The best present of all.

The. Mother. Fucking. Semester. Is. Over.

I flew back to Baltimore on Thursday, which meant stress, booze, and Xanax, because that's the cocktail I use to manage my severe flying phobia. I woke up the next morning, hung over from... life. And in an epic marathon finish, I wrote 19 pages on Friday, over the span of about 17 hours. The quality was about what you'd expect from such a showing, but I was damned if I was going to take an incomplete. It was the least human I've ever been in my life. I was a paper-writing shell of a person, filled with Badiou and self-loathing where my soul and organs used to be. My poor dear Rachael got off work (her last day of the year), and had to celebrate by watching me write.

BUT I'M DONE! Semester wrap-up to follow, at such point as I have regular internet access. Happy holidays to all, and to all a strong scotch.

Peace and joy,
J.

Glorious Email Irony!

This semester has been nothing if not a series of triumphs and crushing blows to the ego. The self-esteem roller coaster that is grad school in a top 20 program has ultimately left me with one pervasive feeling: It is possible, though perhaps not likely, that I am a capable and intelligent person. I think that's what they want all of us to feel. When you brainwash someone, you have to break them down mentally and physically to the point where they're lying on the floor drooling and have completely resigned themselves to the combat boot on their windpipe. And that's where I am right now, two days left in the semester, bone tired, sick-feeling, with one last fucking paper to write, resigned to the fact that it's going to suck and the best my professors will think of me is, "Oh, her? I think I remember her. No... let's not kick her out of the program... not yet." So I'm a shivering empty vessel, which is how they've managed to implant their ideology: you're smart... maybe. I'm starting to see that the life of an academic is feeling that way forever.

Despite the fact that I've reached the 'acceptance stage,' I cannot really continue writing this post. I've finished with two classes, done all but my last touch-ups on a third, and have one entire term paper to write... by Friday. Oh, and I'm flying home Thursday. Which is tomorrow. It's gonna be a photo finish, kids. So, unless you happen to have a term paper out there on Badiou that I can have... No? Damn. In that case, I will just leave you with what I myself received this morning: a letter telling me I've been admitted to the grad program in English. Apparently my file never got processed, so just at the moment when I'm most considering quitting to become a... well, anything else, I get officially admitted. Just in time that I can't claim non-departmental status to get out of writing my papers, just in time to remind me that several months ago this was the thing I wanted most. Just in time to say, Hey, Jessie! You chose to do this for the rest of your life!

Dear Jessie,

Your request to change your major area of study to English has been approved. We have notified the Office of the Registrar to make the changes effective Fall 2007. If this information is not correct, please notify us.

Sincerely,

XXXXXX XXXXXX
Office of Graduate Admissions

...Maybe I should notify them...

Meat lockers and feelings of inadequacy.

Apparently in the county where my mom lives in West Virginia, the public schools close in honor of the first day of deer-hunting season. And they don't just close that day... they get the whole week off. What the shit...

I finished a paper! [Momentary pause for cheering!] ...And now I have to write two more in 15 days, and I have almost no work done on either of them. [Resuming regularly-scheduled puking into a bucket.]

But as always, grad school is best measured in small victories. And the fact that I got a seminar paper done, it didn't suck really bad, I kinda liked the topic, and it was reasonably within the page count (that's usually a huge problem for me)--that, friends, is what we call a minor triumph. However, handing it in today was highly anticlimactic. The professor's "Thanks" followed by setting it on her desk was a real pin in my delirious balloon of giddiness. Also a downer was then going right back to the library to collect books for my next one. And then thinking of the horrifying possibility that I could actually get a paper back while I'm still writing other ones. Shudder. Nothing like a prof's scrawled "what are you even doing in grad school" to keep your confidence up in the darkest depths of finals week.

But we all know professors aren't that on the ball. I will probably never see the paper again. The much more likely but equally unfortunate scenario I thought of is that she will now think I turned it in early because I think it's perfect. That there's no point keeping it for ten more days, because even given that amount of time, I could find nothing wrong with my work. And this, of course, will inspire my professor to scoff loudly and set about proving me wrong. See, if you turn it in the day it's due, and there's a crap-load wrong with it, you get the benefit of the doubt that you know what that crap-load is, you just didn't have time to fix it. Oh well. It's in, and I'm moving on.

Wilkie Collins, Duleep Singh, and the anxieties of the colonial body, here I come. Hooray..?

Oh, and: 7 more inches of snow last night. If you're keeping track, we've got a solid 10 on the ground right now, according to the local news, with a couple more coming tomorrow. Current temp: 0, feels like 0. If you're going to be miserable, you might as well be miserable in a meat locker, that's what I say!

I get to bitch because I don't plan on doing anything about it... that's how it works, right?

If I had forgotten how bad snow removal in Madison is, it's all flooding back now. After this weekend's three-inch snowfall, the major roads are sort of clear, and the side roads haven't been touched. I don't really understand how, in a climate where it snows regularly, all winter, every winter, they're not ready for it. Although you couldn't really say that the plows and salt trucks (which are bad for the environment anyway--they should use sand) are behind, persay. It's not that they get caught unawares by the storm and can't keep up with it. That would be pretty pitiful anyhow, considering it only snowed three inches.

No, it's not so much an inability to deal with the snow as an unwillingness. Last night, after the storm was well over, all of the cross streets on the Isthmus were still completely white. And since there had been sleet, they were also covered in ice. The precipitation had stopped, but... were there plows out? Nope. It seems the city just decides which three major streets they're going to plow, and then they pack it it for the day. Mission accomplished! As of this morning, the bus lane on University Avenue, the major downtown campus artery, was still buried under an inch of snow and ice. And if you live on a side street, forget it, you're fucked. The people who live on the little roads going up from Gorham to Lake Mendota might have some of the prettiest houses and the nicest views, but during the most minor of snowfalls, they also live on an icy white slip-n-slide of death.

I wonder if the state thinks that Wisconsinites are just so rugged and hardy that they'll take care of it themselves. Sure, they must all have tire chains and four-wheel drive and personal plows--they're outdoorsmen! Maybe that's true in the more rural parts of the state, but here in Madison we're a bunch of crunchy, liberal, latte-drinking students. You need to plow us out! In the last twelve hours, I have seen three incapacitated vehicles, one the result of an accident, and two that had skidded into banks of snow and gotten stuck. There were policemen there helping, but not a plow within earshot. Oh, yeah, and all three of these accidents were within six blocks of my apartment.

For the love of god, people... THREE INCHES!