Prompt 27: A Picture of You Last Year and Now and How You Have Changed Since Then

This picture is of me and Phish on Valentine's Day last year at blues.

That pictures is of me and Brock at graduation.  We managed to run into each other both days!

Obviously, the biggest change is that I am graduated.  I am not as skinny as I was then.  I don't go dancing quite as much.  My hair is longer.  That's about all I've got...

prompt 17: A Photo of Me and My Family

I know, I know, I'm like two weeks behind.  Like anyone actually cares.

This prompt is actually kind of hard because I, like my mother before me, don't really like being in pictures.  That said, I just graduated, so tradition dictated that I take a few pictures with the parental units.  Separately, of course, because that's how we bounce in this family.  Also noticeably lacking are any and all siblings.  But here are pictures of me with the various sets

I think I have the same face-shape as my dad.  Also, in comparison to both him and Cristy...I have a gigantic noggin'!

apparently my mother was not even a little excited about my graduation because this is her expression in literally every picture.  Sort of a "meh" kind of look...

Graduation: A Summary

I am a college graduate.

In a matter of two days I crossed the threshold from student to…bachelor? Plain old label-less human? At any rate, not a student. Thursday, out-going university president Cecil Samuelson “bestowed” upon me and one or two thousand others a degree, the physical manifestation of which will arrive in a couple of weeks via the thoroughly unceremonious United States Postal Service. Friday I was handed an empty vinyl cover in which that magical piece of paper will eventually reside.  I shook the hands of men I'd never before laid eyes on and walked from one side of a stage to the other. Thusly was my education declared complete and my life, as a student, pronounced over. 

If all of this sounds like I am terribly prosaic and unsentimental, I am. If you recall, I have previously declared a complete apathy for engaging in the ceremonial hoop-jumping known as walking for graduation. To me a nine year bachelor’s degree feels less like something to celebrate than something to just get over with as soon as possible…    

The problem is that, though probably less so than it was in high school, a student’s graduation is by no means an achievement which belongs solely or even mostly to them. Even a relatively self-sufficient person like me is still indebted to her parents to some extent, albeit perhaps more in intangibles than otherwise*. Hence I feel that all this pomp and circumstance surrounding graduation is not so much for the graduate’s sake as for the family’s. Which is why I decided not to let my graduation pass silently in the night like my brother. Well, that and I was hoping for congratulatory cash donations. Because I’m classy like that. And poor. Mostly poor. 

Unfortunately, letting your family celebrate your achievements isn’t exactly fun for them when you yourself couldn’t care less about them. In fact, I can tell you from my own experience that it’s actually incredibly irritating and insulting. So it behooved me to strive after some level of engagement in the hoopla which, after all, was specifically for me (and also Dan). 

Alas, behoovement does not engagement make. 

It doesn’t help that there are apparently only two questions anyone can think to ask you post-graduation.  “Do you feel any different?” and “So what’s next?” These are especially trying when you have weaned yourself out of school as gradually as I have. I had exactly zero changes pending the ceremony and, in fact, slightly resented it for awkwardly interrupting my regular schedule. If nothing else, this makes for dull conversation—though I discovered on Sunday that it is still preferable to the guy who uses his congratulations to humblebrag about his own self-funded education, graduation, and consequent disposal of student debt 25 years ago (after his fourth or fifth assertion of hatred at the idea of dragging that debt around with him I was forced to reply “Oh really?  Because I just love it!” because I can only handle so much humblebragging)

In the end, I guess I can be grateful to the fifteen year campaign my brother and I have inadvertently waged upon my mother to strip her of any vestige of hope for a nice family moment. Sadly, we not only lack sentimentality for educational milestones, but for pretty much every other thing my mom cares about. Because my mom is practically nothing but sentiment. Poor woman was somehow cursed with two pragmatically stoic children who could never satisfy her need for heartfelt and teary-eyed moments. But despite my mom’s enduring optimism on this front, Dan’s and my war of attrition has, at least, conditioned her to accept an incredibly low level of participation as satisfactory. She’s like an emotional migrant worker living through the Dust Bowl years of her children’s lives—she can make do with practically nothing. 

