I know. I'm a bad blog friend. I never say anything. I'm emotionally distant. Sorry! The first year is almost over and it turns out I'm not in very much of a hurry for my time here to be over. I'm also not so sure I want to be a lawyer... I think what I really want to do is to stick around and try to figure out what I really, really, really want. Which of course is to write, but I need a project. I want it to have something to do with madness and media and violence and pain and death. Because I am not the eternal optimist, and because man is that stuff interesting!
I am about to start writing an awful lot of stuff for finals... but I promise when I'm done I'll come back and talk about all the fun stuff!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Spring Break... hooray!
I know... it must feel like I have stopped writing here, but what has actually happened is I have been overwhelmed with the insane amount of reading that I have been assigned for this semester. It's nutty! It's good though... I feel like I'm learning a lot and it feels good. I feel like my understanding of not just the material, but life in general and even what I'm doing here is expanding in ways that I didn't realize. It's hard! But I'm getting there... I can't believe I am more than halfway through my first year at Berkeley. This summer I will start to study for the LSAT and less than a year from now I will be almost done. CRAZY!
I've been studying violence and trauma and it's hard. It makes every single thing that happens in real life seem more significant than it was before. It highlights the bad things in ways that I never acknowledged, but it also challenges me to really appreciate the good ones. And there are a lot of good things.
This experience continues to amaze me.
I've been studying violence and trauma and it's hard. It makes every single thing that happens in real life seem more significant than it was before. It highlights the bad things in ways that I never acknowledged, but it also challenges me to really appreciate the good ones. And there are a lot of good things.
This experience continues to amaze me.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Oh, I already need a nap!
Today was brilliant! I will come back to that... but for right now, this very moment, while I am exhausted and longing for sleep... I would just like to pose this one question to you:
How is it possible that I have only just completed my first day of the new semester, and have only attended two of my four classes, and yet I am already behind in my reading assignments???
I mean, the things I'm reading are WONDERFUL, but for serious? If this keeps up I will surely go blind, deaf, dumb, and unable to parent in a matter of weeks. Usually it takes months for that to happen! What gives man?
I am all of a sudden terrified that I am not good enough, smart enough, or driven enough to do it... and those are all of the things that I usually console myself with. This is going to be a long 4-5 months.
Just sayin'.
How is it possible that I have only just completed my first day of the new semester, and have only attended two of my four classes, and yet I am already behind in my reading assignments???
I mean, the things I'm reading are WONDERFUL, but for serious? If this keeps up I will surely go blind, deaf, dumb, and unable to parent in a matter of weeks. Usually it takes months for that to happen! What gives man?
I am all of a sudden terrified that I am not good enough, smart enough, or driven enough to do it... and those are all of the things that I usually console myself with. This is going to be a long 4-5 months.
Just sayin'.
Monday, January 19, 2009
January 20th, 2009
So that's tomorrow's date. It's a special one, and one that I have been waiting for for the last 8 years. Of course, what's amazing is that really we've been waiting for a day like tomorrow for our countries entire history. I'm grateful for the fact that I will be able to spend it on Sproul Plaza on the Berkeley campus watching with thousands of others as our new president takes the office. I'm not the most patriotic, and I'm not the biggest Obama fan around, but I can't tell you how happy I am to be able to say good riddance to Bush.
Plus... classes start! So that's exciting.
Every day that I am here, I love it more. I feel at home and it's pretty awesome :)
Plus... classes start! So that's exciting.
Every day that I am here, I love it more. I feel at home and it's pretty awesome :)
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Oh... hey there!
So... it's been awhile. Finals came and went, and I survived a semester at Cal. It could have been better, but it could have been far worse and to be honest, people get a little irritated at my complaining when they find out what my grades were. Still though, it wasn't perfect and that's a problem for me.
Then I survived the holidays. And when I say that I survived, I mean really it was pretty horrible. So now I'm back in Berkeley and have said so long to OC (hopefully for a very long time) and my boy turned 10 and I am going to sit around for two weeks feeling old and lonely and getting a head start on spring semester reading.
It's going to be a good one, classes on theory and crime and violence and power and subjectivity. Sounds good to me!
Then I survived the holidays. And when I say that I survived, I mean really it was pretty horrible. So now I'm back in Berkeley and have said so long to OC (hopefully for a very long time) and my boy turned 10 and I am going to sit around for two weeks feeling old and lonely and getting a head start on spring semester reading.
It's going to be a good one, classes on theory and crime and violence and power and subjectivity. Sounds good to me!
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Is it over yet...?
So here we are... nearing the end of the first semester. I just took my last midterm on Monday and I have my first final on Friday; pirate archaeology! Anyway it's almost over. I miss my friends and my family and (most of all) my dogs. It's a crime that I have to be separated from my little princesses... but soon I will be petting puppy heads and getting puppy kisses. December 22nd I'll be on a plane back to OC for two weeks for x-mas and my son's birthday. We can't wait!
