Great Advice

I was attempting to find a quote to use for my next post. It was about living in New York until it "makes you hard", and I thought it would be useful to replace it with: "Live in Jerusalem until it makes you hard, crazy...or both." At the moment, I am swimming through a mixture of things. Perhaps I can blame it on too much time on Jerusalem city buses. It's enough to make anyone completely nuts. But seriously, I am a bit overwhelmed by the feeling that my 30's are practically planned and unplanned at the same time. Lots to think about and do, and time feels like it's slipping far too fast. And yet, I don't feel as if I have even begun!! So for now, I hope the speech below will bring inspiration. I certainly needed it today. Especially the flossing and calcium part...

Namaste

Graduation Speech to Live By
Written by Mary Schmich
[ I thought you guys might enjoy this and find it inspirational. It is a "graduation speech" that spread through cyberspace as a mass e-mail chain letter that was allegedly given by Kurt Vonnegut to the class of '97 at MIT. However, in actuality, it was a column written for the Chicago Tribune by columnist Mary Schmich. Vonnegut has never given a commencement speech at MIT. However, a nice "speech".- Zero ]

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Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:

Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but known that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. You choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. WOrk hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.

Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Disser-sorbtion

The dissertation giveth, and the dissertation taketh away...

Where to begin with this one?

Let's see...

First, I am writing "full time" again. And when I say writing, what I really mean to say is that I wake up in the morning, sit down with a cup of tea and something to nibble on, and make a few productive paragraphs until I realize that I am starving again--usually around 11 am. After an impromptu "lunch", which usually involves a bowl of yogurt with muesli mix, I stare and fidget for 5 more hours. I check my email a zillion times and watch as the East Coast begins to wake up on Facebook. I attempt to edit what I have written, and chew through a pack of sugar free gum in the process. Orally fixated, I have eaten far too many dried apricots, and have subsequentally noted to self: "No more apricots, Namaste. Just...stop...now." After several more cups of tea and many trips to the bathroom, where I brush my hair and examine the weird freckle that has recenly appeared above my upper lip, I finally give up on my productive day of writing.

My late afternoon activity involves going to the gym that I have recently joined at the downtown YMCA, where I unstealthly attempt to bypass the trainers persons of the gym as they wander around the cardio room. Apparently, I have a sign on my head that says, "Please come up and attempt to socialize with me when I am pounding out my day of frustrations and angst at the highest speed I can possibly go on the treadmill and cannot speak because I am out of breath." Or is this sign on my ass? I am starting to think that it is the latter. The trainer guys themselves are all possessed of intimidatingly developed bicep muscles, which is quite a unique sight for men in the Middle East.

In total, I am working on working. More importantly, I am working on having a longer attention span.

Please, G-d, just let this thing be done.

And here, I would just like to add that it is such a terrible feeling to look at everything that must be noted, fashioned, written and accomplished...and meanwhile, I sit frozen, fretting over the wording of my Facebook updates...

Writer's block, indeed.

Namaste

Long Term, Short Term

In the dense fog of the future, it is not going to matter when or how I completed my dissertation. The mountain of chores attendant to the dissertation--the approval for research, the funding, the inane "human subjects" certification course that recently came close to setting me back 2 years, the poverty, health issues, utter insecurity, student loans, threats to my life and well-being in the field...and so on...none of this is going to matter...

Yesterday, as I gave my mother a goodnight kiss, I realized that it will not matter if I checked off all of my boxes by the end of February 2009 on the long list of chores having to do with my dissertation. It will not matter if I take a few days off to spend time with her, or extend my weekend trip to see her by just a day because she is so sad to see me go. In the end, the dissertation will be here long after my mother is not.

In the end, it will matter more that these precious days were spent with her. In the end, I will have a dissertation and all of the accolades that come with a lifetime of my mother telling me to live my dreams. But in the end, I won't have my mother.

The dissertation can wait a couple of days.

Exit Strategy

"Vertigo," according to Salman Rushdie, "is the conflict between fear of falling and desire to fall..."

I have been cherishing the dwindling sunlight and the last few days of the season that are warm enough to still spend time outside. Living in New England in the fall is one of those remarkable life events, in my opinion. I live in a place where people wave from their yard work as I run through town with headphones in my ears. Today, in fact, the dean of the college slapped me a high-five as we passed on the sidewalk. Under the leaves and the late afternoon sun that is now making its annual trip farther away from the earth, I stop, stretch, consider my pulse and practice a few yoga postures on the boathouse deck on the lake. The water laps beneath me, and the sun shimmers upon the lake just beyond my fingertips as I look down past my out-stretched fingers in a strong, triumphant warrior pose. Later, I hear from a few favorite students that I was "spotted" running through town again. I smile and jovially invite anyone to join me in my regular work-outs. They each giggle, of course, but no one appears to volunteer.

