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a week later i got ya'll
it's been a rough end of the semester
4 research projects
a 5th class tellin me to get my papers better
i got days left to do this
the pressure reduces
my patience to nuthin
but i gotta do sumthin
got a latino/a ethnography
my work somebody's property
"Study of the University"
they try to take my thought from me
my laptop actin shitty
and my rent up to 450
coffee house my sanctuary
but suck away pecuniary
I need to step away from it
but professor just ain't havin it
they take it from my arteries
take away a part of me
trainin' me
makin' me what they want to see
academy
classes say i'm thinkin free
regurgitate democracy
liberty
terrorism seen in me
tenure dream reality
freedom
make me wanna see
who i am trained to be
fuck this system
phd
hierarchy
establish me
poverty
classic case of deviancy
rehabilitation of me
model student
paid degree
debt reach 40g
I gotta pay if I leave
so i guess I gotta play
sign me up for that phd.
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lol i got increasingly angry and frustrated as I wrote that. fun little mirror of my school experience
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SO here's where I'm at.
I'm sittin at cafe paradiso, and I can't concentrate. I'm reading this incredible article by Jasbir Puar on what she calls homonationalism (the conflation of normally hetero-normative nationalism as a rehability/reconciliation of [some] queer bodies - notably white, male, middle/upper-class queer bodies - for nationalist projects, and the reciprocal mobilization of nationalist rhetoric to stabilize those privileged forms of queerness within american-ness). It's an incredible article, but i just can't concentrate.
I mean i've got my own worries and all, but that's one thing. Now I've got a couple's worries too. Damn normative monogamy; it should tell you just how much I love Jon that i submit to this sort of normative framework, and feel good doing it.
My whole worries focus on what to do about my phd. Chicago's only gonna get me my MA. We have to figure out where to go after that, and i use "we" very intentionally. We've talked about san fran a lot, but the programs I want there (at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkley) are REALLY selective, and i pretty much expect not to get in. So, I'm trying to look at other places... maybe I can trick somebody into thinking I'm smart, right?
The problem is that Jon's mobility is somewhat limited, both by his job (there are only offices in specific places) but also by personal preference. I can't fault Jon here, there are places I don't want to go.. like Minnesota for example, fuck that cold shit.
So, a few of the places that could be possibilities for me... Like UCLA, UC Riverside, NYU, Rutgers, etc.... are not options because they're not places Jon wants to be. On the other hand, other possibilites, like Minnesota, Michigan, etc., are not places that I want to be... so they're not options either. Between the two of us, we've pretty much narrowed it to San Fran and Atlanta. And *maybe* DC.
I dunno. It all makes me nervous. I only have like 2 years in chicago, and I know Jon wants to stay there. As much as I hate cold weather and the midwest, I'm ok with Chicago - in part because it's jon's "dream location." The only problem being that there's not a PhD program that I"m especially interested in there, at least not directly.
There are some people at UIC I wouldn't mind to work with, like Elena Gutierrez. Or at Northwestern, like Dorothy Roberts. Both great scholars. The only problem is that UIC doesn't have a suitable PhD program for me, and Roberts teaches in the law school... and I don't think a JD is the right direction for me, even if legal scholarship does kinda fascinate me (and Leti Volpp makes me salivate a little bit).
So here I am pretty unsure about where I'll go if UCSC and Berkeley reject me. On top of that, I'm feeling no insignificant amount of resentment towards academia in general. Can I really expect to produce the kind of world-changing philosophy/thought that I want to be part of... from within an institution that serves the ideological-suppressive work of the state?
But at the same time... i gotta pay my bills, you know? I can't just take a couple of years to write and think, unless I have a structure to support me through it. So I got these loans I have to pay back... but to get a job I can live with (I think), I have to go on for more schooling... which, on the upside, gives me more time to think and write, but on the down side means I get more loans to pay back, which means I have to work for longer, which means I can't devote as much time to thinking and writing as I would like to in what will undoubtedly be my short life. For that reason, FUCK school and i'll piss on yo cat too.
I dunno. I'm just so tired of this.
I wonder what Andy Smith is thinking right now. One of the top Indigenous scholars in the US, and she's denied tenure at U Michigan... after producing a body of work that other scholars envy. And trust me when I say that other scholars who have done significantly less have gotten tenure there and elsewhere.
I wonder if she's thinking... fuck this shit. For real. Fuck this bullshit.
I kind of think she must be. It's all I can think, and I haven't gotten that far yet... nor had that kind of refusal/disciplining yet (and yes - I believe that denying her tenure was a kind of discipline, for being a native woman who produced incredible scholarship that completely reworked the way I and others understand colonialism and racism).
All I know is, I keep stressing about planning my academic career, even as I increasingly despise it. But what other choice do I have? Shit, i can't get a real job. I wanna think, write, act on my thoughts and change the world; and ain't no factory job that's gonna give me the support to do that.
I wonder if I'll produce anything worth reading after I'm dead? I hope so.
That probably sounds like a desire for immortality or something. I don't think that's whats up. I just know I'm going to die before the world is fixed... assuming the world doesn't die first. Maybe if I can produce something worth reading after I'm dead and gone, that will mean there's hope for the world in a distant future?
My life is more than half gone and I'm not yet half the man I want to be (note: i've already forseen my own death, and I mean seriously that my life is more than half gone).
I got to get to work... think, write, think, write.... changing the world is taking longer than I thought...
... the world has made me the man of my dreams...
think, write, think, write...
I think I'm going crazy
I think I'm going crazy
I think I've gone crazy
Funny, same number of characters in "I think I'm going crazy" and "I think I've gone crazy" ...23, including spaces.
23
23
23
23
23
you know...
Discordianism (the religion that worships chaos and discord) posits that 5 is a sacred number because all things of chaos (and thus, all things) can be reduced to 5. For example, 23 is actually 5 because 2+3 = 5. Thus, 23 and other numbers like it are sacred (14, 32, etc; also, in my mind, 8, because 8 = 2^3 and 2+3 = 5).
My statements, 23 characters including spaces, reduce to 5. The rule of fives.
Sometimes I wonder if academia isn't like the rule of 5s.
A group of people looking for patterns where there's really only chaos... not realizing that even patterns are chaos.
...
Man, I gotta stop drinking so much coffee and letting myself wax poetic on the nature of the universe and man's imagined position in it. Especially through things like the law of 5s...
Also, this is some bullshit. You can't listen to music and read some shit at the same time? I'm talking of course about the "currently listening/reading/gaming/etc" option on xanga posts. I am reading AND listening to music THANK YOU.
| | | Posted 4/27/2008 9:20 PM - 3 comments
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