Monthly Archives: October 2011

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A little Psychoanalytic Theory for the Internet Age.

I’ve been struggling with my thoughts on our society’s techno-revolution. Anyone who knows me or who has read more than this post on here also knows that I am very pro-technology. I think it’s great that we all have cell phones that are actually little computers and that Facebook is around. A lot of people discredit Facebook and the impact it has had, narrowing it down to nothing more than another way to waste time and a terrible new aspect of the “I can be reached at all times” phenomenon.

For me it hasn’t been the same. Sure I was a latecomer of my generation into the Facebook world. I didn’t see a need for it in high school. All of my friends lived right around me, we went to the same school, I had their cell phone numbers, and I saw them every day. Most of the pictures they’d post included me or events I already knew about. It just seemed superfluous to my life at the time. Once we all graduated and began to plan our lives across the nation, I realized staying in touch might get difficult, that I might miss out on a lot. I’m not a phone person. I actually hate talking on the phone, so I knew that I’d be terrible at staying connected. Then, Facebook happened.

I’ve mentioned my feelings about Facebook recently, yet I’ve been feeling the other side a little bit more lately. Sometimes I want to escape from things, and Facebook isn’t exactly helpful in doing so. Sometimes I need some space from things, but the act of actually physically having to remove a connection to it seems too much. I don’t need that much space. I’m trying to run away to Australia or anything; I just want to go on vacation for a while. Most people will answer my complaint with the fact that I don’t actually have to go on Facebook if I don’t want to, but that brings me back to the previous point. Sometimes I’m just looking for some space, not a life adjustment. I don’t want to have to stop myself from interacting with other things. It’s a bit of an interaction corner. What’s a girl to do?

Social networking revolutionized human interactions. Forever. The ways we engage with others in the world will never be the same. This radical shift brought with it a whole new system of etiquette – netiquette, and it’s a world we have to navigate much like the day-to-day, off-line world – by trial and error. We have to figure what works for us, what seems socially acceptable to others, and what is responsible. The world of Facebook etiquette, however, is not something we can read about in picture books as we grow up, it’s not something we can pick up from watching our parents. For most of us, we are the first generation to venture into this online world of interaction. We have to pave the path.

I’m not talking so much about the annoying friend who likes all of your status updates no matter what they say or the guy who comments on your conversations with others as if he’s been invited. I’ve been wondering more about the etiquette of passive interaction. Is it healthy for us to always have a connection to every piece of our history? Do I really want a record of my every move, thought, and interaction with someone? What do we do when our morning coffee-time mindless scan of the Home Page brings us face-to-face with things we don’t want to see about people we don’t want to remove from our circle (or friends list – to be more on with the Facebook lingo)?

Where are the rules for that type of etiquette?

Our lives have taken on another dimension, but sometimes I wonder if our human minds are ready to deal with this new change.

Also, Happy Halloween.

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Snowfall and Mental Health.

We got our first snowfall yesterday! I couldn’t believe it: snow for Halloween. Craziness, but the whole town looks really pretty now. It makes me want to sing Christmas carols all day despite my vehement anti-Christmas-before-Thanksgiving stance.

My neighbor and I trekked to the grocery store this morning.

I’ve decided that I kind of hate the weekends now. During the week I have places to be, things to do, thoughts to keep my head on straight. Over the weekends, I tend to fall into bad places. I get all twisted up in my head. Maybe I should blame it on cabin fever. Without a car, I really don’t have any means of getting around (on the weekends or any day for that matter). I think I might start going to the library and sitting around reading just to give myself something to do and a place to be. I’m kind of sick of feeling lonely and lazy on the weekends. My neighbor and I usually go downtown for some breakfast, some coffee, and some grocery shopping. It’s great. I really enjoy myself every time, but as soon as we get back, I’m always staring down a long weekend with very little on my to-do list.

Distractions have been very important for me lately. I’ve needed to get my mind off things, to move forward and stop looking back. So, on that note, I’ve started doing some reading “for fun” – aka I’ve been looking up interesting articles in the MLA International Bibliography database, reading them, and then looking up their authors. I’ve begun to craft a list of schools I want to apply to for my PhD study. This strategy has led me to some crazy schools in some wild places that I never would have considered, much less put on my list, before, but I’m excited.

My question/assignment for you all is to help me in this search. I start my application process this summer, and I need all the help I can wrangle up. Know any schools with great English Departments or professors with a love of all things medieval? Let me know. Have a school you love or your family loves or you think is kinda cool for whatever reason? Let me know.

