So it's spring break. As I write this, I am sitting in a brewery in downtown Nashville (the one in Tennessee, not the one in Indiana...because that would be a pretty pathetic spring break vacation, if you ask me). Fortunately, they have this thing called "Wi-Fi" that can be accessed via my (relatively) new "laptop computer." I am getting grease on my keyboard, but that's okay. The beer is all right. There is college basketball on the TV; so far, my brackets are doing okay, but I could have used a comeback by Belmont (which I did not know until yesterday is located here in Nashville; boy, with Vanderbilt also losing, it's a bad day for local college hoops) against Wisconsin. A few blocks away from here, there is a hockey game going on between the Bruins and Predators. I guess that explains why I've been seeing so many Boston fans around today. I did not realize this was happening, or if I did realize it at one point, I forgot about it. It's been kinda weird, with so many Preds & B's fans walking around, that today I decided to wear to wear my Sharks shirt. There was a woman on a corner selling hot dogs for $2 to Preds fans and $4 to Bruins fans. I didn't think to ask her what she what sell them to me for.
Did I mention that it's St. Paddy's Day? It seems somehow wrong to make the Bruins play a road game on this day, but at least they're playing in a city with a rich Irish tradition like...Nashville. Wait, I take that back. This holiday is stupid. At least in America. For us it's just a reason to drink beer that's been dyed green (I am not drinking green beer, BTW) and wear T-shirts that say "Kiss me, I'm Irish," even if you're not...though the more ballsy of people will wear shirts that substitute "Fuck" for "Kiss". I think I saw a "Fuck me, I'm Irish" button on the video for House of Pain's "Jump Around" back in the day, but of course the "Fuck" was overlaid with one of those annoying black bars. Anyway, my point is, this is supposed to be a holiday in Ireland...I think. It celebrates St. Patrick ridding the island of snakes, or something like that. And yet we cheapen it by turning it into a drinking day. Just like Cinco de Mayo, only with different beer. Same thing we do with every holiday, like, say, Christmas, which these days is just an excuse to patriotically stimulate the economy with shitloads of money on crap we don't need.
I'm not at all cynical, BTW. In case you were wondering. And, oh yeah, it's my grandpa's birthday, too. Gotta call him at some point tonight. Do shout-outs in blogs count as birthday calls?
Did I mention I'm in Nashville? I may have. I got blessed with some beautiful weather for my trip, for which I am thankful. Nothing brings down a vacation like buckets of rain. I drove down yesterday. Damn near got a speeding ticket on the way. Thanks to the Indiana state trooper who was nice enough to let me off with a warning, even though I didn't beg for it and he had every reason to ticket me. I stopped in beautiful downtown Owensboro, KY, on the way. Saw their bluegrass museum there, which was interesting. The theme continued today, where I spent all day at the Ryman, which is a live music venue that hosted the Grand Ol' Opry for thirty years and continues to host many nationall-known acts of all genres (Social D plays there in May, and wouldn't I love to see that), and the Country Music Hall of Fame. I spent a while there. Bought a Hank Williams greatest hits disc on my way out, and also picked up the new Lucinda Williams (no relation that I'm aware of) disc that I failed to acquire before I left. Will listen to both at some point this weekend. The only bummer about the day is that I forgot my damn camera at the hotel. Tomorrow...not quite sure. I may hang around the Vanderbilt area for a bit Or I may go to Andrew Jackson's home. Or I may go to an old, historic plantation nearby. Or some combination of all of the above. On Saturday, I am getting up early and heading back home through Mammoth Cave National Park, where I will take a long tour through the longest cave system in the known world. Should be fun. I will be back in Bloomington sometime Saturday night.
I cannot, in the strictest sense of the word, afford this trip, at least not entirely, on my student loans. Well, maybe, but it'd be close. Whatever. Can't take it with you, right? That's why I have money saved up. Although the $11 I've already paid for parking today is $11 I won't have for my England trip this summer. Good thing that parking attendant who was about to ticket me took it back when I told him I was about to pay. Something tells me I won't be able to escape my next brush with the law on this trip. Despite this fact, I am enjoying myself so far, and the break is certainly good for me.
