So I drafted this particular post on the plane en route to Hawaii where I'm vacationing with my familia for the week. I don't know when I'll next have internet access, but I'll do my best to keep you posted on how my emotional state declines over the next few weeks. Bring on the real quarter life crisis.
Yesterday I graduated from college. And while I'm usually a bottomless well of words and epithets, this particular pivot has somehow left me at a complete loss for comprehension. I'm genuinely not sure whether it's denial or whether I'm just unable to process all the implications of this paradigm shift, but either way the nausea and dizziness that I have come to associate with acceptance and reality come in brief and potent spurts.
And with this state of affairs and the cycles my thoughts run in, I'm convinced that the challenge is not in the changing, but in the leaving. Months of conditioning can easily prepare a grad for the dismal job market or the feelings of uncertainty that accompany the black hole that its my life. I have lists of remedies for the post-collegiate apocalypse, ways to keep my mind sharp; ways to encounter new ideas; ways to maintain a social life in the sticks. But the the thoughts that send me spiraling and the fears I can't quiet have nothing to do with college as a period or as an institution, and even less to do with having to wrap up my time there. They have to do with the people who have become my allies, my enemies, friends, and spirit guides. How do you navigate that change? The unpredictable future of path crossing? How do you answer the most painful question "When will we see each other again?" without breaking down in a family restaurant.
Maybe you can't. Maybe that's how we know people and groups have come to mean something, have come to signify something intrinsic to your existance. Leaving college really is OK. I'm at peace with the four years of fast food, bureaucratic bullshit, and sub-par students. But then again, maybe the real reason I'm ok with that idea and not with the idea of leaving my firends is that I know my University will be here in 1, 17, 43 years. It's not going anywhere. It's not moving. And it would take a skilled and dedicated team of arsonists to burn it to the ground. And the seven grenerations of Trojans that I've had the pleasure of sharing campus with suggest some continuity to the skill and passion of the student body. If there's any shift it's definitely in an upward direction. School is stable, unchanging, (save my departure) and is definitely constant in a way that goes against post grad anxiety of whirlwind change.
My social life can't boast the same continuity. I leave and the infant's nightmare becomes my reality: not seeing it means it has all disappeared. Our separartion is not temporary or imagined but permanent and unavoidable. I close my eyes and its all gone. NOone to grab lunch with or run into at coffee bean or share a glass of wine with at midnight or share war stories of crazy professors with. The opportunities fade immediately and it's not just the rest of the world that sinks but me along with it.
I know the next 12 months, no matter what they bring, will change my social behavior, my sleeping patterns, my standards of acceptability...so perhaps it's unfair to accept anything different from my firends. But that won't stop me from lamenting our communal change, perhaps the only thing we share in our respecive states of isolation.
This mental meandering is really just a long way of saying "damn, it's so fucking hard to say goodbye to the people imbedded in our lives," but maybe that beats the alternative. Then again, says the all-consuming soreness in my heart, maybe it doesn't.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Useless Skills
We learn lots of useful things in college: reading, writing, rithmatic, etc. But survival is also dependent on a set of skills than I suspect, in 48 hours, will become completely irrelevant to my life. Here are a few chart toppers.
1. Deciphering Professors' handwriting
How would we know how we did without these code-breaking status experiences?
2. Knowing what to drink to cure your next day hangover
This will henceforth be referred to as alcoholism
3. How to determine if an outfit of dirty clothing is wearable.
In the real world people may or may not actually wash (and iron!) their clothes
4. How to pack your entire life into a 4x5 storage unit
It's harder than it sounds, and maybe now I'll only be moving at the end of every other year instead of every single May
5. How to pay for a big group meal when no one wants to pay for anything more than what they ate and everyone put in 53 cents for tip and didn't add tax and a person is in the bathroom and another person left early and only left a bus token and the waiter says if you take any longer he's just going to put you to work as a dishwasher for the rest of the month
Split. The Fucking. Check.
Right down the middle.
6. Deciding where to go on a Tuesday night
hahaha, you have work tomorrow!
