It's been a long time

A tranquil river that winds its way through the Korean Folk Village in Suwon, South Korea

It has been quite awhile since I have posted to this space. Not because nothing has been happening, or because I had nothing to say...more because not blogging about anything was a way to avoid articulating things I didn't want to confront. 2014 was a year I am glad to put behind me. I was looking forward to things being different in 2015, but alas, thus far things are continuing in very much the same vein.

An apartment building in San Francisco, California, near Chinatown

It wasn't that I experienced terrible tragedies in 2014 -- on the contrary, I had some amazing opportunities and experiences last year. It was that everything seemed to be piling on top of me all at once: school, my personal life (such as it is...), my home life, important decisions to be made, fears about my future, constant challenges and fears in my immediate family circle, significant financial worries, continual car problems, depression about my current struggles and challenges, etc. It was a constant barrage of small- to medium-sized things that slowly piled higher and higher and higher.

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California

I did some amazing things last year, though -- I visited California (San Francisco and Los Angeles) for the first time, I got to visit Seoul again for the first time in four years, my family moved across the United States to live the same state as me and I got to spend the holidays with them, I met amazing people, I learned a lot about myself and my Heavenly Father, I experienced in a very real way being carried by grace through trials and challenges that I knew were too big for me, but not too big for Him. It was a very instructive year, but it wasn't a very fun one.

Brightly painted beams support a tiled roof on the walls of the outer court at Gyeongbok Palace (the former imperial residence) in the middle of Seoul, South Korea

This is my last semester of graduate school (for now, anyway -- who knows, I may be crazy enough to go back to school and do it again sometime down the road), thank goodness. But that means two sources of stress coming to bear on me at the same time: 1) the aforementioned thesis, and 2) being finished with school means now there's a big fat question mark on every day after 9 May 2015.

North Korean guards on duty at the border of North and South Korea, Panmunjom, in the DMZ

Right now, the main source of my stress, anxiety, depression, fear, sense of inadequacy, and trepidation is my Master's thesis. (That doesn't mean that the second isn't also making its presence felt, however.) My thesis is about the first half of the first volume of Kim Il Sung's collected Works, which is supposed to contain speeches, etc that he gave from the summer of 1930 until the end of 1943. (The last half of the volume covers just a few months in 1945, following the end of World War II when the Japanese, who had been occupying Korea for the last 35 years, were defeated and Korea was "liberated".) Kim Il Sung would have been just barely 18 in the summer of 1930, and the events as they are narrated in this portion of the Works don't match up with the history most historians and Korean scholars accept. That being said, what the Works claims Kim Il Sung said was most likely fabricated out of whole cloth -- the topic of my thesis is exploring why that portion of the Works was written the way it was.

A South Korean soldier guards the door that leads to North Korea in a conference room that straddles the border -- he and I are both standing on ground that is technically in North Korea

I was due to turn in my finished draft to my committee this last week, but when I met with my advisor to give her a (very) rough first draft two weeks ago, she was concerned that I would need more time. I didn't want to move my date back because 1) if I did, I would no longer be able to graduate in May (but I could still walk in the graduation ceremony), and 2) I was afraid that with too much extra time I would just procrastinate everything until one and a half weeks before the new due date anyway. But to make a long story short, she (and the other members of my committee) won the battle and I'm now defending at the end of April, and due to turn in my draft to my advisor the Monday after spring break (~sob~ for my spring break turning into thesis-writing time...).

On the street in Sinchon-dong, Seoul, South Korea, an area popular with college students

It's a discouraging turn of events, but it does give me the opportunity to practice confronting my fears and sense of inadequacy and not procrastinate. I'm trying to look at it from that point of view and not be depressed about this stress continuing through the next two months of my life instead of being over in three short weeks. That will teach me to put things off...

The aforementioned Gyeongbok Palace at sunset

San Fran! (and the end of the semester)

This last week I spent traveling to and exploring the Bay Area. It's the first time I've ever been to California, actually (unless you count the approximately 45 minutes I was in LAX before getting on a plane to Korea once). I don't think I would choose to live here, but it's a wonderful place to visit! I came to see a friend graduate from Berkeley Law (which she did, this last Saturday), but I spent a few days exploring and sight-seeing before her graduation.

But first! A quick summary of the end of the Spring 2014 semester, aka the worst two weeks of my entire life (and it was my own fault). The last week in particular was pretty terrible -- maybe even more terrible than the last week of the Fall 2013 semester, and that one ended with a 30+-hour drive home to Tennessee after only about 15 hours of sleep the whole week. I am so relieved the semester is over! My longest paper was due Monday (April 28) afternoon, but was just less than halfway finished by Saturday night. I started working on it at about 12:30am Sunday morning and it was finished about eleven hours later -- or rather, it was done enough to turn in so I could get started on my other responsibilities. Tuesday I wrote my last paper, for my Research Methods class, and Wednesday I turned it in, met with two of my professors to discuss my other papers, and then spent the afternoon frantically packing up all my things so I could move them into a storage unit. Luckily, my cousin came to help me out. It took the two of us about four hours to finish packing up everything and get it into the storage unit. Unfortunately, in the rush I managed to forget the one thing I have to have to go to Korea -- my passport! Thankfully, I remembered (whilst almost having a heart attack), I was able to make a quick pitstop to pick it up at my storage unit on my way out of SLC the following Monday (May 5). That night (April 30), after dropping everything off at the unit, I drove up to Layton and spent the night at my cousin and his wife's new house, and spent most of May 1 with them having a great time! I'm so grateful to be friends with my cousins, because you have to see them anyway, so you might as well enjoy it, right?