This is not to say that I didn’t try. I sincerely tried to glean wisdom from [stay awake through] the speeches, even the incredibly pompous student speaker on Friday. I rebuked myself when snarky commentary about all the arbitrary traditions rose, unbidden, to my lips. I even pulled out Rory’s graduation from Yale to strive after inspiration.

Alas, it was all in vain.  I am as I am; incredibly unimpressed with the ceremony of graduating college.

Luckily, as anyone who has ever talked to me about my birthday can attest, I do love any occasion where my friends and family get together, especially if it involves presents and/or food (as we all know, food is kind of like a very frequent gift to your mouth, so they’re basically the same thing).  Therefore, on that front—that is, the front where tradition dictates the giving of some sort of graduation gift—I found the weekend to be quite nice.

Of course, I admit this with some embarrassment, though my feelings on being an enthusiastic receiver of gifts should probably wait for another post.  Suffice it to say, I have a feeling that it is generally deemed tacky to openly admit that you look forward to events for the presents.  But in this case my natural tackiness came to my assistance, buoying me up to find some enjoyment in an otherwise boring and rather inconvenient weekend.  If I couldn’t muster a tear for the ending of an era, at least I could easily smile for the bouquet of lovely flowers I received to commemorate it!

Thus my favorite part of my graduation weekend had nothing to do with actually graduating, save that it was the occasion that brought us together. And that was our big dinners Thursday and Friday nights. All four of my parents were there (a first-time experience that I very much enjoyed) as well as some of my closest friends. There was delicious food and even a couple really fantastic gifts. 

I am left wishing that it didn’t require some arbitrary ceremony or “milestone” for people who love each other to get together and eat and even give each other presents. If I had the money, I would make weekends like this happen far more often…only without the polyester robes, ridiculous hats, and time wasted in uncomfortable chairs. Perhaps then I wouldn’t be left with a vague feeling of failure at the end. Regardless, I am glad that I got to see my family this weekend, and even that I graduated, though that’s more in an abstract, reasoned sense than any sort of emotional response. That’s how I feel. 

And before you ask, I don’t know what’s next…

*Let us pause a moment for the obligatory disclaimer about how I’m making some assumptions here and that I acknowledge that actually there are plenty of kids who may not have anything at all to thank their parents for and I’m sorry if they’re feeling marginalized right now and they have my sincere apologies

Because learning without creation is pointless

I've been trying to write a story for the last couple of weeks.  On a good day I write about 1,000 words.  Prolific I am not.  It's because, surprisingly enough, I find fiction writing to be exhausting in a way that writing here is not.  Writing on my blog is casual--just me spitting out whatever is rattling around in my head.  Writing a story is different--it needs to be "right".  And finding the right words to explain the right actions in the right way leaves me exhausted after just a scene or two.  Which is ok.  Because there isn't actually a time line on anything and if I it takes me till October of 2015 (which is what the NaNoWriMo website is predicting based off my current rate of writing) then...ok.  Why not?

oh, it's actually November of next year...hooray!

But, it also means that today I just wanted to take a break and do some writing that wasn't quite so difficult for me.  Perhaps later I will write another scene in my story.  But for now, it is the mental equivalent of sweatpants and chocolate time for my brain.

Miley...I think you're doing that wrong...

So let's talk about the usefulness of education.  In my last post I mentioned how I'm adjusting to adult, non-married life.  I talked about my recent interest in researching fairy tales and how I questioned whether or not reading arcane academic articles was a better use of my time than perusing facebook and buzzfeed.  I left it open ended, implying I wasn't completely sure about the answer.

Well, inasmuch as I am capable of being completely sure of anything (I'm not), I will say that I am sure.

With qualifications.

