Where did I leave that fire?

I've been waking up most weekdays around 5:30 to go to Boot Camp from 5:50-6:50. This means that I hear a lot more NPR than I used to. This morning, a segment on Neko Case was on first thing and she was in the studio working on this song with a line "where did I leave that fire"? It immediately stuck with me because her explanation of the lyric was something to the effect of finding yourself lost and unable to get to something that you used to feel confident in.

This seems to be the theme of the week since a friend and I were just talking the other night about how I seem to not be celebrating the completion of my master's degree enough. I met up with a fellow graduate last night and was both saddened and comforted in knowing she felt the exact same way! It's certainly not because we didn't work hard enough or something like that.

After a few days of reflection I'm thinking that it has more to do with the fact that graduate school totally breaks down your confidence through many years of writing that is constantly critiqued and rarely celebrated. And the critique is nearly always received from a distance: comments from the professor posted online in response to blackboard or blog posts or written comments on a paper that are handed to you at the end of class to read once you are all alone and can absorb the comments in the most isolated setting. This process of turning something in and then receiving feedback weeks later without any real dialogue naturally built into that process has made me feel as though I've lost the ability for self-assessment in some way. I feel that once I've turned in a paper it becomes the professor's own property to interpret, comment against, destroy, celebrate, whatever.  I feel like I get lost somehow in that.

I converse with professors regularly and perhaps more than most. It's not that dialogue isn't happening. What's not happening is dialogue within the process of assessment. There seems to be a strict divide between the classroom experience of sharing commentary and sharing openly in office hours, on the one hand, and the substantial feedback on the writings which ultimately determine one's grade, on the other hand. In the classroom or in office hours, people are for the most part polite and may choose what they say more carefully since someone is sitting right there and able to respond immediately to their challenges, inquiries, etc. However, when someone is reading a paper away from the student and grading, it is meant to be more "objective"...but this form of objectivity seems in fact to objectify the student and their ideas as opposed to contextualizing how this piece of writing fits in with the student's overall contributions, insights, or quite frankly, his/her real capacity for deep and sustained intellectual thought.

There is a major dichotomy between the active dialogue between professors and students and the passive interactions between readers (i.e. the professors) and writers (i.e. the students) that I certainly have not paid a whole lot of attention to as a grad student. I haven't been able to see the significant difference between those two relationships while I was in the thick of it, and I think that is why when graduation came, it didn't quite feel like success. All I could feel about it was that I hadn't quite mastered all of the things that I had hoped to and was inundated with the negative memories of harsh (or what seemed like terribly harsh) criticism on my papers. Basically, I felt like I had failed in some way even though I was supposed to be showing my success.

Now that I am gaining some perspective again, I've got to go find that fire...and hold onto it so that I don't repeat the same mistakes by losing such an enormous amount of confidence when I return to school as a PhD student in September or overly objectifying students' papers once I am in the role of professor.

The New Recruit

On The Sergeant's Boot Camp website, it claims that "whether you run 60 miles a week or gasp for breath walking up a flight of stairs, your Sarge will challenge you." I read this in the middle of the night one night last week when I couldn't sleep and decided that this is exactly what I need. So, I signed up right then and there.

I started this Thursday, the morning after I received my certificate by email to attend the class. Class starts at 5:50 am. Surprisingly, the sun is already coming up at this time. I had no idea! I arrive at 5:45 since I'm supposed to arrive 10 minutes early to warm up. I start running around the track and I'm already tired.

Training begins promptly at 5:50, and our Sergeant is a woman named Vivian who is about my height. And she is tough. After the warm up, we grab our 5 pound weights and run the track several times. The group is about 15 people, and 14 are all clustered together running in a synchronous group. I am by myself about 500 meters behind them. Then we move on to pull-ups, and I can't even budge my body as I try to lift it with my arms. Vivian is encouraging and comes over and tells me to just lift one leg while tugging on the bar. This looks incredibly silly, and yet, I'm still finding it difficult.

Thank god Elizabeth asks to be my partner. We have to hold each other's ankles while we "wheelbarrow," which means walking with all of your weight on your arms across the trackfield. Again, I don't budge. I try to lift my arm from the ground and it won't lift up. Vivian again comes over and tells me it's okay to just stay in place (if you can't envision it, it is basically like a push up with your legs off the ground), and again, I find this incredibly difficult.

Somehow I show up today and am heaving around the track and skipping across the field rather than hopping like I'm supposed to because the hopping is killing me, and Brent looks to me and says "you've been doing this a while, right?" And I'm like, "um, definitely not. This is my second day." All of a sudden I make a bunch of friends. Mike walks over and encourages me with this statement "I was sore for the first three weeks, but you'll really notice a difference by the end of the month." Wow, THREE WEEKS OF THIS LEVEL OF SORENESS? I'm trying to avoid humor today because it hurts my belly just to sit still, much less laugh. For the record, I did 150 sit ups today. Did you hear that? IN ONE DAY! 1-5-0! I went from not doing ANY sit ups for over a year to 150 in one morning. It was KILLER.

I'm sticking with it because I paid for it, and I like to get my money's worth out of things. And honestly, after waking up and writing my thesis around the same time every morning, this feels like a surprisingly refreshing change. By 7 am, I've already done some kick ass work. We'll see how I fare by the end of the third week.

Keeping Those Whites Pearly

One of the reasons I was able to keep up the oppressive pace of working and being in school full-time was foregoing certain necessities like rigorous exercise...and going to the dentist. I'm rectifying both of those things today. More on the exercise front tomorrow....

The first thing I did after I finished classes a few weeks ago was make an appointment with the dentist. I had my appointment today and was reminded of why the dentist is so dreaded. It's not just the whole having your mouth open for an hour thing or even the incessant scraping of tartar off of the teeth.

