Am Whiny, Send Cheese

[itsallovernow]

It's raining. My hip hurts. I feel like a miserable failure at life.

Snort. That is all true, but there's something so petulantly self-indulgent about writing it all down and posting that has at least partly shaken me out of my funk.

Helped out at a chichi event for my college and several others yesterday, talking to all these bright young things about their futures, and had a few moments of sheer joy at my education, at what it gave me, at what I still value about it. When I read LJ's of students who whine about classes, who don't go, who skip them or blow them off, or simply don't appreciate them, I'm angry in an entirely unjustifiable way. Your education is not a punishment, it's a gift. And I realize that access to the internet is something I didn't have to contend with as a student, I had a different sort of education, but I can still say that it's something to be appreciated in all the maddening glory of papers and tests and projects and crazy classmates. You go to school to change your mind, to change the world, to learn to think. Not to get a job, not to get ahead. Go because it makes you better. And yes, that's terribly snobbish, but it's something I believe wholeheartedly.

And of course, following the program, I had another what am I doing with my life breakdown which is just getting old by now and is entirely tied into my reunion in two weeks and the fact that I was the girl up there with the bright future, and am now the girl struggling to get by. I am not happy with identity shifts, even 10 years past their expiration dates.

I'm also unhappy that my decision about my house and how we will live in it seem secondary. M. seems to have this idea (subtle but pervasive) that it's his house, and I just live there, and I'm not sure it's worth the effort to fight it, or if I should finally get the gumption to move out. I was planning on September as my end date, but perhaps I should bump it up a little, start exploring my options now. Or perhaps I'm just feeling wretchedly sorry for myself and should just get over myself and appreciate that I am living a good life and have all of these wonderful people in my life and stop whining.

The whole Tiptree thing really made me miss Anthropology. I wonder if I wouldn't be happier with a media and culture degree than another writing degree. I surely do love the word trope:) Fandom is such a culture - rules, hierarchies, status, and I wonder how "we" would have reacted had the nominated text designed as less of a specific story feeding a specific request or desire, and more of something mainstream, something considered by all to be well written. What if it had been one of the BIG fannish stories? Mostly I'm intrigued because like most small scale societies, we prefer to dictate our own rules, and having someone from the "outside" step in and take a text (in whatever format) and apply an outside set of rules to it is both something worthy of attack and defense. We want to be the ones giving recognition and withholding it, we want to be the ones dictating how we'll be perceived. We enforce the rules and the punishment of appropriation. Gah. As an anthropologist, I LOOOOOVE this sort of stuff.

There was even a little TV. I watched the Season Finale of BSG, and against all plausible odds, I will be back for next season because you know what? This is the show I tuned in for. (And god, I've gotta admit that bad hair extensions not withstanding, the color palette drew me in. I loved that they had color again!! And while I've never been attracted to Lee, I found pudgy Lee far more appealing. Hmmm). But mostly, it was the sense of people in a little bit of chaos, in a little bit of trouble, surviving, thriving, living a life without the military structure and order and that contrasted with what was going on with the fleet made me interested, gave me back any investment I'd had in this show. The ending was fabulous with the metal cylons marching in the streets of the tent town, and the moment at the end, when Starbuck said, "We'll fight until we can't anymore." Yeah, I'll be back and no one is more surprised than I am.

I'm reading this odd sort of book called "Treasure Forest" by Cat Bodhri. It's got a premise I love - children with knowledge that their parents lack, insight into something otherworldly (it's the whole Hansel and Gretel thing) and some of it's deftly handled, and some of it isn't, but I'm still reading because I like the idea of the forest as dangerous and embracing. And because I hit a wall with "In the Garden of Iden", partly due to 1st person narrative, and partly due to, "I know I'll care in 20 more pages, but right now, I'm kinda bored." I wish I liked Kage Baker's prose more, because the premise is just so utterly intriguing.

Oh, oh!! Also, danceswithwords has a wonderful, insightful essay about Aeryn Sun up at idol_reflection. Go forth, read and comment.

Comments

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link to that wonderful essay about Aeryn. I've just started season 4 in my Farscape marathon.

