To Boldly Go, or something

From an email I sent to a former classmate who is about to enter a Master’s program at NYU:

Grad school is a pretty hard transition to make (or it was for me). There was a lot of self-doubt involved, mostly because I felt like I didn’t have the rigorous background of other people who went to more academically challenging undergrads. But eventually I had to realize that that was an excuse I was using to let myself off the hook because I was scared shitless. And now things are good. I’m committed to doing this thing (PhD) and committed to believing in my intelligence, I guess, the validity of my contribution. Yada yada yada. The point is, grad school will probably shake your idea of yourself pretty profoundly, and it will seem easier to go backwards to something safe rather than forwards. But just go forward.

And today I have had to repeat that to myself many times: go forward, go forward, go forward. Sometimes a little egotism and a little blind faith are just what you (I) need to continue doing what needs to be done.

You want to know something nerdy about me? The Feminine Mystique inspired me not to go back to Starbuck’s when I got back from Chile, inspired me to effing aim big(ger), which directly led to my soul-sucking ESL job, which directly led to me deciding that grad school was happening for me now, not later, which directly led to now. I guess it’s nerdy because technically, nobody told me that my best bet was to stay home and have kids and keep house, like in the ’50s. Still, it is a path of least resistance (at least has seemed so to me)–I’m not just talking about being a housewife here. I’m talking about telling myself no, letting myself off the hook, denying that I have a contribution to make, settling before I’ve even tried to do the hard, rewarding things.

And here I am, fighting myself to stay motivated, to keep doing this. I’m just going to keep repeating, Go forward, go forward, go forward.

And on a lighter note:
The Things I Think I May Have Learned In My First Bit At Graduate School:
1) Tums are essential.
2) It doesn’t matter how good an Odwalla bar seems the first time you try it, by the fourth time you eat it because you forgot to pack proper food, it will start tasting like chalky protein powder, even though they will help you not to feel sick after too much coffee.
3) Read ahead.
4) Most of the time, you get more done at the library, but sometimes the library is just this hateful place full of screaming 18-year-olds, so at those times you should work at home with the cats.
5) It’s really important to work out when you sit on your buns all day.
6) Your professors are so nice. They’re just like you, only older and smarter with more books.

In conclusion, grad school is basically the stuff that dreams are made of…plus lots of stress. But seriously, where else do you get served champagne in the middle of the day?*

*This happened when I went to a dissertation defense, so obv. not a regular occurance, but still. DLI never gave us champagne.

Two Interesting Articles

because I have nothing else to do right now? Oh no wait, because I’m taking a break from my 72 hour count-down to essays being due.

Primero:
Indians raised and trained in the US don’t always love working in India. But, like, isn’t it in their, like, genes or something?

Segundo:
Western men are doomed because they can’t be more like the Chinese/women; Or, David Brooks’ How I Learned to Stop Grouping Animals and Love the Relationship.

SOCIALISMO O MUERTE…no, er, literally.

So here’s the deal in the US of A as of now:

If you lack a job with health coverage (common, unless you happen to work for a large corporation that can swallow the costs–which may also be fairly common), anytime you need to see a doctor, you can do so. But it will cost you exponentially more than if you are insured. Exponentially.

No hospital emergency room in these great United States can turn you away. Even if you go to the ritziest hospital in the fanciest neighborhood–say, to take an example at random, Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, CA–those doctors will not turn you away. And that’s good, right? Care for the sick is a right, not a privilege, no?

Well…yes and no. You see, even though it pains me to admit this, even though I would like as much as the next person to believe that all hospitals, doctors, and nurses are motivated by only the purest philanthropy, still, the facts are there, and I am forced to the conclusion that hospitals, doctors, and nurses are, in the main, motivated not by a desire to improve the quality of their patients lives, but a desire to profit off the sick people who walk through their doors.

How did I reach such a shocking conclusion, you may rightly wonder? And further, who am I to pass judgment on an entire–nay, THREE entire institutions? Well, friends, let’s take your second question first. When I visited the emergency room about nine months ago due to dizziness and nausea spells that were so severe that I had to leave work, I went to the emergency room near my house–the only one even remotely possible to reach in a reasonable amount of time without a car. I went to said ER, where I was more than candid about the state of my insurance coverage–namely, that there was none. Also namely, that I was not, as the saying goes, sitting on a pile. The nurse looked at me. “You can apply for economic hardship discount later. For now, we’re giving you the uninsured discount.” This sounded reassuring to me, and I saw the ER doctor. He eventually diagnosed me with vertigo (which I do not have) and wrote me prescription for vertigo medicine, in about the course of twenty minutes. For this service, I received a $450 bill from that doctor. I later received a bill from the hospital for nearly $800. And that was after the uninsured discount. And they demanded payment in full.