In a short time, I will be leaving this place--this place where the leaves fall, and my groceries are always placed in the cloth bags that I trot along with me to the only grocery store in town. I will be leaving this town where sushi is still considered an exotic food, the only coffee shop is closed on Sundays, and it is far more convenient to buy my vegetables in coin tender from the local farmer's kids who spend their summers sitting in self-made stalls along the side of the road. Of course, I will be leaving behind the migraines that never fail to bring me to my knees when the weather changes to snow or rain. I am also tempted to think that my insomnia of the past year will remain in this particular American zip code.

Two months until the semester ends. Two months until my contract is over. Time is up. Game over. Do not pass go. Obviously, with the leaves now falling, I take this as a sign to begin stripping myself of my short list of "trappings". In this, I have begun to concentrate my efforts on my "exit strategy". I need a new passport. I am inwardly tossing around the novel idea of selling my car. I am sticking closely to my budget and monitoring flights to Tel Aviv like a hawk. I have begun to begin again, which is refreshing. Perhaps you can take the girl out of the fire of the Middle East, domesticate her with a job and break her heart a few times. Maybe she'll leave it all better than she found it. Maybe she'll even be sweeter as a result. But, in the end, you can't take the fire of the Middle East out of the girl...

I am forward looking, simply because of the vertigo I feel if I allow my brain to even consider the whirlwind of this past year. When I run through town, I watch the leaves fall to the ground, and if I am not careful and deliberate with my state of mind, I feel the temptation to fall along with them. Ideally, a part of me fancies the idea of "settling in" for another long winter, but this is obviously not an option--not for me. Yet, the same part of me knows that another winter for me here would be suicide. Perhaps one day, I will look back and wistfully reflect upon how this year of my life was a perfectly encapsulated moment of yin-yang. For every moment of personal beauty there has been an equal amount of personal tragedy. It is what it is, or rather, it was what it was. I have taken the lesson. The wind is blowing. The time is coming to take the lesson and move on.

I fantasize regularly about how little I plan to pack. It instantly clears up the vertigo.

Namaste

Atonement

I have been immersed in blur of teaching, teaching-related mental fatigue and High Holiday activities. By way of atonement, I hope you will all forgive me for not writing.

More soon,

Namaste

Manifesting

Two weeks ago, I submitted a third draft of my ongoing chapter to my dissertation adviser. I submitted it knowing that it was only the beginning to the end, not the end in itself. For someone who has enjoyed a lifetime of instantaneous academic approval simply for showing up, I cannot even describe what it feels like to pour so much life energy into 40 fresh pages, only to receive a shiny bit of approval for one tenth of the work. Apparently, I am being schooled in the art of writing as a European academic. In time, I know that I will thank my adviser for this (in fact, I already do), but at present moment, I feel as though my natural voice is being constrained and reshaped against my will. Here, my biggest strength is my Achilles heal. I have a natural inclination to want to find my own way and so I bristle at the imposition of someone else's standard. Next, of course, I bristle at the very fact that I find myself so reticent to change. The words themselves want nothing more than to scream back from their gilded page, and I remind myself to be more like water. Nothing is ever written in stone...

After the completion of my draft, I planned to reward myself with 10 solid days away. I closed up shop, jumped in the car on a sunny day, and made my way through Amish-country America, all of the way down to Washington, DC. The good news is that the dissertation monster does not affect the daily lives of my friends in DC. In fact, no one even has the foggiest clue that the dissertation monster even exists. Fortunately, life continues as normal for the people I love there. I was delighted to find that a number of them have climbed their respective ladders, moved to the suburbs and set up shop. They are either life mating, lactating, or soon-to-be lactating. Those who are decidedly not on the warpath to mating and lactation are gracefully climbing out of their twenties and "moving on up". These are the ones who are becoming 30-something professionals and no longer living with 10 other post-graduates in dirty row houses on the Hill. One friend in particular recently took her promotion at the office as a sign that it is time to move into a tall building with high security and a proper view. For what it is worth, I came to realize that I rely on my friends in DC for their continued success and happiness. As a whole, they possess the sort of steady pragmatism and approach to life that I happen to lack, and I love them for this. Their journeys are meaningful and exciting for me as a way of not being completely disconnected from what is considered the most successful way of living an American life. It never fails to impress me how every single one of them is smart, successful, driven, moral and entirely warm and wonderful people. I honestly can't imagine walking through life without them.