Whether it is my Mormonism or just me, I have to say that educating myself, even about the most obscure and useless of topics is an improvement over entertainment-grazing the internet for babies and kittens (which is not to say that there isn't a place for babies and kittens and gif-fests).  If for no other reason than that the latter requires absolutely nothing from your brain.  And if my primary pass-time is something that I can do equally well when I am literally half asleep, there is something wrong with my pass-time.  Hence, I declare obscure research a winner!

But frankly, it's not actually a huge step up to go from facebook to obscure research.  There's a last step missing.  And that is where my qualifications come in.  (guys.....I'm sorry, but I'm having a really hard time focusing on the rest of my post with that gif repeating above me over and over...)

Ok, refocusing.  What I'm talking about is synthesis.  This is a thing that, ideally, you learned about in high school.  If you didn't learn about it in high school then I am praying that you learned about it in college.  But since I've been a college TA, I know that many many people did not, so I will give a quick summary, though I'm pretty confident that none of you, my 12 lovely readers, are these people.  Anneke, if you're reading this, bear with a non-education major as I try to explain this.  There are different levels of learning, each one implying a certain depth of understanding.  Because understanding is not the same thing as knowing.  Think of it....think of it like acting.  Imagine a scale, and on one end you have Antonio Banderas learning his first Holywood part phonetically because he didn't speak English at the time.  He knew his lines, but he didn't understand them.  All he could do was repeat back exactly what he had memorized.  On the other end of the scale you have, um...someone like Robin Williams or Anthony Hopkins.  These are men who know their lines, know their characters, know the story, understand all those things, and using them, they riff and improvise and actually create more than what is in the script.  This is synthesis, and this is what is necessary to make education worthwhile.

hey look! A little picture about exactly my topic!

It is a hard lesson to learn, especially for those students who made it to college without learning it.  So many kids would email me or approach me in class to ask "Why didn't I get an A?  I covered all the study points."  Even setting aside my feelings on grade inflation, the most basic answer is that simply regurgitating a list of facts is not demonstrative of complete education.  It's Antonio Banderas speaking out sounds whose meanings he couldn't comprehend.  To show me that you actually understand what those facts mean you have to synthesize them into something greater than the constituent parts.  Tell me why those facts were significant.  Tell me why we're studying that story.  Tell me anything, as long as it shows that you've not just memorized the information, but actually digested it and comprehended its significance.  Be Anthony Hopkins disappearing into his character so that you forget that he isn't actually a terrifying madman in real life.  Be Robin Williams riffing so much during the making of Aladdin  that they could have made three movies on his material alone.

Which brings us back to research for research's sake.  It's true, pumping my brain full of facts is better than turning it off entirely and tucking it away in a corner.  But better still than that is taking all those facts and doing something with them.  In my case, right now, I am using my research to write my own version of one of my favorite fairy tales (I hope to adapt more in the future).  Sometimes I write quasi-scholarly analyses of stories or movies or books here on my blog.  Maybe I just tell my boss about how strange the stories are.  Whatever I do, about not just fairy tales but any other topic I research, the point is that once I've put the information in my brain I need to work with it.  If I don't, it might as well not be there in the first place, taking up space.  Because not only does synthesizing your knowledge demonstrate a deeper and more thorough understanding of it...it actually creates that understanding.

Synthetic thinking is a..."higher" level of thinking than consumptive.  It takes more work.  In practical terms that means that you just don't really do it without making yourself do it.  And you don't make yourself do it without a reason.  Now that reason may be simply because you enjoy it (that is why I write this blog).  But until I sit down and write a blog post about the importance of College Girl literature I don't actually fully understand that importance.  The bits and pieces of my thoughts are all floating around in my head but I've never taken the time or energy to straighten them all out and organize them and make something of them.  This is actually exactly what is happening when you're talking to someone and you explain something and they get all excited and exclaim "Exactly!  That's exactly what I think, you just put it so much more clearly!"  What they're actually saying is "I had all those bits of idea drifting around in my head, too, but I never sat down and put them all together like you have just done and I can recognize the idea all put together there in your words!"

