AllAboutToledo

acadisorganization

Both of my professors this quarter happen to be among the most disorganized I’ve ever encountered. They’re both great, but they also go off-syllabus a lot, which is also fine, but it means that I have no idea what work I’m supposed to have done for tomorrow. The website for my linguistics homework hasn’t been updated since last week and I can’t access any handouts, and my Russian lit class is already a day behind the syllabus and I can’t tell if that means we’re actually a week behind or just one class (in which latter case I’ll basically have Wednesday to read the first quarter of The Brothers Karamazov. Shit.).

I guess I could clear up all this confusion with two really quick and simple emails, but I think it’s more fun this way.

rockademia:

“My Bloody Valentine Isn’t Anything (Unless You Get Totally Blazed First): A Behaviorist Study of Cannabis-Shoegaze Interaction”

“Dude, This Shit Is SO Brutal: An Althusserian Approach to Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power”

“The Drum Fill Before the First Verse of ‘Only Shallow’: What. The. Fuck.”

quick, to the Horowitzmobile!

I just realized that academia and literary studies are all just a vast conspiracy to make people feel bad about not understanding Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas Pynchon novels. Yes, that’s right. I have found secret documents from the turn of the century that reveal that literary studies exist for the sole purpose of trumpeting the alleged virtues of inaccessible literature so that people who don’t like those books will feel threatened and insecure. Furthermore, these documents establish that literary criticism is entirely a masturbatory exercise that exists only to make its practitioners feel smart and that any assertions about a work of literature that go beyond the author’s intentions and processes in creating the work are completely speculative and invalid. And it has no real-world application (whatever that means…).

Also, Frankenstein is apparently “completely devoid of sexual tension.” (Yes. Someone actually said that.)

quitting time.

I have decided to quit learning French and it feels so good.

I didn’t go to class yesterday or today, which I justified by saying that I was studying for midterms (which I was sort-of doing). But the sense of total euphoria and freedom and general well being that I’ve been feeling during that hour where I would otherwise be experiencing profound confusion and regressive anxiety has been too wonderful to give up. So I have decided officially to quit French.

I’m starting to think that it’s a bad idea to do things that cause nothing but frustration and anxiety when the reward is basically non-existent. It may be a good idea to start doing things that make me happy instead of things that make me miserable but supposedly lead toward some kind of permanently elusive goal that I’ve basically given up on attaining (not given up on, but simply realigned my goals to be more toward “happiness” than “hating myself”).

So as of today I’m done going to French class. Sure, I ate the $160 I spent on materials (seriously. For a fucking language.), but what I gain is not having four hours of torture every week.

[Plus there’s the practical considerations: A) I’m failing now, so the effort it would take to pass would almost certainly have negative consequences for my performance the seminars I’m taking, seminars which actually matter to me; B) even if I did pass somehow, I wouldn’t be able to advance to the tertiary level in the sequence next quarter because of scheduling conflicts so it would be for nothing. So, since I’m getting absolutely no personal satisfaction from it, and instead getting a massive fucking headache, I think it’s time to stop sticking my finger in the electrical socket that is the French language.]

This is a nice step forward on this whole reordering my life so that I don’t hate it thing.

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AA

I don’t know if I’ve hit rock bottom yet, but today I experienced an epiphany or a moment of clarity. I realized that I don’t have to keep doing what I’ve been doing. It’s been bad for five years, but it started even before that. I don’t have to keep living this way. I don’t have to wake up every morning and lie to myself that everything’s ok. I don’t have to keep pouring money and energy into the pit of my addictions: I don’t have to stay in academe.

I don’t have to keep humiliating myself in a French class that I will never pass.

I don’t need to stress about my lack of interest in medieval English literature.

I don’t have to feel guilty about my inability to teach eighteen year olds how to form an argument.

The alternative may be moving into my dad’s basement and working at Rite Aid, but maybe that’s not such a bad idea. ‘Cause this shit ain’t working.

[Although, like a true addict, I’ll probably finish out this binge - which is unfortunately another year and half and thousands of dollars, instead of a few more days and few hundred dollars. I’ll finish what I started (because I’m doing this for my own fun anyway), but I may have finally realized that doing what I’m doing [especially when I don’t have any kind of real/realistic goal(s)] isn’t any less humiliating than moving into the basement* and working retail. Plus I’d probably get to read more.

So fuck you Chaucer, I’ve got beers to drink.

* Actually it’s a downstairs apartment. We don’t have basements here.

and I quote from myself for the first time:

“I’m starting to think that academia is like a comic book shop. The employees are all nerds who showed up as customers and wound up hanging around for years. Then they pestered the owner for a job until a few of them got one, and then they spend their careers making minimum wage and lording arcane knowledge over teenagers.”

Lisa: May I have that seat?
Comic Book Guy:  Yes. If you can answer me these 
questions three. Question the first...
Lisa: Never mind.