Of course, I applied for the financial hardship discount. I explained my financial situation, detailed my expenses every month, and never heard back from them. So I didn’t pay. I didn’t have the money to pay with (unless I put it on my credit card and went into hair-raising debt again), and furthermore, I did not think the slipshod doctoring that happened really deserved $450, nor that the hospital would go under if I delayed my payment of that bill for a while (say, until the end of grad school when I might have a job enabling me to pay such an amount).

Now, nine months later, I have received a bill from a collection agency for the original $450 with interest from that doctor. If I don’t pay, I will have a black mark on my credit forever and ever amen.

So how do I know that hospitals, doctors, and nurses (well, not most nurses,actually) are motivated by filthy lucre and not by the Hippocratic Oath? Well, if this hospital, doctor, and nurse trio had really cared about my quality of life, they would have said, “We will treat you, but we want you to know that it will cost more than two-thirds of what you make in a month. And we will demand payment in full. Further, if you do not pay, we will send you to a collection agency and you will never be able to buy a house.” But nobody said any of that to me. They treated me, knowing my financial situation, and now demand money that I don’t have. So I’m going to have to put it on my credit card or have it on my credit report, neither of which is very appealing to me. ARGH. I wish I could look that doctor in the eyes and say, “You, sir, are a greedy pig. And an idiot, because I didn’t have vertigo. I had hormones in my body from birth control that made me very dizzy and nauseated, which I found out on my own, because you told me I had vertigo.”

The point is, anyone who thinks our system is not already socialist obviously has insurance or has never been sick. Our system is socialist (in the sense that everyone has access to healthcare), just inefficiently so. If we believe healthcare is a privilege for those who can afford it, let’s at least be candid about that fact. If, on the other hand, we believe healthcare is a right for every citizen, then let’s make sure the life that is saved in the ER will not later be ruined by the ER bill.

Anyone else have any stories or opinions on this? I’d really like to hear.

Eeyore. Merp.

For the past two weekends it has been BEAUTIFUL weather and for the past two weekends (well, last one and the one I’m in) I have had to hole myself up in the library where I can see the beautiful day but not participate in it. WHAT A DRAG, you say? Yes, it is. But it is also my fault for not getting more stuff done sooner.

On the plus side (not really), I went to the gym this morning for a swim after a week of lazy and self-destructive neglect of the ol’ cardiac/musculature systems, and the pool was “closed.” There was no one there and the lights were off, and technically, I could have gone in anyway, but my Inner Nag reminded me that if somehow, someway, after a lifetime of accidentless swimming, I should suffer an accident in the pool, no one would be there to pull me out and perform CPR. So I didn’t go in.

Well, back to the salt mines (i.e., presentation putting-together–actually very fun. I like Power pointing.) What keeps me going is the idea that SOMEDAY, after MOUNTAINS of time and effort have been spent inside on beautiful days, I will have the LEISURE to work forty (maybe fifty) hours a week and take walks on the weekends, sleep in, and LIVE in a HOUSE.

don’t ask about the caps.

Mea Culpa.

It can be depressing to think about how selfish you have been in your lifetime, how utterly and completely myopic your worldview is–that is, when you are a safe distance in time away, it looks myopic. At the time, you might even believe you are being liberal and broad-minded in a sea of conservative reactionaries.

Going to a new university has made me think about my old one a lot. Ever since about 2005 I’ve been willing to orate upon the limitations and myopias of the private Christian institution that I, after all, chose to attend for my B.A., but looking back on the types of things I said (or didn’t say), as evidenced in a friend’s blog, I realize that I was astoundingly, given my general view of myself at the time, self-centered. I remember that summer of 2007 as one of intense loneliness and lack of production/momentum, but also of intense beauty. I was often alone, but 7 of my friends had also moved to the city I went to post-graduation; I just couldn’t bring myself to believe in our connection, I guess, in the point of all we were doing. Meanwhile, the friends I left behind cleaned & vacated our epically dirty, roachy apartment, which I left without even arranging to have my furniture removed, and I said not a peep about it, didn’t even think about it, probably. i’ve often wondered how and why my relationship with various people, including those who cleaned that place, changed; I think I may see a part of the answer now. I have enough distance to realize that my side of the story is inevitably flawed, but not enough to therefore detach myself from my version of things. And this is, to some extent, how we all operate. Yet it is particularly humbling when you realize it about yourself, really realize how very selfish and hypocritical you can be. And back to my Xtn university, many of the things I disliked about it were so superficial, though I paraded them as deep philosophical flaws: I lacked the personal motivation to initiate/finish independent studies or work as hard as I could have in classes, therefore the university was at fault for not being academically challenging enough (true enough, but no excuse for laziness); the school’s outspoken philosophy marked me, I felt, as different somehow, so they were generally hidebound and embarrassing…I don’t know if I’m making sense. It was sort of like being in high school again and being so deeply ashamed of myself and by extension of my mother, the person who made me who I was, except I was ashamed of the school instead of my mom.