If only more people understood the principle of synthesis I think the world as a whole would be a much better place.  Synthetic thinking leads to an understanding of and ability to both articulate and support one's own beliefs and ideals rather than a blind defensiveness.  It leads to developments of philosophy and art and science.  And the thing is, everyone is capable of it.  It's not a "smart" vs. "dumb" thing.  If you want to be that reductive you could, I suppose, argue that it is a "disciplined" vs. "indulgent" thing.  But even then, you can't expect someone to discipline their mind in a certain way if they have no understanding of what that way even is.

But maybe I've managed to explain it successfully here.  And maybe someone who didn't quite understand it will read this and then they will  (or maybe not...I'm not so optimistic about my writing/explaining abilities).  And then, just maybe, they will have the discipline to start trying to think this way.  And I suppose that if I can manage to inspire that series of events with my blog for just one person then that will be a good day's work.

How life is these days...

I was asked to write a review for the movie The Host, and I will.  But first I'm feeling like I ought to post a general update on my life and things.  Sort of a philosophical update though, cause this is me we're talking about.

First for the update part.  Most momentous update of my life is that I will likely be graduating either in August or December.  I will be taking one final gen ed class (an "advanced writing" class that is completely unnecessary but required...bleh) through independent study and then I will be done.  This means that I will have my Humanities degree, but no minor.  It also means that, for all practical purposes, I am basically done with school right now.

The other major thing in my life is my recent decision to really get serious about buying a car.  It is a thing that I am putting a lot of time and thought into, going so far as to spend actual time physically in the library researching the best used cars.  My ideal purchase (with reservations as I've not actually driven one) is the 09 Honda Fit

yes, I am aware that it looks like a baby mini-van...

I didn't really imagine that my college career would end quite so...anticlimactically.  I expected I would take my last year of classes like any normal student and I would walk out of the testing center from my last final and I would feel that lifting of the weight of school I get at the end of every year, but multiplied several times as I realized that I wasn't just done for the year, I was done forever!  I'd have a big graduation and I'd send out invitations and my parents would come down and go to the ceremony and it would be a great moment in my life.  That's how I imagined it.

I did not imagine that I would be in school for 7 years.  I didn't imagine that I would be graduating due half and half to a lack of money to continue and to an intense (and I do mean intense) aversion to continuing.  I didn't expect that my student experience, rather than ending with a definitive bang! would trickle down like a faucet with a weak nob.  I didn't imagine that, by the time I finally did graduate I would be so sick of school and tired of the entire stress of it that I would want nothing more than to let the bloody event pass with as little notice as was humanly possible.  No big graduation ceremony, no invitations, no family gathering.  I just want it to be done already.

just stop.

Ironically enough, my own apathy about the entire process makes me sad and kind of makes me wish I still wanted to do it all up proper.  College is the last possible bastion of juvenile life.  Sure, they say it is supposed to be your first steps into adulthood, but really it is your last steps as a child.  You're still in a highly structured environment over which you have only some control.  You still have a host of precautions in place to catch you just in case you crash and burn.  Perhaps this sense of extended adolescence is exaggerated due to the fact that I went to a Mormon school, or perhaps it was just a different sort of adolescence (no one will ever convince me that drinking unto shit-facedness is a mature thing to do, which is the only stereotypical college behavior I can think of just now).  The point is that when you finish college you theoretically are really and truly and for once and all stepping out on your own.  You're to get a "real" job and buy a "real" car and finally have a "real" relationship.  All the things are suddenly becoming real.  That transition deserves to have at least some sort of deal made over it--big or otherwise.

But I find that it is happening very gradually.  Last year was supposed to be a year of working and earning money to go back to school.  It wasn't supposed to be my first "post-college" year.  But that is exactly what it was.  And now, here I am, having made the decision to be done with the whole thing.  I'm looking at my life and slowly grasping that it is no longer divided into 4 month segments, after each of which my schedule and the entire structure of my life gets jiggled around.  I'm not "working till I go back to school" now.  I'm just....working.  It's both liberating and frightening.  On the one hand, I have always struggled to commit to things in my life when I know that in a few weeks or a couple of months I'll probably have to ditch it to accommodate a new class schedule or whatever.  That is no longer the case.  My schedule is pretty much set for the foreseeable future.  But that in itself is quite scary.  Now, if I get bored it's not just "well, you can hang in there through the next two months and then things will change."  If I want something to change in my life I will have to actively change it.

