Lessons in Life

Now in KatiNews:

I was really starting to feel that whole 'grad school anxiety' that everyone who's ever been in grad school (or who's currently in grad school) has been so fond of telling me that I should be feeling, and would probably be feeling soon. Gah. It's like you guys put your voodoo on me and I got all freaked out about falling behind the arbitrary deadlines I've set for myself. Overwhelmed anxiety is paralyzing to me. I can't get anything done when I feel like that. So I resorted to the old solution that college students have been employing since the beginning of college. I self-medicated with whiskey and wine.

I'm not typically one to espouse drinking your troubles away, but I was anxious and knew I needed to relax because I knew my anxiety was edging on unreasonable. I was on my way to a write-in with friends, so I wasn't going to get any more schoolwork done that day anyway. I had to force some calm upon me. And as it turned out, whiskey and wine work miracles.

But that's really only the bandaid cure. Mostly, it calmed me down enough so that the next day I could voice my concerns about "falling behind" with my advisor, as well as talk to some friends and cohort about life and goals and expectations. The sum total of these conversations is that my anxiety melted back away. Cliff reminded me that it's more important to get things done well than to get them done fast. Tony got me thinking about where I was when I started on this journey, and what a very long way I've come. Gina reminded me that it wasn't just a change back into academia when I moved here -- I moved back into This American Life. Melodi's own realization that she could only do what she could do, and should therefore focus on her own goals (which in her case involve the will of her tribe) helped me to set my sights back on what I want to do Ultimately, which should in turn guide what I do along the way. Andrew pointed out that 'along the way' sucks sometimes. So you just keep going. And Michael, of course, just keeps me sane.

In addition to these conversations, there's been school. Class discussions. Books. Articles. Essays. I'm constantly in the process of absorbing ungodly amounts of information. And then I have to reconfigure it in my head and figure out how to express what I know to people who do not know it. Because that is, right?, the point of my education. Figure out how we can make the world better, so that then we can make the world better. Theoretical excercises are fun and all, but they don't get the job done. Eventually you gotta do.

In Other KatiNews:

I think I'm doing pretty well readjusting back into This American Life. We got the stages of culture shock, right? The most common four being 1)excitement, interest in all these new things, 2)Problems in adjusting, where you're like "ohshitwhatthehellisgoingonhere?!" 3) recovery, where you "learn the language" of the new place, and 4) adjustment, when you finally feel at home.

Then there's a fifth stage. A "rinse and repeat" stage. This is the one where you go back home, and realize you no longer feel "at home" there. Now you have to go through all those stages again, but it's more surreal this time because everything is familiar... just not quite comfortable, doesn't come quite naturally. That's where I've been. Probably where I am.

I forget sometimes how different I am from most Americans, just given what I've seen and what I therefore know. It shocks the hell out of me sometimes when people speak, because they're not taking into consideration what I take into consideration. I mean, do you realize there are still people out there who think that prisons are populated by "the bad people"? Of course you realize that. You probably believe that, because it turns out that that's a pretty common belief. I used to hold it myself.

But I've spent four years working with gang-bangers and drug addicts and murderers and car thieves. I know their wives and their children and their brothers and sisters and I've talked to them all about what they've done and why they've done and how they got to where they were. I'm a pacifist myself, and I believe in respecting other people (not that I'm always good at it, but I like to think I try). I certainly wouldn't suggest that everyone run right out and become gang-bangers and drug addicts and murderers and car thieves. But if you happen to be one, I think I'm much less likely to assume now that you're "bad people". Instead, I wonder how you got there. And I realize that I myself, the super-liberal pacifist, could have wound up there just as easily if I had been given different circumstances.

Ah, it's just so weird sometimes when I realize how trapped I am in the life I've led. I forget the assumptions that other people make. That I used to make.

I can't even say, "I'm right and you're wrong" because I'm far too aware that our perspectives are guided by a wholly different set of life experiences and knowledge bases. Of course I think I'm right. It's my point of view. But it's... so fun and interesting to learn other points of view and see how they all fit together. So I hear that someone believes animal testing is wrong, and that you should test on prisoners instead, and I'm horrified. But then I have another piece to add into my puzzle that explains this world and why it is the way it is.

I don't really have a point to all of this. Just what's been on my mind.