and last night’s phrases
sick with lack of basis
are still writhing on my floor
what a week. feels like a month. time is so weird here - it goes by sooo fast, but when you think back to 5 days ago, it feels like it was last year..or at least last month. i never think ‘damn it’s only monday’, cause i know that in an hour or so it’ll be friday again.. so sleepless though. the things i’ve been saying doing and hallucinating… yesterday was clearly a high point: econ class, population: 400 - who all showed up that day because there was a test, + 1 professor whom i adore. right before the test, in answering someone’s question about the multiplier effect or something that was the least difficult of the topics on this test, the prof points me out and asks what was basically ’what is 500 divided by 4′. i replied that it was, of course, 20. duh. i just checked the postings though and by some miracle i got a 90. i didn’t remember to bring my calculator either, so i was doing that same genius math that i had performed for the class - on my test. anyway.
came back two nights ago after 6 hours in the library. polisci. wasn’t finished studying in any way, wasn’t even tired or lacking the motivation to study more, just sort of cut myself off around 6 hours. humans need to move - three walks down the hall for bathroom breaks and some fidgeting around the cubicle do not count. neither does writing, typing, or moving your eyes from left to right. i don’t even mean significant activity - just enough to make sure blood still circulates, bed sores don’t form, and carpal tunnel doesn’t develop.
so i walked home. all 100 feet. but i was glad that it was only 100 feet, cause the temperature had dropped about 60 degrees in those 6 hours. i had great intentions. i was gonna go for a short run, come back and finish up making flash cards of all my class notes, and then go to bed so i could get up early and finish studying.
this is not how the evening went. i changed into my running clothes, sat down at the computer, and started reading some online bbc news. 3 hours, no runs, no sleep, and no studying later - i accepted that my night was not going to be happening as planned. it instead, included hours of interesting discussions about everything political and international. my roomate is amazing. probably the best roomate i’ve lived with so far. and as it turns out - our ramblings that night weren’t so much a distraction as they were preparation.
we talked about political beliefs and social injustice, about random chemical plant disasters from 1984 india, vegetarianism, travel, and how people should be more outraged.. then we talked about how little we know about all the things that we were talking about and how it seemed hard to find unbiased information in our classes. - she’s an anthropology major and i’m polisci/global econ, which seem to be biased in the opposite directions… i feel sometimes like i’m being trained to defend everything capitalist, globalist, realist… big business and mncs and why does the environment matter?
literally, that was the defense in the last reading for my poli class: “but really, how much is greenery actually worth?”. another amazing defense: for homogenizing cultures/americanization the author explained that this was impossible: the US follows principles of laissez-faire - which is a french word. obviously other cultures are entering the US just as much as the US is entering other cultures. - I know from other readings/ assignments that there exist much stronger arguments - ones that have statistics or some sort of evidence backing them up; arguments that don’t disobey chronologically the events of history..
but then when i hear some of the ideas from the roomate all i can think about is why they would not make sense, be an economic disaster, etc.
My point is just that i don’t know exactly what my opinion is, and i definitely can’t support it. i don’t feel like i’m getting the information i would need to back up whatever i think - whenever i figure out what that is. even if i agree with what we’re learning, i still want to know why other people don’t. now being the only underclassman in a seniors-only core class, i thought that i was probably the only one who knew so little and felt so intimidated - especially when my classmates sit there pulling out the most detailed and random references and discussing things at a level so far above my head, that i would need maybe 2 more years in school and some classes on the eu/international economy/pre-1700s asia/etc. to keep up with them. but during this 3-hour talk, i learned that i am not the only intimidated one, that seniors don’t know what they think even after all these classes, and randomly a lot about burma.
which, was the main essay question on my test yesterday. this term, we didn’t discuss anything at all about burma/myanmar. so, like most of the essay questions, it was a little bit unexpected. also unexpected, is that i was prepared.
this brings me to another point: i know so little, i’m definitely going to need another 2 years here. maybe 10. but i guess that’s what grad school’s for. i like being in classes with people that know so much more than i do. if i graduate early though, that’s a whole year’s worth of knowledge - do you know how many possible random references i could obtain in a year’s worth of classes?…i could be right there front row citing the rioting in that obscure southern chinese village in the summer of 1485. for now though i’ll stay in the second row and keep my mouth shut. or maybe ask more questions..
