that point.

Remember when I wondered if I would ever reach the point where there were simply not enough hours in the day and days in the week to get everything done? No need to wonder any more: I have reached that point. It is a very unfortunate point to reach.

I hate finals. Can coursework be over now, please?

the aristocrats.

Undergrad student: I just really can't reconcile these obvious contradictions in the text. Why can't we just say the author [name redacted] is wrong?!

Professor: Well, it really comes down to whether or not you have an aristocratic or democratic sensibility...

Undergrad student: Excuse me?

Professor: If you have a democratic soul, you will always have an impulse to finally reconcile the whole with the parts. You won't be able to live with contradiction; parts that don't fit with the whole will have to be ignored or discarded. If you have an aristocratic soul, you will be able to appreciate contradiction and realize it is often the most interesting part of any text. You will be able to fall in love with great authors, while still remaining critical of their work.

Two hours later...

Me, to a friend: I always knew I was an aristocrat! And today, Professor [name redacted] just confirmed it. Score!

a mind is a terrible thing to lose.

I lost my wallet this morning, for the second time in two weeks. Both times, I've lost my wallet somewhere in the library, and both times, someone has turned it in to the front desk without taking any of my money (or, thank god, my coupon for 40% off at Banana Republic). While I'm concerned about my inability to hang on to my belongings, it could be worse: prior to these last two mishaps, the last time I lost my wallet was in college, also at the library, and that time I got it back with no money left in it. (However, in terms of bad news, it just so happens that this morning one of my students was working the front desk at the library when I went to retrieve my wallet. And yes, I am shallow enough to have been embarrassed that he saw the hideous picture on my student ID.)

Alas. There are two lessons to be learned here: 1) Students here are remarkably honest and trustworthy (or perhaps, simply, less in need of my $5) and 2) I am well on my way to becoming an absentminded professor.

Time to buy a tweed jacket and start smearing my lipstick all over my teeth.

on friendship.

"A friend is not somebody one trusts to behave in a certain manner, who has certain useful qualities, who holds acceptable opinions; he is somebody who evokes interest, delight, unreasoning loyalty, and who (almost) engages contemplative imagination. The relationship of friends is dramatic, not utilitarian." > Michael Oakeshott, The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind

three times, not the charm.

I've just finished reading The Republic, for the third time. You'd think that after three complete read throughs I'd have it down cold, but every time I open it up again, I feel as though I've never really read it at all. And I don't mean that I discover something new each time I read it, I mean that I really feel like I'm reading it for the first time. Again.

This is not a good thing. There is no joy, at least for me, in never quite getting a grip on something. You know all that romantic comedy bullshit about every time you kiss someone, it feels like the first time? I never thought that was a particularly compelling idea either. Familiarity is nice. Especially after the third reading.

Plato, you are clearly brilliant, but you give me a headache. So there.

women and weed.

I am reading Herodotus, which, I am happy to report, has been quite fun. So far, I have learned two very important lessons: 1. Oracles are tricky tricksters and misinterpreting them often leads directly to death and destruction, and 2. Women are very, very dangerous, and their mere presence often leads directly to death and destruction. It helps that oracles were often women, so basically you can just apply the second lesson and be done with it.

Suddenly, I am suspicious of myself.

Also, I have learned from Herodotus that potheads are as old as time: Scythians used to take hemp and cast it on to hot stones, which, Herodotus tells us, "gives off smoke and a vapor...the Scythians in their delight at the steam bath howl loudly." Did they also suddenly crave olives and pita bread? Because if so, they sound exactly like boys I knew in high school.

hobnobbery.

A couple nights ago, my parents took me to a party. I really enjoy "adult" parties my parents take me to, because "adults" are, in my experience, much friendlier than people my own age. Friends of my parents friends also tend to be much more interesting than people my own age. Not only that, but the alcohol and food at "adult" parties is way, way better than anything you can find at a party thrown by anyone in their late twenties.

The party I went to a couple nights ago was nothing special, as far as these things go, but it ended up being quite memorable. Somehow, I found myself having a very interesting discussion with a woman who writes for Slate. That was cool enough in and of itself, until she then introduced us to her equally interesting husband, who, I later discovered, had won a Nobel Prize. Then, to top it all off, she asked me for my email address. Why? Because her son lives in DC, and she thinks he and I should really meet for drinks.