7. Climbing over people in a lecture hall when you have to go the bathroom or you've finished an exam early
These skills may be transferable to first class airplanes but I really can't think of another space that has that awkwardly sized leg room situation where it's just enough that the person doesn't have to stand but definitely not enough that you can get out comfortably
8. Staying up and mentally alert past 3 am
I'm confidant that I will have little use for this ability and that the lack of practice will have me turning in by ten on the reg
9. Skimming reading for the point
No time limit. You can actually enjoy and CHOOSE the books and articles you're reading
10. Bitching
Sassy complaining is an art form, but doing it when things are actually bad (unemployment, isolation, death, etc) as opposed to fake bad (they gave me a regular instead of a skinny latte, I only got the third highest grade, I had to walk 5 feet because of my parking spot) is in bad taste. The days of bitching are behind you, young graduate.
1. Deciphering Professors' handwriting
How would we know how we did without these code-breaking status experiences?
2. Knowing what to drink to cure your next day hangover
This will henceforth be referred to as alcoholism
3. How to determine if an outfit of dirty clothing is wearable.
In the real world people may or may not actually wash (and iron!) their clothes
4. How to pack your entire life into a 4x5 storage unit
It's harder than it sounds, and maybe now I'll only be moving at the end of every other year instead of every single May
5. How to pay for a big group meal when no one wants to pay for anything more than what they ate and everyone put in 53 cents for tip and didn't add tax and a person is in the bathroom and another person left early and only left a bus token and the waiter says if you take any longer he's just going to put you to work as a dishwasher for the rest of the month
Split. The Fucking. Check.
Right down the middle.
6. Deciding where to go on a Tuesday night
hahaha, you have work tomorrow!
7. Climbing over people in a lecture hall when you have to go the bathroom or you've finished an exam early
These skills may be transferable to first class airplanes but I really can't think of another space that has that awkwardly sized leg room situation where it's just enough that the person doesn't have to stand but definitely not enough that you can get out comfortably
8. Staying up and mentally alert past 3 am
I'm confidant that I will have little use for this ability and that the lack of practice will have me turning in by ten on the reg
9. Skimming reading for the point
No time limit. You can actually enjoy and CHOOSE the books and articles you're reading
10. Bitching
Sassy complaining is an art form, but doing it when things are actually bad (unemployment, isolation, death, etc) as opposed to fake bad (they gave me a regular instead of a skinny latte, I only got the third highest grade, I had to walk 5 feet because of my parking spot) is in bad taste. The days of bitching are behind you, young graduate.
Monday, May 13, 2013
What Does 2013 Even Mean...
So I've been experiencing a series of frustrations this week. I'll begin by warning you all that this post may be alienating or upsetting or even offensive, but if nothing else it's from the heart. This is how my super liberal self feels.
I attend an elite private university in California. I am about to graduate from the least prestigious of its academic programs, the college of arts and humanities. Which really has nothing to do with what I'm about to talk about. I could have posted about this last Monday, but I think it's literally taken me all week to process what happened and how I felt about it, and it hasn't even directly impacted me. On Saturday night a group of students hosted a house party several blocks north of campus in a perfectly respectable and safe neighborhood in our city. These students happened to be Black. A noise complaint was called in to LAPD (instead of campus police) and two officers came to break up the party. They ushered students out of the house and as the crowd began to surround them in their stream of compliance it appears that theses officers of the law felt unsafe and called for back up.
And back up came.
Back up came in the form of over 70 police officers in riot gear. Back up came in 6 student arrests. Back up came in pepper spray, hate speech, and one of the clearest cases of racial profiling I've lived through. (The white party across the street barely received a second glance). By the end of the night, black was not just something these students happened to be. It was a costly and uncompromising barrier between these students and the undergraduate experience allowed to so many of their classmates.
The shameful component of all of this is how the administration responded. In that they didn't. They didn't support their students, defend their students, or listen to their students. They didn't host an open forum until several days after the incident, and to call the event an open forum is severely misleading. I suppose the business model of this university leaves me disappointed but not necessarily surprised by this lack of response.
Students rallied around the events, pivoting the trauma into an impetus for change. Well...probably about 1500 students did that. This university has 16,000 undergrads.
I think the part of all of this that broke my heart, that challenged my faith in humanity, is how many students remained distant, silent, or disinterested. I have yet to meet a person who is for resegregation or who proudly espouses White superiority (probably because of the uber liberal circles I run in), but it is disappointing to me that 1600 of our generation's alleged brightest minds can't see how racial profiling and unchallenged police brutality are simply the next phase in socially justified segregation. When steryotypes become actions they quickly become habits and policies. So why, in the two thousand and thirteenth year of our lord are we still letting a single aspect of appearance determine so much of our world.