From the rigor of Washington, DC, I made my way north again and let out an audible sigh of urban relief when my dear little car, Betty, and I emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel and traversed our way along the West Side of Manhattan. I spent the next 5 days in what can only be considered my personal Zen. I indulged in a manicure and pedicure and spent the mornings running along the West Side along with the rest of the urban runners of Manhattan. It was a delight. The weather was amazing, and I did everything in my power to be outdoors as much as possible. I scheduled catch-up times with all of my good friends around all of my favorite Manhattan eateries-- including my favorite, down-home Middle Eastern spot in the East Village, and cash-only favorite French cafe in the Upper West Side. I anonymously attended Shabbat services. I wrote poetry on the subways. I practiced Hebrew with some Israeli friends. I finally managed to escape from my summer stresses of solitary confinement completely, and, in doing so, I was able to think about the future.

I realized that I am preparing for life to change soon. And it occurred to me that perhaps one of the reasons my dissertation writing has been so complicated and delayed this summer is because something deep within me is fighting against this change. I am not entirely sure what is going to come next, but one thing I do know is that I am missing the road.

Betty and I returned to our sleepy little town in New England last night. I am currently sipping tea and preparing to teach three classes in the semester ahead. My personal goal for the semester is basic survival. Beyond this, I am looking forward to the embrace of a routine, and making plans to pack a bag in January and hoof it back to the Middle East for a long while...

Maybe indefinitely.

Namaste

"You May Say I'm a Dreamer..."

"A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline."--Harvey Mackay

Tears of frustration were shed this week. Twice. For 10 minutes on Tuesday morning, I was rendered in a sobbing fetal position on my office floor, just for the hell of it.

The good news, however, is that tears as a result of feeling entirely overwhelmed were only shed once this week. On Wednesday. Kind of a like a passing New England summer rainstorm. Again, for the hell of it.

Tears of fear concerning my academic debt and unknown future? Nearly shed-- but let's face it--that one is so played. Perhaps I could shed a tear for my indifference to my unknown future at this moment, but I would rather be writing...

Number of total words written this week: 2,876. They say that this is "a lot". I see it as paltry. Negligible at best. I see it as a drop in the ocean, but try to remind myself that it is one drop is more than I had a week ago. I also try to remind myself that I have re-read countless number of articles in addition to writing this week. Yesterday, my pen and post-it tabs swallowed yet another scholarly book.

I sometimes have to force myself to leave the house. Otherwise, I am entirely too comfortable reading horizontally in my lounge attire of tank tops and boy-short underwear. I shower and shave occasionally. I sometimes remotely ponder what to do with my shadowy mane of hair. At the moment my long hair serves as my only reminder that my youth has not been forsaken. Once upon a time, my hair was my amulet of sexual power. Now, since its renewal, it just serves as a friendly reminder of the woman I was once in a state of becoming in contrast to the woman that I have since become.

The writing persists, and the thinking never stops. Even in dreams, I am thinking. But the good news is that I am sleeping better. This may sound like a complete contradiction in terms. This is because I have begun doing yoga again. The nice man at the yoga place is only charging me $9/class.

Maybe one day I will long for a return of these halcyon moments of solitude when all I did one summer was write a doctoral dissertation in my underwear.

Oh, and in the meantime, I am neglecting to mention that in my moments of procrastination, I have renewed my fiendish love of music. I woke up singing John Lennon this morning. I made a cup of tea, sat down, and here we are.

As I write about war and the continuing violation of life itself in Israel-Palestine, I find it necessary to take the time to indulge in the small comfort of hope...

...hope that I will finish this darn writing thing sooner or later.

...hope that I won't crash and burn in the face of another long semester of teaching ahead of me.

...hope that when the time comes to go abroad again, I won't still be the veritable shell of myself that I have been since last October...

...and hope that all of this time spent writing about the world will actually matter to the world...

Namaste

ps: I love the way that Yoko opens all of the windows in this video. It is so subtle (and seemingly bizarre), but there would be no light if she didn't do this. I am a big fan of people who know how to let in the light.

Reflection

Several weeks ago, I stopped looking in the mirror. Although I have never been a fan of mirrors in the first place, I stopped looking because I started to fear that the person looking back at me is someone I do not know any more. So many changes, shifts and points of disruption have taken place in the past few months, causing me to feel like I simply cannot keep up or account for anything any more. Looking in the mirror fills me with tremendous anxiety right now. So many unexpected sucker punches have led me to feel emotionally atomized and disconnected. But, rather than dwelling on my state of limbo, I have just decided to suspend the limbo even more by just not giving it a point of focus. Hence, no mirrors.