Conversations like this do not happen to me. Ever. And unfortunately, this one occurred when I was already on my fourth glass of wine, which means that it is somewhat tainted in my memory by an alcoholic haze. However, I woke up the next morning and my mother, who was present for the whole exchange, confirmed that it had, in fact, taken place. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure I would have thought I dreamt it all up.

intellectual endurance training, update.

Finals are here, yet again. As much as I miss being on the quarter system, I have to say that I'm quite happy to only have two sets of finals a year now, instead of three. Maybe doing this three times a year would make it all seem more manageable, but somehow, I doubt that. It would probably just increase my whining accordingly.

Anyyyway, as I said, finals. Like last semester, I have a pretty grueling writing schedule planned out, I'm once again eating too many fried egg sandwiches, and I am currently listening to cracked out technopop on repeat. Strangely enough, though, my brain stamina seems to have increased slightly. Either that, or my work standards have sunk somewhat, which is probably the more accurate explanation, now that I think about. Despite the increase in brain stamina (or the lowering of standards) finals this semester are still going to kick my ass, because, unlike last semester, I now have 50 papers and 50 exams to grade, in addition to all of my own work.

I am kind of curious to see if all of it actually gets done. At some point, I expect that there will just not be enough hours in the day and days in the week, but so far I haven't ever reached that point. I'm curious to see if I ever reach it. Honestly, though, if I make it through this semester without taking any incompletes, I think I deserve a fucking medal. Or at least a free coffee, or something. Too bad there is really no glory in grad school.

distractions, unwelcome.

1. The entire seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are now available for instant viewing on Netflix. Why have you DONE this to me, Neflix? WHY? Don't you know that I have FINALS to write?

2. My students have a paper due soon, and they seem to assume that if they talk to/e-mail me enough about it, I will agree to write it FOR them. Sorry, kids. (It turns out, though, that some of them really ARE listening when I speak, contrary to my previous assumption. This discovery is so immensely gratifying that I may begin to actually enjoy teaching because of it.)

3. I am obsessed with a particular song by Yeasayer. How could a song be distracting, you ask? Mostly it's because I want to listen to it ALL the time, but when I listen to it and try to do my reading, my brain fails to absorb things. My mind is weak and easily thwarted, it seems. Also: the video is quite possible the strangest I have ever seen. Why are hipsters from Brooklyn so entirely strange?

planets and orifices.

Please, bear with me, and read this passage:

"Upright between the surfaces of the universe, he [man] stands in relation to the firmament (his face is to his body what the face of heaven is to the ether; his pulse beats in his veins as the stars circle the sky according to their own fixed paths; the seven orifices in his head are to his face what the seven planets are to the sky); but he is also the fulcrum up on which all these relations turn, so that we find them again, their similarity unimpaired, in the analogy of the human animal to the earth it inhabits: his flesh is a glebe, his bones are rocks, his veins great rivers, his bladder is the sea, and his seven principle organs are the metals hidden in the shafts of mines."

And now, you are probably wondering: 1. Who the hell wrote this, and whether they are insane; 2. If the word "glebe" is a typo; 3. How the hell anyone gets away with this kind of egregious sentence construction. The answers to those questions are: 1. Michel Foucault, and yes, probably; 2. No (look it up!); 3. Beats me.

What I am really concerned about, though, has nothing to do with any of this; it has to do with the fact that there are not, in fact, seven planets in the sky OR seven orifices in my face. Back when Foucault was writing, Pluto was still a planet, so there should be NINE planets in the sky, and as far as I can tell, there are only SIX holes in my face, since two nostrils really only equal one orifice.

Now, have I simply uncovered a couple silly mistakes here, or have I uncovered Foucault's super secret esoteric message?!?!!!!!!

Sub-question: WHY ISN'T IT SUMMER YET??

a parable.

Last night, my phone died. Kaput, no longer, adios phone. I plugged it in for a few hours, hoping that perhaps the battery would recharge and somehow revive it, but there was no sign of life. The most it could do when turned on was beep, mournfully, bidding me a final farewell as it was drained of its final measure of battery-life.

