just managed to manifest as a general hazy gloom and negativity that waits to pounce whenever I let my guard down. I used to love my alone time, revel in it...but now it just makes me feel strange.

I wonder if some of this feeling is me grappling with this strange adulthood transition. I am no longer a part of my family pod; I am a little seed that has blown away to strike out all by myself, unsure where I'll land. I am such a very small part of this huge world. I used to be so naively excited about taking on the world, but now I'm overwhelmed, and I don't want to be alone. I am not a loner, but I feel like I'm almost forced to be a lot of the time because I just can never take the easy way around anything.

I'm not sure where my sense of never-aloneness went. I always had a sense that God/the universe/whatever had its arms wrapped around me, always watching, always helping, but I keep losing that feeling. I feel almost not a part of myself, even, like I detach from my body sometimes. I wish I could say it was highly effective meditation, but it's like I'm outside of my own self, marveling at this whole swirling life that belongs to this thing called Ursula, a word that I automatically respond to and somehow sums up this animated form. Maybe I'm really a prophetess on some higher plane of consciousness. That would explain things.

I can't afford to lose myself right now. What happened to the indestructible me?

I don't like being this weird emo kid.

Just when I fall apart, and especially when I start to hit bottom, God shows up through coincidences and reminds me of how magical life is.

Another year at SU. I moved in early on the 14th to my temporary on-campus apartment. It's big and nice but lonely and kind of smells like water damage. I have no idea if I'm supposed to have a roommate right now...I didn't get to live with who I wanted to, so it's pretty lonely. Yesterday I mostly settled in, helped move freshmen into their dorms, and watched Olympics in my friends' apartment. People bring the weirdest things to college...swords, a couch the size of the room, platters with their grandma's face all over it. It was pretty cute/a bit heart wrenching to see the freshmen and their parents so frazzled by the going away process. Three hours of hauling boxes to the 3rd floor had me a bit frazzled too...

Today was my first cross country practice. Glenn thinks I'll be able to race by mid-season, which I am kind of doubtful of, but he's the expert. I get to run a little bit, bike some, and do crazy core work. He made me feel a lot better about the cortisone shot, though. Apparently I could be a fluke case where a pain gate in my spine has stayed open even after my injury healed, so it keeps triggering unnecessarily, which the shot could cure. If the initial shot doesn't work, however, I'll have to try one in my spine. :( I spent the rest of the morning helping with first year check in. Mostly I told people not to skip the language placement table and to sort themselves by last name. For hours. But I am one of those people who can't stop trying to be helpful and just go eat my darn lunch. Actually I think I really wanted to see all of the first years, not going to lie...When I finally went to lunch, there was NOWHERE to sit, so I sat by myself on the edge of a table. Who comes to sit next to me but Pres Schrum himself. We had a lovely chat about majors, SU history, and most importantly, HUMILITY! And now I"m working.