an open letter to ridiculous people.

Dear Female Undergrad Student Body,

It is 39º degrees here in Washington, DC today. That's pretty cold. Not Chicago in January, mind you, but still, it's cold enough. Indeed, it is cold enough for me to be wearing leggings, knee-length socks, leather boots, corduroy pants, a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, a winter coat, gloves and a scarf. My walk to the bus this morning was pleasingly comfortable; not too warm, not too cold. And yet, when I arrived on campus, I spied you, Female Undergrad Student Body, being absolutely ridiculous, and wearing NO PANTS.

Seriously, Female Undergrad Student Body, I realize that pants can be constraining; they dig into your hips while you sit all day in the library writing papers, they sometimes make weird sounds as your legs rub together when you walk, buying them costs money, etc. I understand, I really do, because oftentimes the first thing I do when I get home at night is take off my pants. But you see, Female Undergrad Student Body, the key difference here is that I take off my pants at home while you wander around campus wearing only leggings. Leggings are not pants. And judging by how cold your ass must be right now, surely you can realize this.

The university you attend costs $35,000 a year. If you can afford that (and judging by the Uggs you're wearing, you probably can) then there is no reason to be walking around in your underwear.

Toastily yours,

Julia

intellectual endurance training.

It's finals week, and I've figured it all out: I need to write at least six to seven pages every day for the next ten days if I have any hope of finishing everything on time. This sounds pretty manageable, until you realize that writing six decent pages is not entirely a piece of cake, and that, once you've been writing that much for a few days in a row, the chances of remaining at the top of your intellectual game decline steadily. So, by next Friday, I will probably be writing in gibberish.

I've started to think of grad school as one very long intellectual marathon; using that analogy, I really need to work on increasing my brain stamina. Perhaps listening to bad pop songs on repeat, eating fried egg sandwiches for dinner every night and failing to do my laundry are not the best ways to train for this marathon? And shit, when you put it that way, my life sounds pathetic.

unconstructive criticism.

The discussion, after presenting a rough draft of a paper in class:

Professor: "This paper is beautifully written, Julia..."

Me: "Thank you."

Professor: "...but, the topic really isn't very good."

Me: "Oh."

And sadly enough, I had a TA in college tell me the exact same thing once. If you are ever in a position to dispense advice on papers, you should know that this comment is not helpful. It only causes the writer in question to wonder if academic papers are actually supposed to be written badly. After all, if no one can understand what the argument is, perhaps the argument is brilliant?

aspirations.

One day, I hope I will be able to write like this:

"The long miseries and vanquished heroics of Troy inspired the world for millennia, though there is not much in the tale to offer comfort except the spectacle of futility on an epic scale. I am not sure we have at the moment any notion of comfort in that sense, of feeling burdens which come with being human in the world lifted by compassionate imagination. Our always greater eagerness to describe ourselves as sufferers makes us always less willing to identify with suffering as a fact of human life...This being human -- people have loved it through plague and famine and siege. And Dante, who knew the world about suffering, had a place in hell for people who were grave when they might have rejoiced." > Marilynne Robinson, "Facing Reality"

zeitfreude.

Grad school, I've decided, is one long subject convergence continuum. I've written about this before; about how there are constant strange subject convergences that occur again and again, somehow randomly and yet unsurprisingly. Case in point: a couple weeks ago during my office hours I had a long discussion with an undergrad and and my fellow TA about Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt. Neither of them had read Schmitt, and I was attempting to (badly) summarize The Concept of the Political and how it may (or may not) relate to Arendt. This was, by the way, the first time anyone has mentioned Schmitt since I started classes here.

Within the next week, in three separate classes, three different professors mentioned Schmitt and Arendt in the same sentence. Not exactly earth shattering; talking about Arendt and Schmitt in a political theory class is hardly off-topic, after all. It's not like all my professors suddenly became obsessed with Britney Spears, or the best way to clarify butter. But still, Arendt and Schmitt just happened to come up, in totally organic ways that had nothing to do with me. It was awesome; like I had somehow introduced the topic into the political theory universe, and it started to bounce around and into other people's brains and conversations, only to get repeated back to me within days. Totally ridiculous, I know, but...fun to imagine.

I mentioned to one of my fellow grad students that I think there should be a word for this kind of thing (prefereably some German noun that would be both fun to say and randomly capitalized, like Schadenfreude or Zeitgeist) and not only did he look at my like I was possibly insane, but he suggested that the word "coincidence" already had that covered. Coincidence! A coincidence is when you run into someone you know in the street, or you happen to own the same pair of shoes as the person sitting next to you; what I'm describing is academically cosmic. I don't think he quite got my point, though. And, unfortunately, I don't speak German, so someone else will have to come up with the appropriate word. I bet Arendt and Schmitt would know.

old schoooool.