Not sure how to end this post, but I want to iterate that despite the melancholy of the last paragraph, I am filled mostly with love right now–for those lovelies who cleaned that apartment, for the ones who put up with my angst that summer, for the cats who always are up for a cuddle, for my mother who still speaks to me, for my husband who just made tostones–this list could go on forever, but I will stop it here (with a tip of my hat to Joyce): love.

Yes.

A friend in the blogosphere.

Oh Golly. Thank gawd for this blog. Now that I am in graduate school meself (and even in a PhD program, like her), I find reading this blog so comforting in a way I cannot explain. It helps that she is vegan, reads the New Yorker, does yoga, is funny, and has a life partner who makes regular appearances in the blog, whom I think I would like very much. In fact, reading her awesome blog always makes me want to write a blog of my own, although upon comparison I usually feel a bit deflated. ANyway, today, I really needed to read that blog. I also really needed to eat chocolate chip ice cream (not really). The reason, you might be surprised to find out, was that I totally tanked (=got one of the lowest grades in the class) on my midterm in my history of feminist thought class. I’m not totally sure how it all happened. I was hungover when I took the test, but also felt reasonably confident that I had answered the questions well. All my reading responses had more or less positive feedback on them, but apparently I wasn’t taking all the right things away (?).

Well, as my “perverse fate” would have it, to sort of quote Mary Wollstonecraft, I have also been going through one of my bouts of contemplation of other, any other, career that I could possibly do that would not be more miserable than my last one–if you call that a career, which I don’t. This is how I feel when I feel like I’m behind in everything even though I do try to put in a lot of work–just sort of trapped and sad. It’s very melodramatic and emo of me to frame my problems this way, and while recognizing that, I still just want to sit on the couch and cry about the hard decisions I might have to make.

Seriously, the dilemma is: attaining this level of education is a serious privilege, in many ways. It’s a big step to just give it up. Also, if I plan to work in my chosen discipline at the college level at all, it cannot possibly hurt me to have a PhD. On the other hand, I sometimes doubt whether I have the mental wherewithal to do the PhD. Most of the time, I feel like I do have it. Other times, I don’t know, I feel like I’m too handicapped by having gone to this rinky-dink college. But that makes no sense, because my current university let me in to their most exclusive program (almost didn’t, come to that), so obviously they have some confidence in my abilities.

The other dilemma is this: does this work really matter? In the blog above-mentioned, the author does not seem too plagued by this consideration, but for some reason it weighs me down considerably. I don’t feel like I’ve found my “obsession” yet, that one topic that I know I will want to write about for the rest of my life, or at least for the next decade or so.

Now I’ve muddied my mental waters again, although when I started this post they seemed clearer (on the side of continuing in the program and getting a PhD).

Hey, it’s just one midterm! And hey, the prof said she expected better! That may make me cringe, but it’s much better to have failed to live up to potential than to have done one’s absolute best and still gotten a low grade. And the weird upshot is that if I do poorly on everything, the university will probably ask me to leave anyway, thereby making the decision for me. But I would be very sad if that happened.

On a totally unrelated note, how about that Pam! You know, Pam from the Office! Freaking out because Michael is sleeping with her mom! Come on, Pammy, grow up. Also, thank you Dwight for finally coming out as totally crazy. Also, Oscar is the new Jim, without the mischievous streak and the office love interest, now that Jim is the new Michael. Things to think about.

Also, if anyone has a good essay topic for Ulysses, you should tell me. All you Joyceans out there.

OK, I’m going to bed.

PS–Google “neti pot.” Jman is not convinced, but (thanks to a testimonial read in a facebook status) I am totally into trying it.

Mamma Mia

**Note: not a post about my mother**

If good fences make good neighbors, then fences covered in birdshit and the odd roach in the kitchen make passive aggressive encounters with your neighbor inevitable. Don’t worry, I didn’t follow that either. Suffice to say, our neighbor seems to be mad at us, for something that is (I think) a misunderstanding branching off from a weird overreaction. Sigh. Oh well. These things do happen. Neighbor drama, I mean. I for one am just going to sit back and act like the set builders–calm and collected, to carry the drama metaphor a bit further.