Meanwhile, of course, I have been teaching. And loving it. In some ways, teaching has become the one thing that I have been able to manage to keep consistent in my life, where everything else has fallen apart both in and around me. And where I haven't been giving an ounce of solid care to myself, I have been pouring that energy into my students. I have somehow managed to love and nurture them at a moment when I suppose I have needed to be loved and nurtured the most. But I have done this without really expecting anything in return--other than the hope that they might attend my classes, read the stuff I have put on the syllabus, and get a kick out of my quirky references to pop-culture and regular reliance on You Tube videos to illustrate the points I make. The bottom line is that I have just felt that I have the love to give, why not give it? Why not just do what I like to do and do it with all of me? No excuses. Shit happens. Who cares, anyway? Just get out of your own way and give it everything you have for the sake of it? And if you're going to do it, do it fully, with passion, and yet, fully without ego...

So...today, I gave my job talk. The talk was presentation of my research, and open to the public. In the past week, I encouraged my students to attend for the sake of seeing what it is like to attend talks at the upper levels of the academy. I also invited a few colleagues, but with the schedule I had this week, I really failed to focus on whether they could make it. After all, people are busy. Students are busy. The last thing anyone wants to do is sit in a classroom at 4:30 in the afternoon on a nice, spring day. I am not the center of the Universe. Heck, let us not forget, I don't even look at myself in the mirror anymore...

I expected a few loyal students and a handful of faculty members to appear. I also expected the department I am interviewing with to be in full form, ready to pounce upon my research with the kind of viciousness that only the exceptionally educated yet grossly underpaid sort of people do in order to justify their noble sacrifices to themselves and others.

I was not expecting, however, a packed room of students and a wide array of faculty members who showed up to demonstrate their support of my candidacy for the job. I did not expect that every student from both of my classes this semester would be there. I also did not expect to walk into the room and see that one of my classes was sitting en masse with hand-made signs on their shirts with the slogans, "HIRE HER" and "WE LOVE PROFESSOR NAMASTE"...among others. I did not expect that this class of mine would take it upon themselves to make a poster that called for my hiring at their school. In fact, who could have anticipated the room to be so packed with people that students were standing out of the door, into the hallway, and creeping in to sit on the floor.

So I gave my little talk. I gave it, and, for what it is worth, it went well. I talked for 40 minutes, and then engaged 45 more minutes of questions from students and faculty. And it was...actually...exciting for me...really great...

But what made it even greater was looking up from my notes and seeing my own students in the audience with those beautiful signs on their shirts. And my colleagues were there, too, each one of them sending me the energy they knew I needed. Each member of the audience smiled and winked at me when they managed to catch my eye while I spoke and looked around the room. Several gave me the thumb's up sign as I carried on in my professional language, still feeling so removed from my body. And yet, as I talked on I began to I look out across the sea of 50 faces who all gathered in one place just for me. In a small way, it kind of felt like one of those rare birthday parties a person has when they can look around the room and see a bunch of people they love all sitting together in one place. They were there for me. To celebrate me. They were listening. And they were smiling. And it was amazing. Beyond amazing. And really, beyond words.

For better or for worse, what may come with this job will come...but I realized that I was today, for the first time in many months, finally seeing my own reflection.

American Guys

For the past two days, I have been putting my academic talk together for the interview I am giving for the "big job" this week. Of course, as I sit here clipping away, trying to sound erudite about social movements and the major ideological political shifts in the Middle East in the past 30 years and why, why, why, why all of it is so pressingly important to me (all the way down to my tips of my toes, the top of my nose and etcetera....clearly.)...the front of my mind is whirring away, while the back of my mind keeps thinking...

"Hmmm...maybe I should consider the idea of dating an American guy again."

Clearly, I have no specific American guy in mind. Clearly, this is just an object of fascination for me, simply because it just happens that the last long(ish) term relationship I had with an American male was...gosh...3 years ago. And prior to that? Yep, 3 years. Maybe my 3 year rotation cycle is up for American guys? (Yes, I actually think this to myself as my fingers keep typing at speed about the rise of Islamist political parties and the impact this has state making in Palestine.)

"Hmmmm. The American male. So monolithic...so white and burdened by their privilege and popped collar culture...so mass-produced by the self-help generation of our parents...and yet the rare few can be so tender, kind, inspiring...and real..."