And why aren't people saying anything? Great, African Americans and Latinos stood up for themselves. But where the fuck were the white people? Where the fuck were they? Just because something isn't directly about you doesn't mean it doesn't affect you. Just because you're not the target doesn't mean you don't get schrapnel. And when we refuse to acknowledge what is right, and when we refuse to stand up for it, that's when we abandon democracy and liberalism.
So my call to action is to stand up for you believe in. Whether that's the ability to wear white after labor day or the need for change in the way we conceptualize race lines in this country, figure it out and make your voice heard. Maybe if we act quickly we can be remembered as a generation that gave more than two shits about anything besides apple.
I attend an elite private university in California. I am about to graduate from the least prestigious of its academic programs, the college of arts and humanities. Which really has nothing to do with what I'm about to talk about. I could have posted about this last Monday, but I think it's literally taken me all week to process what happened and how I felt about it, and it hasn't even directly impacted me. On Saturday night a group of students hosted a house party several blocks north of campus in a perfectly respectable and safe neighborhood in our city. These students happened to be Black. A noise complaint was called in to LAPD (instead of campus police) and two officers came to break up the party. They ushered students out of the house and as the crowd began to surround them in their stream of compliance it appears that theses officers of the law felt unsafe and called for back up.
And back up came.
Back up came in the form of over 70 police officers in riot gear. Back up came in 6 student arrests. Back up came in pepper spray, hate speech, and one of the clearest cases of racial profiling I've lived through. (The white party across the street barely received a second glance). By the end of the night, black was not just something these students happened to be. It was a costly and uncompromising barrier between these students and the undergraduate experience allowed to so many of their classmates.
The shameful component of all of this is how the administration responded. In that they didn't. They didn't support their students, defend their students, or listen to their students. They didn't host an open forum until several days after the incident, and to call the event an open forum is severely misleading. I suppose the business model of this university leaves me disappointed but not necessarily surprised by this lack of response.
Students rallied around the events, pivoting the trauma into an impetus for change. Well...probably about 1500 students did that. This university has 16,000 undergrads.
I think the part of all of this that broke my heart, that challenged my faith in humanity, is how many students remained distant, silent, or disinterested. I have yet to meet a person who is for resegregation or who proudly espouses White superiority (probably because of the uber liberal circles I run in), but it is disappointing to me that 1600 of our generation's alleged brightest minds can't see how racial profiling and unchallenged police brutality are simply the next phase in socially justified segregation. When steryotypes become actions they quickly become habits and policies. So why, in the two thousand and thirteenth year of our lord are we still letting a single aspect of appearance determine so much of our world.
And why aren't people saying anything? Great, African Americans and Latinos stood up for themselves. But where the fuck were the white people? Where the fuck were they? Just because something isn't directly about you doesn't mean it doesn't affect you. Just because you're not the target doesn't mean you don't get schrapnel. And when we refuse to acknowledge what is right, and when we refuse to stand up for it, that's when we abandon democracy and liberalism.
So my call to action is to stand up for you believe in. Whether that's the ability to wear white after labor day or the need for change in the way we conceptualize race lines in this country, figure it out and make your voice heard. Maybe if we act quickly we can be remembered as a generation that gave more than two shits about anything besides apple.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
The Gap Year
Not a huge fan of that concept. It's only a gap year to you. Because you don't think that what I do this year matters. Because you think that I'm just waiting for the next thing to happen.
But to me this year is everything. It's the way to determine if all the ways I've improved myself will stick. If I'm done growing. If I'm any closer to being a real person, to being an adult. And just because I haven't shrowded this experiment in the cloak of a fellowship doesn't mean that it means anything less to me. It just means something less to you.
I have lots of plans. Things I couldn't do over the past four years or the past 22 years, some of which I don't know if I'll ever be able to do again. So allow me to enjoy this moment, this year. It's not a gap or a gutter or time off, it's my life. Let me live it.