So I turned the poor thing off, and (begrudgingly) made plans to visit my nearest AT&T store. This morning, in a last-ditch attempt to save myself some money, I plugged my phone in one last time. Five minutes later, it showed a fully-charged battery. Confused, I turned it on, and, holy shit!, it worked. Hello, phone!

And in case you are wondering: I do indeed consider this an Easter miracle. Hallelujah!

a conversation with my mother.

My family came to visit this weekend. Within five minutes of arriving, the following conversation ensued:

Mom: "So how are things going? I know you've been so busy lately..."

Me: "Ugh. To be honest, this week has been insane. I finally finished grading midterms and papers, and doing that while trying to catch up on other work since spring break has just made everything so much crazier. And, I have a paper due on Monday! I swear, I've been so busy, I literally haven't had time to eat."

Mom: "Oh, I was just thinking that you looked like you lost weight. You should be busy more often!"

Me: "Um. Thanks?"

newty g makes a comeback.

From The New Yorker:

"Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House, is a reader--and something of a postermodern interpreter--of the works of Albert Camus and George Orwell. A few days before President Obama's big health-care 'summit,' Gingrich addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference. He cited Camus's, 'The Plague,' summarizing its message with Jack Nicholsonian authoritativeness: 'The authorities can't stand the truth.'"

Camus! At CPAC! He is rolling in his grave, surely. Where do you come up with this stuff, Newty G? And why do I still think you are strangely awesome?

lessons learned.

Things I have learned so far in grad school:

1. When you are speaking, no one is listening to you.
2. In any grad seminar someone will repeat exactly what you just said five minutes ago and act as if it was entirely their own idea in the first place.
3. All undergrads assume that grads students a) live on campus and b) have unlimited free time and nothing to do except answer their questions.
4. Political theory grad students are very awkward creatures.
5. Awkwardness is a state of mind.

a flood of weber.

I'm sure you all doubt my ridiculous talk of cosmic academic coincidences. But please, seriously, someone needs to explain to me how it's possible that, having never been assigned to read Max Weber before, I have read him already four times this semester, and in four different classes. Twenty-four years of Weber-less existence, and now, he is everywhere. Is this not a very strange coincidence? Is it not academically cosmic!? Come on!

(Those of you who took sosc at Chicago will object to my never having read Weber before, but unlike the rest of you my third quarter of sosc was taught by the world's most ridiculous professor (Gopal, I am still angry with you, FYI) and we spent so much time reading Marx we never got to Weber. I kid you not: We spent at least three classes discussing On The Jewish Question.)

I hope this flood of Weber ends better than my year of reading Nietzsche, which was not at all pleasant. So far it's going better, but in general it seems to me that an overdose of any kind of depressed German can't be healthy in the long run. But as long as I don't end up with a tattoo that reads "fundamental doubt is the father of knowledge," I think everything will be ok.

the position of total neurosis.

I have never wanted to be a teacher. Not even in a moment of vocational weakness have ever thought, "well, there's always teaching." This is fairly unusual, especially for someone who has always loved school. Teaching always seemed really difficult, though, and it involves the one thing I hate most: performing for a crowd. In light of this, you may reasonably ask, why would I ever think that it was a good idea to get a PhD in a subject that has teaching as its inevitable end? An excellent question, and one that I have no satisfactory answer for, so please, don't ask me.

In any case, I am now in the position where I not only have to assistant teach, but I'm leading discussion sections for a class which is on a topic I'm not particularly well-versed in. The subject of the class is politics, of course, but it's not really my kind of politics, which is to say that there are occasionally numbers and charts involved. I admit, I have yet to fully appreciate the science part of political science.

It's not clear to me, however, that I would be more comfortable teaching a subject that I do know a lot about. If I knew more about what I'm teaching I might very well realize even more clearly that I have no idea what I'm saying. This would only make matters worse. I spoke to Gremlin about this, and she suggests that there are three possible ways to teach something:

1. Total ignorance: you read something once and then pretend you know something coherent about it and the subject it's on.
2. Partial ignorance: you read something once or twice, but have read some other related things and have a half-formed grasp on the subject in general.
3. Relative Non-ignorance: You've read something a bunch of times, have read lots of other related things, have written on the subject and basically know a whole lot about it.