That said, in my entire dating history, I have only seriously dated 2 American male folks. (Not much of sample, I know.) For what it's worth, both were very good male people. Both were fair and blond with blue eyes, which is also a serious deviation for me. (Even at the time, I knew that I was experimenting.) Both had limited international travel experience at the time and only spoke one language between them.

American Male #1 was a former U.S. Marine, very athletic and so very All-American in a number of genteel, Southern American ways. He was particular adroit at opening doors and walking on the proper side of the street with me. He was incredibly masculine, which I found incredibly satisfying, given that it is my first preference to be the woman in the hyper-heterosexual relationships to which I feel myself drawn. He also very social and had excellent manners, which meant that I could take him must about anywhere. This, and he was impeccably well-groomed without being high-maintenance. Although we weren't ever really "in love", we had a very healthy connection, and we remain good friends. He still shows me a great time whenever I come to town, which makes me forgive him (just a little bit) for being a life-long Republican...

American Male #2 was a advanced degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. All things considered, he wasn't my type from the start, but he was smart and I was drawn to him for being a few years older than me. He was also a licensed massage therapist, which I thought was really cool. I liked the shoulder rubs he gave me after class, during which time he told me what a great coordination and athleticism I had, which is really the only reason why I gave it shot with him. Otherwise, he had a very weird, somewhat demanding personality, which bordered on anti-social. I rather embraced his very illiberal brand of liberalism. Even when he told me that he believed in human compassion in one breath, but then went on to say that he had a difficult time "relating to people without Master's degrees". Even at the time, I knew this was silly, but I still went to great lengths to accept his veganism, which, by today's standards, I can honestly say would never make it to the first date, much less into my apartment. Nevertheless, he did teach me a thing or two about massage and cooking without harming animals.

"Hmm. American mens...there is just such a jumble of them out there...you really never know what you're going to get. Where the heck am I going meet one that is intelligent and kind without being a popped collar push over?"

Given my present location (in America), the question seems rather oxymoronic, doesn't it? While I haven't necessarily gone out of my way not to date American men, it certainly appears from my track record that I must not find most American men engaging enough to date. The other side of the coin is the obvious possibility that most American men have no idea what to do with me. For starters, I am not particularly good at any of the country club sports. I don't look good in khaki. I do not lounge. I do not have a rich father. I have an aversion to lawyers and dating them because I don't like to argue. I am direct without ever being not bitchy. I particularly don't like conflict, nor do I like to get into extended conversations about my "feelings". I avoid all guys who can't hold up their end of the conversation with me, which means that the one's who haven't traveled or read for pleasure or know anything about culture, history or life or have ever had an original thought in general...unfortunately don't get very far with me. I am not looking to get married, and yet I am ethnic, really ethnic, and this confuses American men very, very deeply. I tend to spoil the ones that I love, a kindness that American men always manage to confuse with weakness. I have hips. I like food. I am driven by my passions and creativity. I do not handle the stresses of the leisure class well, and therefore, I do not lounge. I also talk with my hands and regularly make friends with strangers. But, I'm more than this, so much more than this...and I realize that this is hard to take...

"Hmmm....Maybe this summer...who knows?...Maybe I should just be open to what comes along and not ask to see his passport straight away..."

But for now, back to the work. G-d, it's hard work. I am torn between whether I actually take myself too seriously or simply not seriously enough.

"Hmm..."

Either way, there appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel. I will be in Washington, DC this weekend with all of my beloved American friends, some of whom are very good at country club activities. Come what may with the job stress of this week, I am looking forward to putting everything behind me and having some serious fun. (Oh, and non-American men need not apply.)

Namaste

Birthday Follow-Up

Good news! My paper proposal did ultimately write itself. Why? Because I am a total bad ass.

The funny thing is that a year ago, I couldn't have brought myself to even think about doing such a thing. I had absolutely no confidence in my ability to lend any critical voice to much of anything. Yes, I had passed my preliminary exams, but even then, I wasn't entirely sure that the process had been rigged. Why did I pass with distinction while my more studious (and highly competitive) colleagues had to wait six months and take them again? I had no idea what made me "distinct".

In other news, the birthday was a SUCCESS. A big one. I'm officially 30...and..it...is... fantastic. Aside from the usual barrage of wonderful phone calls from friends and family all over the country, one particular call made my day. The story remains officially untold, I know, but what is official is that the Universe somehow managed to carry me to this moment. I'm not sure how many days of karmic goodness I had to pay forward for all of this to happen, but it has happened in a most...serendipitous...way.