My last foray into the world of graduate school applications was quite the wild ride. Stressful. Terrifying, but in the end successful. Let’s hope this time is the same (although I could do with a little less stress, a little less terror, and a little more success overall).

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“Disturbed” is a good word.

For all you English majors out there (or any of you who cite following MLA guidelines):

I am deeply disturbed by the new 7th edition requirement that block quotes be kept double spaced. I’ve been living with this change for a little while, expecting that I’d get used to it. Well, that hasn’t happened. I still feel like I’m cheating, like I’m adding pages to my paper by citing double spaced passages of verse. I mean, the lines don’t even make it to my right margin! It looks so… spacey.

While I don’t have my handy-dandy MLA Guidebook with me at the library today, I give you this passage from the Purdue OWL:

For quotations that extend to more than four lines of verse or prose, place quotations in a free-standing block of text and omit quotation marks. Start the quotation on a new line, with the entire quote indented one inch from the left margin; maintain double-spacing. Only indent the first line of the quotation by a half inch if you are citing multiple paragraphs. Your parenthetical citation should come after the closing punctuation mark. When quoting verse, maintain original line breaks. (You should maintain double-spacing throughout your essay.)

I am not happy. I don’t often use long quotes, but when I feel the need to, I don’t want them taking up half my page… Gross.
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TIL

Today I learned that I need a new phone. I’ve been holding on to my old phone out of mere nostalgia for far too long. It’s time to upgrade.

Lucky for me, the iPhone 4s just came out. Can you say Christmas present?

Also, today I learned  that the human mind is a powerful and mystifying thing.The few last days have been pretty rough for me. At first, it was all I could not to be upset all day. I was sad, but I didn’t want to be sad. I hated being sad. It sucked.

Then, I talked to my mom, and she told me that sometimes we just have to let ourselves be sad. Sometimes, we just have to indulge our emotions for a while; we have to bake some cookies and watch Harry Potter and cry if we want to. Sometimes, we just have to snuggle with our tiny kitten, go out to lunch with friends, and buy ourselves some fresh flowers at the market. At first, I didn’t want to follow my mom’s advice. I didn’t want to give in to my sadness. I just wanted it to disappear.

Then, I realized that it won’t just disappear and that I can’t just ignore it. If I want to move past my sadness, I need to acknowledge it and accept it.

So I did.

I watched a movie and ate a cookie. I went to lunch with some friends and laughed about pumpkin spicing ALL THE THINGS! I let myself cry.

And, you know what? I feel better. Today was not a terrible day. Today felt like any other day. I guess I really did just need to let my mind take some time for itself, to let it recuperate.

I know that I will probably face some more rough days in the future, but I know also that I will be okay, that I will get past it, and that I can still smile.

Today I learned that I am stronger and more independent than I thought. Today I learned that I am growing up. Today I learned a little more about who I am and who I might become.

Today, all in all, was a good day.

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Never far enough.

Sometimes I wonder why life plays cruel tricks on us. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve resolved to forget something, or to wipe it from my mind, only to find reminders of it around every corner.

In high school I couldn’t wait for college. By the middle of my Senior year, I was ready to be gone. I wanted a whole new life in a whole new place. I wanted to move beyond high school, to leave it in the past, and to embrace something entirely new. Looking back, I know this feeling of restlessness and my somewhat overwhelming feeling of needing to escape led to my obsession with moving out of state. As those of you who know me or who can recall old posts know, I did not leave my home state of Florida for college. I moved from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando – a whole three hours away. As soon as I started at UCF, I found reminders of home and my high school everywhere. I saw people from back home in my classes and walking around campus, my high school played the football states championship game in Orlando, and on and on. I felt like I’d never be far enough away from it all.

I cannot say that I felt the same when leaving UCF as I did when leaving my high school. I was so connected to UCF and to Orlando; my whole life was there. Yet, I finally achieved my goal of moving to a new state. As a friend of mine said the day before I left Florida for good, “You’ve finally done what you always said you wanted to do. That must feel great.” And it did, and it does. You learn things about yourself when you leave behind everything you’ve ever known and loved in order to pursue a dream – things that you’d never learn any other way.