You know what isn't getting done? Work. I had grand plans for getting a bunch of work done this week, and so far...yeah. Reading about willingness to pay and looking for data sources on state government budget deficits will just have to wait I guess. Whatever. Spring break is for slacking off, not working all the time. One way or another, it'll get done.
So what's been happening? In a nutshell, this has been a very difficult semester from a lot of standpoints. There's been too damn much work. This, as you well know, is bad for me. I tend to work too much and self-isolate, which I will whine about more below. It is not a healthy way to live. I swear, I came into this with the best of intentions: that I wasn't going to get overwhelmed by the whole ordeal. Well, that has gone out the window. Between school, looking for an internship, school, helping with the H2H sale, school, work, and school...I've been driving myself pretty hard. I don't think this is necessarily any different from what most other people are doing, but somehow, I feel like I handle it worse. Even though I think I'm giving myself enough breaks and doing my best not to work myself to death...it doesn't work. I don't sleep; six hours a night is about the best I manage these days. Once again, I've failed to prioritize fun. This was one of my New Year's resolutions, and so far it has not panned out.
What exactly have I gotten for busting my ass? I failed my finance mid-term. And by "fail" I do mean FAIL. Everyone I talk to about it starts off by saying, "Oh, it can't be that bad," but by the time I'm done telling them about it, they have this sad look on their face and can only say, "Oh," in an "Okay, I guess it IS that bad..." manner. Suffice it to say that I need a really generous curve to salvage this one. The internship search is languishing. I had three interviews locally, and all three cancelled at the last minute because they had second thoughts about my availability. This is not necessarily unexpected, but it is disappointing. My attempts to find something in England have likewise failed so far. It would help if I could just get someone on the phone or get a response via e-mail. I also does not help that I'm too much of a pussy to pick up the phone and make more calls. At this point, my confidence in getting a position for the first half of the summer is low enough that I've gotten a waiver application from the MPO that I need to fill out and turn in. More on this below, too.
So I turned 31 on Saturday. It turned out to be a GORGEOUS day out, so I took advantage of it to go out into the woods and walk for twelve miles. Us city slickers call it "hiking." Then I went out for the evening to Upland. Kind of a small crowd: me, Alexi, the Reeves', and Venkat. Everyone else was already gone for spring break. Did I mention it's spring break? Alexi made me this really neat handmade card that I appreciated a lot; it was one of the more thoughtful things that anyone has done for me in a long time, maybe ever. Sara asked if she could start calling me "PeePaw," which is apparently what she used to call her grandfather. I granted this request, so everyone who was there that night is free to refer to me by whatever name they call their respective grandfathers. It's kind of embarassing to know that, of my little group of friends, I am the oldest. But, hey, I guess that distinction has to go to someone, right?
Even before my birthday, I started off spring break on the right foot by driving up to Indy last Thursday to see Flogging Molly. Hadn't seen them for a couple of years. I finished my V507 final by 7:00 p.m., and immediately jammed up there for the show. The last couple of times I saw them, I felt like they were getting a little more mature but less fun. This show seemed like a bit of a throwback to their earlier, more raucous days. Shit, they even played "Black Friday Rule"...not quite the same way as they used to, but close. I liked the whole show. Made me excited for their new album, which comes out sometime in May.
Okay, so, before I commence with whining about shit, I'm gonna head back to my hotel. Been a long day, and I've been at this bar for over three hours now. Time to start winding down for the day. BRB...
Okay, I'm back. Still there? Good. I'm back in my hotel room now. It is across the street from an adult video store and around the corner from another. You get what you pay for, and I didn't pay much for this. I also passed a Hustler store on the way out of downtown, in case you wanted to know. It feels good to lay down. Been a long day.
So where was I? Oh yeah...