But most of all, I am noticing a gradual but distinct change just in the way I view and interact with the world in general.  Last night I actually said the words "well, and I'm sort of in a different part of my life than you" to my roommate Karissa...and it was quite obviously true.  I think I always sort of filed phrases like "different part of my life" and even "adulthood" into a folder clearly marked "married and making babies".  That has always been the great life event that changes my relationship with my friends--that makes me feel like we're no longer in the same part of life and we have less in common to talk about.  I have one friend in particular--she has been married now for 6 or 7 years; she lost one baby, and another spent the first couple of months of his life in the NICU; she has bought and sold a house; she is living a completely adult life.  When we get together I ask her all about her life and she tells me about her husband's job and her kids and what she is doing to utilize her talents and skills as a mother and it is a completely different world.  So when she asks me what's new in my life (she always does, she is always interested in what I'm doing) I feel absurd.  She just told me how incredibly difficult it has been for her to deal with the death of her child and I'm now going to tell her how hard it was for me to...what?  Get over a boy who didn't like me back?  Her life contains deeper sorrows (and thus deeper joys) than I am experiencing yet and I simply can't help but feel the contrast.  So I usually just say that there's not really anything new with me (which is usually true) and turn the conversation back to her.

That has been my perception of true adulthood.  Things are more serious, more poignant.  But last night I was talking to Karissa about buying a new car.  She is also looking to buy a car.  She wants something cheap that will get her from home to work.  It doesn't need to be pretty, or even run especially well.  It just needs to get the job done.  I, on the other hand, am looking for, as she put it, "a grown-up car".  I'm ready to have a car that I can count on, one that is going to last me several years without ever once refusing to start due to high or low temperatures.  In the most pragmatic of terms, I'm ready to buy a car that I can't simply pay for straight out of pocket.  I'm going to have to get a loan and have a monthly car payment.  Like you do when you're an adult.  This is an idea that I wouldn't have even considered while I was in school.  There was just no way.  But the prospect of working full time...full time (not just for four months of summer) changes things.  It quite literally changes the way I look at my life.  I'm no longer looking a maximum of four months ahead.  I'm planning now without an enforced deadline.

I may not have moved to the part of life that is being married and making babies.  That level of adulthood is still before me.  But I am done with school now.  I am finished with the very last days of my adolescence and I have, without quite realizing it, stepped fully into the murky waters of being grown up.  The wait for my life after college is over and I'm now living it.  It is both scary and wonderful...

SPATULAs, Pad Thai, and Adverbials

So, I suppose I should write an update on ye olde SPATULA.  I know you all can't actually see them, but I want you to know that there are actually two posts lurking about in my Blogger Closet that were meant to be SPATULA updates.  I just never finished them.  I do that a lot.  I think there are some 20 ish posts I have here published on my blog, but there are about 45 total posts in the closet.  I should go through and clean that place out.  It's getting musty and I'm pretty sure there are spiders...

hands down...most awesome spatula on earth.

Anyway.  SPATULA.  So, Dr. Parry was fabulous and worked so well with me the entire time we were getting my project proposal ready.  He never shook his head and said "What was I thinking?  Clearly you're not cut out to do projects with the adults..." and for that I was grateful.  In the end I did manage to get my proposal finished and submitted on time.   I settled on the immensely clever and creative title of " Not the Hero We Deserved, But the Hero We Needed." Because when in doubt, just rip off a quote from your source material.  Except that I really like that speech Inspector Gordon gives there at the end of that movie.  As for the project itself, I'm supposed to be doing research right now.  The thing is, they don't actually tell us if we've gotten the grant till February.  Not that I really need the money to do this project, really.  Which is why I'm supposed to be doing research right now regardless.  I guess if I ever really need to write a paper for one of my classes I'll really get into that research.  Dr. Parry said if I find anything interesting he'd love to talk about it with me.  Bless him.  

