Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage
I spent all day (shy of when I was passively listening to Nelson drone on about Nietzsche for 2 1/2 hours) holed up in my room being rather unproductive and counting the minutes until I can get in the car and leave tomorrow. I took out my atlas and charted a course to Providence and collected the majority of my necessary belongings in a laundry basket. At some point gumption got the better of me and I spent the last few hours cleaning up a paper I wrote for my Chinese cinema class to use as a grad school writing sample and with every edit and re-write, my statement of purpose is becoming all the more solid and convincing. This is reassuring - and especially important - because sometime this week I realized that I have no back up plan, no means or marketable talent with which to make a livable wage, and no desire to really pound the pavement in search of employment. Call me lazy, I don't mind and I'll even be forthcoming about not wanting to work, but let me be in a place where everyone struggles and lives cheaply - but at least we have fantastic books, watch films every night, and engage in academic discourse. The alternatives are nauseating and my fingers are crossed. I hope that I have some control over where I end up, but in that bottom of the barrel something is better than nothing sense, I am willing to consent to whatever the fates have in store. Again, the thought of a diehard New Englander transplanted to Chicago for six years+ is a little absurd, but such is life and such is the crappy hand I am playing right now.
eh, I understand that this blog has no academic substance lately - my classes are all pretty esoteric and I am honestly not as committed to them as I might otherwise be. So I'll save you the meat and just stick exclusively to the gossipy fats around the edges.
Ultimate irony - I got an email around 11pm from the Professor who's class I was staying to attend tomorrow informing us that he has the flu and thus won't be in tomorrow. This guy had the audacity to send a somewhat threatening email last week which read something to the effect of "Tuesday's class will reveal the necessary secrets to pass the final exam." Jerk-off.
The calendar of remaining time in this semester and year are quite odd. I have to go to MIT on Monday (info session for CMS) only to go back on Friday for a debate tournament. It is coincidently the last week of classes - and exam period will be given over to addressing all the school work I've all but back burnered in this huvel of a semester. At some point Katie is bringing a HUGE Boston contingent up for skiing at Sugarbush and Jack and I are going to join the crew for a lavish Thai food dinner and reindeer games. I have some take home assignments and a final exam and need to work on my Nelson paper (it seems like this is the only substantive assignment I've done in 6 months) and get that done sometime between Christmas and New Years. It's sad how much truth there is to the statement: if you don't use it, you lose it. Tonight I was editing my writing from last year and even two summers ago. It was really precise and well-thought out. I don't think I am in shape enough to pull that off right now. Time to barrel into grad school rather than growing soft and illterate on the couch a la "Must See TV." So this is me - burned out, but clinging hopelessly to the discipline of school because I know I am far worse off without it.
posted by lmjasinski at 12:58 AM