TODAY'S TOPIC: Why Being A Loner Is Not Conducive to Succeeding at Graduate School (Or Anything Else)
So I'm a loner. And an introvert. Those qualities seem like they go hand-in-hand with most people. With me, these qualities seem to be pretty strong. Give you some examples. A couple of times in the last few weeks I've gotten together with some friends at other people's houses/apartments. This is enjoyable, in large part because I do it so infrequently. Or at least, it's enjoyable for a while. But before long, it inevitably happens: I start thinking to myself, "I'm done." I have fun for a while, but eventually I just realize that I've been around people for too long, and it's time to go be alone. That's when I start looking for a way out. Usually it doesn't present itself quickly, so I sit around smiling and laughing in the appropriate places, but not really paying a great deal of attention. I guess at these points, the healthiest thing to do would be to just go for a walk or go outside for a bit to try and rejuvenate myself, but I don't do it. Instead, I just wait for my opportunity, and it'll eventually present itself.
I've been this way pretty much my whole life. There's just so much group fun I can take before I need to go be by myself for a while. I can do all right with one or two people for quite some time, but the bigger the group, the less I want to be around. Tonight, as I was walking back to my car, I passed all the crowds waiting to get into the bars in downtown Nashville, and I thought to myself about how little that type of scene appealed to me these days.
So what does this have to do with grad school? The way I see it, there are three areas that it adversely impacts things:
--My social life: Clearly this is a problem. I've done okay with creating a little niche for myself. The thing is, I don't think I use it to its full extent. I know I get stressed out by school and life in general, and I think that if I stopped to take time out and talk to people about it, I would feel better a lot more quickly than I do. As it is now, I pretty much just keep my feelings to myself until I can't take it anymore, then realize after talking to someone that all along they were experiencing the same types of things. Getting that validation is very helpful to me because I so often feel alone in all of these struggles. So why I don't seek it out earlier is a puzzle to me.
--Getting to know my professors: I feel like, in grad school, one should get to know one's professors and establish a strong working relationship to them. I came here hoping I'd be able to work with a professor on their research projects, but so far it has not turned out that way, and I think part of that has to do with not making much of an effort to get to know the professors. Although a lot of this may not be my fault. Not only are classes much bigger than I imagined, but so far I don't feel like I've taken enough classes in my specialties that might bring me into contact with professors who share more of my interests. I'm hoping that changes this summer, though.
--Networking for an internship: This is where I feel like I'm in the most trouble. In part, I've been trying to craft my own internship because I've only got half the summer. This has required lots of e-mails and calls to companies, many of which are not returned. That's not my fault. What is problem is that it's so hard to pick up the phone or write an e-mail that I end up wasting a lot of time thinking and planning how I'm going to approach someone and not much time actually doing it. That's increased the pressure on me while at the same time reducing the amount of effective time I have to make contacts and do other things that would help in the internship search.
So the reason I'm complaining about this is because I'm afraid these things are all putting me at a disadvantage. I'm concerned that not making connections here makes surviving grad school more difficult, and could make finding a real job a year from now -- and sustaining a career after that -- that much harder. Building a network seems to be pretty key at succeeding professionally these days, and I don't know that I'm doing that well right now.
Then there's this: There are two types of being alone. One is good, and one is bad. Right now I'm experiencing the good kind of alone. This is the kind where I'm traveling on my own but still doing things I enjoy and not thinking too much about my to-do list or what's waiting for me when I get back. I'm just going with the flow and seeing where things take me. Then there's the bad kind. That's where I end up in my room studying or doing other work for hours on end. That makes me miserable. Trouble is, I don't know what else to do. The reading and writing and everything else has to get done at some point, and it's not exactly work that can be done as a team. So I end up closing myself off from the rest of the world while I work the day away. I know it's probably not healthy, but like I said, what can be done about it?
Sometimes it seems like people who aren't shy and introverted like me have it so much easier. The world is not always kind to people like me, not when so many things depend on who you know, not what you know. So we have to work extra hard to succeed, professionally and personally. And that's just what I need: more work.
But not now. Now it's time for bed. As people keep reminding me, I am very old now, and PeePaw needs his rest.