Gremlin and I agree that there would be nothing worse than teaching from position #2. In Partial Ignorance, you know enough to know there are many different points of view, but you don't know enough to really understand your own point of view, which invariably results in a half-assed presentation of confusion. In position #1, you don't know enough about the topic to appreciate the vagaries of it, and so have the ability to seem confident even when, in reality, you have no idea what's happening. Position #3 is, of course, the best position to teach from, but apparently one only reaches this point at the end of grad school. Which is why, I assume, most schools don't let grad students teach until their third or fourth year in the program, and even then only in their area of specialty. I should be so lucky.

Despite all of this insanity and anxiety about teaching, objectively I know that I can do nothing except shut up and deal with it, which is pretty much what everyone I've talked to about my predicament has suggested I do. I can't get fired, after all; I can only look stupid. Worse things have happened.

I've also realized that, consciously or unconsciously, I set myself up for this kind of grief. I volunteered to go to grad school, didn't I? It's my own damn fault. And this isn't the first time I've set myself up like this, either. In college, for example, I volunteered to write a BA thesis, which meant that I had to participate in a BA thesis seminar, which ensured that I would have to conquer a pathological fear I had had since grade school: letting other people, people who were not my teachers, read my writing. I can't explain it, but this was a long-standing problem for me; not even my mother had ever been allowed to read my papers. And yet, I volunteered to write a BA. Even worse, I ended up kind of enjoying my BA seminar.

And here I am, yet again, volunteering to do things I profess to dislike. There is something very wrong with me.

seven year itch.

In an attempt not to become a hopelessly lame grad student who does nothing but read political theory, I went to a lecture at the Corcoran last night. The speaker was Stefan Sagmeister, who is apparently a very famous designer, mostly of album covers, but who I had never heard of until a friend of mine invited me to the lecture. The subject was happiness and design, and Sagmeister, who is quite charming and very European, was incredibly entertaining.

I have absolutely no talent for design, which will certainly not come as a shock to anyone who has seen this blog, but my ineptitude has not stopped me from being genuinely interested in the subject. I like the way design is not quite a fine art while not being entirely practical, either. It can be frivolous in a way that architecture is not, while serving a much more functional purpose than something like sculpture or drawing. It's also a huge field; I'm particularly obsessed with book cover design and fonts, but there are a whole host of different ways to be a designer, and sometimes it's easy to overlook just how pervasive design can actually be. If you have seen the movie Helvetica, you will understand what I mean.

Anyway, all that is actually beside the point, because while the lecture was quite good, the most interesting part had nothing to do with design: it had to do with what Sagmeister calls his "seven year itch." In short, every seven years Sagmeister takes a whole 12 months off. He takes no clients, and devotes that entire year to exploring new ideas and indulging in experimentation without any expectations. Most of the lecture was spent defending this practice, and explaining how it makes him not only a happier person, but also a better designer. Being phenomenally successful, and possibly a tad eccentric, are obviously key to making this kind of lifestyle possible, but I have to say, I think it's a phenomenally good idea. It's tempting to consider this as a kind of sabbatical, but sabbaticals are usually used (at least in academia) to finish writing books, which, while undoubtedly useful, is not particularly experimental and carries very definite expectations.

What I have in mind is instead something closer to what Marilynne Robinson did after the success of her first book. Rumor has it that, instead of immediately starting her next novel, as most successful authors do, she took several years off and did very little except read. Not just literature, but also history and theology and philosophy. And this is why she can write so well on such a wide range of topics, which is what makes her, I think, such an excellent writer, both in her fiction and non-fiction. Robinson's seven year itch lasted longer than Sagmeister's, but nonetheless, it speaks to the same kind of commitment to experimentation and curiosity. The attraction of this idea goes back to an obsession I have with being interdisciplinary; it seems that the deeper I go into my specific discipline, the more obsessed I am with not being stuck in it.

In short, since I got to take most of 2009 off to travel and read and lay around New York, I am now thinking that I'll do it again seven years from now. Even if that turns out to be impossible, I think that just the idea could make surviving the next seven years much, much easier.