When I was
pulled off the Appalachian Trail and into a whirlwind of organizing
Pre-Orientation food pack out and feeding a bunch of leaders in the week
leading up to Pre-O's, I had planned on writing a last trail journal entry
describing the strangeness of being swept up into that pace of
"normal" life that is so much faster than hiking the trail. The
problem was I was too busy and too tired to ever sit down and write that
journal entry. I started blogging my trail journal entries and when I finished
posting those in October, I planned on writing another blog post to reflect on
those posts and to note how I was swept back into "normal" life. The
problem was I was too busy and too tired to ever sit down and write that post.
That state of existence pretty much sums how I felt all semester: I was too
busy and too tired to __________. I take full responsibility for putting myself
in that situation. I'm the one who chose two research classes, a studio art
class, and a class slightly heavy on reading, in addition to working quite a
bit. And I'm also the one who was too stubborn to not do everything I
was supposed to to prepare for classes, even when the wiser part of me said I
should really just go to sleep. There were times during the semester when that
part of me that insists on doing everything to the fullest extent possible
confronted the part of me that keeps an eye on important things like sleep,
nutrition, and mental relaxation, and the confrontation wasn't nice. On the one
hand, a good trip leader is continuously checking in with the group and with
herself to make sure everyone is hydrated, fueled, and blister free. That's
important to me, so I wanted to value the decisions that I could make in the
best-interest of my well-being. On the other hand, the driven part of me knows
that if I don't follow through strongly with whatever I'm doing, I'll
look back at it and regret not going all the way. A good runner can push to the
edge, even though it's uncomfortable, and stay there until the race is over.
That's important to me as well.
This
confrontation of the well-being consultant and the gun-ho shoulder coach made
me question my past assumption that being insanely busy all the time was my
perfect state of being. It's not that I want a bunch of free time, but I have
to come to value more the opportunity to go into more depth with the things
that I do, the opportunity to really focus. But that runs up against my love
for wayyyyyy to many different things. I think at the end of last fall semester
I wrote about how I was excited that I believed I could combine a lot of my
passions. I was very optimistic then. Which is not to say that I'm not now, but
I am somewhat amazed at the energy and excitement that exudes from that
writing. Perhaps I should have read and absorbed that energy and excitement
during this semester when I was continuously worn out and beginning to lose
sight of the "why" behind my actions. As the semester came to a close
I began thinking about what I might write in my review of the semester. In the
past, I have identified themes that have developed in classes and beyond, yet
this semester I was having a hard time finding a strong, cohesive thread onto
which I could grip. Typical. Just so typical of this semester to behave like
that. Just as we spent the whole semester learning about the different ways
anthropological theorists have conceptualized culture and then finished off
with Lila Abu-Lughod's writing about the problem with the concept of culture
and how treating a "culture" as bounded and cohesive fixes
differences between the self and other, I've spent many moments looking back on
a period of time (i.e. a semester) and have used the time unit to bound it and
identified major themes to make it cohesive and now, I just can't seem to do
the same thing with this semester. This could in part be because the nature of
my study is such that it is no longer little sets of semester long foci, but
rather a shift to ongoing research. Nonetheless, it makes me laugh that when
learning about postmodernism the thought came to mind--"Well,
postmodernists may say that the time of modernism is over, but talk to anyone
from back home and their understanding of the world is clearly rooted in
modernist assumptions. Postmodernism may live in academia, but not necessarily
elsewhere" but now I can't help but analogize the disjointedness of my life
to the disjointedness of postmodernism. And so what do I write about if there
is no overriding theme of the semester? I supposed I could go into detail about
postmodernism, but to be entirely honest, I've done a fair amount of that in
the past week and a half with a final paper for my methods class...and I'm not
quite in the mood to be doing it again so soon. Nonetheless, in the spirit
of the way the semester has been, I offer not an analysis of the semester in
order to spin a thread of thematic lessons, but a series of snippets that
highlight the feel of what makes Bowdoin a community filled with wonderful people. I don’t know if it
will be an effective way to portray the semester, because so many of these
instances may primarily have meaning to me because of the memory and feeling
they bring back. But, whatevs (as they say in the east), at least I can read it
and think fondly about the importance of people in my life.
“Face it D,
you’re a theory nerd. We all know it.” “So you’re going to make me come out,
huh? I was a closet theory nerd, but
I guess it’s not a secret now.” “Danica. Let’s be real here. It’s obvious.”