~  ~  ~

So I've decided that I'm embarking on a quest.  I want to find the best Thai food in the Provo/Salt Lake area.  Which is to say, I want to find the best Pad Thai in the area.  I always get the Pad Thai, which seems like the best way to evaluate the relative quality of each different place I go.  On that note, today after class I decided to go and try the Thai place I looked at every day on my way to Vivint.  It's called Spicy Thai and it's on University Ave. next door to Magleby's Fresh (whatever the heck that is...they advertise their breadsticks, which was odd enough I almost went in after my meal and requested to try them).  I'm sorry to say that I was not hugely impressed.  I got the impression that it was one of those "Dudes in the office need lunch" kind of places, specializing in fast, not horrible, "Thai" food (quotes being important indicators of the quality of the food).  

My plate did not look this good...

In following with a place that caters to people on timed lunch breaks, the food came very fast.  I'm all for eating expeditiously, but when my food gets to me too fast I'm likely to assume that it was just siting there somewhat like a hamburger from McDonald's, soaking up the rays of a luscious heat lamp.  I took that picture straight off their menu, but I'm afraid that my meal didn't look even that good.  And the food itself was...fine.  Bland and fine.  I am oddly picky about the texture of my noodles, and theirs were quite good, fully cooked, but firm rather than mushy.  But the sauce tasted like the same sauce I could buy at Target.  Nothing special at all.  I traditionally get a dish of lime to squeeze over my Pad Thai, but once I got my food I never really saw my waitress till I was nearly done, so no lime for me.  Which is a pity, because that little zing would have been really helpful.  I splurged and got a brownie and ice cream for dessert.  It was chewy and sort of fudgey, but the taste was odd.  It tasted like they used butter flavored Crisco actually.  Not my favorite.  Either use butter or use Crisco people.  Don't try to use both.  The price for the Pad Thai was pretty reasonable, however the brownie was not.  Overall rating would be 2.5 stars (who decided stars was a good way to rate restaurants?  makes no sense to me...).  Probably not a place I'll be going back to.

~  ~  ~

This semester marks my first steps on the road to editorship.  I am taking Elang 223, Intro to Linguistics with Professor Oaks.  I love Prof. Oaks.  He is hilarious.  Today in class he said "Verbs are the dungeon masters of the sentence."  The other day he was talking about back formations, which is when people assume that someone who "edits" must be an "editor".  The word didn't exist till people just started saying it.  Tangentially, this is the basis of my favorite joke in Clue, when Col. Mustard asks Wadsworth what he does and Wadsworth says "I'm the butler...I buttle."  Anyway.  Prof. Oaks is telling us about back formations and he mentions that there is currently one coming into existence right now.  "Ush" as a back formed verb from "usher" is starting to be more and more common in popular usage.  As he is telling us to pay attention and listen for "ush" he suddenly exclaims "See?!  There are so many reasons not to give up on life!" 

Anyway, the point was not, actually, to talk about how ridiculous my professor is, but rather to explain that I think I am really going to love my editing minor.  I have loved everything in this class.  Today we talked about some of the basic parts of speech.  This is the stuff I thought I'd hate.  I always loathed grammar when I was in high school.  But that is one thing I can say unequivocally in favor of my two years in Russian class.  I took from that class a new-found love of grammar.  It's like a logic puzzle, trying to trace out the parts of speech.  In Russian it's all about word endings, but in English it's about syntax.  I'm signed up for two more linguistics classes next semester and I'm very excited for them.  One of them is a straight up grammar class, and the other is...oh gosh, I don't remember how he explained it to me, but I know that it was what he suggested when I asked him if there was a class just about morphology.  

And lastly I will leave you with this gem.  A great song and a great video.  Please enjoy!