I have some more travel essays in my head to write. Per the suggestion of one fabulous reader, I am starting to look for a venue to publish some of my travel experiences. As always, I am most open to suggestions...

Love!

Namaste

Professor Namaste says...

It's been a tremendous week. I have put two course proposals together for the coming semester, and have been delighted to find a warm and receptive audience for my ideas. I've taught classes, attended important meetings, made new friends and influenced others...

Students are signing up for my courses in droves. I'm struggling with the difficulty of not only being new and fresh-faced but instantaneously popular by default. I came back to my office from lecturing this afternoon to discover this in my email inbox:

Dear Professor [Namaste]:

I just wanted to say that I think class on Friday was awesome. I meant to send an e-mail sooner, but it's been busy. I think the general consensus was that class was much like how things were with Prof.XXX earlier in the semester: engaging, theoretical, and stimulating. I think the activity was a great way to practically apply what we have been learning with some contemporary and very-real-life situations.

Hopefully more classes like that are on the way. Thanks for joining us and taking on such a great responsibility! I think the rest of the semester will be excellent. See you in class-

I guess it's safe to say that things are going well. I'm still a little overwhelmed by my new found status. In fact, I'm blown away that I am now sitting in faculty meetings, and the majority of my colleagues are old enough to be my parents. Everyone has been so warm, so welcoming, so wonderful...that it makes me wonder if I somehow slipped into some subaltern universe of academia.

Maybe taking the blue pill...maybe doing the hard work to live your dream...maybe choosing a path of personal enlightenment that involves giving and being of service to others... isn't so bad after all?

I can now decisively say that all of my hard work is worth it in the end. So, this is what it's like to live your dream...

Namaste

How About Them Apples?

Chapter One of my dissertation is now roughly comprised of 20 well-written, single spaced pages in 10pt Arial font, not including my 6-page bibliography that manages to grow as new ideas pop into my mind. I'm almost there, boys and girls! I'm almost there!

A few things:

What on earth did people do before "The Google"??? Hell, what did people do before computers? I'm already losing my mind with the nature of this enormous undertaking. I can't imagine having to do any of this on a word processor. From my laptop at home, I have the whole world at my fingertips. And with full access to my university's on-line journal community, I'm printing off articles left and right. Like, just the other night, I got distracted and started teaching myself the mechanics of Portuguese. Thanks to "The Google", I found an entire Portuguese grammar lesson on line. Portuguese, you ask? Yes. Just follow the bouncing ball, if you will...

I looked in the mirror the other day and realized that my hair has grown quite a bit. I'm now starting to wonder if the actual process of writing will have a Rip-Van-Winkle affect on me. Am I going to wake up in 60 years and discover that I'm an old man, too? And, out of curiosity, why do some people really start to look old at 30, and others still look great?

I'm doing a small load of laundry at the moment, but all that needs to be washed are my yoga clothes, and yet I haven't worked out since Monday. Tragic, but true. When writing, I live in yoga clothes. At a minimum, I try to match. Right now, I have on my favorite mint green velour pajama pants and a white half-sleeve shirt. I love velour lounge wear. Especially in the winter time.

Last night, I broke plans with friends so that I could stay in and write until two o'clock in the morning. If it were not for the fact that my eyes could no longer make sense of what was on the computer screen, I would have stayed up all night. Tonight, I have a birthday party to attend. I'm sincerely looking forward to not wearing my glasses for a few hours, and even putting on make-up.

Have I mentioned that I haven't worked out since Monday? Yes. In the weeks ahead, this, this no-working-out thing will have to stop. I haven't slept as well as a result of it. You would think that the mind-muscle would be tired and want to rest, but it keeps going like the Energizer Bunny. My body is not a well-oiled machine, but simply a puppy that must be run every day so that it doesn't wake up in the middle of the night and pee on the floor.

My deadline is Monday morning, and I am greatly looking forward to walking into my former advisor's office, slapping my work down on her desk, smiling and asking her if she likes apples.

Living the Dream

Lately I've been thinking that I should write a book about surviving graduate school. So, I poked around a little bit on Amazon and realized that the concept is pretty played. However, what I did find is that most of these books are really traditionalist in course. If I were to write a book, it would be devoted to doing graduate work the "easy way". As our dear President would say, it's all about "Strategery".

For example, I would devote a chapter to the usefulness of picking a theme of your Master's thesis a year in advance and only taking classes that will allow you to write papers under this theme. Of course, you have to already be mature and rigorous. You have to know what you like, like what you know, and be fully prepared to sink into it. But this way, by the time a year of coursework rolls around, you already have three or four chapters written.

