"Sleep seemed like such a waste of time -- I wanted to be awake, alive, learning and experiencing life to the full. We had to define everything, physically and intellectually, and we wanted our tomorrows to come fast so we could analyze what we did with our yesterdays."

 --Eartha Kitt, I'm Still Here, (63)

"Today, stop missing your fulfillment walking down someone else’s path. Take your own journey, even if the first steps are hard and know you’ll be rewarded down the road." -- Leslie Pitterson, of Clutch Magazine

Now is the time for big questions about the path I will walk in both the immediate and distant futures. We should all take some time to reflect on whether what we're working towards is what we really want, before we start telling ourselves it's too late to jump ship. [Fun fact: it's never too late to jump ship. Happiness has no expiration date.] 

"Life is just a bunch of stories you go through, and they all end sooner or later." -- Surprisingly poignant blue collar guy in this movie I just watched

 (The movie wasn't really great enough to recommend it. This is the only part you really need.)

Reblogged from Post Secret:

TRUTH:

Her fiery balloons make me sad though.

 

What we're all traveling:

 

because

Extended metaphor time...

So this Goffman reading is actually really helpful to my life. 

In one of his most oft-quoted plays, Shakespeare said:

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts..." --from As You Like It

 Goffman analyzes the same idea on a smaller scale, from the viewpoint that our very personalities are performances. We spend lots of time and energy constructing them and molding ourselves into the people we want to be. We imagine how our words and actions will be interpreted by others, and whether those interpretations will align with those others' expectations. Everything I have learned and am learning about personal and social identities leaves me inclined to agree with him; effectively, our whole lives are a show, and whether the lines are ostensibly "ours" or belong to a character we're trying out, the whole thing is improvised. The thing to never forget about life is that we're all just making it up as we go along--figuring out who we are requires experimenting with who we can and can't be. How can you know what will or won't feel legitimate unless you try it out? The audience may always be satisfactorily convinced, but we must always be our own harshest critics--only we know how much work went into the role we're playing. Anyone who has ever acted knows that even though action is called for those in front of the curtain, the real excitement happens backstage--what I'm learning is that no matter who you invite backstage to see both sides of the show, your backstage is still a performance space for them. There's no way around it, so don't try to reveal all your tricks and expect the same in return. Go ahead, give away your front row seats, yeah, and don't be afraid to invite others to join you on your stage...as long as you don't forget that they have their own dressing rooms that are just as hectic as yours. Social conduct is a performance and even the briefest of interactions is choreographed; relationships are dances and sometimes your toes will get stepped on or you'll have a hella awkward head bump, but you've gotta walk it off. Your identity is a diamond with countless facets; there are a million personalities inside of you, a million roles you know how to play. Send this one back for further character development if you have to, but remember folks, the show must go on.

Today I finished reading a wonderful book called My Name is Memory

Ann Brashares is on the road to becoming one of those authors I read everything by (like Jodi Picoult) because of her ability to be taking me along through a beautiful story that I can get lost in, developing characters whose pain and joys I feel as if they were my own (or, at the very least, those of someone I'm close to), and then all of a sudden hit me out of nowhere with a line or a phrase that brings me up out of this delicious book-world and back into the real world and makes me question something major in my life and the world at large. 

All her descriptions of the eternal undying lasting love and devotion between the two main characters nestled warmly into the depths of my heart like someones snuggling under a blanket, but they're not what I want to talk about. That happens a lot these days. 

Example A

The little tiny afterthought-like bit that blew me away was as follows:

"It took a half-dozen of those lives for me to recognize the difference between a means and an end." --Ann Brashares, "My Name is Memory" pp. 154

I suppose I first wondered some semblance of this towards the end of high school, when Student Council president came around to ask the Top Ten graduating seniors to fill out this sheet with some questions on it for little blurbs about us that would be put in our yearbooks. One of the questions was "What is your favorite memory from your time at Oakcrest?" or something to that effect. The 8 other members of the Top Ten who were sitting in AP Calc with me started laughing and remembering awesome times they'd had in this club or at that party or whatever, and I was struggling majorly to come up with anything worthy of eternal glorification in the pages of my yearbook. It dawned on me then that these people, my friends, had legitimately enjoyed high school to some extent. Particularly after my personal life exploded at the beginning of junior year, I had been treating it and my experiences in it like a means to an end. It was one more thing I was ready to get the hell away from, til it was over and I realized I had never really experienced it at all. 

