Lovely Little Sunshine

I was on a mad computer spree yesterday, and I'm deeply ashamed of myself. You see, it started innocently enough. I wasn't really happy with the tumblr set up for keeping a blog and letting a wide range of people view and comment on it, so I came back and started another blog on blogger. That lead me to realize that I still had all of this widely distributed Google technology. So then, obviously, I had to clean up my accounts and try to connect them. Naturally, this lead me to adding new profile pictures, updating my information, clearing irrelevant history, trying to get my twitter to sync up with everything, and asking Google if I thought I was pretty enough. That was an afternoon.

Well, things got worse. In doing all of this, I discovered that Google was running a limited beta of its new service called Google+. Essentially, Google+ is supposed to take the Facebook model but make it parent proof by allowing users to decide with whom various things are shared. So all those 15 year olds who were at that totally rad basement party at Johns can post their solo-cup wielding pictures without fear mom and dad will be able to see it. For those of us who aren't teenagers, this perhaps just gives us a renewed sense of privacy. There's also the neat little feature that Google has given its users that allows them to completely wipe themselves off the server (allegedly). Its like an Internet cyanide pill. You take it and drift off into oblivion. What's so important here is that, unlike Facebook, it appears Google is offering those who get way to weirded out a way to escape.

I've been using my Google+ account and I have to remark on a few things. First, I like the circles idea and the Hangout option. When it comes to the Internet, I'm pretty OCD about making sure that all my stuff is organized and controlled. Second, I like how much it is tied in with the regular Google interface, including a little "+Nicholas" in the top corner next to my "Gmail" tab. But there are some things I'd love to see from updates. It would be great if I could tie in my other Google services to my profile such as blogger and youtube. It would be great if a post in one would show up on my posts in Google+. Also, it would be awesome if Google could add some sort of App that would allow movement between Twitter and Google+. Again, it may just be my Internet OCD talking, but I love being able to go to one place in order to see all my internet accounts and then break off from there if I want.

Now, I know it may appear that I am asking Google to basically take over my Internet life. Hell, I already have a blog with them! But I'm ok with that for the moment. I don't get my news from Google (and I'm not digging Google Reader much anymore) and I visit a lot of other websites that aren't dominated by Google. But having my homebase on the Internet be one, well integrated source is very appealing to people like me (you know, crazy people). I do the same thing with my hardware, except with Apple (though I own an Android phone). Maybe I'm just too obsessed with streamlining my Internet experience, but damnit, I love all this technological sunshine. I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords.

A PhD in People Watching

It’s always interesting telling people what I am doing next year. All the other twenty-something graduates are either all getting jobs, starting their stream of disposable income, getting married, or moving away to settle in somewhere far away (or at least far enough away from their parents). But when people ask me what I’m doing, I essentially have to tell them I’m still going to school for another 6+ years.

What’s more, when I tell them I’m going into a PhD program, there’s a faint level of recognition- though I’m uncertain if that reaction is pity or confusion. But when they ask what I’m getting my PhD in and I tell them “cultural anthropology” I’m amazed by how many people ask me “what is that?” I must appear to be quite the oddity to them.

But it’s a good experience for me to have skepticism and curiosity laid across my life. It forces me to continuously ask myself “why am I studying this? What am I even studying?” And, perhaps unfortunately, my ability to articulate the answers to these questions is rather limited. Certainly, I did it well enough to get into my program and I’m very excited about it. But there is something far more nebulous and exciting that is driving me along this line that I cannot quite convert into words.

Ultimately, I am fascinated by watching my world denaturalized in many respects, and watching the kinds of optimism that comes from that. The ways in which we make sense of our world (and here, I’m speaking in the broadest ‘we’ possible) and how our orderings create worlds we did not expect. I absolutely love that. But how do you explain that to someone who still thinks you’re just crazy to keep going on to get a PhD in people watching?

Having a Home

I recently received my housing offer from Princeton, and I was surprised by how big of a moment it really was. Opening the email and getting the floor plan of the apartment my girlfriend and I had been assigned was not some banal moment that I simply passed over. Well, it was at first. It was when I laid down to go to bed that it really started to hit me. I have a home, and its out there waiting for me.

Leaving my apartment in Chicago was a very strange, melancholic moment in which each room being emptied of our possessions recalled the wonderful moments we had had in living there. The apartment went from being lived in and warm to being an exposed skeleton that only spoke in faint whispers. It was strange, to say the least. But maybe that’s because I’m overly sentimental. In any event, my girlfriend and I became provincial Chicagoans for a while. We were sleeping in someone else’s apartment for a while (on a mattress on the floor) and we were just running down the clock. You see, my graduation meant leaving the only home we had ever had together. The city and our apartment was where we met, fell in love, made a home, and grew as people. So graduating and moving out really took away an implicit part of who we are as people.