The evening of May 1 I drove up to Logan to my grandma's house and stayed there for a few days. While I was there I got to hang out with my friends and I even got to see my little brother graduate from college! I also "got" to help him move his stuff out of his apartment and clean it, but hey, I love him and he paid for the movie we went to afterward (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - awesome!).

Monday morning, bright and early, Mr. Farmer came and got me and we started driving west. We got on I-80 and basically drove until it dead-ended into the ocean. We stopped in Reno for the night on the way, where the place we were staying was hosting a bunch of bowlers. It turns out that's because the National Bowling Stadium is right across the street (and was visible from my room window). We didn't stay there long, though; we packed up and left by 9am the next morning and made it to the Bay Area by lunchtime. On our way to where we were staying that night (on an old Navy base that's now been taken over by NASA), we drove past Facebook's headquarters. Their sign doesn't have their name all big on it, just the "like" symbol and the address.

While we were staying on Moffett Field, we saw the skeleton of an old airship hanger that must have been at least twenty stories high, if not thirty, and the door were massive! They moved on what were essentially railroad tracks, they were so big. (I have pictures of most of these things I'm talking about on my Instagram.) We spent that evening and the next morning exploring Palo Alto, which is about twenty miles south of San Fran and were a lot of rich people live, it seems. That afternoon we picked up Mr. Farmer's nephew, Jim, at the San Fran airport and checked into our hotel in downtown San Fran. The view was great! It's just as hilly as all the movies make it out to be, too. And windy! I think the weather's been amazing, but there are a lot of people walking around with coats and scarves on still, which confuses me, but apparently they think it's cold.

The next day, Thursday, we got up early and went to explore the pier area, specifically Pier 39 (which is basically a massive tourist attraction). We saw the seals that live on the docks, ate some yummy bread from Boudin (they even make bread in the shape of animals!), and took a lot of pictures. Then around noon we hopped onto a ferry boat and headed out to Alcatraz in the middle of the bay! It was the only thing Jim insisted on doing, and I was skeptical, but it was really interesting. It was also very, very sobering. Not that I've ever wanted to commit a crime, but now I really, really don't want to. Alcatraz the island was actually not that bad -- windy, but gardens have been carefully planted and tended (as they were during the time it was a prison island), and you can't beat the view from the island. And the prison wasn't exactly dank and dark like dungeons in old movies -- but it would be damp with all the fog SF gets and I'm sure it would have been cold with all the wind whistling around and the entire structure being made out of concrete and steel. They have a really great audio tour of the cell-house that has some commentary by actual former prisoners and guards and they talk about what it was like and some of their experiences. It was definitely much more compelling because of that; otherwise it would have been a slightly chilly concrete room with a lot of empty cells. Hearing the men talk about it made it much easier to imagine what living in those cells would have been like. So all you kids, stay in school and don't do drugs and obey your parents! Trust me, you don't want to end up in prison.

Thursday evening we stopped to see the Golden Gate bridge on our way to meet up with Mr. Farmer's daughter and her boyfriend (who was also graduating from Berkeley Law). We had dinner at Chevy's and had some yummy ice cream for dessert. By the time we got back to the hotel we were exhausted, but it was a fun day. Friday we met her in Berkeley (we took the BART (that's the name of the subway! Bay Area Rapid Transit, BART for short) and she showed us around the law school and the Berkeley campus and some of the area around the school and the downtown. We ate lunch at a pizza place downtown called Jupiter, which was wonderful! Then we came back to San Fran and I left Mr. F and Jim and went shoe shopping (they wouldn't have enjoyed it) and spent some time in my room until we ventured out into Chinatown for dinner. We ate at a great Chinese restaurant, House of Nanking, which unfortunately was not a dive but actually pretty clean and well-kept (dives are my favorite, and usually have the best food, but this place was still really good, if not as atmospheric).

Saturday was Chris's graduation! It started at 9am, so we left our hotel at 6:30am to make sure we weren't late (we were more than an hour early). As far as graduations go this one wasn't too bad, but there were so many people! After the reception, we all went our separate ways and I tried to find a Korean restaurant in the area Daddy told me about. I wasn't able to find it, but I did find another Korean place that looked almost exactly like it had been transported intact straight from Korea to Berkeley. I had some yummy bibimbap there and did a little more exploring before I headed back into San Fran, where I did a little shopping (but I couldn't really buy anything because I only have my carryon) before going back to spend a little time in my room. Then I had a fun adventure! Someone must have tripped the fire alarm (accidentally or not), because I was happily updating my Instagram with pictures of my adventures when it went off about 9pm~ish. At first I thought it was an accident or a joke, but all of us pounded down the stairways to the pavement outside nonetheless. Two honest-to-goodness fire trucks came racing up the street, sirens blazing and lights twirling, and some real, live firemen went into our building and checked everything out. Thankfully, there was no fire, but it did make last night the most interesting and exciting Saturday night I've had in a long, long time!

Which brings me to yesterday. Ever since the semester ended, I haven't been able to sleep past 7:30am, and coming out to an earlier time zone has made it worse! I wake up rarin' to go between 6 and 6:30 and can't get back to sleep, and this morning was no exception. So I got up and packed up all my stuff, then walked about 1.5 miles to the nearest church building for church. It was a lovely service and the people made me feel so welcome!

Right now I'm in the LA area enjoying hanging out with my darling Julia! So I'm going to go do that now. ^_^ Thursday morning, bright and early (7am!) I'll fly off into the sunrise, headed for Korea. My friend Sooyeon will pick me up at the airport Friday night (Korea-time) and I'll stay with her for a bit and also try to visit as many of my Korean friends as possible before my classes start on 3 June.