But to me this year is everything. It's the way to determine if all the ways I've improved myself will stick. If I'm done growing. If I'm any closer to being a real person, to being an adult. And just because I haven't shrowded this experiment in the cloak of a fellowship doesn't mean that it means anything less to me. It just means something less to you.
I have lots of plans. Things I couldn't do over the past four years or the past 22 years, some of which I don't know if I'll ever be able to do again. So allow me to enjoy this moment, this year. It's not a gap or a gutter or time off, it's my life. Let me live it.
Monday, May 6, 2013
What the Fuck Do I Want
This question has been plaguing me for the better part of 96 hours, since a meeting with a professor sent me spiraling into self doubt and uncertainty about my future. A fringe benefit of paralyzing terror regarding the future is some brief clarity regarding what you do want, and hopefully you can turn these things into some sort of cogent answer to the black hole ahead.
1. I want to-do lists to become check lists full of red xs and tally marks. I want to see places and do things that make other people jealous
2. I want to live in other cities and become citizens of other countries and finally belong nowhere at all because my heart is in too many places
3. I want to be a citizen of the world. If ever I meet a person who is bi-lingual I always want to know one of their languages. I don't want to be told what people are saying in films by condescending sub titles, I want to translate for myself. I want to know words in other languages that lack translations and use them to perfectly describe my thrilling life
4. I don't want to lose people. This one is doomed for failure in the same way that we are all inevitably ambling towards headstones but it doesn't make it any less true for me. I don't want to lose friends to petty fights or inconvenience. I want to be the friend that keeps in touch, even across the globe.
5. I want to fall in love. And even if it doesn't work out I want to know that I was capable of loving someone and that he was capable of loving me
6. I want to work with people and listen to their wrong opinions and the poetry of their right answers and clever solutions
7. I want to question myself and challenge myself and improve myself
8. I want two homes. I want an urban oasis with large windows and minimalism and chrome and hard wood where we can only store 4 roles of toilet paper at a time. I want a country escape where I can be reminded of the world before humans got smart and greedy and built glimmering idols, 97 stories tall, to prove their prowess and competency.
9. I want ice cream. I'd love a better body, and I continue to work for it, but I hope to never be so diet-crazed or food conscious or so ill that I can not enjoy some ice cream.
10. I want no regrets. Whatever choices or mistakes I make, whatever crimes I commit, whatever recognition I receive or whatever trade-offs I make, I want them to be in honest enough pursuits that I can look back and smile, not wince, on my formative years.
and a bonus...
11. I want to be young forever. I don't mean that I want my boobs to stay perky or that I want to be able to do tequila shots without a hangover. I just mean that I hope I am able to continue looking forward, at all that has yet to happen and at all the possibilities in each new stage of my life. And I hope I stay resistant to the idea of stages, and feel free to draw in the lines myself.
1. I want to-do lists to become check lists full of red xs and tally marks. I want to see places and do things that make other people jealous
2. I want to live in other cities and become citizens of other countries and finally belong nowhere at all because my heart is in too many places
3. I want to be a citizen of the world. If ever I meet a person who is bi-lingual I always want to know one of their languages. I don't want to be told what people are saying in films by condescending sub titles, I want to translate for myself. I want to know words in other languages that lack translations and use them to perfectly describe my thrilling life
4. I don't want to lose people. This one is doomed for failure in the same way that we are all inevitably ambling towards headstones but it doesn't make it any less true for me. I don't want to lose friends to petty fights or inconvenience. I want to be the friend that keeps in touch, even across the globe.
5. I want to fall in love. And even if it doesn't work out I want to know that I was capable of loving someone and that he was capable of loving me
6. I want to work with people and listen to their wrong opinions and the poetry of their right answers and clever solutions
7. I want to question myself and challenge myself and improve myself
8. I want two homes. I want an urban oasis with large windows and minimalism and chrome and hard wood where we can only store 4 roles of toilet paper at a time. I want a country escape where I can be reminded of the world before humans got smart and greedy and built glimmering idols, 97 stories tall, to prove their prowess and competency.
9. I want ice cream. I'd love a better body, and I continue to work for it, but I hope to never be so diet-crazed or food conscious or so ill that I can not enjoy some ice cream.
10. I want no regrets. Whatever choices or mistakes I make, whatever crimes I commit, whatever recognition I receive or whatever trade-offs I make, I want them to be in honest enough pursuits that I can look back and smile, not wince, on my formative years.
and a bonus...