I have grown and changed and become a new person in the few short weeks I’ve been here, but I’ve also been clinging to aspects of my life in Orlando. I’ve been wishing that I could have moved them here with me – my favorite UCF Starbucks, UCF’s beautiful campus that I knew like the back of my hand, my RA apartment, my level of comfort, everyone I care about. Recent events, however, have taught me that clinging to the past is the best way to ruin the present and to occlude the future. In some respects I’ve embraced my completely new life here, but under the surface, I know I’ve been desperately clutching at my comfortable UCF existence – at lunches with my older brother every week, at living mere feet from my best friend, at everything that made my life so perfect for the last few years.

I need to stop. I need to stop wishing that my UCF life will magically repeat itself here. I need to stop looking for people I know and love around every corner. I need to accept that everything is different now, even me.

And as I try to move forward, just when I think I’m no longer homesick or wishing to rewind time to the gloriousness of the summer, I’m reminded of all that I left behind in Orlando. An episode of House Hunters featured the Winter Park Farmer’s Market this afternoon, and I almost cried. I had to change the channel. I couldn’t take it – all the talk about people loving and enjoying the things I can no longer have, the things that are no longer a part of my life, the memories I want so desperately to be more than memories.

The other day I came across a quote while browsing my Pinterest feed.

You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.

It’s time for me to stop re-reading, revisiting, and attempting to rewind. It’s time for me to acknowledge the passage of time, the change of place, and the birth of a new me.

I suppose it’s time to let go.

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It happens to us all.

In my Shakespeare Seminar class on Tuesday, we discussed Macbeth, and the conversation inevitably wound around to the Weird Sisters. How could it not? I mean, come on, they’re weird. We talked about them as possible agents of evil, possible projections of Macbeth’s Calvinistic reprobate soul, and as simply ladies who can perform magic. During our discussion, my professor asked which of us, if any, believed in the supernatural. She was shocked that we were so ready to dismiss the last idea that the witches might just be witches, that they might actually have been there on the heath, doing magic, brewing potions, and conjuring ghosts. She said that she often likes to imagine her former students sitting in class with us, filling the spaces and the air with their presences. She even told us a story of her encounter with ghosts in the very building in which we have class.

Apparently, just after Seton Hall opened its doors to women, she began teaching here. Her first night on campus, she got stuck an elevator between floors and had to be hoisted out of the shaft by emergency personnel. According to my professor, the ghosts were trying to keep women off the campus. Guess I better watch my back.

Anyway, she concluded her story with “I guess it’s just the life of the English majors. We believe in the craziness. Must be why we all go crazy in the end.”

The whole class chuckled, and I couldn’t help but remember a comment on of my new friends made at Target the other night. She and I and a third were making our way through the hats, gloves, and scarves. Realizing how many strange items Target carries this time of year, we began to take turns picking out the funniest, most outlandish hats and scarves (and hats with attached scarves and scarves with attached hoods) we could find. I started to try a couple on just for  some fun, and as they got more and more ridiculous, my new friend commented that I seemed able to get away with many of them. “For some reason they don’t look so crazy on you,” she said. “Must be the English major thing. I feel like you guys can get away with anything.”

I suppose it’s true. We English folk have a history of craziness. We push the limits of societal norms, and many of us spend our last days in the looney bin.

But isn’t that what makes life fun? I say embrace the crazy.

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Magnetism.

I read an article today about gender theory, and while I understood almost nothing (thank you, by the way, literary theorists of yore, for always choosing a three-syllable word when a one-syllable word would suffice; you make my life so very much easier), I found one particular sentence rather interesting:

Knowledge, after all, is not itself power, although it is the magnetic field of power.

– Eve Sedgewick, “Axiomatic”

This line stuck out to me so much that I even copied onto the back cover of my notebook so I’d be able to come back to it later. I suppose later is now.

The simple idea of stripping knowledge-for-knowledge’s-sake of power seems rather simple, yet our society appears to hold the opposite view. Children are expected to attend college because it gives them knowledge which gets them a better job. People pursue higher degrees to accumulate more knowledge, and we bestow them with fancy titles like Master of Arts or Doctor of Philosophy. Knowledge seems to hold some sway, at least in the general population, but I find myself asking the same question Eve Sedgewick introduces in the line I quoted: is simply acquiring enough? Shouldn’t we go further, do something with that knowledge we’ve accumulated, change the world?

It is in our actions and in our exercising our knowledge for the betterment of others that we gain true power – in how our actions, and very lives, affect those around us. Although this train of thought takes me down a very different passage than I’m sure Sedgewick ever intended or thought her work would transport a reader, I feel my meditations are especially applicable to my current position in life.