Grown-up Clothes

"Dress to make yourself feel like who you are."

                                                       - Duncan Quinn (here at The Sartorialist)

I read that quote this morning. It could be taken two ways: 1) You know who you are and you dress like it because you're awesome that way and don't feel the need to hide or change that, or 2) You don't feel like who you are (...or are supposed to be) so you dress yourself so you do feel like who you are. I think I fall into the second category. 

...this picture notwithstanding. This was really posed and a tiny snapshot in time. Also, you can't see that underneath I'm wearing my pajamas t-shirt. 

As a newly-minted graduate student and a 27-year-old, I've been paying a lot more attention to "grown-up" clothes and fashion and style in general than I ever have before. I think I've avoided paying much attention to fashion and style because, let's face it, it makes me feel really insecure. If you're not trying, then when you look like a slob you can reassure yourself by saying, "Well, I'm not really trying. If I tried I'd look great. And besides, I'm so comfortable." When you try and you still look bad...well, that just hurts.

Still, being taken seriously as an adult with intelligent ideas is easier when you look the part - whether or not you feel the part. And so I've been making an effort to dress more like a graduate student...whatever that means. To me, ideally, that looks something like this:

All images from What Would a Nerd Wear, which I just discovered and is sadly no longer active.

Yeah, I never go to school dressed like that. I'd like to, though. But let's face it: I'm never going to wear heels to walk around campus. They're too uncomfortable. And I'm only just now warming up to wearing a skirt to church, let alone to school all day. Again, it's about comfort. And I hate shopping. Sadly, my head and my heart are on different fashion pages -- my head's all, "Get up and get ready! Don't you want to look cute and have people take you seriously?" and my heart's all, "Heck, I'm just gonna wear those baggy jeans and my hoodie. Who doesn't love hoodies?" It's a daily battle, one that I'm sad to admit usually ends in a negotiated cease-fire, rather than a victory for my head.

Most days I manage to not wear the baggy jeans and hoodie, which I am pretty proud of. About half the time I even make it out the door with eyeliner and mascara on, which whoa. That's a big deal. For my next stride forward in the fashion world, I think I'm going to need to learn to do something with my hair other than put it in a ponytail or a bun. Or at least learn how to make them cuter.

August Update

It's been more than a month since I've updated, possibly the longest time I've ever gone without writing on my blog since I started. The problem isn't that I haven't had enough to write about, but that I had too much. It's been a crazy, stressful month.

The first half of August I spent tying up loose ends at my jobs in Logan. There were a lot of things to do at my office job, in particular. We had to hire someone to replace me, and then she spent a few days with me learning the ropes. It never seems like you do a lot until you have to tell someone else all about what you do, and then you do way too much. My nannying job didn't require anything like that, but the little girl I'd been taking care of turned one the Monday of the last week I was there, and of course there's a lot of hullabaloo for that momentous birthday. (On a side note, it seems that one is the magic number for the kids I nanny, something akin to Cinderella's midnight curfew: the day after the first little boy I nannied turned one I left to move to Utah; just a week after the little girl I nannied turned one I moved to SLC.)

And there was that weekend -- the weekend before I moved -- that I got sick and puked my guts out every hour or so all night. That was fun.

About a week later, I moved down here to SLC with no place to live. A kind friend generously lent me the use of an empty room in her basement for a few weeks while I searched for a place to live, but come 1 September I would have to be in my own place. Needless to say, not having a plan or a permanent place to live -- not to mention living out of half-unpacked suitcases and boxes -- has been stressful. Add in going back to school and some fun hormones, and the latter half of August has been...interesting. I did find a place, though, and just in time -- I signed the lease to rent a room in a small house with three other girls yesterday morning.

To say it was a relief is a huge understatement. I found the place last Wednesday, but it wasn't until this Thursday morning that the landlord told me he'd decided to rent to me. The wait was interminable and nerve-wracking, especially since I wanted to live there so much. The house is located in a quiet family neighborhood just off a major road that goes past the university. It's got two bedrooms, a living room, a small bathroom, a small kitchen, and a small dining room upstairs and a laundry room, a small bathroom, and two bedrooms downstairs. It has a decently sized backyard (with a laundry line! I'm excited to hang my sheets out to dry) and a small front yard. All the other girls are RMs (returned missionaries), and all are about my age, going to school or working. I have one of the upstairs rooms, which is a real blessing. After living in basements intermittently over the last two and a half years, I've learned that basements are not a good place for me. I need good natural light to stay happy and positive. More details and pictures to follow when I actually move in.

And school. Graduate school. That started last Monday, the 26th. I even remembered to take the traditional first-day-of-school picture! Since no one was around to take it of me, I had to do it selfie style.

My schedule isn't very grueling. Because I'm a grad student, I only have to take nine hours to be full-time. Because I have the FLAS Fellowship, I'm not allowed to work. And because the Asian Studies MA program at the U is interdepartmental and very, very small (think seven people total), I'm taking all undergraduate classes for graduate credit. I also have a couple of Institute classes, but they don't require work outside class, and I'll be spending a few hours a week helping with a professor's research study for one of my classes. And I have no classes on Fridays.

My goal for this year is to treat graduate school like a job: up to campus by nine, and no going home until five. Hopefully this schedule will allow me to do all my work during those hours on campus and I won't have to bring anything home with me. That was the best part about working: once you're home, you're done. No homework, no papers, no readings. All your time is yours. I loved having guilt-free free time in the evenings, and I'm hoping to preserved that. Thus far I haven't done too great...but I'm working on it.

Grad School Is Happening

I've made some big changes in my living space and I just got back from an awesome vacation, but this is all I'll share for right now:

It's happening!

