Rock Band

The folks I'm staying with have all the ModCons, which includes a full set of instruments for rock band. So I've been playing it with them, as it's more fun with more people. It's kind of crazy, because you're not really playing an instrument but you really feel a sense of accomplishment when it says you did well! It is a truly impressive game design, letting people with no musical skill or experience feel what it's like to make music. And I think a lot of folks decide to go from the game to learning a real instrument because it's a lot of fun. It is interesting though, how while theoretically it's a group game, in actuality you're sort of playing just for yourself. You get an individual score at the end instead of a band score, so you're competing against the computer and yourself instead of competing with your 'band-mates'. But still a lot of fun, especially since it satisfies my long buried Karaoke needs. Well, my long buried live performance needs which I have been sublimating into Karaoke!

Moving and packing

On the one hand, I'm pretty pleased with myself that I'm keeping less than 1/4 of the things I had in my storage space. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I could probably get rid of more if I took the time and effort. But I just can't care that much! Sure, I could do it, but would the reward really be worth it? Probably not. I'm hoping to find a company that ships by volume, which would mean losing a LOT of stuff would be worthwhile but not losing a little stuff. Perhaps if I sell stuff off rapidly I'll take the time...

It's amazing to realize that if all goes well I won't be back in California for years, if ever. And more amazing to realize that I'm really pleased by that-- a few years ago all I wanted was to live here.

In which I am a dumbass

I have resolved to post at least once a week, and maybe will even make it to daily. We shall see! It's all about not waiting for something funny and/or major to happen. And on that note...

This morning I was a moron. I woke up and my eye felt a little funny. On examination in the mirror in the bathroom, I was getting a little bit of a zit on the lower eyelid. No one likes this, as it's both unattractive and painful, so I thought, 'oh, I know, I'll wash it right away and maybe that will help it be smaller/go away'. So I wet my face, got a little tiny dab of soap on my finger, leaned in to make sure I put the fingertip in the right place for maximum washing and... stuck my soap-covered finger directly into my eye. The pain and the burning and the 'oh, oh, oh crap, owwwww!' was made all the worse by the fact that it wasn't a normal soap-runs-into-eye-in-washing event-- I stuck a finger covered in soap into my own damn eye because I am just that dumb. I washed it out as fast as possible to mitigate the effect, but now not only do I have a little zit on the bottom of my eye, but also a big old case of red-eye ouchie. It's going to be a glorious day!

life and all that stuff

It's been months since I posted. Partly out of inertia, and partly because I just didn't know what to say. I think I've been frozen since October, when I dropped out of grad school.


It wasn't a really surprising thing for me to do, since I've been joking about it for years, but it
took me by surprise nonetheless. I came back to campus after spending the summer with my Boy in England, and the sight of Stanford made me cry. The thought of having to deal with the people and see the places made me want to run away and hide. And the only good reason I could think of to do any of it was to get paid--which is laughable given how little I was getting paid! So I left the department, I left academia, and I probably left archaeology. I love the field, I love the work, but I don't love it enough to make up for all of the bad, and these days you have to take the two together. So, I decided to move on to something that was at least enough money to make doing it just to get paid worthwhile! I got fired up about what I want to do next, and started making plans. But because I was back in England, I couldn't get a job, so I just... froze. I didn't have anything to do, or anything to be, and I got a little lost. I don't like being a housewife, and I hated being financially dependent on the Boy, but I couldn't do anything about it-- and it was made worse by the fact that we didn't have the conversation about how our six month test of living together was going until three days before I left, and so I retreated into our flat and hid for a little while. But now we've decided that we DO like each other after more than two weeks in a row, and I feel like a real person again, as though I can start to make plans and do things for me.

Hopefully, more frequent blogging will be on the list of things I do-- it'll be nice to have a record of what I was thinking as we began the moving process!

