this cup is made from 10% or more of recycled paper fiber
In anticipation of the upcoming semester, and to provide a clean mental break from work, I spent the last ten days traveling and riding in cars, buses, trains, bikes, and streetcar trolley things. This now seems very fitting and predictive, as I want to study these funny networks of ways we get around and hopefully make them easier to use and less killing to people and the planet. I think that's how I'll describe my research from now on: making our funny networks of getting around less killing, at which point people will ask me if english is my first language.
But now, all summer vacation behind, I am faced with the naked realization that I have to get to work. Like really workie work, not the haphazard "read a paper, take a nap" work I've been attempting since I quit my job. So I'm back at the school I left seven years ago to re-learn what it means to take a class, where all the computer labs are, where the best coffee can be purchased, where the sunny spots are on the lawn.
You'd think these things wouldn't change, and maybe they haven't and I've just forgotten them, but I'm feeling like a stranger in a familiar land. It's the closest I've been to living a dream where you don't have any clothes on. I feel like an outlier--a glaring fraud, and I'm wondering why no one is calling me out. Everyone is walking around with Purpose and Determination and I'm doing my best to look busy and smart, but really I'm feeling as lost as a freshman from India.
I need to write one of those letters to my past self telling me not to worry about it, except I'd have to impersonate my future self to talk to my present self. Can I do that? It may take more drugs than this cup of coffee can provide. I need to write that everyone is faking it and just feeling their way through it. That the insecurities will pass as soon as I'm too busy to care, which will happen shortly. And I'll look upon this calm time as that feeling of weighlessness at the apex of a roller coaster arc, before you start to hurtle towards the earth again screaming wildly "stop! stop! I want to get off!"
But now, all summer vacation behind, I am faced with the naked realization that I have to get to work. Like really workie work, not the haphazard "read a paper, take a nap" work I've been attempting since I quit my job. So I'm back at the school I left seven years ago to re-learn what it means to take a class, where all the computer labs are, where the best coffee can be purchased, where the sunny spots are on the lawn.
You'd think these things wouldn't change, and maybe they haven't and I've just forgotten them, but I'm feeling like a stranger in a familiar land. It's the closest I've been to living a dream where you don't have any clothes on. I feel like an outlier--a glaring fraud, and I'm wondering why no one is calling me out. Everyone is walking around with Purpose and Determination and I'm doing my best to look busy and smart, but really I'm feeling as lost as a freshman from India.
I need to write one of those letters to my past self telling me not to worry about it, except I'd have to impersonate my future self to talk to my present self. Can I do that? It may take more drugs than this cup of coffee can provide. I need to write that everyone is faking it and just feeling their way through it. That the insecurities will pass as soon as I'm too busy to care, which will happen shortly. And I'll look upon this calm time as that feeling of weighlessness at the apex of a roller coaster arc, before you start to hurtle towards the earth again screaming wildly "stop! stop! I want to get off!"
random bits cobbled together by j-dub
5 Comments:
Happy first day of school JDub!
That would be weird. I work at the university I graduated from and every once in a while I have these weird flashes of my former, seriously f'ed up self who was too punk rock to live.
You'll get over it soon enough and be glad you really aren't an incoming freshman.
I was going to say something calming, but then you went ahead and said it all in that last paragraph.
You're going to be fabulous as making our funny networks of getting around less killing...as long as you're just dreaming you're naked and not actually showing up to class that way.
Trust me on this one. As a professional student, I can say with some authority, you should wear clothes to school.
as it turns out, I got to help a chinese transfer student find a building today.
the moral: it makes you feel better to find someone more lost than you.
It's not schadenfreude, but it's close.
Helper schadenfreude.
It's schadenfreude AND good karma.
Warm feelings all around.
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