my life is currently saturated with it.
everything feels simultaneously urgent and luxuriously decadent.
the hyperreal
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Monthly Archives: October 2008
to whom it may concern
you are amazed when i speak. when i listen to you, you believe you are teaching me–a child, empty-headed, wide-eyed, amazed.
you read my expressions of interest as evidence of my lack of self, my kindness as insecurity.
you read my silences as sad, pretty and vacant. and in them, you want to rescue me. even while i am rescuing you.
the moments of vulnerability i offer up are unfathomably generous gifts to you, and not signs of weakness.
when you refer to my brilliance, you wish me to understand your words as noblesse oblige and not heartfelt truth.
all i can hope to do is write enough, so i may make the process of talking about what i already know for your benefit a process that need not compound my gall.
to one of my friends in the WGS department
Dear ______________
I think I need to take a year to think about my options. (THANK you for being honest enough with me to help me see this.)
After visiting Berkeley and talking to a professor in the Rhetoric department, I’ve become convinced that I need to take time to think very deeply about my future. I’ve always felt like I’ve had to contort my manner(s) of thinking and writing and seeing and being in the world in order to produce work that is academic (or even intelligible as “logical,” “intelligent” or “coherent”), but until recently I was certain that academia was the best option available to me. I thought it was worth it. But I had been failing to deal pragmatically with the fact that what I love about academia–that it provides a powerful platform for the deployment of new methods of reading life and the world that can promote greater justice and understanding–was but one tiny part of an entire culture and lifestyle that in many ways grates against who I am…and in ways I’m not interested in brooking.
At this time I plan to take the GREs (since I’ve already paid for them and I’m sure it will be good practice), then take a solid year before I even think about applying to grad school. In the meantime, I want to research every avenue I can.
But that also means, of course, I will not be needing a letter from you any time soon.
Do you think this is a good plan?
Thanks immeasurably for your help, honesty, and genuinely-motivated concern.
Peace,
Erin
___________________________________________________
she writes in reply:
That’s great to hear, Erin. Yes, you might as well take the GRE–it can’t hurt.
And DO take a year to think about your options. You are exactly right that the
awesome parts of academia are but one tiny aspect of an industry that has many
deep problems. I think you can find much better options for your life. I
always recommend that people go into academia only if they truly cannot be
happy in any other profession, and I don’t think that’s the case with you. So
yes, go to Alaska, think, exist, explore, and have fun! You have a wonderful
life and career ahead of you, with many possible paths and options. And if it
does turn out, later, that academia is right for you, you will still have that
option (and a recommendation from me).
Warmly,
____________________
exhausted…
is academia the right choice?
i maintain this blog for two reasons:
first, it helps me to do justice to myself by way of partially externalizing what is in me but invisible to the world. and second, i want what i put forth to be reckoned with, embraced as worth turning sideways and otherways to understand…by those who have the gumption of course.
i figure that the way to maximally increase my chances of being listened to is to play the game of “prestige.” it’s harder to dismiss as nonsensical and nonserious the writings of a tenured professor than those of a lowly, undisciplined, inexperienced college grad. and i know with painful certainty that my writing “rather threatenest than dost promise aught.” i write to please no one. not the lay reader. not the academic.
academic niches may exist for me. perhaps at berkeley…i hope. i know i can tailor myself so as to be intelligible as an intellectual, a person not only capable of but adept at logic and argumentation…even though i despise the west’s overvaluation of these institutions.
i would like feedback though. i would like support and guidance. because this is my life.
and i would like also–any time and always–to be listened to when i say “this is important.”
i will say it now: “what i put in this blog is important.”
there is nothing a person could do for me that i would need or appreciate more than expending the energy to listen to me.