“Did you know
a person should be hugged at least eight times a day?”
Competitive
hugs with the person living my alternate reality.
“The last two
things Danica has said to me is, ‘Have you felt like stabbing yourself today?’
and ‘You remind me of a duck.’”
Bisbee
impersonating last-year’s Danica who spent wayyyy too much time in the cold
tape room at late hours during this year’s sculpture opening.
“Why don’t you
come in tomorrow with a list of the things you’re doing and your schedule and
I’ll help you narrow it down.”
“Science!”
Friends who
will wake you up after a 10 minute nap at 2:00 in the morning. I’ve finally
joined “the club.”
“What combination
are you? Oh, you’re INTJ. That’s obvious. We know our brethren.”
“D-money!
What’s up?”
“Move your
chin down just a bit,” “I’m sorry. I
guess I just have a defiant posture.” When he’s done drawing, I take a look.
“Wow,” I say, “I expected to dislike a drawing of myself as much as I dislike
photos of myself, but it actually…it…” “It makes you feel beautiful?” “Well…I
couldn’t go that far…but yeah, I guess so.”
“We’re twins. We’re basically the same person,
can you tell? We look exactly alike.”
“Hi,
how can I help you?” asks the woman who makes fried eggs at Moulton. “Um…I know
this is a weird request, but can you start saving your egg shells for me?” Not
quite the “over easy” or “over hard” answer she was expecting.
“Bisbee,
how can I be of best help right now?” “Get out of here. Go take a nap.”
During
brunch while I’m frying eggs. “You’ll be fine on the test. Just think of it
this way, taking a test is like cooking an egg.” “…” “There are one-hundred and
one ways to cook an egg.” “…Sooo you mean there isn’t just one way to do well
on a test, but a lot of different ways to get there?” “…yeah, that’s it.
Exactly.”
Contra
dancing with the person “whose soul I have looked into.” (and couldn’t stop
laughing both when we were contra dancing and when we were told to hold eye
contact without knowing each other the year before.)
Planning
the Banff trip. Interviewing for the Banff trip… “So, it all started on
Facebook…” and “I mean…I think we’re all qualified in different areas, so
depending on the situation I think different people will take the lead. It’s
not set in stone, and I think that flexibility is a strength.” “…” “I mean…you
have to admit, Danica has sort of this presence.” *awkward moment*
“You
give the best hugs.”
“I
hope things are going well. It seems like you’ve had some pretty intense last
couple of weeks—yes?”
“Yes, yes, I
think I like the spackle on the wood. It looks like icing, doesn’t it? What do
you think Eggs?” “Yeah, I like the icing. It really takes the cake.” Bisbee
groans. “That was not fresh, Eggs,
really not fresh.” He turns away thinking we’re done. “But Bisbee,” I say, “I’m
not supposed to be fresh—I work with egg shells.” “Alright, two for two, you
got any more?”
“I can come
help if you want, you know, ‘cause manual labor is my middle name.” “I do know.
Manual labor is your first, middle, and last name.”
Roomie dinner.
After I
continuously get headaches after laughing. “We’ve figured it out—you’re not
allergic to gluten. You’re allergic to happiness. It just happens that you
don’t feel well when you eat gluten because everything with gluten is
happiness.”
“[Insert any
phrase here.]” “That’s ‘cause you’re a man-hater, R----.”
“The cruise
was canceled. Apparently the boat won’t start. This is bonus time, though—time
where you had something scheduled so you couldn’t have done anything else. Go
home and take a nap.”
“So I’d come
down to the room when I was leaving to make sure the kids had turned out the
light, and I’d see the light on and think, ‘Oh somebody left the lights on
again,” so I’d go in there and turn out the lights and then I’d hear this
voice, ‘Please sir, can I have some more porridge?’ And I find Eggs in there in
the cold in shorts shivering away with the tape.”
“L. You have
bells attached to your belt.” “Well, yes. It’s the holiday dinner. Duh.”
“Nobody say
the word. We want to pretend it’s not looming after this meal.” “What word?”
Pause. “Studying…”
“Baby beluga
in the deep blue sea…”
Post-meditation
class, leaning against M—in an immobile position with eyes closed. “Danica
looks like she’s gone to another place right now…” –B.
“Have you been
getting outside?” “Um, no. I haven’t been going on or leading Outing Club trips
and rarely find time to get outside in other ways.” “Get outside. Go. Now.”
“I allowed
myself two days off during the break. It was a total mistake.”