And so I made a vow to myself that I was going to start living my life differently. I was going to stop taking my life and my day-to-day experiences for granted, I was going to treat each day like an adventure, I was going to do x-thing and y-thing and become an awesome person. And to varying extents at various times, I have done those things, I think. But although I pause to look at my life with wonder more often, and I meditate, and I occasionally walk around Princeton just to look at its beauty and marvel at the fact that I'm here, and I tell my friends just how much they mean to me, and I have begun to take chances...just like college was the end-goal of high school, grad school has been sneaking up as the end-goal of college. Professorship as the end-goal of grad school. And yes, these things are my goals, they are what I want to do with my life, and I'm okay with that. I like them. I actively chose those goals over the other options and am happy with my choice (for now, at least). This is what I want. 

...But what is the end-goal of professorship? Can that be the end-all be-all of the end-goals? Should it be a means? What end would it serve? #BigImportantLifeQuestions  

My Life has...Purpose?

So a few of the research opportunities to which I'm applying call for Statements of Purpose as part of their applications. When I learned that I started freaking out, like I'm 20 years old (for a few more hours), I'm just a student who wants to keep being a student--you want my life to fit together into some sort of a cohesive narrative about why grad school is right for me and I don't think that's going to happen yet (ever?). I was scared I was going to have to bullshit the whole thing and I wasn't going to get in because this was going to be a piece of crap, and I was scared of how I was going to un-piece-of-crap-ify it by the time legit applications roll around. 

And then I started writing, and shocked myself. It...works. I didn't have to BS any of it, because once I got going, I realized there were signs and there are reasons why I want to do what I want to do and as much as I wouldn't have believed it a few days ago, there is a purpose to all of this. I've never thought about my life as something purposeful before. It's...interesting, to say the least. I won't call it fate, I might call it destiny, because I think it's more than coincidence....It's weird how we're writing stories that have follow-able plots without even being aware that we're holding pens. I always say that I want to be a professor because really, what else would I do? Nothing hopefully seems a lot more obvious after you read this:

Then entirely confident in my future as an English major, I enrolled in my first Sociology course on a whim, but quickly became enamored with the discipline and the change in perspective developing a “sociological imagination” entailed. A particularly interesting reading in that first class inspired me to take Families later, and in retrospect, I think I knew that introduction to the field had changed my life plan even before I enrolled in Inequality: Class, Race, and Gender instead of the last prerequisite to declare English. That course, in addition to introducing me to the truly interdisciplinary nature of Sociology, presented me with my first experience with original sociological research, in the form of a group project surrounding social stratification found in the most common fields Princetonians enter after graduation. From the earliest stages of that project, it became clear that I devoted myself more entirely to the research than my fellow group members, printing piles of articles and enjoying the process of enveloping myself in the structural faults of the nonprofit sector—my English-heavy close-reading background translated into research suiting me well. Recognizing this love for research prompted me to realize that my friend’s half-joke that she could see me as a professor held some weight; a tutor throughout middle- and high schools, and the friend who is ever-ready to enlighten others with some nugget of knowledge, teaching comes naturally to me, and despite having always been an avid writer, I had very recently realized that writing scholarly works might come just as naturally. These combined realizations led me to apply for, and thankfully be awarded, recognition as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, a feat which I hope, like this research opportunity, will enhance my chances of acceptance into a prestigious PhD program in Sociology.

Though my group didn’t have full freedom to choose a research topic for that assignment in Inequality: Class, Race, and Gender, the choices presented to us demonstrated something integral to my love of sociological research—the ease with which a topic of general interest to me could become an academic project.  From that point on, whenever I read an article or had a discussion with a friend about some social issue, I began to wonder how I could study it and come to some sort of informed conclusion; my junior independent work this year grew out of the same process. Almost since enrolling in college, my friends at other institutions and I had often debated the benefits of going to our respective schools over others, and after reading an article in the New York Times about college’s effect on students, I realized that I could turn this debate into a substantive research endeavor. Under the guidance of a graduate student, Alex Davis, and my advisor Professor Rebekah Massengill, I developed an interesting research question and constructed a thorough questionnaire and extensive list of variables on which to compare institutions; this pair has proven instrumental to my research as I can further develop ideas through conversations with them, as well as approach them with questions about survey design, data collection, or even use of STATA for data analysis. At different stages in my research process, each of these mentors jokingly informed me that I was working too hard for a junior project, reflecting again the fact that I take naturally to research and truly enjoy it more than most.