I Wish Undergrads Would Learn How to BE QUIET in the Library, Mix #4.

(And in honor of undergrads, all the songs on this list were songs I loved in college. MAJOR FLASHBACK. Also, the songs are arranged in rough chronological order, according to when I started listening to them. And, yes, yes, I should actually be writing a paper right now. Whatever.)

1. El Scorcho - Weezer
2. Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk (Reprise) - Rufus Wainwright
3. As Is - Ani DiFranco
4. Take Me Anywhere - Tegan and Sara
5. The Past and Pending - The Shins
6. Us - Regina Spektor
7. Such Great Heights - Postal Service
8. July, July - The Decembrists
9. Jesus, Etc - Wilco
10. With Arms Outstretched - Rilo Kiley
11. I'm A Cuckoo - Belle & Sebastian
12. Like Eating Glass - Bloc Party
13. Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken - Camera Obscura
14. The Funeral - Band of Horses

my brain, a strange place.

I went to the symphony last night, and instead of actually listening to the Beethoven and Bartok being played, I thought about Hobbes' materialist philosophy. In my defense, I had spent several hours reading Hobbes, and thinking about how everything we do is merely a series of reactions to the physical world. So, as the older gentleman on my right dozed off, I tried to picture what sound waves look like, and how we hear them, and the amount of pleasure we derive from the experience. I considered explaining all this to the friends I was with, but then I realized that nobody actually wants to think about this stuff. Except me, maybe.

And if I actually derive pleasure from being in grad school (which is not necessarily the case) what would Hobbes say about that? I think he would say that I'm still living in the state of nature, and my passions are definitely not consistent with natural law.

Oy.

an open letter to a very dead philosopher.

Dear Aristotle,

Why do you keep insisting that things are "evident," "clear," and "obvious"? No, it is not clear to me that "the law is impartiality," nor is it exactly evident how "the virtue of the good man and the good citizen is the same or different"! It may be obvious to you, Aristotle, that happiness is the same for an individual and a city, but some of us are still a wee bit unsure on that particular point.

Seriously, Aristotle, if anything was at all obvious, clear, or evident about your work, do you really think I would be reading it 2,300 years later? Do YOU? Yeah, I thought not. Now quit trying to make me feel dumb.

My deepest, most sincere philia,

Julia

the good, the bad.

The good news: Lockers at the library here are opened with keys, instead of combinations. My brain is very thankful that it has one less thing to remember.

The bad news: Lockers here are the size of a shoe box. A shoe box that only fits flats. So I guess this means I can't store my gym clothes in my library locker anymore.

More good news: I am finally reading the Nicomachean Ethics, Calvin, and Luther. Turns out that grad school might actually make me smarter! Useful!

More bad news: The City of God has come up approximately seven zillion times in the last three days. My adamant refusal to read Augustine in college is really coming back to bite me in the ass. If only the damn book wasn't so long.

mind vomit.

Grad school makes brain mush. But here are some thoughts:

1. 97.6% of the undergraduate student body here wears flip-flops and JCrew, simultaneously. And roughly 88% of the female undergraduate population carries a Longchamp bag in brown or black. (I also have a feeling that irony is not widely understood here.) My question is: Who are these pod-people, and what should I do with them?

2. I am not smarter than I was as a senior in college, and yet as a grad student I think people expect me to be smarter than seniors in college. This is problematic.

3. I need to find a 4th class that won't make my brain explode. PhySci is, sadly, no longer an option.

4. Junior mints: brain food or poison?

reprogression.

Grad school started yesterday, and at this very moment, I am in the library. It's a pretty hideous building, designed in the brutalist style and made of concrete. I am in the basement computer lab, searching for articles on JSTOR, and in a minute I will go upstairs to the student coffee shop, where I will drink watery but caffeinated sludge and read Tocqueville.

Is it 2007? Because, as far as I can tell, I'm back in college.

Grad school: tentative progress or huge regression? The jury is still out.

district of coolumbia.

Since I am now, officially, moving back to Washington DC this fall for grad school (against my instincts, but not my better judgment) I've started thinking -- could it be possible for me to be cool in DC? Having never been cool, not in my entire life, I see not much reason to hope, but still, it feels like it might be possible. (Last time I lived in DC, I was in high school, which immediately disqualified me.) You see, living in Brooklyn, I am hopelessly uncool. I am much too poor and much too conventional; I haven't written a novel, I'm not in a band, I don't make jewelry in my spare time and sell it on etsy, and more importantly, I don't aspire to do any of these things -- in short, I am not a hipster, not even close.

