may 20th, 2011-->mark your calendar!

i have been (keep your fingers crossed!) granted permission to participate in graduation! i can walk with my co-horts! woot! double woot! triple woot!

now, all i have to do to get the damn diploma is: 1. write a 20 page paper for one class 2. come up with and execute a prject on policy change for my other class 3. find a VIABLE summer language class ( i have one in the works, it still needs to be approved, then finagled from 3 credits to 4 credits) 4. finish the summer class 5. get my diploma

can i do it folks, with less than a month to go??? will i sleep? will i lose my sanity? will i drrive my family and friends up the wall?

leading the way???

this week, i am one of 3 (in total) students helping lead/facilitate discussion in class. no big sweat, right? i like to talk, right? i have decent insights, sometimes, right?

this shouldn't be a huge deal.

but, of course, i over-think things. the book itself is incredibly dense. it's of the academic caliber that the graduate level *should* be at. and i absolutely loved reading it. helps that i got to sign up for the week i want to facilitate. but there's SOOOOoooo much i want to get into. that i want to be able to fully digest and explore and am excited about!!!

did i mention the power point???? in all fairness, it isn't required, but to date, only 3 of my classmates who've lead discussion have not used it. and everyone's p.p. (power point, you potty minds!!!) is way beyond what my menial skills can throw together. custom backgrounds, fancy charts, video clips....sigh. what's an old-fashioned, academic supposed to do????

oh, and did i mention that, 99% of those "facilitating" were really just summarizing the readings? which is fine. it helps a lot to have things re-visited, especially for 'staying power' purposes. but now i feel compelled to give one of those fancy-pants, techno-riffic presentations instead of a thoughtful discussion with a few sllides with various quotes and images.

:::::::sigh::::::::::

gender performance and the quest for self identity

the majority of my readings this week are on cultural gender identity. it's been kicking my brain's (non-existent) ass in so many ways: from acquainting myself to new perspectives to re-evaluating my own perceptions. one of the areas i find myself struggling with the most is sense of identity and gender performance.

in addition to the assigned texts, i also have gone back to some of my own books (of which i have quite an array) on gender/feminism/identity: "misogyny: the world's oldest prejudice"--which didn't have as much as i was hoping it would; and "polite lies: on being a woman caught between cultures"--which had a LOT more than i remembered...

the author, kyoko mori, writes about her experiences being a japanese woman who lives now permanently in the US mid-west. not-so-oddly much of what she writes resonates with my life experiences, but in particular, i would like to offer up one passage in particular, since it is what i have been wrestling the most with in my own life:

Personal appearance causes anxiety and insecurity because those of us who are not beautiful consider our clothes, makeup or hairstyle to be expressions or symbols of who we are, and yet our choices are burdened by cultural, societal, and sexist expectations. Personal appearance is the four-way intersection where our personal symbolism clashes with the symbolism of the culture in which we must live. For some of us, it's a head on collision, a big highway catastrophe.

those are the kind of days i have been having- second guessing/ judging myself because i find myself surround by cultural expectations of "what i should be" and then find myself embarrassed/ashamed that i'm not meeting those "standards."

simply unpoetic

i want to write brilliantly. the kind of writing that just flows onto the pages, melodic and easy to read. that makes people want to keep reading. that inspires them to think. to respond.

i used to have it in me. now, i don't so much.

i follow other blogs that are way more entertaining/ witty/ verbose.

maybe i just don't have anything interesting to write about.

maybe, in my attempt to keep some sense of anonymity, i lose the power of what i could be saying?

maybe i need to shower and load up on B vitamins....

i never thought that being a student again could physically and mentally drain me as much as it does. i feel like a robo-zombie by the end of the day wednesday and then, thursday, its "start on homework day" so it can all be done for the following tuesday.

will i really have to wait until december for some quality "me time"???

second thoughts...

there are moments when i more than second guess myself- and today i am having one GIANT "what-the-frack-am-i-doing?" day.

here's why (in brief):

- i cried IN CLASS last night because i just couldn't "get" the conjugation patterns. and it was still a 'review' class.

- i haven't figured out yet if my unemployment checks have been "frozen" on account of sheer stupidity.

- my brain hurts.

- i feel so emotionally exhausted from trying to keep up that i was out cold last night from 11:30 until 10:45 this morning. i haven't slept like that since i was like, 5.

- i hardly get to see my spousal unit- unless i visit him at work. i don't want to be one of those couples that gets driven apart because we never see each other/ have quality time together.

- i can't imagine how i would potentially balance a job and school work- and i'm only a week in.

i know logically, i shouldn't second guess myself, but there is a huge part of me that wants to turn and RUN the other way. to move somewhere "affordable" (read: rent is under $800/month) that has a stable job market instead of squeaking by on one part-time job and student loans in an ass-expensive location with a dying job market....

why did i have to pick now to go back???