AllAboutToledo

Aesthetics

I should be getting a masters in religion/divinity or journalism/communications, because they have the best MA hood colors - scarlet and crimson. Instead mine’s gonna be white, ‘cause all of the humanities’ are white. Lame. Might get a lemon one if I end up with that second masters, though…

and I quote (saving grace of my day edition):

- It is important that I go to Yale. They have Harold Bloom.

- Harold Bloom is a misogynistic narcissist. He is not even in their English department - they gave him his own department of Humanities because nobody could fraggin stand him.

- Harold Bloom informs much of my own scholarship.

- You can not seriously be this stupid.

[from: so you want to get a PhD in the humanities]

I wonder what one’d find if one were to do a study of whether men are more comfortable critiquing the work of other men or the work of women. I’m trying to work through in my own head right now why I’m less comfortable responding a male classmate’s work for fear of being condescending than I am of doing this to a female. And it seems like there’d be quite a disconnect between my actual motivations and what you would observe if this were done as a relatively superficial set of statistics. That is, I’m more comfortable critiquing the female’s work because I think it is better and I therefore have more to say about it, and because I consider her a friend, I’m not worried about offending her or appearing to condescend to her. The male’s work I think is less complete, so it’s more difficult to respond to without stating the obvious (critiquing work that isn’t at a very advanced stage of completion is all but impossible, I think) and therefore appearing condescending. I’m also less friendly with the guy than the girl because we don’t work together and because I don’t respect his work ethic. But is there some hidden thing at work? Am I actually comfortable critiquing the girl’s work because I’m comfortable assuming a (covert) position of relative authority, and reluctant to do this to a guy? Am I inverting my real motivations? Yeah. I’m procrastinating at 1:00 a.m. and I’ve been aimlessly reading philosophy blogs about Judith Butler and Elizabeth Grosz all day. Fuck off. But back to the argument - I’m thinking of this also in the overall statistics of academia where women generally outperform men, so if my avowed motivations (the guy happens to be less secure/proficient and therefore seems a less “worthy” or stable subject for critique than the girl) are generalized, you would have a general trend of males preferring to critique the work of females, but for entirely non-gendered reasons (simply because the work is better) it would still play itself out in a gendered correlation (because the women would generally be producing higher quality work than the men [also, I wouldn’t be surprised if women outnumbered men at the graduate level in the humanities, further skewing the statistics]) and in fact the motivations would be the opposite of those presumed by the “men want to assume power by criticizing women” idea. Not that I have any idea what the fuck I’m talking about right now.

Should I be embarrassed that something I wrote sober while hanging out (this) is considerably sloppier and less coherent than posts I’ve put on here drunk at three a.m.?

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.