Befriending and having intellectual discussions with persons from a wide range of racial, economic, cultural, religious, national, and regional origins throughout my time at Princeton has engaged me academically with the often-overlooked intricacies of identity politics. Additionally, my current research topic has shown me that, at this stage of life at least, higher education and the changes to individual identity it prompts fascinate me—I hope to study another aspect of this topic in my Senior Thesis next year. The Sociology courses I have taken so far, in conjunction with my overall college experiences and the people I have come to know during my time here, have inspired me to seek to understand the gray areas of social life and society, most clearly in the areas of individual identity, both in terms of culturally significant identities that are not traditionally studied (such as identifying as an adult), and the complications that can arise from various conflicts and convergences amongst traditional identity markers. In my current research project, in which I ask whether one type of institution better facilitates its students’ transitions to adulthood than does another, I hope to broaden the expanse of knowledge regarding the effects of higher education on young Americans by drawing attention to and filling an overlooked gap in the literature, effectively demonstrating that “higher education” as a topic of study contains its own gray areas and points of heterogeneity that warrant further study. I plan to continue to conduct research in this manner in the future, by delving deep enough into areas of interest to me that I find yet-unexplored layers to be probed and analyzed. As truly strange as my friends and classmates may find this, I find exhilaration in being surrounded by books and articles, reading and highlighting, trying to find my way to a research question—in the simplest of terms, I love research, and would relish the chance to make a career of it. A winding road comprised of specific courses, professors, and graduate students led me to pursue a degree—and hopefully, a career—in Sociology; without these individuals and their work, I may have gone on to criticize contemporary novels and lived blissfully unaware of the ways in which I could add to the knowledge of the world, and I cannot bypass the opportunity to affect others in the same way by continuing on to graduate school and, eventually, professorship. A multi-tasker by nature, I aspire towards a dual career in professorship and administration, so that I may ensure the incorporation of diverse ideas and teachings into curricula and academic atmospheres.

This post is not meant to be a Debbie Downer...

 

I usually have something witty and cute to say about life in general, or my life specifically, like how they say change is the only constant in life, but today I want to take a moment to recognize that that volatility makes life really really fragile. Not only in the oft-talked-about highs-and-lows/rollercoastery ways, but just in the ideas that it can change irrevocably in the blink of an eye, and it can be over just as fast.

"When a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations, to try to impose some order on the chaos and make sense out of that which seems senseless." -- Barack Obama

 National tragedy this week in Arizona: Six regular people living their regular lives decided to go out and participate in democracy--crazy idea--and it cost them their lives, some of which were long and full, but others of which were truly just beginning. 14 more people were injured, with various degrees of severity; their lives have been changed forevermore.

Princeton tragedy: We lost a Tiger this week. A freshman girl from Virginia, who lived in Forbes and played on the softball team. Two of my friends knew her well, and I can't begin to imagine what they're going through because I have never lost a good friend. Her death was ruled "natural causes"; she had evidently been having medically unexplained seizures since May, but had decided to come to Princeton instead of deferring a year to try to figure out what was wrong. I've heard a lot of people commenting that they didn't understand why she would do this, but reading the articles on the homepage about how her friends are mourning her, she wanted to sleep in her uniform, and even her parents called us Tigers her family, it makes sense to me. This place has given me the best years of my entire life thus far, years I sometimes doubt will ever be matched, and from what I can gather, it gave her the best 5 months of hers. And that makes me glad. I just...she was (relatively) fine at dinner the night before, and they found her dead in the morning. Just like that.

Something that has the potential to become a personal tragedy: Okay, I'm being melodramatic. But I'm worried. So I've been pretty quiet about this because I don't know what to think, but things have escalated to the point that it must be shared: my father has been in and out of the hospital for the past week-and-a-half or so. This may be more information than you need to know, but he woke up last Thursday morning with a full bladder and couldn't go. The pressure just kept increasing and increasing so he went to the hospital and had to get a catheter put in. That was in for a week--and he missed work for a week--and when they took it out this Wednesday, he still couldn't go. Now they're saying he has to have surgery next week, and they're going to run tests on samples from his prostate, which means prostate cancer is a feasible explanation for what's going on right now. How do you go to bed one night feeling relatively alright (my dad has high blood pressure and diabetes) and wake up the next morning showing potential signs of having CANCER?! He gets regular checkups and everything! My mom says I'm worried about nothing right now, but I can't help it; I'm freaking the fuck out. 