Meanwhile, you make sure to take the very maximum of your credit load each semester--normally 18 credits, by allotting three credits to M.A. thesis research. In the end, you've loaded your credits in advance and simultaneously worked ahead so that you can:

a) graduate early
b) get a heck of a lot more bang for your buck
c) take a semester off to shake and shimmer your way through Southern Spain (or what-have-you) before you either have to go out into the real world or return to begin the coursework for your Ph.D.

Ahem.

Because I'm currently teaching a graduate seminar, I am constantly repeating this advice to my 10 bright-eyed, eager beavers all of the time. Who else is going to tell them this? Certainly not the administrators who want their warm bodies and hard money in the system for two full years.

One of my other little secrets that I will share in my book is that I am a huge fan of doing an 8-credit independent study at the end of the M.A. career. Why? Oh, yes, let me tell you why! The reason for this is also twofold:

1) You pick something you're interested in and write a kick-ass, publishable work on it. You're not confined to the droll of weekly classroom discussions with often less-engaging minds, or having to read from an entire syllabus of stuff that you've already read for the past two years. No. You get to make your own syllabus and proceed accordingly.

2) Upon the completion of writing your kick-ass paper in something that makes your heart race, you are given an "A" from the student-friendly professor who already thinks that you can walk on water. But this is not any "A"...no, friends!!...this is an 8-CREDIT "A". Do you have any idea what happens when you get an 8-CREDIT "A" added to your already-stellar G.P.A.? You graduate...um...6 months early....and magna cum laude from your class. Mmmmm-hmmmm. Sha-bang! Mama knows, child, mama knows!

Of course, I could spin out useful tips for making the most of your time and money all day, but I have another book to write first to fulfill the requirements of the Ph.D. Lately I've found myself clarifying this to my family when they ask when I'm going to be done with my "paper" so that I can start producing the grand-babies en masse. Just last night, even:

"Mom, no...it's not a paper...it's a book. Yes, a book! A real book!"

"But I thought it was just a paper."

"Well, yes, I guess you could say that a book is a really big paper."

"How big, honey?"

"350 pages, Mommy."

"Oh, honey, that's so big! That's just too big!"

"I know. It's fairly daunting, but I can do it. I'm ok."

(Hysterically.) "Do you think you're ever going to finish?" (Pause.)

(Long silence from my end as I take a deep breath and try not to hang up on the woman who gave me life.)

"Honey! I worry for you. You're my baby and you're so lost with all of this talk of doing this and doing that! When!...are you going!....to!... settle down!!....and!!!...raise!!...a!...family!!!!!!?"

My mom is in a constantly flustered state of worry that the florescent lights of the library are going to hinder my reproductive capacities. She once sent me an article from USA Today that said that people with more education get married less, have fewer children, and also have less sex...

...But I digress.

Point is, I've also done the research on this. Statistically, the odds are stacked against me with the Ph.D. There's a reason why so few people in the world actually succeed in getting one. The irony of it is that those at "the top" fail to outstretch their hands to those who are coming up behind them. The thought is that if they had to struggle, then so should we, and so the cycle perpetuates. No one is in the business of helping their fellow scholar. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but what I am describing is the general rule of academic counter-intuitiveness.

I've also realized that, just like the M.A., the key to survival is not how "smart" you are, but whether you have what it takes to navigate down so many dark and winding alleys. It's a matter of how well you handle both silence and failure and what you do with it. The prize doesn't go to the most erudite, but rather, to the the most disciplined. It's one thing to say that you want something, but another thing entirely to sit alone, with yourself and your books hours at a time and still have the gumption to connect thought with action.

For those of you wonderful folks who've asked, I'm really doing ok. My committee is now headed by a supportive, student activist who knows and understands my heart. We talk in high, spiritual metaphors when I relate my research interest to my need to do something worthwhile with my life. He gets it, and, according to him, I can do anything I want, even walk on water. In the past several weeks, I've done a great deal of assessing of this process and realized that it is neither a veritable Mt. Everest, nor a doomed descension into Dante's innermost circle. Sure, writing a dissertation is not easy, but I now recognize that it's an honor to be able to do it. This is what I've worked for. This is the fun part!

Like everything, living your dream comes with a great deal of costs. After all, what's the value of anything if it doesn't involve a lot of challenge, enormous personal growth and a little bit of sacrifice?

Fortune Cookies

So, I may not be writing so much of this internet writing for the next couple of months...maybe years. If anything, I'll try to touch in once a week or so, but I can't promise.

