Ideas for my Future?

Like so many of my friends, including those from Wesleyan and Cambridge, I am currently accepting ideas as to what I should be doing in a year, or with my life in general.  Submissions will be accepted for the remainder of the academic year.

x

thanks

Middle November

Dear Family and Friends (and self!),

Well.  It's been like 2 weeks or so.

Happy November!

November is a strange month because -- a) it's been my best month and b) it's a complicated month full of planning for the future, which is always a stressful and confusing process.  I mean, who knows what comes next?  And who knows what I really really want, hidden underneath all the things I've decided that I want--or, what I should say (and what I really mean) is: who knows what I will really want by the time I've graduated from here?  See, that's the big question.  Because I know what I want...for right now.  So I'm planning for those things.  But life would of course be simpler if I knew what I should be planning for, and what I should be doing right now, and how I should best allocated my inner energies and outer energies.  What dreams should I be crafting?  Is it wrong to hold on to the old ones; what would replace them anyway, and and what if they're still the right dreams?  How can I know?

Life is complicated.

What I really mean is, I didn't do very well on my GREs and now my professors seem to be depressed for me.  It's already middle November so there's very very little time to correct for my blunder.  One of the professors at Wesleyan I contacted basically indicated that she's not sure I'm going to get into any but the very worst schools on my list (which is okay because every school on my list is there for a reason--not just to fulfil a hierarchical role, but also because I genuinely like the faculty and programme).  I'm not even sure the professor thinks it's that likely I'll get into that particular school either, though.  This makes me life...well, full of rethinking.  As I suppose it always is, but now it's sort of a public rethinking.  Which is good for me.  Let's overcome the awkwardness and the hindrances of pride!  I'm feeling okay with it, actually, minus the part where who knows where I'll be in a year.  I don't like that because I'm worried about myself when I think: oh god, will I be able to eat in a year? What about repaying student loans? What if, after not getting into ANY schools, I then can't find a job? It's a terrible market out there! Who wants Development Studies students anyway? What if I really, really can't find anything?

And those are my fears.  They're not super pronounced, I should add, because I have lots of amazing friends here who are also becoming very good networking sources for me, and who promise they could find me jobs in India or South Africa if I wanted them (which I would).  I'm trying to rethink whether it's a possibility to stay at Cambridge a while longer, since the faculty here is beginning to know me, and since...well, I really really like it.

Onto the next part of the story!

I really, really like it here.  Like, more than I've ever, ever liked anywhere else--ever--on the face of the planet. And by that, I don't mean, 'Oh, it's more scenic than Amsterdam!' or 'Wow, it's so much cheaper than [some other place]!' or even 'I think I could stay the rest of my life here!'  What I mean is that I like myself better. I like myself here. I like my life here.  I love my life here.  I love everything about it, more than I've ever, ever loved myself and my life anywhere else.  I love being so close to London (my current favourite city ever).  I love being in a place that I can cycle through endlessly and still find more areas that are undiscovered because, yes it's small, and yes it's a town not a city, but the ground keeps going.  I love learning to cycle again and choosing to fall off of my bike and then get back on and making the kinds of choices that leave me liberated.  I love putting in active effort into meeting people because we're not all crammed into the same small place.  I love Autumn.  I love how white the sky gets, and it always makes me think I'm going to wake up to snow or frost (though I haven't yet).  I love that I just bought new cycle lights because somehow that makes me feel.... I can't even say!  Ecstatic.  Established.  Something.  I love that it's not a study abroad programme, because I'm actually a U of Cam student and I'm doing a postgraduate degree (how cool!) and living on my own money and (still) opening my own bank account and making all of my own decisions...in a foreign country.  I like making fun of my British friends for saying 'herb' and 'tomahto' and 'potahto'.  They love making fun of me for saying '(h)erb' and 'tomayto' and 'potayto'.  Okay actually that gets a bit annoying, but it's still fun.  I love that I'm here for a year.  It's not a 4-month hiatus and then I'm gone again.  It takes 2 - 3 months to get settled into any place, so what a tease those programmes are!  I love thinking about how I'm going to be here in June still.  What a treat!  What a complete privilege!  What a journey!  It always surprises me because I think I'll be gone in March or April, but--no!  I'll still be here.  Maybe even longer.  Who knows.

I love going to the grocery store here and using my points-reward card; love using sim cards in phones; love duct-taping my cycle basket more securely on so I'm not thrown off-balance when I ride through town.  I love learning to cycle on the left side of the road (new development there).  I love how I'm starting to be able to see my breath.  I think walking is beautiful.  I've always thought walking is beautiful, but now I think so again.