First off, the music is always bad and more noticeably bad than in other places because you try to listen to drown out the sound of the drilling, scraping, and suctioning. I remember hating the music in the dentist's office when I was growing up too. Today I listened to a series of Peruvian renditions of ABBA after what must have been a George Winston CD. Dancing Queen was first, which is how I knew the tune...and I'm pretty sure the rest were ABBA songs as well, but less identifiable for me without the lyrics. I mean, I love ABBA, and I don't mind Peruvian flute music, but put the two together? Um, no. My guess is that the tools of dentistry are so loud that they keep the volume up so that the patients can hear that rather than the scraping and suctioning, but they themselves must not be able to hear how bad it is because surely someone would bring in a mix tape or something. And then, because the workers themselves can't hear the music above the tools, they don't want to invest in XM radio.

And those loud tools are just so bad. Watching that ice pick looking thing scrape away at three years of tartar for what felt like forever was only tolerable because I really REALLY did not want to be at work. If you look away from the pick you are staring straight at that weird overhead light that they use. Every time I go to the doctor it seems like there is some new thing in use, but not so at the dentist! All of the tools -- even the mouthwash cups -- seem to be the exact same as many years ago. I guess I should give it up for better mouthwash flavors because I do remember that those used to be worse. And what's up with the heavy lead apron and biting on plastic for teeth x-rays?  Isn't there a better way to do that nowadays?  I gagged on the woman today from those plastic squares she shoved in my mouth -- whoops.

Finally, the most obnoxious thing about the dentist appointment is the spitting and spraying of stuff while you are in there. I mean, I had to wear construction goggles to make sure teeth stuff didn't fly into my eyes. Then, the assistant put the suction tube in my mouth and just left it there as it tried to inhale my tongue. By the end, when the doctor tells you that everything is cool -- no cavities, etc -- it seems somehow anticlimactic after all of the work leading up to that. I mean, I'm thrilled I don't have cavities...I guess I'm just unclear on why no one has yet developed a home kit for effectively removing tartar (since brushing and flossing apparently aren't enough) so that you don't need to see the dentist unless you have a tooth problem.

Thank you Bill Cosby for knowing our pain!

Cooking Trial: Indian

Why is Indian food so hard to make?  I have a cookbook, and I seem to follow all of the instructions, but it just doesn’t ever taste like in a restaurant.  It’s like, I know from cooking Cajun food that it’s not just the ingredients, but the exact right amount of time and size you chop everything that makes a huge difference. 

After trying it on the Whole Foods buffet a while ago, I decided to try my hand at Cabbage Madras with Peas and Red Potatoes tonight.  I even tried to make my own garam masala since I thought I had some and realized too late that I didn’t….

I’m not sure which exact spice I was missing because I had turmeric, cloves, peppercorns, even yellow mustard seeds….  Maybe it was the frozen peas?  Something I’m not accustomed to cooking, but I wasn’t sure what other kind of peas to use.  I also blanched the potatoes before throwing them in with the cabbage, so the flavor didn’t quite absorb into the potatoes like I would have liked.

Anyway, here is a pic of it since I at least was appetized by the look of it if not overwhelmed by the flavor.

Moving Right Along

I've been basking in the glory of completing my master's degree for all of 24 hours.  And because life seems to be this way right now, a wrench got thrown into my celebration.  I found out yesterday that I have to move out of my place by the end of the month, which means I have to move once before I get up and move across the country at the end of the summer.  It's certainly something I'm going to be able to manage--I hope!--but it was definitely unexpected and the lack of feeling prepared for this is what is making it all so harrying.  Thank god I'm done with school!!!!!!

This is now the second time that sharing my exciting news of entering the PhD program at UC Santa Cruz has bitten me in the butt.  And bitten me hard.  The first time was sharing this news with my employer earlier in the year, which did not go over well at all and almost cost me my job.  Now, a casual "heads up" to my landlord when I saw her on campus last month has left me with the ultimatum of packing up the majority of my things and putting it in storage while letting strangers come through the apartment for open houses all summer or just moving everything into storage and moving in with my significant other (or couch surfing I suppose was another option).

I mean, I get it.  Well, I'm starting to get it anyway. I understand that business is business.  But I have really been surprised about the way that this information has been received by employer and landlord alike.  It's like without missing a beat, they are ready to throw me out.  No discussion, no negotiation, just a blunt use of the power that they hold over me.  I guess I've just never felt so disposable, and I must say that it is making it really very easy to feel ready to leave this city despite all of my friends here (who I know will visit me because I'm moving to a vacation destination, HELLO!  VISIT ME!).  I've paid my rent on time, painted the apartment and in general, made it look much better than it did when I first moved in...and this is the thanks I get for being reliable.  Same with my job.  We just closed out the fiscal year, and under my leadership of fundraising, the library raised 148% more money this year than last year (and years before).  No points for good work.  No points for taking good care of my apartment.  I suppose this is the consequence of me not being perceived as loyal to these people?

Dreaming of corporate job security and company loyalty has not really entered my imagination.  But I can't help that I've been thinking a lot about this NPR profile of the culture of Exxon Mobile ever since I heard it yesterday morning.  I'm not interesting in working in a place where I have to confess how many sticky notes end up at my house rather than my desk, but the "collective culture" is something I've never experienced in the workplace.  I can't help but wonder what it would be like to work in a place like that is so loyal to you that if you follow the rules, you are basically set for life.  

Being free of attachments is something I strive for from time-to-time, and so, as much as I hate moving, I typically find it a good time for renewal and re-evaluating my sense of what is necessary and what I hang on to even though it is weighing me down.  It gives me that needed push to lighten my load.  But the key about that kind of situation being therapeutic is being prepared for it.  Rready or not, here it comes.