The deal is that I'm supposed to be writing my doctoral dissertation at present, and I've managed to piss off the last year and a half doing other things. Of course, "other things" have included 6 months of language study, moving back and forth across the country, living in a war zone, working a series of menial jobs to support myself, dealing with health and family issues, etc, etc, etc. Poor, poor me. Certainly it's not the blog that consumes much of my time, but I do fully admit that in light of everything else, I need to be more disciplined. In fact, if I believed in New Year's resolutions, this would be one: Radical Discipline. Indeed.

Today, after what some would call a complete "Come-to-Jesus" meltdown with my (now-freshly "former)" dissertation advisor, I realized part of the reason for my proverbial pissing in the wind is due to fear. No, I take that back: The absolute largest part of this issue is paralyzing fear:

Fear that my research is crap. Fear of getting it all wrong. Fear that I have nothing to say. Fear that if I start, I may never finish. Fear that if I finish, I will be seen as a weak intellectual at best, if not a downright fraud. How can this girl who comes from nothing achieve something so lofty? (She must not deserve such a thing. Who did she sleep with to get through so fast?) And finally--this sounds completely insane, but--fear of success. Even if I do manage to claw my way to the finish line, then what?

I would say that I am moribound with fear and practically paralyzed as a result of this 98% of the time when it comes to this particular situation. The irony is that while I am mostly worried about the repercussions of finishing, I am also as equally stunned0stupid by the fear of not completing the mission at hand. The thought of leaving this behind me without completion is also something that renders me incapable of cogent thought. If I fail see this last leg of my journey to the very end, I know that I will forever be scarred by the story of how I spent the rest of my life paying off the thousand of dollars of institutional debt I incurred when I never got my PhD.

The reality check is that, in a very real way, I have practically mortgaged my life on my success in this endeavor. No doubt, a tremendous gamble. And even the completion of it doesn't guarantee much of a financial pay-off, other than the mere satisfaction that I've done this entirely on my own, for myself, because I can. (And because, at the end of the day, I can actually say that I really love what I do.) Unlike my colleagues, however, I have no trust fund or even one or a set of supportive parental units to pull from when I've had to steal toilet paper from local coffee shops, or forgo two month's worth of electricity when I couldn't find enough pennies in the bowels of my car to keep the lights and the heat on in my apartment. None of this mattered, by the way, because there was no food in the refrigerator to spoil, that is, unless you count the peaunut butter and Ramen Noodles I survived on for a year and a half.

Before my illustrious meltdown this afternoon in my emotionally-distant, supportive-yet-cold, caring-yet-cruel advisor's office today, I told a friend of mine on Friday that I'm officially going to stop making this PhD thing look so smooth. Because it's not. It's terrifying. In actuality, I feel like an Olympic figure skater, pumped up on steroids and artificial painkillers, who actually is in the running for the coveted Gold despite the fact that she's competing on two broken legs. I'm just not that tough. Nor do I care to be. I refuse to be inhuman. Who cares if I'm breaking the stoic, PhD code of silence by saying so.

Yes, I am well aware that 98% of all doctoral students experience this issue, too. This is why only 10% of us actually manage to complete the PhD. The failure rate is beyond staggering...and stiffling. And if that 10% of lucky masochists weren't completely certifiable before the process, they certainly will be in the end. Please don't tell me that what I am experiencing at present is "normal". I know it's normal. But I am also brutally aware that the path I'm on right now is the farthest point on the map from normalcy and "healthy" that one can choose. I'm a mental athlete, training to compete for the Nerd Olympic Games. On Mars...

The problem is the love-hate paradox. I love it; I hate it. I love reading and learning and talking shop. I love teaching. Really love it. But I hate being told that if I don't write a widely-respected book, I will not be able to freely do what I love to do. I hate the fact that I can't write just to write. Everything is strategy and innuendo. It's a huge chess game with no end, much less a clear and decisive victory. Moreover, I have to write to please an audience of people I hardly respect, and who typically act like emotional 7 year olds, and hardly respect themselves.

I may have officially just now crossed the line in becoming the person that I silently pray for: The PhD student who blogs to all of her internet pals about how completely psychzoid she is.

Yeesh.

I promise to work more. Blog less. Fortunately, this sort of thing is a rarity. In the meantime, thanks to those of you who managed to read this far. Rant over. Oh, and for the record, I, too, believe in Fortune Cookies, and really hope that Someone Up There has a better handle on it than I do. Are the stars just simply out of alignment this month? What gives?

Ambiguously yours,

-Namaste