"Procrastination," n. :

I'm embarking on a great adventure, a foray into the unknown, boldly stepping into the great wide land of... the Statement of Purpose. Having had a chat about Finances with the pops, who went into hypersupport overdrive, I have decided to apply to that dream of an M.A. program in the UK. Those affable Brits don't even want to make me take nasty tests, or submit a writing sample, or even pay an application fee.

I have a Word document of some five single-spaced pages, which is mostly just the splatter-effect of a few attempts at careful thought. My brain feels rusty, poisoned, and a wee bit squished (thanks, loud French dyke bar), I have no idea how to proceed, and in short -- I'm a little scared.

So to lighten the mood:

NYT: Switzerland Accidentally Invades Liechtenstein.

... Switzerland has an army? Who knew.

Ivory Tower Welcomes Narcissus

So the denizens of teh internetz have been making a lot of noise about some alleged findings that college students are more narcissistic than ever. As a proudly narcissistic recent grad, and a product of the "self-esteem movement," I have a few things to say about this.

1. I haven't read this study. So.

2. "The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as 'If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,'' 'I think I am a special person' and 'I can live my life any way I want to.''"
Well. I certainly hope that twenty-year-olds never stop thinking, "If I ruled the world, it would be a better place." In fact, I hope more and moretwenty-year-olds, especially in the apolitical swamps of American youth communities, start wanting to run the world, more and more badly. That phenomenon is one of the motors of political activism, of significant change. It's called youthful idealism, folks, and it's good for the world.
I'm sorry if I think that I can live my life as I please. I intend to work my entitled little ass off to get there, but if I didn't believe it was possible, and if I didn't believe that I am in some way uniquely able to do things that other people can't do in quite the same way, I would never, ever be able to get there. In today's academic job market, for example, how does a recent English literature Ph.D. not shoot herself in the head unless she really, really believes she's got something great?

3. "By 2006, [the study's authors] said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982."
Anybody else find this statement mathematically untenable?

4. "The study asserts that narcissists 'are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors.'''
Okay, I'm no walking DSM, but this sounds to me like a list of symptoms of full-blown narcissism, of seriously disordered behavior. An "above average" tendency towards narcisissm and all-out psychohood are two very different kettles of fish. If every college campus was packed with such people, nothing would ever get done.

5. "'Permissiveness seems to be a component,' [study co-author Keith Campbell] said. 'A potential antidote would be more authoritative parenting. Less indulgence might be called for.'"
I grew up in a hyperprivileged suburban area. I know about overpermissive parents. They have been and remain a favorite ranting subject of mine. However. The standard for the study seems to be pre-1980 non-narcissistic behavior. I think there have been some major strides in cultural "permissiveness" and dismantling of cultural "authoritativeness" in the past twenty-five or thirty years, which are bound to have had an impact on parenting. This is a Good Thing. As a young queer person, it is easier today to come out of the closet. As a young woman -- or a young anybody -- it is easier to lead a sexually empowered lifestyle. I think and hope that mine was the last generation to hear over and over, in the wealthy, educated Northeastern classroom, that girls do English and boys do math. Black people, hispanics, and women are running for President of the United States and winning Oscars. (Let's remember that a big part of the self-esteem movement was also the happy vision of hateless rainbow communities. Teaching children, however simplistically, to tolerate others as well as to value themselves doesn't sound like a ticket to all-out cultural chaos to me.) These are very simple, unnuanced benchmarks, but I think they say something. Reactionaries too often code freedom granted to young people as "lack of discipline," but when what is so frequently disciplined is identity itself, how can we uncritically attack that freedom?

6. "The new report follows a study released by UCLA last month which found that nearly three-quarters of the freshmen it surveyed thought it was important to be 'very well-off financially.' That compared with 62.5 percent who said the same in 1980 and 42 percent in 1966."
I wonder how those numbers tally with increases in the cost of living, decreases in government subsidies and aid, and the expansion of cultural expectations regarding what a comfortable lifestyle -- what "well-off financially" -- really looks like. Hmm.

7. I can only assert this anecdotally, but I feel in my gut that it is a fundamentally different experience to be young - and especially to be a college student - in 2007 than it was in 1966, or 1980. Competition is everywhere, and it is fierce. Talk to any eighteen-year-old applying to college, watch the doubt and fear cloud her eyes, and you see that kids are not universally, consistently, and constantly validated, valorized, petted and adored. I railed against the unbridled narcissism of some of my classmates as loudly as the next kid, and did my best to recognize my own. (Uhm, hello, I write a blog. Automatic diagnosis for borderline narcissism.) But I was also tortured throughout my college years (and continue to be tortured) by self-doubt, total conviction of my own utter worthlessness, the feeling of being adrift and alone and lost, and so on. I never once turned in a paper that I was proud of, that I thought was worthy of the professor's gaze -- yet I basked in the praise I frequently got, and believed it. I said above that I know I have something special, or I wouldn't be pursuing the paths I'm pursuing. That is true. It is largely a gift from Professor Wry, my thesis advisor, who never, ever coddled or praised me, yet somehow conveyed, and continues to convey, that she deems my thoughts worthwhile.