Even living back in my home in Algonquin is not a totally grounding experience. Certainly we are loving this summer of no work and all play (and forming really terrible habits along the way) but its still slightly strange. We are occupying old spaces that were suspended in time and sentiment before. I give new life to old streets that still retain their old life every time I pass through them. And all of our possessions remain in boxes in the garage living out their days in an unused silence. Until we heard about our housing decision we were sojourners in a world of the past with no return destination built with permanence.

But there I was, 2 am, lying wide awake and realizing now that there is some home out there waiting to absorb the material aspects of my life. The boxes of unused stuff has a new destination to look forward to, and my life has a new space in which to grow. To some extent Princeton still seems like an abstract place I’m expected to be in by September, but it has become a little less abstract. I am uncertain what direction my life will take out east, but I know that there is some place for me to retreat to, to emerge from,  and to relish in. Well, assuming I get sufficient furniture to do all of that on.

Life of the Mind

My time at the University of Chicago was truly amazing in many ways. It was fraught with all the anxieties, failures, triumphs, and ambitions that a twenty-something college student could experience. It occurred to me, during my graduation weekend, just how remarkable of a school Chicago is, though. For, despite the fact that I may have tapped in to the universal experience of college in America, whatever that may be, I also experienced something unique.

But the uniqueness of my experience was coupled with an awareness that, all around me, there were people who were far less satisfied with their time at Chicago. They were unfulfilled by the promises made to them about the “life of the mind,” the picture the university painted of students were allowed to flourish intellectually and independently. Or, more commonly, they were upset with the trials and general discomfort of education at Chicago. They bear no love for their alma mater, and for that there is no remedy that may be provided.

This sense of dissatisfaction, to me, seems to be the fault of the students, not the university. For one, assuming that the “life of the mind” promised in college catalogues would be anything like the reality is truly absurd. Colleges and universities market an image constantly, but like all ideal forms, they are rarely fulfilled. Instead, the life of the mind was one that had to be forged by eachstudent individually. We are, after all, unique and individual thinkers to a large extent. The life of any mind must likewise be unique and individual. To rely on the image the university sent out- its one size fits all life of the mind- is to betray the very fact that every experience will be radically different.

But perhaps the real root of this disappointment stems from what can be seen as a culture of self-important, braggart professors who dominate student thought and life. I like to, personally, think of college tuition as going towards the payment of the use of resources. This does include professors, but it also includes the libraries and activities as well as, perhaps most importantly, the students gathered there. There are many I have encountered who argue that a “great books” education is possible with a library card and a good library. But this misses such an important, and wonderful part of college education. The jackasses and geniuses you find at a university test your beliefs. They try patiences and integrity constantly. And at UChicago, they do it to a much more infuriating and amazing level than most other places. As a second point to the advantage of university education over the autodidact’s path, I like to think of universities and professors as a time saving institution for people willing to learn. As my professor of History, Dain Borges, said in class once, professors are there to save you time. Autodidacts often spend time revisiting ideas that have been disproven, reading books that end up on a dead end trail, or chasing snipes. A professor, at least a good one, will have already seen these trails and paths and know that they will bear no fruit. And they are there to guide you away from proven dead ends and on to the path towards your own discovery. There are bad professors, certainly, who think themselves too important to help undergraduates in their research and education. But they were the minority in my time at Chicago. Maybe that was because I stayed away from the celebrity professors.

But what of the people who hated Chicago for its difficulty and lack of fun. I certainly resented the apparent lack of parties and great times. But that is not to say they did not exist, they just weren’t all that frequent. But, I chose Chicago because it was a difficult environment to navigate intellectually, emotionally, and socially. This is no defense of Chicago’s environment, and its no consolation for people who want the Chicago degree but not the proverbial bitch slap the institution delivers on a quarterly basis. But, during graduation, as I thought back on my four years, I felt somehow fulfilled in a very real way by what I had gone through. I went through embarrassments and breakdowns as well as success and triumph. I was forced to face my short comings and, thought not assuaged, have recognized that they must change if I am to survive in my chosen line of work. Its never comfortable to feel stupid or face failure in spite of one’s best efforts, but it is absolutely necessary. Everyone at Chicago is amazingly smart, and they will rarely have anyone else tell them or show them their faults outside of Chicago. Well, unless grad school is in your future (let the failure really begin).

As a final note, I’d just like to remind anyone from UChicago just how special your time and education is. On my visit to Princeton, I heard repeatedly that the undergraduates were “coddled.” The Core and the way we are educated at Chicago is fairly unique, and a degree from Chicago is known to come with certain degrees of admiration. Not everyone takes classes like Hum and Sosc. Not everyone is held to the kind of standard people at Chicago are. There are many great universities out there, and many that produce amazing students, but there is no place like Chicago. We are not better than everyone else, we’re just different. And we’re different in a very remarkable way. Four years of your life is far too long to be upset and angry. Four years of your life should not be spent in misery and contempt. All around you there is a wonderful experience to be had- you merely have to have it.

“i feel like i’m dragging a refrigerator down a dirt road in hell right now, but i will take beauty and wonder just the same”
-Blake Schwarzenbach