“I don’t get
Bowdoin Logs. They are just ice cream rolled in cookie crumbs.” “Cheap ice cream rolled in cookie
crumbs.”
“Beneath the pines, of dear old Bowdoin, we’re
slingin’ the ink and kiddin’ the profs along.” (along with the dance and
laughing)
“Your life
just always has something interesting to dissect.”
“Every day we
matlabbin’” or “Every day we filterin’” We work in the hood.
“Gluten
Nacht!”
“I don’t want
to do work. I want to hang out with you.”
“It’s the eggs
that really wow me.”
Strange look
from a professor when I come to class in thermal long pants, 3 jackets and a
winter hat. “I know it’s weird, but I can explain. I went surfing this
morning.”
Writing
Conferences
“I
hope you are going to relax now and not go do work.” I stutter a bit replying,
“Well, I mean, I was planning on going and getting some work done
tonight.” “*Sigh*” “It’s almost the end
of the semester, though, right? So not too much longer now...though I’m not
sure how much longer I can keep this up.” “I’m not sure how long you can keep
it up either.”
“You pulled a
Danica again…” (too many fried eggs on the line)
“Time is
always—or at least almost always—an independent variable.” “Unless you’re
Doctor Who…”
“Do you have the will to live?”
“Are we good?”
“No, you’re great—go team and go home.”
“You’re
wearing pants?!?!”
“I think
Faulkner once said that good writing means killing your favorite children.”
“I understand
what you’re getting at. I just want to do it all!!”
“It’s good to
see you happy again.”
“I guess we
just live life in the periphery. So if all of us in the periphery got together
for our own social gatherings would be no longer be in the periphery? Or would
be spontaneously combust because we’d be walking contradictions.”
“Do I need to
keep N. away from the tilt at all times?”
“Hi there.
We’ve just finished planning the rest of S’s academic career.”
I learned a
lot this semester—in academic areas, about the importance of maintaining a Big
Sky Country perspective on life (i.e. how things aren’t necessarily as big and
in control as they seem if you are able to see the depth of the picture), about
balancing physical and mental well-being with making the most of a learning
situation, about the importance of getting outside and being active for my own
sanity, about how much I love the people around me, and much more. I would
venture to say that this semester is the one in which I have “struggled” the
most, but looking back on it, it was so fantastic—a situation in which I had an
incredible love for everything I was doing and for people in my life, a feeling
which I wish I had caught more sight of during
the semester, but it is enough to look back and know that it was a time and place that pushed me to
grow much more than an easier situation would. I think that a lot of meaning
was gained by beginning to know a variety of people on a more holistic level. I
see that process as one in which I simultaneously want to engage in a
meaningful relationship in which participants know each other beyond single
facets but also feel very vulnerable in that to let one know you are struggling
is to risk a misinterpretation of who you are and who you set out to be.
In some ways
thinking back on these little instances of my semester experience, I can identify themes…I suppose that
contradicts what I said earlier about the lack of an overriding theme, but I
standby my original statement that I didn’t recognize a thread developing
throughout the semester. The drawing together of the importance of perspective
and people is something that arose after the semester, when I had the time and
energy to extract myself from the almost-constantly-working,
dedicated-yet-exhausted self who navigated the semester. Two of the greatest
successes of the semester were the process of bringing to consciousness the
geographical underpinnings of my perspective on the minutiae of my life and
using a geological feature metaphor to maintain a sense of the scale and
importance of things during insanely exhausting times, and the recognition of
the value of people and relationships with people. I laugh again because back
in the day I used to be a bit of a cynic about people, and now I just can't
help but love people and appreciate the people with whom I come in contact
throughout my everyday life. Perspective and people are what have come out of
the semester not because they are a new way of thinking or new aspect of my
Bowdoin experience, but because I think they were challenged this semester,
sometimes pushed out of the way by competitors and regaining awareness about
each was vital for making this immensely exhausting semester still an immensely
positive adventure.
A little something my coach wrote me a
few years back sums up how I think I had to learn to live this semester. It
highlights both the joy of pushing to be the best you can be, the human element
of the relationships that are present in everything you do, that you can choose to have fun, and that the outcome
doesn’t influence the value of an experience or process. I’ll leave you with
that.
“Remember
to run with joy today. Enjoy your surroundings, the competition, and the gift of running. Cherish your
teammates and encourage them to be their
best. Choose to have fun, and when it’s all done, we’ll hug and be thankful no matter what the outcome.”
-Coach