A Journey Without a Destination Is More Like Aimless Wandering, Part II

Here I am. I'm 26, barely graduated from my undergrad, working two part-time jobs (but thankfully with insurance), and I've got a GRE Analytical Writing score that could very well keep me out of grad school. (At least this year.) The kicker is that when I checked, I saw that I only needed another half-point (or a 4.5) to jump all the way to the 73rd percentile. Basically, the difference between my reader being in a good or generous mood and s/he being anxious to get home or go to lunch. When there's a-- wait, let me do the math...29 percentage-point difference in just a half a point on your scale, you need a new scale.

Mostly I'm just mad. But there's another part of me, a not-very-small-and-in-fact-growing-increasingly-larger part of me, that wonders what the heck I do now. To be honest, I decided to apply to grad school more because I'm not too keen on continuing to do what I'm doing now more than because I finally know what I want to do with my life. Having an MA at least means I can start looking for work in my field, or I could move on to a more prestigious program and get a Ph.D. I figured the U would be a good choice; I could finally take some formal Korean classes, deepen my understanding of the culture and history of the region, and yet the tuition wouldn't totally break the bank and I'd have a decent shot at a fellowship, not to mention friends and family who live in the area. And the U is thankfully in a bigger city than Logan. It would be a leap of faith, but not a huge one.

So...now what? I could take the GRE again, but that's another $175 and I'd have no more time to prepare than I did last time. Not to mention, because I waited so long to take it the first time, now I have only about two dates I could even take it -- and that close to the application deadline, there's no guarantee that they'd receive my scores in time, anyway. I could call up the ETS people and keep squeaking until they give me some grease and take another look at my writing score, but let's face it, the probability of that happening is slim to none. I could throw myself on the mercy of the admissions committee at the U and try to explain my way into getting them to admit me. Or I could just give up.

Honestly, that last option was my first inclination. Just throw my hands up and say, Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it and resign myself to being a 26-year-old BA working two part-time jobs in a small city with no real job prospects in her field (but thankfully with insurance). But isn't that too pathetic? I already feel like I'm a pretty amazing failure, but that would really take the cake, no matter how much I just want to sit down and have a good cry. It's hard to feel upbeat when I look at so many of my friends and peers and they're working on their Ph.D.s or Master's, or traveling the world, or living and working in other countries, or gainfully employed and have cars and houses and kids.

Even worse than the (not inconsiderable) blow to my pride is the lack of direction, the shattering of expectations. I don't know what I want to do with my life. The pointlessness of it all is inciting an existential crisis. I want to do something, but it's eternally frustrating that I just don't know what. I wish I had that clarity of purpose and utter conviction I had as a three-year-old who wanted to be a ballerina. I'd settle for the naive confidence of the high school sophomore who was convinced she wanted to be a biochemist. (Whew, dodged that bullet.) Heck, I'd love to even have the optimism of the brand-new college freshman who wanted to become an English professor.

What am I doing with this time I'll never get back? Nothing very fulfilling. Please don't mistake me, I am so grateful to have a way to support myself, somewhere warm and dry to live, good food to eat, a little expendable income for fun things and to pay down my student loans a little faster, a family who loves and supports me, and an education. I am tremendously blessed, and even if that was all I had I'd still be one of the richest people alive. I've been trying to concentrate on those things, and I've been glad to be here in Logan for some things happening in my life and in the lives of people around me, but I feel like I'm stagnating here. The problem is I don't know where I want to go, let alone how to get there, to get myself moving and cease stagnating. I have no idea what the future holds or why this happened to me when everything suggested it wouldn't. I don't know what I want. I don't know what God wants me to want. I feel like every time I think I do know, it turns out not to be the case...? At this point I just want to stay in bed all day and stare at my ceiling.

A Journey Without a Destination Is More Like Aimless Wandering, Part I

The annoying thing about life is that it's impossible to do perfectly.

As much as I would like to be able to, I can't. And sometimes, Life throws you a curveball just to drive that home.

When I graduated earlier this year, I had no idea what I was going to do next. I'd kind of decided to move to Korea to teach English, and so I hadn't worried about doing silly things like taking the GRE or filling out a FAFSA. Well, Korea didn't pan out, much to my disappointment, and so I spent the summer pretty much lollygagging around until I finally got my act together and found a job. Then I got a second job because the first job was only half time. I vaguely figured I'd work for a year, pay down some of my student loan debt and regain my sanity, then plunge back into school the next fall.

It was a good plan. Okay, at least it wasn't a bad plan.

The only problem was, I forgot that grad school is not something you decide to do and just do in the spur of the moment. You have to plan ahead, waaaaay ahead, and do silly things like take the GRE and fill out a bunch of applications and ask a lot of people to write letters of recommendation and fill out the FAFSA. By the time I realized, Crap, I have to take the GRE and start looking at schools stat if I want to go to grad school in the fall! it was already early October. But the whole thought of that (and all the money it would require) was so overwhelming I procrastinated dealing with it. Finally, in early November I bit the bullet and went for it...but many of the places I was looking at had application deadlines on 1 December or in the middle of the month. If I wanted to even have a shot at applying to them I'd have to have my GRE results in to them by then, which means I'd have to take it in the middle of November at the latest. So I registered, paid my money (watching $175 go out of my bank account just for the pleasure of taking a test hurt a little bit), and took the test on 15 November at 8:00 in the morning.