In DC, though, there are no hipsters. I went searching for them, when I was there a couple weeks ago, and despite what others may think, I found no evidence that they exist. Perhaps I was looking in the wrong places but, even if there is a small enclave of hipsterdom in DC, it is only just managing to survive in an inhospitable climate. (I'm honestly intrigued by this -- why are there so many hipsters in New York, and Chicago, but none in DC? Please investigate, sociologists.) So, where there are no hipsters, would it be possible for me to be cool or, at least, cool by comparison? Will you at least be unable, from a distance, to tell that I am hopelessly dorky? In DC I will still be poor, but in a glamorous, starving intellectual kind of way, and in comparison to everyone else, I could be downright unconventional. (I read philosophy! I listen to obscure bands! I shop at flea markets!) This seems promising.

The real question is, though: will there be anyone around to appreciate my new coolness? Or perhaps the equivalent of the hipster in DC is a twenty-four year old presidential speechwriter? Do the hordes of White House, World Bank, and Congressional minions occupy the same space in DC that aspiring writers and artists occupy in New York? I think they might, and if they do, I doubt they will consider me interesting, much less cool. Sigh. I won't get my hopes up.

That said, who wants to rent me a very reasonably priced one bedroom apartment in Dupont? And who wants to discuss Spinoza with me? Or help me re-learn Italian? Sigh. Again, I won't get my hopes up.

federal bureau of insouciance.

I met the FBI today. Like, seriously. They came to Park Slope, flashed some badges, and then pestered me with questions about the trustworthiness and illegal proclivities of an old friend while I attempted to drink a latte. (This particular old friend happens to work at the White House, hence the need for character references and a security clearance.) My FBI agents were, as you'd expect, dressed in cheap suits and sporting buzz cuts. They had never been to Brooklyn before, and I must say, they did not blend in with the natives. Undercover agents, they were not.

Anyway, when the whole interview was over, I was really relieved that the FBI dudes hadn't asked any questions about my life. Had they asked what I'd been doing for the past 3 months, they may have taken me in for further questioning. I haven't even filed my tax return yet! Damn government bureaucracy. It's, like, such a pain.

social networking.

Someone just tried to pick me up with the line: "Hey, are you on JDate? You look so familiar."

The Upper West Side is a truly amazing place. And no, I am not on JDate.

there will be lists.

I totally love lists (obviously). One of the few things I truly enjoy about the holiday season is all the "Best Of" lists floating around - I hunt them down like Elmer Fudd hunts wabbits - but in a purely non-OCD kind of way. Mostly I love lists because they provide so many opportunities to indulge in my favorite pastime: deriding the taste of others! And so in the spirit of giving, I made my own Best Of 2008 list. I chose categories according to whim, and ignored all publication/release dates. The space-time continuum means nothing to me - if I read/saw/heard it for the first time in 2008, it's eligible for awesomeness. Feel free to disdain as you please.

Best Essay: Up and Then Down, Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker - No surprises here; my love for Nick P. never wavers, and elevator rides have never been the same. Runner up: The Greatest Story Ever Told, Chris R., Yale Daily News - Men everywhere are still gasping and squirming; I almost peed my pants laughing.

Best Song: Someone Great, LCD Soundsystem - The only song of 2008, and I liked it way before I wanted James Murphy to be my friend. Runner up: N/A - I wasn't kidding about this being the only song of 2008.

Best Overall Musical Performance: Devendra Banhart - I hated Devendra Banhart, until I started to love him. I can supply no rational explanation for this; it was just his moment. Runner up: Amy Winehouse - Criminal overuse of liquid eyeliner aside, I honestly like the entire Back to Black album, and I am not ashamed to admit it.

Best Fiction: The End of the Affair and The Quiet American, Graham Greene - I didn't read all that much fiction this year, but I finished these books back to back and loved them equally, confirming yet again my strange love for dead white male quasi-imperialist British authors. Runner up: The last three stories in Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri - she is definitely getting repetitious, but sometimes the product is still really good.

Best Non-Fiction: Between Past and Future, Hannah Arendt - Arendt took this one without really trying. No one is surprised, I'm sure. Runner up: It's got to be a tie between The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood, and Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz.

Best Movie: Reprise - I'm sure I will regret loving this movie, kind of like I regret loving Garden State and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But some things are just too apt, and Reprise is just one of those things. Runner up: There Will Be Blood - Truly awesome, and I mean that in the biblical sense.

Best Actor: David Boreanaz - OMG, no I am not kidding, have you seen Bones?! Angel can act! Well, sort of...at least, he can act in a way that doesn't involve breathing heavily and brooding. It's a total relief. Runner up: Neil Patrick Harris - Historically surpasses all levels of amazing on How I Met Your Mother, and Dr. Horrible takes it to a whole other level. Angel may have won in the end, but you still have my heart, NPH.

Best TV Show: Wonderfalls - No contest, the talking animals win, don't even try. Runner up: How I Met Your Mother - See ode to NPH above.

And now I'm spent. List may be amended, as other random pointlessness occurs to me.