11. I want to be young forever. I don't mean that I want my boobs to stay perky or that I want to be able to do tequila shots without a hangover. I just mean that I hope I am able to continue looking forward, at all that has yet to happen and at all the possibilities in each new stage of my life. And I hope I stay resistant to the idea of stages, and feel free to draw in the lines myself.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
The Cinderella Fallacy
From among the battery of lies that Disney brainwashed us with in our youth, this is one of the most frustrating. The commitment to happy endings in that animation studio was upsettingly Utopian and these days the simple elegance of the animation and the sweet songs are only just enough to prevent the stories from ringing completely hollow. But despite their irrelevance to reality, the anti-feminist whims of Disney are part of our cultural catalouges and we must, therefore, confront them.
But it is not Cinderella's inability to complete simple tasks without the assistance of rodents, magic, or men that gets my goat. It is the fairytale's governing principal that when the clock strikes twelve, everything will disappear. That in twelve swings of a pendulum everything we have that brings us joy will taken without cause but with great consequence.
I suppose she didn't work for her gown or glass slippers, but Allah knows she deserved them. And Allah knows she enjoyed them, in the most pure and innocent of ways. So, dear fairy godmother, why taunt her with happiness? You could have just as easily treated her to a tacky dress from the sales rack at macy's and some worn pumps from the Goodwill. But instead you treat her to the lap of luxury, a jarring experience to be sure, just to rip it away. Rude.
I resent the implication that happiness, that relief from the unpleasantries in our lives, is temporary. Who says? Disney? Well he also wanted a housing development with only Aryans so let's take the guy's advice with a grain of salt. Maybe if we pull a Cindy and wait to be saved that's true. But if we work hard and long and hey, I'm not averse to a dash of good luck, then why shouldn't we be able to shake off the step mothers and step sisters and evil cats in our lives?
Part of Cinderella's cautionary tale is that we should work for it; that gifts can be taken as easily as given. But at this volta in my life the more powerful message is that Disney sucks, and fairytales are bullshit, and if I want it to my happiness can last until 12:15, or 3:15 (I know dad, nothing good ever happens after 1 am). It's really not up to an unwelcome elderly woman or a concerningly mysterious prince (seriously, what's his name?) to determine when my fun is over.
And furthermore, a ripped dress, a little pumpkin mush, and and a lost shoe is not a compelling set of reasons to head home. Lock it up Cindy. Rule #76 - No Excuses. Play Like a Champion.
But it is not Cinderella's inability to complete simple tasks without the assistance of rodents, magic, or men that gets my goat. It is the fairytale's governing principal that when the clock strikes twelve, everything will disappear. That in twelve swings of a pendulum everything we have that brings us joy will taken without cause but with great consequence.
I suppose she didn't work for her gown or glass slippers, but Allah knows she deserved them. And Allah knows she enjoyed them, in the most pure and innocent of ways. So, dear fairy godmother, why taunt her with happiness? You could have just as easily treated her to a tacky dress from the sales rack at macy's and some worn pumps from the Goodwill. But instead you treat her to the lap of luxury, a jarring experience to be sure, just to rip it away. Rude.
I resent the implication that happiness, that relief from the unpleasantries in our lives, is temporary. Who says? Disney? Well he also wanted a housing development with only Aryans so let's take the guy's advice with a grain of salt. Maybe if we pull a Cindy and wait to be saved that's true. But if we work hard and long and hey, I'm not averse to a dash of good luck, then why shouldn't we be able to shake off the step mothers and step sisters and evil cats in our lives?
Part of Cinderella's cautionary tale is that we should work for it; that gifts can be taken as easily as given. But at this volta in my life the more powerful message is that Disney sucks, and fairytales are bullshit, and if I want it to my happiness can last until 12:15, or 3:15 (I know dad, nothing good ever happens after 1 am). It's really not up to an unwelcome elderly woman or a concerningly mysterious prince (seriously, what's his name?) to determine when my fun is over.
And furthermore, a ripped dress, a little pumpkin mush, and and a lost shoe is not a compelling set of reasons to head home. Lock it up Cindy. Rule #76 - No Excuses. Play Like a Champion.
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