I spent the lion's share of what little prep time I invested reviewing math concepts I was supposed to have mastered in middle school and the first couple years of high school. I'm sure this will not come as a shock to any who know me, but my mastery of math concepts basically stops at multiplication...if that. My grasp of even basic math was pretty rusty at best. I was not terribly worried about the vocabulary sections, since I knew about 90% of the words on the vocab lists in the prep book I borrowed from the library. (Let's face it, with my parents and my bookworm childhood, I'd be worried if I didn't.) Likewise, I was pretty confident about the analytic writing portion; if I managed to procrastinate every single paper I'd ever written at USU (some pretty spectacularly) and still not lose any points, I figured a half-hour to write one one-page essay was not going to be terribly taxing.

What's that scripture again? "Pride goeth before the fall"? (More accurately, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. But it still applies.)

The morning of the GRE I wasn't feeling too bad about life. Nervous, but confident. I'd said my prayers, and I figured any Asian Studies program probably wasn't going to look too closely at my math score anyway so I'd be okay. The analytical writing section came first, and I felt like I did a good job on the two essay prompts I'd been given. I asked the Lord for the inspiration and guidance of the Spirit and for His help in doing my best, and I felt like I'd received it. I moved into my first math section feeling confident. (I didn't end it feeling confident, but that's a whole 'nother ball game.) The rest of the GRE went pretty quickly, especially the verbal sections -- I finished those with almost half the time to spare. The new computerized version of the GRE tells you your raw scores for the math and verbal sections as soon as you're done taking the test, so I knew I'd done okay with a 163 in verbal and a 154 in quantitative. I left feeling pretty upbeat, which was only confirmed when I looked up the table that converts your raw score into the percentile score grads schools use for admissions. I was 91st percentile in verbal and 60th in math, definitely good enough to satisfy admissions requirements. I was sure that when I got my writing scores I'd get a 5.0 or a 5.5 (out of 6.0) and be fine.

I realize that sounds incredibly cocky, but nothing in my education to that point had ever given me reason to disabuse myself of that notion, so you can imagine my utter shock when I opened my official scores Sunday morning to see a glaring "4.0 -- 49th %ile" staring back at me. I've never been hit with a 2x4 before, but I imagine the feeling of stunned bewilderment and disorientation is somewhat similar to how I felt at that moment. In case your math is as bad as mine, the 49th percentile is 21 percentage points shy of the 70 I needed to be admitted to the program I was most seriously considering, the Asian Studies MA at the University of Utah. The 49th percentile is average. Average. I went down to my room and sobbed.

The thing is, I realize that I'm being compared to other takers of the GRE, who are on average a smarter  bunch of people (or at least better test-takers) than your average US citizen. I know that, I do. Yet I find it utterly incomprehensible that my math score could be higher than my writing score, ever. Maybe back when I was two and learning to count but couldn't read yet. Definitely not now, not after not taking any math class for more than two years and not having a "real" math class since my second semester at UTM taking college algebra (and I got a B, by the way) more than six years ago. I felt like calling up ETS then and there and demanding to know how the heck this had happened. But I'm a chicken so I didn't. Now I'm desperately scrambling to find a way to fix this and I feel like my life has just been knocked into a flat spin. This post, however, is getting long, so I'll talk more about that in my next post.

A Jaunt Down Memory Lane

I was going through my documents folder on my computer this afternoon when I realized it was a little messy. As I started to tidy it up, I opened a few folders I haven't looked through in years, the ones containing all my papers from high school and my first few years of college. I started opening them and reading them, and boy, what a hoot! I have a pathological need to take myself hyperseriously, and it shows. But anyway. I opened and read one particular essay I wrote for my favorite English professor of all time, the amazing Dr. Bradshaw, during my very first semester of college. I don't remember exactly the assignment; something about narrating a small, seemingly insignificant moment. I wrote mine about the moment it really, truly hit me that I was graduating from high school. Now, seven years later, having just barely graduated from college (but having yet to have that same moment of realization about graduating from college), I thought that it was a timely piece of writing to pull out and dust off.

* * * * *

Photo from the Fuller Partners' website, here.

It was a trip I'd taken a thousand times before.

The car windows were rolled all the way down, and my arm was draped over the side of the door, weaving in and out of the stream of air that rushed past. Sweaty hair, pulled back into a messy ponytail, whipped back and forth with every gust, leaving stinging trails across my cheeks. Outside, the sun shone fiercely in its slow, daily trek to the west. The azure sky burned a brilliant blue. A few wispy clouds hung determinedly to the horizon, but the vault of heaven remained clear of any friendly clouds that might wander across the path of the sun and cloak its blazing wrath. Denied their rightful place high above our heads, they had settled for sending their moisture to saturate the still air down below, smothering us in what felt like a hot, wet blanket.

The radio blared yet another song about a guy and a girl falling in love, or maybe falling out of love; it was hard to be sure. Beside me in the front seat, my sister sat looking out at the familiar trees and houses flashing past her open window. She pulled absently at the clammy tee-shirt that clung to her. “How do you think practice went?” she asked over the sound of the radio and the rushing air.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied, shrugging. “I think we made some improvements, definitely. T-man seemed happy with what we got done.” I, too, pulled at the tee-shirt clinging to my sticky, sweaty skin. A bead of moisture escaped my hairline and rolled down my cheek; another traced a leisurely line down my neck. “Considering that it’s about fifty million degrees outside, he should be happy we didn’t all collapse and die of heat exhaustion.”

She nodded. “I think things are finally coming together. There are still a lot of rough edges, but I think we’ll do well on Saturday.”

I glanced at her briefly before turning my eyes back to the road. “Yeah, me too.” 

* * *

We traveled down the same road, the two of us, this time going in the other direction. Not much had changed, if anything at all. The placement of the cars in the driveways, maybe.