Being here is challenging in ways that I never would have imagined, yet it is also allowing me to make connections with some of the most amazing women. Moms like me who are nothing like me at all. Women of all shapes and shades and backgrounds who each bring something wonderful to the table. Literally to the table, you see there is one friend of mine who opens her table up every now and then. We sit in her kitchen and talk about the kinds of things that need changing in the world. And we make plans to change them. It's not just talk either... most of these women are on their second year here and have already initiated some fantastic programs that will make life easier for the next round of women that attempt to change the lives of themselves and their children by giving this academic thing a try. Things like babysitting co-ops and emergency single parent food banks. Things like a single moms club (eh-hem, I must say that I was involved in that one) and emergency contact phone trees so that we will always have someone to call if we need help with life, or anything.
It's cold tonight. In more ways than just the weather. Life has been good to me, and I've had to watch some people fall down. I think it's getting close to time that I stumble a little myself and I'm terrified. I'm not afraid of total failure, I know better than that... yet something in me thinks that I can't possibly get through it all without some setbacks. So I'm bracing myself for more than winter.
Enough already... I don't want to bring anyone down! I can smell the from scratch veggie soup simmering in the kitchen and my boy is practicing drums. It's good in here... hard, and tiresome, but still good.
Being here is challenging in ways that I never would have imagined, yet it is also allowing me to make connections with some of the most amazing women. Moms like me who are nothing like me at all. Women of all shapes and shades and backgrounds who each bring something wonderful to the table. Literally to the table, you see there is one friend of mine who opens her table up every now and then. We sit in her kitchen and talk about the kinds of things that need changing in the world. And we make plans to change them. It's not just talk either... most of these women are on their second year here and have already initiated some fantastic programs that will make life easier for the next round of women that attempt to change the lives of themselves and their children by giving this academic thing a try. Things like babysitting co-ops and emergency single parent food banks. Things like a single moms club (eh-hem, I must say that I was involved in that one) and emergency contact phone trees so that we will always have someone to call if we need help with life, or anything.
It's cold tonight. In more ways than just the weather. Life has been good to me, and I've had to watch some people fall down. I think it's getting close to time that I stumble a little myself and I'm terrified. I'm not afraid of total failure, I know better than that... yet something in me thinks that I can't possibly get through it all without some setbacks. So I'm bracing myself for more than winter.
Enough already... I don't want to bring anyone down! I can smell the from scratch veggie soup simmering in the kitchen and my boy is practicing drums. It's good in here... hard, and tiresome, but still good.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Oh mama!
So my mother was here visiting for the weekend which was both wonderful and highly stressful. My mother is one of my best friends, and though our relationship can be a bit (ha!) dysfunctional, overall we get along rather well and at times we actually seem to share a brain. The thing about my mother (grandma,) is that for my son, it means that it's time to act like an unruly, ill mannered, disrespectful, spoiled little brat. Which is exactly what he did for the majority of the weekend visit. Top that with the passive aggressive "woe is me" attitude that my mother, bless her heart, can sometimes have and we've got one exhausted me.
And did I mention I'm working on writing a midterm paper? Right. Not a lot was accomplished this weekend in the way of paper writing. But that's alright. I'm learning how to balance school and family all over again. I did it once when I first went back to community college at Golden West in Huntington Beach. The difference of course, was that in HB I had friends and family all around me, and I was juggling a full time job on top of being a single mom with a full class load. The balance there was different. It had more to do with getting the help I needed to just get through the long days and nights, where as here, in a town hundreds of miles from family, the balancing act involves finding the time & making room. Instead of needing them for tangible things, I don't really need them at all. I still love them and want them around, it's just not quite so need based.
Moving to Berkeley has allowed me to see how much more functional I am when I'm a little further away from the nest, so to speak. I don't fall back into the same codependent routines that I was raised watching. I don't feel like I have to do things any certain way to make other people happy, and in that I am able to do things in ways that allow me to be happier.
But I will miss my mom. Being able to show her around the Cal campus was quite amazing. She's never looked so proud. This is all new for us. This school business. The idea of my graduating and going on to do something that I love instead of something that I have no choice in, well... it's awesome.
But what am I doing here... I still have that paper to finish!
And did I mention I'm working on writing a midterm paper? Right. Not a lot was accomplished this weekend in the way of paper writing. But that's alright. I'm learning how to balance school and family all over again. I did it once when I first went back to community college at Golden West in Huntington Beach. The difference of course, was that in HB I had friends and family all around me, and I was juggling a full time job on top of being a single mom with a full class load. The balance there was different. It had more to do with getting the help I needed to just get through the long days and nights, where as here, in a town hundreds of miles from family, the balancing act involves finding the time & making room. Instead of needing them for tangible things, I don't really need them at all. I still love them and want them around, it's just not quite so need based.
Moving to Berkeley has allowed me to see how much more functional I am when I'm a little further away from the nest, so to speak. I don't fall back into the same codependent routines that I was raised watching. I don't feel like I have to do things any certain way to make other people happy, and in that I am able to do things in ways that allow me to be happier.
But I will miss my mom. Being able to show her around the Cal campus was quite amazing. She's never looked so proud. This is all new for us. This school business. The idea of my graduating and going on to do something that I love instead of something that I have no choice in, well... it's awesome.
But what am I doing here... I still have that paper to finish!
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