Paradoxically, I am also completely certainthat no graduate program will accept me. That I am not a unique little snowflake, that there are hundreds of others just like and so much better than little ole me, that my life will be boring and banal and will pass entirely unnoticed in the eyes of the world. The occasional validation from an outside source is generally just a brief ray of light in an otherwise dim outlook.

The victory of the self-esteem movement, the upside to narcissism, is that I'm willing to try my damnedest anyway. Surely that's worth something.

If I can't have my Kalashnikov, I want no part of your Universal Sisterhood

So I was going to post a long boring rant about how I just submitted my first conference paper abstract (aren't I wonderful) and my fears of public speaking and blah blah blah. But, as College Girlfriend would say, F that S.

Instead, I'm going into orbit about this: Student sit-in in Pakistan defends mosques on government-seized land (NYT - Times Select). Here's the L.A. Times version.

No, I'm not angry about women (armed with sticks!) proclaiming "Sharia or martyrdom" in a children's library in Islamabad.

I am, however, furious with the kind of blind, white, Western women's-libber pseudo-feminism that produces the following knee-jerk reaction to this moment of activism: these women are fools because they are working for their own oppression. See, for example, this (perfectly nicely toned, I think) blog post, and then the fuckwits in the comments thread.

I'm sorry, but last time I checked, a woman in a niqab weilding a Kalashnikov is an image that requires a little more nuance, thoughtfulness, complexity than Ye Olde False Consciousnesse Argvmente.

This article comes a little closer to permitting the Jamia Hafsa protesters, oh, I don't know, some kind of - what's the word - agency (that's Smarts & Guts in plainspeakin' English). But its author, who, I'm guessing - based on the name Joanne Payton, her residence in London and her profile's poorly chosen Virginia Woolf quotation - is neither Pakistani nor Muslim, feels the need to prescribe a course of action for the protest. These women just need to recognize the universal laws of the Universal Sisterhood and all will be solved! They need to understand what I in my cosy flat know about "ideological and practical state violence."

For serious, okay. She uses the term "universal sisterhood."

Now, I'm no cultural relativist. Neither do I feel comfortable, for a number of reasons, taking a definitive position on the protest, its aims, or the women involved. But I would like to issue a demand for complexity. I would like us, especially as feminists, to pause before powerful images, actions, and words. I would like us to absorb them, contemplate them, turn them around and look at and through and around them. I would like us to take as many positions as possible, see where they lead, and then choose the one that leaves us all the most open space. I would like us to stop being prescriptive. I would like us to stop accusing each other of operating against our own best interests. I would like us to stop talking and start listening.

I would like us to embrace the difficult, the paradoxical, the tough-to-digest. Please. It's high time.

Make love and logic mix

All right. Here we go, kids, blogging adventure into the unknown, or little-known, or rather-overly-known. Who knows? Point is, I'm too old by half to be pulling the Sylvia Plath gig, but too wee to attempt pretentions to something else. So I take my blog title and pseudonym from the poem below, which has merit here, if not elsewhere, for a number of reasons. Okay, two reasons.

1. Plath wrote it at quite a young age, before she received any formal training in writing, and before she officially embarked on a career as a poet. I am young, and similarly have not a leg to stand on. This may be meaningless.
2. The basic paradox of the poem mirrors the basic paradox of this blog. Plath, a neophyte, youngling, apprentice in the world of Poetry, gives instructions, as though she were otherwise, to neophytes, younglings, apprentices. The result is stilted verse, which nevertheless conveys a goodly nugget or two of valuable reflection on how good verse is made. Similarly I, who have no basis to claim any sort of knowledge or experience (really) in the world of the Academy, will be claiming things all over the place in this blog. The result will no doubt be similarly stilted, but I hope nevertheless to convey something, well, at least worth reading.

Because, you see, I've been reading around in the Academic Blogosphere. And it tempted me. I'm not an academic (yet): I, like boringly numerous others before me, hold a B.A. from a Prestigious Small Liberal Arts College (a.k.a. "The Petri Dish"), and like slightly-fewer-yet-also-numerous others before me, harbor academic ambitions. Despite my total lack of qualifications, I maintain the belief that I have something to bring to the table. This is probably a result of the culture of petting and fond encouragement that reigned throughout my training in the Petri Dish.

I plan to be working, in sundry ways, in the Academic World for the next year, while I painstakingly prepare for tests, take tests, pound out statements of purpose, achingly trim and primp writing samples, bite my nails, and cower in fear of the thunderous hammer of rejection. I'm bound to have something to say about all of it. And about a whole bunch of other stuff along the way. All - or, really, some - will be revealed.


Notes to a Neophyte

Take the general mumble,
blunt as the faceless gut
of an anonymous clam,
vernacular as the strut
of a slug or small preamble
by snail under hump of home:

metamorphose the mollusk
of vague vocabulary
with structural discipline:
stiffen the ordinary
malleable mask
to the granite grin of bone.

For such a tempering task,
heat furnace of paradox
in an artifice of ice;
make love and logic mix,
and remember, if tedious risk
seems to jeopardize this:

it was a solar turbine
gave molten earth a frame,
and it took diamond stone
a weight of world and time
being crystallized from carbon
to the hardest substance known.

-- Sylvia Plath, c. 1948