Over the last few days, I’ve come to understand just how important friendship is. Friendship, like Sedgewick’s knowledge, is magnetic at times. What draws two people together from across a library table, a crowded coffee shop, a classroom, or a world? How do we manage to find friends who seem to know us better than we know ourselves? How would we ever survive without this powerful, magnetic, magical (to quote a dear friend of mine) bond with another person?

In the Middle Ages, people believed that everyone had invisible darts of light shooting from his eyes. They believed that when we found a person with whom a strong relationship was possible, our eye darts would connect with his. The idea of friendship (or love) at first sight seems especially well founded in this idea – this idea that assigns a supernatural power to human relationships, that takes human relationships to a magical level, a level beyond our control or understanding.

Friendship changes people; it changes worlds. I know that my friends bring out the best in me, for if they didn’t, I wouldn’t bother maintaining the relationship. I would not and could not be the person I am today without the influence of friendships both past and present, and I hope that others can say the same about me. It’s a scary thing, friendship. Trusting another person with a piece of yourself, asking that person to keep it safe, to keep you safe. But, in being a terrifying thing, it is also a beautiful thing, a magical thing. Like knowledge friendships can be accumulated and stored on shelves (or Facebook profiles), left to be admired for their quantity rather than quality. Yet, in doing so, we erase the very fabric of the relationship – change it at its core – for it is no longer a relationship, but a title.

Friendship is a powerful force, yet, like knowledge, it must be cultivated, worked for, maintained, and exercised. Friendships cannot exist in a vacuum. They are meant to change lives, to change worlds.

I count myself lucky to have friends across the nation, and even some across the world, for whom I am willing to cry, to whom I am willing give my time and trust, for whom I work and strive to be a better person. Friendship is work, yes, but in the end, when you’ve met the right people, those who are willing to give all same effort, that work becomes magic.

Let there be more magic in the world. Let it start with you and circle back to you.

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More transitions.

I’ve been making the transition from my old Windows PC (Henry) to my new MacBook Air over the past week or so. So far, I’ve been loving everything. There are a couple little things that have stopped me up and frustrated me, but overall, I’m very happy with my decision to make the change to an Apple computer.

The thing I love most about my new MacBook is its size. I’ve decided to name her Heidi because she’s so skinny. I can carry her all the way to campus, around campus all day, and all the way home without my shoulder cramping even once. It’s glorious. Anyway, I’ve also run into some problems. For instance, my blog updates no longer automatically appear on my Facebook. I’ve read a few suggestions about fixing this issue, but nothing seems to work. Boo. Also, my iCal app keeps giving me an error code when it tries to sync with my google calendar. Second boo. In the long run, these are minor issues, but if anyone has any ideas about how to fix these problems, I’d greatly appreciate the help.

It amazes me how far technology has come over the last several years – even just in my own lifetime. The fact that I have this tiny computer that weighs maybe 2 pounds that can access the Internet from anywhere, sync with all of my other devices, and still look super streamlined and beautiful amazes me. I’ve really been missing all of my friends from Orlando and my family and friends from back home in South Florida recently, but with e-mail, Facebook, and my phone, I can talk to them whenever I want. Yesterday, I was working on a paper for my Shakespeare class and was sorely missing one of my best friend’s input. We used to spend hours in the library (or the Starbucks, depending on how late we’d been studying the night before) bouncing ideas off each other. I’ve been missing that. Most of my friends here in NJ are Diplomacy students and not very much help when it comes to analyzing Shakespeare. Through a Facebook message, an email, and a text, we were able to recreate our study session technologically. How great is that?

I’ve also had friends who hate the idea that new technology enables us to be accessed at any moment, that we can’t stop the deluge of information and demands on our time. I see their point, and remember one friend in particular who decided to give up on Facebook for a while to see how many people would actually in keep in touch with her via phone only. It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure I 100% buy the idea that Facebook, email, and other avenues of social media remove all personal connection from our interactions with others. Sure, I can’t hear my friends’ voices when I talk to them via Facebook messages or texts, but I still share my thoughts, feelings, and emotions with them. Yes, I miss seeing my boyfriend in person every day, but I also smile every time his name pops up on my phone because he’s sent me a text message. I still have a connection to the person behind the technology. Rather than a telephone as the vessel for communication, I have a computer. Is that so bad?

Transitions are a natural part of life. That’s what I’ve learned. Embrace the change.