This time, the windows remained up, so as not to muss meticulously arranged hair, or displace carefully chosen clothes. Instead, the air conditioner quietly blew chilled air across our faces and ruffled the filmy fabrics of our best black pants. I curled my feet in my high heeled shoes; the cool air was making my bare toes cold.

My sister flipped down the passenger-side visor, peered intently at the mirror attached to the back of it. She looked down quickly and rummaged through the contents of the bag perched precariously on the seat next to her. “Where is it, where is it…stupid mascara,” she muttered.

I glanced over, amused. A little foundation and eyeshadow was all that was involved in my toilette. “You were supposed to do all that before we left.”

She waved a hand at me absently, and continued digging. “Yeah, but I didn’t get to put my…ah hah! I found it!” She held it up triumphantly. “I didn’t have time to put any mascara on before we left, I had to eat.” Her mouth open and eyes wide in concentration, she carefully brushed the black goop onto her eyelashes. She finished and thrust the wand back into its tube. “I wish we could wear lipstick,” she complained. “Makeup just doesn’t look right when you can’t do your mouth.”

“Come on,” I said. “You know that’s not practical. You can’t wear lipstick because if you did, your horn would slide all over the place and you couldn’t play. And it’d get all in your horn and would be the devil to clean.”

“I know,” she sighed. “But still, it would be nice to wear it just once.”

* * *

The same trees and houses and cars I had seen countless times slid silently past the window of the car. In four years, nothing significant had changed.

I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat in the back of the car, tugging at my skirt, trying to pull it down over my knees. The scratchy wool resisted my efforts, stubbornly riding up again. Skirts, I thought darkly, are not my thing. I sighed and shook my head a little, blowing a few loose strands of hair out of my eyes. Despite the care I’d taken to pin it back, my hair was just as stubborn as my skirt in the matter of staying where I wanted it.

A hand involuntarily rose to scrub at my eyes, but stopped just short of actually touching them. Nuh uh, I thought sternly at myself. No touching. Don’t smear mascara and eyeshadow all over your face.

Mom and Dad chatted amiably in the front seat, occasionally directing a comment to the backseat and my sister or me. I was reaching for my chapstick when it hit me.

“I’m not wearing any lipstick,” I said blankly. “I’m not wearing lip gloss, either.”

Mom looked back at me, confused. “So?”

“So,” I said, “so…I can wear lipstick. I don’t have to play tonight. I’m not in the band anymore, so it doesn’t matter. I’m not wearing any lipstick,” I repeated dazedly.

My sister stared at me, then said slowly, “You’re right. You’re not in band anymore. You’re graduating…”

You’re not in band anymore.

The words echoed silently through my head. I’m not in high school anymore, I thought, sitting back numbly. I’m graduating.

I call this my Victory Series: Announcing that I'm official DONE with my undergrad!

This is me on my very last day of classes, 26 April, going into my last college class.

This is me today, right before my very last undergraduate final EVER.

And this is me afterwards. I mean, I guess I'm happy or something. Or something. Yeah.

And this is what I did to celebrate. I call it The Taste of Accomplishment.

Full-blown panic is starting to set in.




Three more days, three more tests, and one more paper to graduation.

Minority / Majority

I wrote this essay for my Perspectives on Race class that I'm taking right now. It's an interesting class, for all that we mostly just sit around discussing the issue more than trying to find an answer. Which begs the question, Is there an answer? We were supposed to write about a time that we were a minority or a time we were discriminated against, so I chose to write about living in South Korea. We were supposed to keep it to two pages (it's a large class, over 80 people), but I could have written a lot more on the subject if I'd had the space. If I had written more, I think I would have included more about what I learned and discussed in greater detail the treatment I received while I was there. But here's what I did get written.



"It's hard to be a minority when you're white and middle-class and living in America. I was never “normal”, per se, but I didn't stick out too much if you just looked at me. Which is why moving to South Korea for a year and a half rocked my world so much.

The United States may seem like the bastion of white middle-class-ness, but compared to South Korea it's incredibly diverse ethnically and culturally. For the first time in my life, I was the outsider in every way it was possible to be outside the norm: I wasn't ethnically Asian, I didn't speak the language, I couldn't eat the food, and the culture was totally foreign to me. I couldn't walk the walk or talk the talk, and I definitely didn't look the look.



My time in Korea wasn't my first experience being a minority – I grew up in an LDS family smack dab in the middle of the small-town, Bible Belt American South – but it was the first time people stared at me before I opened my mouth. In fact, I didn't have to do anything other than exist to get looks, both covert and overt, as I walked down the street. I was used to being “strange” because of what I believed and certain things I did or didn't do, but I wasn't equipped to handle the curious stares and whispers that trailed in my wake. I had years of experience explaining myself and my religion to skeptical and sometimes even hostile listeners; but now I couldn't communicate more than a few halting sentences, and anyway how can you confront people for merely looking at you? What could I have said?

My initial reaction to being so utterly foreign was a crippling self-consciousness. I tried to comfort myself by telling myself that not everyone was staring, but the truth was most people were. I'm average height in America, but in Korea I'm on the tall side. My hair, though light brown, is naturally wavy instead of heavy and straight. Even bundled up against the cold as I was there was no mistaking my double-lidded green eyes, and the weak winter sun and harsh wind only made my skin paler and my cheeks redder. It didn't help that little old ladies would come up to me, fascinated, and pat me on the back. You look just like a doll! they'd exclaim, reaching up to run their fingers through my hair. Is it natural? they asked.