Too much has happened this week. The world is a crazy place, and our time in it could very well be shorter than any of us imagine. So LIVE your life, okay? Drake has some new song out with Nicki Minaj (said in a disgusted tone, but the reason behind it is another story for another time) in which he says, Every one dies but not everybody lives, and he's entirely right about that. I'm NOT going to say to live each day like it's your last, because let's be real: you'd probably end up in jail or in the hospital or do something to directly cause it to be your last.

I will say this though: I was doing this self-affirmation exercise for a while last year but I stopped: at the end of the night before I went to sleep I would think about one positive thing that happened that day, one thing that made that day worthwhile. It sometimes meant actively taking steps to make something worthy of this title happen each day, and that's something I want to start doing again. It's something EVERYONE should do, because whether we like to think about this or not, your whole world could turn upside down, inside out, or just plain dark overnight. 

Ice, Ice, Baby

A few days ago, I went ice skating with some friends. I was superexcited about the trip all week, trying to get more and more people to join me. When people asked if I was a great skater, I said I'd only gone once or twice when I was a kid, but I didn't see why that should stop me. I put my makeup on and got all cute and went outside to meet the girls I was going with and we excitedly walked over to the hockey rink. There was food and hot apple cider and people holding hands and skating, and it was so incredibly quaint and cute that I rushed over to the stand to rent my skates and began putting them on. 

...And that's where the trouble began. I could barely STAND in them; how was I ever going to skate? My friend tried to convince me it wouldn't be so bad once I got out there, so I followed her onto the ice...and froze. What had I been thinking??? That I could just go out there on the ice for the first time in ten years and whiz past people like a pro? That ice skating was going to be just like roller skating? That I was just naturally good at everything? Whatever crazy misconception of my own life I'd been suffering from, it disappeared rather quickly as I realized I had no idea what I was doing out there. 

So the wall surrounding the rink became my new best friend. Wallflowers aren't just for high school dances anymore; in my bright red sweater, I was a flower on the wall of Baker Rink. I held onto it for dear life and slowly made my way around the circumference of the rink. On my second time around, there was a girl doing worse than me, blocking my way on the wall and I had to leave the wall and skate unaided around her. My friend M saw this, applauded me for having let go of the wall for 10 seconds, and held out her hand to help me skate around with her without the wall for support. I was nervous, but I went around once with her; I still didn't feel comfortable afterward, though, and retreated to the wall. Then I saw my friend E, who I know used to be a figure skater in high school, and told her about how hard skating was for me. She said my skates were too loose, and once I fixed them, it was a whole new ball game! I began to skate near the wall, rather than holding onto it, and when my friend K held out her hand to skate with me, I wasn't that scared! It was especially poignant because about a month ago I taught her to roller skate in almost the same exact way, and I remember how scared and shaking she was; oh how the tables turn. An event photographer even took a picture of us in our cuteness, and when she went to get some food, I kept skating around by myself! Before the end of the night, I attempted to help teach someone else to skate better, learned the basics of skating backwards, and was DANCING in my skates on the ice. 

Moral of the story: Recognize that being a wallflower is NOT cute. Recognize that you can do it, even if it's foreign and difficult in the beginning. Recognize that your friends are there to help you, and take their hands when they offer them in assistance. This whole damn world's a slippery, slidey, carved-up-and-full-of-nicks-and-grooves place, but if support and teamwork and patience and love got K, M, and I through the night without ever falling, then chances are pretty good we'll stay on our feet for a good long while. 

(Just don't try to get too fancy. J was the only one who fell all night, after tryna show off, haha.)

I Been Gone for a Minute/ Now I'm Back at the Jump-Off

So sorry I disappeared for almost a month. What can I say? Life got busy. But I missed the release I get from this, so I'ma try to be more faithful to you, dear blog and dearest readers.

October in a Nutshell (readysetgo!)