thoughts

I am more and more sure that this academia thing is not for me. I like teaching but I don't love it, I enjoy research but I'm not obsessive about it, and I feel like there are lots of things in my life that are important besides my work--I'm never tempted to work ten or twelve hours a day because 'I just have to get this done, it's so interesting'. Ever. And that seems to be the expectation, that you'll be so obsessively devoted to what you do that everything else takes a back seat. I can't think of a single thing in my life that I feel that way about, with the possible exception of The Boy, but even that's different, because it's not obsession-- he's important, but both of us have things we want to do away from the other, and don't feel guilty about it. I want to use my evenings to relax, watch TV or go to the movies or spend time with friends. I want to see breaks as time when I can relax, not time when I can get uninterrupted work done. I want to make enough money to go out to dinner without feeling guilty, and even to go to the movies more than every few months. I want some control over my life--I'm sick of someone else being able to change how often I get paid without warning, or deciding how much it ought to cost me to live and only paying me that much. I believe that I'm going to be staying in England with The Boy permanently, which means that we can't really move, so even if I get the degree, I have such a restricted search field that I have almost no possibility of getting an academic job better than adjunct. Even if I wanted academia, I don't want that, adjuncting (in England, lecturing) is a shitty job--the pay is horrific and you have no job security, as you might not be needed for any given term.

And suddenly, everything I've been working for since I was about twelve years old is pointless. Why get a PhD if I'm never going to use it? What's the point? I mean, yes, I could go by Dr., yippee, but if I'm not going to be teaching and I'm not going to be publishing, is there a single thing in my life that would be better if I finish the degree?

I can't think of one.

Time for a breath of air

I've officially passed both written exams, yay and yippee! Oddly, the one I was less confident in I did better on--I suppose I studied more for it because I was less confident, but it still seems odd to me. Now all I have is that pesky oral exam.

Now, I have no fear of public speaking. Or performance in general, put me up in front of a thousand people with something to do and I'm good to go. But have a panel of five people who know more than I do and let them ask me questions, and I freak out. I suppose this is just a form of test anxiety that most people don't have to deal with, but wow, it sucks. I get hot and I can't think. I'll grab onto the first author I can think of who discusses the issue, regardless of how recent or relevant they are: 'As you know, Aristotle discussed this issue, arguing that the sun rotates around the earth based on these criteria...' Urgh. I'm concentrating on pausing and taking a moment to think, because it does no one any good if I answer right away and make a babbling fool of myself.

In other news... nothing really. I can't go away for the break as I had planned because I am bad at budgets, so I will instead be sitting around with nothing to do but worry. And knit, I think I will take knitting up again. It has to be good for relaxation, it's so meditative. Oh, and I'll get to spend more time at the gym. This may not be a horrible break after all!

Fun-having ban of epic proportions take two!

I've been working on written exam number two for three day snow. I've got about six solid pages written, which is a decent but not spectacular start, and I'm feeling reasonably good about it. I've also found out that I passed the first written exam, which puts me on track to have my orals at the beginning of the quarter.

Which is all well and good, but I seem to care less and less. The more I think about the academic lifestyle, the less I'm sure that it's what I want to do. It was all well and good in the 1970s, when they couldn't hire tenured professors fast enough so coming from a decent program meant not only a job but the potential for a bidding war, academic publishers would publish anything that was of sufficient academic merit, and the only people who made it to college were the ones who really wanted to be there. But now that universities are downsizing, students are more and more treating college like high school where all they should have to do to pass is the absolute minimum, and academic publishers are choosing to publish based on possible profitability rather than on merit, it's not looking so pleasant.

I don't want to spend the next five years attempting to publish constantly in order to meet ever more ridiculous tenure requirements. I don't want to put having children off until I have tenure, but I don't want to have to teach two or three classes a semester and write a book and several articles while pregnant or with a new infant. I don't want to have no choice over where I live, because there are so few tenure-track academic jobs open that IF I'm offered one, I will have little choice but to take it. I don't want to spend the next five years barely scraping by as an adjunct, never having time to do my own research but not being able to get a tenure-track job without constant publications. I don't want to deal with entitled students who think that just because the made it to college (or because they're at an Ivy League), they deserve good grades with little or no work, because 'that's how it was in high school'. I don't want to never be able to afford to own a house because universities are almost always located in the most valuable real estate areas. I want health insurance that involves a doctor who doesn't assume that the only possible illnesses are pregnancy and STDs. I want dental insurance and eye care. I want an income that a person could live on somewhere other than rural Idaho (that not being, notably, where I actually live).

It truly saddens me that academia has come to this. I love my research, I love teaching, I love thinking deep thoughts and trying to puzzle out how people work and why, but the bureaucratic nonsense has made that less and less of the job.

Nontheless, I treck onward. I'm going to finish the damned degree at this point no matter what. If I chuck it all at that point, all well and good, but I'm too far in not to finish.