After a few weeks self-consciousness gave way to anger. Stop looking at me! I wanted to shout. I'm just minding my own business, riding the bus just like you. Have you never seen a white girl before?! But of course they probably hadn't, not up close, and so the anger never made it past my thoughts. In time, the anger faded into amusement and the amusement faded into indifference. The stares and the whispers, the pats and the questions and the exclamations – they were all just part of life. It became such a part of life that coming home and fitting in again was almost as much a shock as sticking out had been when I first got to Korea.

I wouldn't say that I was particularly prejudiced or close-minded before going to Korea, but my experience there had a profound effect on me. I know what it's like now to be the person that isn't like everybody else. I know what it feels like now to be lumped into a stereotype willy-nilly, with no thought for who I am as an individual. I know how it feels to tamp down on the annoyance or anger that bubbles up when people make off-hand comments casually condemning something about which they know nothing.



It would be a lie to say that I don't have stereotypes and biases of my own, but since my experience in Korea I have tried hard to judge people on their own merits. I resist expecting people to act according to what “everyone” says. I've made a concerted effort to realize that people sometimes have very different ways of approaching life and its problems, and to reserve judgement on people's actions until I've at least tried to see things from their perspective. The outcome of those efforts has been profoundly enlightening, and I have come to see the world in a very different way from how I once saw it.

I don't relish being a minority. I returned to Korea one summer after I'd been back to America for about a year, and on bad days that annoyance and anger would flare up again. It's not particularly enjoyable to be stared at and whispered about and pigeonholed into a certain stereotype, but my life has become so much richer for that experience. My life has changed for the better, and I have become a better person for it. I cannot claim to be wholly without prejudice or bias or stereotype, but I can now recognize more easily when I've allowed them to creep into my judgements or my perceptions of people. My experience as a minority certainly doesn't equate with those whose experiences have been lifelong and overwhelmingly negative, but I can try to empathize based on what's happened to me. But I think most importantly my experiences have left me with a need to reach out to others, to overcome those small things that separate us so that we can learn from each other. Because what makes us the same is so much more than what makes us different."

Stream of Conciousness

I did it. Remember those two 10+-page papers I had to write in just three days? I did it. I blows my mind just a little bit. With the first paper, the paper I wrote for my Intro to Islam class (fascinating, by the way) on comparing and contrasting the concept of God in Islam and in my religion, I felt such a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when I turned it in Friday night. I spent half of Saturday at my grandfather's memorial and with my family; the other half I spent cramming all I could about Sino-North Korean relations since 1949 into my head. I don't do homework on Sundays. Believe me, I was anxious about that. I mean, that left me with just one day to write (and finish researching) a whole paper on a massive topic. But I woke up at five am on Monday and wrote the first 3.5 pages in under four hours -- which is a miracle for me. Then I went to take the one final I had. I came back and wrote a little more, but I couldn't concentrate. I took a break from just after three pm to about six-thirty pm. Watched Bones, checked my Facebook, went and had dinner at a friend's place. I came back, said a little prayer that I could stay focused, and knocked out the rest of the paper. It was in before ten pm, two hours before it was due. The whole experience was completely anti-climatic. There wasn't any sense of accomplishment or relief. Mostly I just felt like I'd written a crap paper. I woke up Tuesday morning and checked Blackboard and there it was: a 19.5/20. Maybe I was too hard on myself. Maybe my teacher wasn't holding me to the standard I thought she was. Maybe she just read it late at night and wanted to just get it out of the way. Maybe she read it after someone's paper that was actually crap. I don't know. I still don't know what I made on my other paper. And I've got one more left. This one's about the Korean War, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Not the current war in Afghanistan. The one with the Soviets. And I have to find a job. A car. A place to live. A purpose for the rest of my life.

I said before that I've been listening to Mutemath a lot recently. This is from their song "Clipping".

Feeling overload
Carrying bottled skies around
I've been drowning all along
Wearing out in a faltered sea
And I give up

Common sense failed again
Meddling in a foreign scene
Foreign dream
Oh, Time won't spare another sun
Daring me with another choice, another choice

Anymore, I don't know who to fight anymore
I don't know what is right anymore, anymore

Finals Are a Fun Time for All

I know I've been absent in the blogosphere for a while now. Along with all the craziness inherent in the last few weeks of the semester, some personal and family things have cropped up, as well. I have three final (and long) papers to write this week, a job to find, and I need to start researching what in the world I want to do next summer after graduation. And what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.

"Of the people, by the people, for the people"

One of the main reasons I chose to come to Utah State was so that I could study what I'm interested in - Korea, or more broadly, Asia. My classes this semester include one on Chinese government and politics and one on the Cold War in Asia, which, for those of you who aren't familiar with either, are filled with a lot of fighting.

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In my Chinese government class, we're working our way to the present day, and are currently learning about the Sino-Japanese War that was a part of World War II (but most people in America don't know about, since we were only involved in an advisory capacity), and the civil war between the Communists and the Nationalist that followed it. It would probably be more accurate to say encompassed it, since the fighting started before the Japanese invaded, was temporarily suspended while China tried to fight the Japanese, and resumed towards the end of the fighting with the Japanese. In my Cold War class we're currently studying the first war in Vietnam. What? you say. There was another war in Vietnam? Yes, there was, and they don't really mention it in history class in American high schools. Vietnam was a French colony starting in the 19th century, and after World War II, the French were reluctant to let such a great source of natural resources go. But the Vietnamese understandably would have liked to have control of their own country, and so the nationalists, led by Ho Chi Minh, started a guerilla war with the French. And left to their own devices, they would have pushed the French right out of Vietnam. Only, Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh had Communist ideology. And Communist ideology -- or more correctly, the Communist power bloc -- was exactly what the United States was deathly afraid of in the 1950s. So what do you think happened?

