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?