Also, it’s getting cold up in here. I miss the west coast. Nothing like an hour of facebooking to drown you in a sea of nostalgia. xoxo

PS–I’m reading Ulysses–and liking it!

Has it come to this?

The disheartening short answer is yes, it has.

What am I talking about, you ask? Just one more article about the dirtiness and criminal unaccountability of our food system. Despite its somewhat goofy title, its a serious six-pager, bracketed by the tragic story of a young woman paralyzed from E. coli caught from a home-cooked burger from Sam’s Club, reassuring the vegetarian/rich foodie, just another rat gnawing the conscience of the would-be vegetarian/poor foodie. It focuses on hamburger meat, but I think the recent peanut butter scare leaves little room for doubt that the lack of proper testing for pathogens is not limited to the meat industry.

The most amazing thing to me is the mental contortions we go through to justify the system as it is:

Dr. James Marsden, a meat safety expert at Kansas State University and senior science adviser for the North American Meat Processors Association, said the Department of Agriculture needed to issue better guidance on avoiding cross-contamination, like urging people to use bleach to sterilize cutting boards. “Even if you are a scientist, much less a housewife with a child, it’s very difficult,” Dr. Marsden said.

Bleach? On my food surfaces? In an ordinary kitchen? I thought that was post-apocalyptic advice for after we’ve annihilated humanity and only the fundamentalists in bunkers with bottles of bleach and rain barrels survive? Well, here come the Four Horsemen, by golly.

Wouldn’t it be better if meat cost more, therefore (middle-class) people eat less of it, therefore we are not as riddled with heart disease and other maladies due to high consumption of meat, therefore health costs go down for our already-socialized-but-inefficiently-so system?

Of course that pat little solution raises all sorts of other problems, not least of which is people who already don’t eat much meat or other protein, and what they do manage to get is of the very poorest quality with the least nutritional value. Hmm…perhaps all that non-profit like training I received at MAS would come in handy with my friends who want to farm…”Meat in the City”–I can see it now.

On a related note, we should really get some chickens/move. Cage-free vegetarian-fed eggs are killing me. KILLING me! (Can’t even bring myself to buy the organic ones. Or to stop eating eggs, I guess. I blame the weather. Plus bananas aren’t local and am I supposed to give up baking too? NOT LIKELY BUSTER!)

On a more distantly related note, I’m having trouble keeping my eyes on the prize lately. Making pros & cons lists of whether or not one should stick it out to the end of one’s PhD program is probably not the most efficient use of one’s time when three papers are coming due all too soon. The problem is I like school – using the library and reading lots of books and articles and having class discussions. And I’m not totally convinced that I’m not grad school material yet. And that rational voice in the back of my head keeps saying, “It will get easier. Then you’ll want to stay.” And maybe that voice is right. But I just have such a horrible emo time when I have to pick a paper topic. Once I pick it things usually roll along, for better or worse. But picking it! That’s the bane of my existence. And then there are the dismal reports about the job market. And the dismal Chicago weather. And the dismal idea of being stuck in a hard-working job with no time to make yogurt or kombucha.

But enough of this emo lolly-gagging! I’m off to see Bright Star!

In case you haven’t already inferred this from my long silence,

shit’s been busy.

Also, I think I need to officially take a break from this. There’s some various reasons, mostly sounding very emo and new agey, and also boiling down to: this is the last thing on my list of shit to get done. Also, any of you who read this probably have my phone number, and we can just talk on the phone and I’ll tell you about stuff I’ve been doing lately and/or why I’ve decided not to keep up my personal blog for now.

If I write something I particularly like about pop culture or literature or anything, maybe I’ll post it here. But they will probably be few and far between.

Nonetheless, I’m not deleting. This isn’t a violent rejection in any way. This is more like a “we need to take some time to remember why we’re together in the first place” type of thing.

<3 <3 <3

Are you there God? It’s me, Vicki

to BLATANTLY misuse Judy Blume’s title. No, this is not a coming-of-age tale wherein you will read a third-person narrative of hope and tenderness. No. This is a self-destructive, self-indulgent little whine of a post, intended only to let you know how much I am kicking myself right now for picking such a dumb ass topic to write ten pages about.

If you have an answer to this question: will Vicki’s life ever resolve into something she can be reasonably proud of? then please leave a comment below.

Well, back to the ol’ word processor. Those words don’t write themselves. (But if I were less human and more machine, they might.)