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Needless to say, combined with the events currently taking place in the Middle East and northern Africa, this has really set me thinking. My first thought was to be disappointed that America was so often so quick to put the short-term goal of immediate stability and national interest over the long-term goal of helping the citizens of the country establish a self-sustaining government that followed the voice of the people. For all our rhetoric about democracy and the rights of the people America has historically done more to secure its own economic or political safety over supporting government "of the people, by the people, for the people". Yes, I understand that things are much clearer in hindsight, and that policymakers felt that the Soviet Union controlled any and all Communism in a huge plot to take over the world, and even that when you can't know the future you have to make decisions based on the best information you have. But I still claim the right to be disappointed that my childhood view of the US as the greatest country in the world, Supporter of Liberty, Democracy, and People's Rights, is not as true I was taught it was in sixth grade social studies.

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So Much to Do, So Little Time

Picture here

I'm so proud of myself. Today I finally buckled down and did a lot of things I've been putting off for weeks now. I suppose it started last night, when I decided I should probably finally unpack. Three weeks after I moved in. But hey, it's done, right? Unfortunately, the next thing I accomplished should have been finished Saturday night: a paper for my 830 Intro to Islam class this morning. At only two pages, I thought I'd be just fine if I woke up at 530 to finish it. It turns out, if you have to learn APA style when you've never, ever before used it, and research a topic you know nothing about (evidences for Mohammad's prophethood), two hours is not enough time to write a two-page essay. So, needless to say, I did not end up going to class this morning (and I feel really guilty about it). I finished it about 1015, packed up my life, and made it on time to my 1130 class (Cold War in Asia -- we started on the Korean War today!).

During my one hour break before my Study of Language class, I ran over to the International Student Services office and signed up to be a volunteer English conversation partner for an international student. I don't know who it'll be, but I did ask them to give me a Korean if at all possible. I figured I owed it to the universe to pay it forward; this summer when I went to do my thing in Korea, I was blessed with an amazing peer tutor that I'm still friends with and adore to death. I learned more from her than I did from my four hours of class everyday, I swear. That volunteer opportunity is on top of the other two I've already signed up for -- the adult literacy initiative and the ESL outreach run by the community. Now if only I could find someone who would pay me for my time...~sigh~

As soon as I came home, I found a rep from the home care/hospice people talking with my grandparents (and a wonderful neighbor who came over to help interpret). So I sat down and had a talk with him about some options we can explore to help out my grandparents, and some insurance stuff, too. Tomorrow we're going to go talk to a social worker and try and get hooked up with someone who can help us get them enrolled in Medicaid and my grandpa matched up with the VA hospital. But I got the ball rolling on my taxes (thanks, Mom!) and the car's state inspection and registration renewable. And this afternoon I finally got ahold of the bank to request a replacement card for my expired debit card.

I still have so much homework to do, and I haven't had a chance to start on it yet. I really wonder if I'm going to make it through this semester alive sometimes. Or at least, make it through this semester all caught up on my dramas. But the two are practically the same.

Off On A New Adventure

Old Main - Picture here

So.

Yeah.

Yesterday ended my first week of classes at USU. My first impressions went something like this: Wow, this campus is so big. Look at all that snow and they're still having classes! There are so many people! A syllabus? The classes are so big and hardly anyone ever talks...Man, I have a ton of reading to do. Blackboard? What? It's not that thing in the front of the room? Oh, you mean we get our homework online? Wow, we're actually talking about RECENT HISTORY! There are right answers to all the questions! I can bring my computer to class? People are calling me by my first name again. Weird. Taking notes...what? All the PowerPoints are on Blackboard so don't bother? Another six readings? ~sigh~


You wouldn't think there'd be much culture shock, coming back to Utah. I mean, I was born here in this very town. I've driven past the hospital I was born in at least ten times since I've been here. I lived here for most of the first half of my life. And yet...there is culture shock. When I walked into church last Sunday, into a room literally bursting with young, single LDS girls, I was...shocked? Not really shocked, I guess. Maybe overwhelmed. But it wasn't really that, either. It was just so different from what I've been used to for my whole adult life (I know, like it's been so long) that I was a little taken aback and didn't know what to think. And always before, I've either been with someone else, or been unique enough to stand out so people would go out of their way to find out who I was. This time, I'm pretty much just another girl in a room full of more than a hundred. Strange.

I think some of the reason I felt discomfited was that suddenly, most of the things that have defined me and made me unique over the last ten years were no longer unique or singular. Plenty of other people had been on missions, speak different languages, have five or more siblings, don't drink, smoke, or mess around, and go to church every Sunday. I'm not saying I lack other distinguishing qualities, just that those were the ones that stood out the most in people's minds. It's taking some getting used to, that's for sure. And the sheer number of people is just...overwhelming. I've never been good at making friends or good first impressions, and I literally know no one, not in my classes or my ward, or my extracurricular activities. How do I even go about making friends when I don't live on campus or have an in into the social scene? Thankfully, by the end of the first week, I know probably five people's names and have had at least a conversation with them. But the prospect of integrating myself into this system is sometimes enough to make me contemplate moving back home and becoming a hermit.

Seeing my grandparents again was a shock, too. I hadn't realized just how much their health -- both mental and physical -- had deteriorated in the few years since I had seen them last, my grandfather especially. I guess I had this idea that they were the grandparents I'd known ten or so years ago when we left for Tennessee, but of course that's absurd. I just didn't expect things to be this bad. I don't regret living here and helping to take care of them, but it's definitely a challenge. I have a feeling I'm going to learn a lot from this experience, even if all I learn is patience.