I'm happier (and more stable-ly happy) than I ever have been in my life before.  I wake up in the morning and even if things suck because I only have 2 more weeks until my first application deadlines and I hardly feel ready in the slightest, and I also have 2 more maths quizzes to take before then and where will I find the time and shouldn't I be more focused on my MPhil work than on overseas maths?, I still feel happy.  I love making my bed in the morning, with the beautiful hand-embroidered / cross-stitched pillowcases my Grandmother's Cousin gave me peaking out at me from behind the pillow I actually lay my head on (I cannot possibly dirty the beautiful stitchwork!); it makes me feel happy to look over and see that on my bed. I can't even tell you.  All of my mood-swings I'm used to having from middle school, high school, Wesleyan x10, and even Amsterdam (truth)...have suddenly dissolved.  Now I recognise that this is the result of many things.  First, it is possibly the result of a temporary improvement in my moods that will backslide or itself disappear in the near or distant future. Total possibility.  Second, I'm working really hard at this whole emotional stability issue.  But it's also easier to resolve here than it was (for instance) at claustrophobic Wesleyan--which was a good place for me in many ways, but also in no way did anything to help my deep and frequent emotional fluctuations.  Space is more clear here; there are fewer social obligations (despite the fact that there are many social outlets and everyone's always busy with socialising in addition to academics); I have room for myself.  That's something new.

I guess that's the best thing about being here.  It's not just that we have rolling country fields and flat roads making for easy cycling for miles and miles and miles.  It's that we have the same kind of space for individuals.  It's so beautiful.

Anyway, I love being here.  November has been fabulous, despite the fact that I'm simultaneously grappling with issues of applications, life-decisions and the future.

love.

It's November

How did this happen so quickly?  It's the age-old question, I suppose.  Several updates:

1) I bought a plant finally!  A Japanese peace lily from a sweet florist in the market, for £2.75, so I feel like I did well.  She tells me that if I replant the lily in a larger pot, ze will grow larger, but I can feel free to leave hir indefinitely in the smallish plastic container in which ze came, and that will be fine. I haven't found a name for hir yet.  I forgot to tell you that for my GREs, I definitely used gender-neutral (ze/hir) pronouns in my analytical essays.  That may probably have been a bad idea, but this is how we get the point across--don't cave, just do it.  I'm not doing the whole 'her/him', 'she/he' (or, worse, 's/he') crap.  And if we all just started writing ze and hir in our GRE essays then it'd be fine and I wouldn't get in trouble.  We'll see what the results are.  At any rate, they might have thought it was a strange continuous typo that I didn't have time to fix in the 30 min for reading the prompt, planning, writing and editing that test-takers have.

2) I also bought spinach!  I was feeling famished ALL THE TIME and desperate for soymilk (which I have, but like, don't want to drink all of in one day...), so I decided to get me to the market and buy me some spinach. And I just feel really good about that decision.  I did both of these things while helping a friend buy her new bike and lock at the market 'Bikeman' stall, so I'm doubly impressed by my multitasking, though I feel a bit like I should have been there with her the whole time and not ditching her periodically for plants and spinach.  Oh well.  But we were both really excited about the respective chores we were able to cross off our lists.  (The chores we were able to cross off our respective lists?  Ah, whatever).

Why are these all consumerism stories?  Oh well--they're not over!  (And they're based around low-level sellers, so I don't feel that bad).  The last one I was going to share is that I'm *finally going to be able to play my classical acoustic standing up*.  I went to our local music shop and they say it's cheap and easy to permanently attach a strap button, so that is EXACTLY what I am about to do today.  Also it will get me out of the house.

So yesterday was a good day because--it was Hallowe'en (HAPPY HALLOWE'EN!), it was my two-year Facebook marriage anniversary with one of my besties (haaaay!) and also we conveniently had a Skype date then--which I did NOT miss this time but almost did! (when does Daylight Savings kick in for US-ers? I know we're not going to be 4hrs apart forever...y'all are weird), AND I took my Differential Equations midterm and Skyped with my dad (I hope I did well...and that the staff in Virginia receives it properly and is able to register that the whole thing happened in a timely fashion).  And then my course-mates all met up at a pub around 9pm, so my good friend in my course & in my college with me--the one who now has a bike!--cycled over with me and I stayed for like an hour and tried 3 different people's beers before leaving.  I apparently missed--again--her dancing, which I also missed at the Diwali celebration.  She is supposed to have an adorable, high-energy jump-dance thing she does that I absolutely, absolutely have to see.  This is my new mission in life.  I'm lying, but I do want to see that.

Oh, and I forgot!  You're going to laugh at / question me, but a really good thing happened and that was that I fell off of my bike (well, flew, again, as happens with me...).  I know it sounds crazy.  But.  See, here's the thing: I did this twice before in Amsterdam, was terrified of getting a bike here because it might happen again and I'm not a strong biker, and my pride was mostly still wounded from all the Dutch people running--flocking, really--to my side to look over me, speaking Dutch, which I thought was crazy because really? if I fall off of--fly off of--a bike, I'm probably from out-of-town. But they were sweet. And I was a bit mortified, more than even really physically injured.  So these memories haunted me.