I agree with you about the season finale of BSG; I hadn't lost my fascination with the show, nor had I been disappointed by it, but the season finale really made me eager for the next season to start! Incidentally, they're just starting to film it here in Vancouver...I keep my eyes open for possible BSG sightings!

You go to school to change your mind, to change the world, to learn to think. Not to get a job, not to get ahead. Go because it makes you better Words of wisdom, indeed, which often seem to be lost in the mad shuffle to get ahead. One of the things I think that is missing in our educational system is that joy in learning many things that may or may not have immediate significance in the job world, but that make one a more complete person. I admire the Renaissance for that, for all those artists and scientists and others who learned for the sake of the learning.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I had definitely lost interest - to the point where I hadn't bothered to watch the final three eps. But something caught me here.

And some of the educational stuff is perspective, I think. I didn't invest in my education with the idea of a job at the other end (and there's nothing wrong with that approach, I just find it somewhat limiting in an undergraduate first go around), I went to get the education itself. And some of that is our system, and some of it is the value we put on knowledge and thought as a society .

[danceswithwords.livejournal.com]

One of my degrees is in mass communications, which at my school basically meant cultural and media studies. At the time I was there, Madonna was very big, but I'm willing to bet Buffy the Vampire Slayer and fandom have superseded her at this point.

I'm really glad you enjoyed the essay. I posted it and then got sucked into the mad rush to make my work deadline; I should probably let people on my own flist know it exists.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

It isn't so much that I want to study media, as media culture and response. And also, how media shapes us, gives us status. But mostly, I'm probably better off just writing:)

And yeah, I should have commented to say how much I liked the essay - it's incredibly insightful and I really loved it.

[kernezelda]

*pokes you gently to go comment, you, the most ardent Aeryn fan of all*

:)

It's a very wonderful essay.

I took about three courses in Anthropology, and found it vastly interesting, including going out to a dig site in Arcadia, north of Pensacola, to see some of the early settlers' homesteads/businesses. It was hot, dusty, tiring and generally made me glad to be majoring in English instead.

But the talk about ancient ancestors, tribes and clans and moieties was always fascinating.

One of my favorite books is Octavia E. Butler's Wild Seed, which tells the story of Doro, an ancient soul who tries to form his own people from various race, people like him, for his society and his food. I very much like OEB's early work, although others have enjoyed her later works more, the Parables.

[fialka.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to bet Buffy the Vampire Slayer and fandom have superseded her at this point.

Oh, how I wish. I'm struggling through all the writing up of my MA methodology papers right now, and at my uni no one even gets *why* I'd want to do my thesis on fandom, let alone have anything helpful to say about it.

But yes, education should be a gift. I suspect it's that whole-grade-for-module-riding-on-one-paper thing that's making me feel slightly ungifted right now.

Never missed a class though. Even took a couple I didn't have to. Hell, that's the *fun* part!

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Never missed a class though. Even took a couple I didn't have to. Hell, that's the *fun* part!

Yeah!! I'm the same way, never missed class, would have gone to more if I could have:)

I'm struggling through all the writing up of my MA methodology papers right now, and at my uni no one even gets *why* I'd want to do my thesis on fandom, let alone have anything helpful to say about it. Shakes head sadly at your classmates. God, it's this whole fantastic, fucked up, eminently fascinating community with rules and status and hierarchy and subgroups and currency and philanthropy and villains and heroes, and gah... it's such a CULTURE!!!

[fialka.livejournal.com]

And history. And archaological artifacts. I'm looking at such a teensy weensy slice of fandom, and I swear, I could write a PhD length thesis just on that.

Complexity Is Your Friend

[suenix.livejournal.com]

God I was so grateful to get to GO to college
that I wanted to suck up all I could there.
I was the first in my family to do so.
I saw it all as an adventure. (I worked
me little ass off to pay for it too)
Yeah I know I sound old and cranky
there , but really.

I think BSG will continue to intrigue me.
It 's not perfect but it is still very compelling
to me. I could be a glutton for punishment
though, I sat through 7 seasons of X Files.

Suenix