And then yesterday, I flew off of my bike. At a red light at a big intersection, just after lots of people had crossed the street and were standing on the corner onto which I fell.  True story.  But!  So, I was biking to my midterm exam, terrified of being late (even though it didn't really matter if I was there at 2.05 or 2.10 since it was just me in a room with the exam, and my college 'exam invigilator' watching over just me), and still feeling sleepy, and frustrated with myself for not having studied more, and feeling like my brain wasn't active and was just really confused and that this was not a good, sharp way to start a midterm exam in a class that is a joke and also one in which I need to get an A, period, done. In which I will get an A because it is a community college distance-learning class, and because it is fun, and because I need one, and because if I don't get one, I will never forgive myself since the Professor is just the least helpful person on the planet and I should be able to ace this.  Anyway.  That's how I was feeling--feeling irresponsible, basically--and then I'm cycling up to the light, and the green pedestrian light goes on.  Well everyone in the Netherlands knows that means a cycle can go, too, and half of the people in Cambridge seem to know that, so I was prepared to go, but this old man on a cycle in front of me stationed himself right there and didn't seem prepared to budge.  Now I had (in my mind) two options.  I could stop and wait.  I could go around him.  In reality, I had three options.  I could stop and wait.  I could go around him--on the left or the right.  I don't know what compelled me to do this, but for some reason on the left-hand option seemed available to me, and by that I mean, the option which required me to squeeze my cycle (currently travelling at a pace faster than I could really manage any significant manoeuvring--a word which I can never spell, for the record) between this biker ('cyclist') and the curb.  A curb, which is my arch nemesis.  Because the first time I flew off my bike on the way to class in September of 2009, it was a curb which did me in.

Many thoughts were in my head.  Mainly: I am going to intersect with this curb right now because I am not perpendicular-enough to it, and I am going to fly off of my bike.  Okay.  I accepted this as a natural consequence of living in a world with gravity, and so I went forward without braking, slid along the curb, and then you know how that goes.  The crowd said, 'Oh!' together with one voice, and the man looked down at me as if he were going to say, 'tsk tsk tsk' and instead says, 'You were going at quite a pace there. Quite a pace'.  I want to say back: 'You were stopped at the light and parked close to the curb, it's all your fault and don't talk back to me!' but of course I have literally zero right to say any of those things. I mean, I guess I can say them but it's obviously my fault. But I was still bitter with him. And then to try and chide me! I condescended to speak politely to him.  My basket's a bit twisted but it's all good and I get back on my bike just in time to see him cross the street and the light turn red.  Short cuts make long delays, as Tolkien so sagely wrote--I mean, he like constantly wrote sagely things but that's beside the point. Because then I stood on my bike at the red light and laughed. And smiled. Because I felt really good. Because I had been tired before, but now I was awake. Because it was Hallowe'en and I had just flown off of my bike--again. Because I'd done this before. Because I'd known it was going to happen and I still chose it anyway. Because it didn't hurt (exactly), but I was slightly more aware of my knee than I had been before. Mostly because I used to be afraid of falling, and now it had just happened (again) and not been a bit deal. In fact, it's sort of like how people always say--why are you so terrified of bees? If you were stung once then you'd stop being afraid of it. Well, my friends, I had NOT stopped being afraid of bikes (and I'm still terrified of bees and would like to avoid the prospect of any interaction with bees, let alone a stinging-based interaction, for as long as I live, in any life, ever). But now I am not afraid of bikes. In fact, I like my bike. I like me, and I like me on my bike, and I kind of like that I flew off of my bike. It made me really happy, in a weird way.

So I rode up to my college and locked it up and went inside and took my exam.

The end.

Also, when my friend from Wesleyan came to visit this weekend, we had a really great time and she ended up staying a second night, and she and my friend here and I all hung out and made various lentil and bean dishes and watched Talladega Nights and talked about everything in life.  And the Hallowe'en Dinner was great--we did go as The 99% (and one hippie, my friend here), and one of my other friends in college dressed up with a sign that said 'Occupy Leckhampton' (the postgrad community/manor here).  And the decorations were great!  The pumpkins that had been carved the Wednesday before were all over the place, and everywhere there were orange and black balloons, orange and black streamers, those clear plastic sheets with ghouls &c printed on them stuck up on the windows and doors, inflatable skeletons.  And during the dinner someone (my college 'Uncle') went around and put little mist/fog-spewing-things inside of the carved pumpkins along the tables and they started fuming all along the hall and it was really cool.  The end, again.

Love!

xoxo
Me