That guy I was gushing over all summer? He has a new girlfriend. She's a freshman. Possibly cuter than me. I found this out by running into them when they were on a date. (low point)

The next day, random (cute) black sophomore guy and I got pretty damn hot and heavy on the dance floor at Quad, and I WASN'T EVEN THAT DRUNK. (high point)

Omg, I absolutely love my Junior Paper topic, and so far the research is fan-fucking-tastic. I'm studying the effects of the institutional structure of large public universities and small private universities on students' transitions to adulthood. I designed an awesome survey and am comparing institutions on lots of variables and I'm pretty sure I've done more work than I need to by this point, and the best part is I'm enjoying it so much!!! Watching this transform from an idea I thought could be cool to a tangible item I created, and watching the item go out into the world and come back with data from real people that kind of fits the idea i originally had! Fuck all those oh-no-what-have-I-done feelings I was having immediately after declaring SOC last year, I fucking LOVE. MY. DEPARTMENT. Kind of related side note: I also fucking love my friends from Oakcrest. I hadn't talked to some of them in legitimately YEARS, but now that I need research help, they're all willing (and most of them excited) to help, and it makes me feel so loved! <3


(Oh and I think I have a thesis topic. But we'll discuss this later.)

I got a LAMP mentee this year! And I already know her and absolutely love her. She came over last week and we chatted and had fancy snacks. It was so cuteI. People think we're a great match, and we're determined to prove them right.

 I think I'm developing a new best guy friend. I mean, Quad's given me a whole circle of amazing new friends who I love and wouldn't trade for the world, but I think one specifically is taking over that spot in my life, which has been feeling decidedly empty for a little while. (Kind of sad side note: Somehow, I feel like seeing the guys that used to share the position of my best guy friend nearly every day now that they're in Quad with me is hurting us, somehow. I don't really understand it...maybe because I don't just go chill with them anymore because they're so far away? Maybe because I'm too...[insert whatever's wrong with the way I am with very close guy friends here] in public at Quad and it weirds them out? Maybe I'm just reading too much into this? Whatever's going on, I feel like K is taking M and A's spot, and the strangest part is I'm not sure I mind so much. I love all three of them with all of my heart.)


Midterms were rough but obviously survive-able. Enough said.


I think I said this already, but Princeton is beautiful in the fall. I want to spend part of this break (once I get back on campus) appreciating that.


PRINCETON HALLOWEEN WAS THE MOST FUCKING AMAZING NIGHT OF MY LIFE. I'm sorry ML friends, Pirate Party may have been surpassed. I got soooooo many compliments about my scandalous costume ("GOD IF I HAD YOUR BOOBS"- a friend). I had sooooooooo much to drink, but remember the entire night. I had a great time behind the bar, getting hit on by lots of frat guys from Rutgers and BEATING TWO AT CHUG IN YOUR FACE! A co-Quad-officer was dressed as a doctor and we were on tap together for a little while (didn't plan this); out of this came the quote, "NURSE THIS MAN NEEDS BEER, STAT!" There is at least one photograph that is too scandalous for facebook. Two random WHITE GUYS danced with me; that never happens. A friend of mine and I exchanged a verrrrrry tight hug complete with cheek kisses (just drunken fun. Not even thinking about reading anything into it.)  While all my little-pussy friends chased their shots with apple cider, I chased my shot with another shot. All in all it was an incredible night and so totally what I needed.


And nowwwwwww I'm in Florida visiting my dad for half of fall break! 


yayyyyyyy nutshells!

I believe many of us--too many of us--don't take enough time out of our lives to appreciate the simple things. I was reading an article for class yesterday, in which someone said he "abhors the dull routine of existence." I didn't realize how much that struck me, until today I was walking home from lunch and, for no real reason, I glanced up at the sun as it cut jagged little patches of light through the reddening trees. I was overcome with a realization of the true beauty of this place I nonchalantly call home, and instantaneously upset with myself for ever having forgotten it. So I beg you, the next time you're out and about taking a walk, no matter your destination, take a short moment to really look at your surroundings. Remember why where you are is where you have chosen to be, and why you have chosen it. Remember that we are products of our surroundings, and do your best to reflect the beauty that surrounds you.

Sometimes I still marvel at the fact that this is a building I have class in. It makes me feel rather classy overall...

I'll leave you with a song:

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Twenty-Eight: To Someone that Changed Your Life

Dear everyone I have ever interacted with,

I firmly believe in the philosophy of tabula rasa, that we are all born as blank slates, to be written on by those we meet, those we know, those we love and those we hate...even by those to whom we never gave a second thought. Every thought we think is influenced by those we have come into contact with, personally or academically, real or imagined; it's really hard to have an originally original thought in this day and age.

Anyway, I like to say funny phrases like color-me-happy and I'm living in a heavily outlined world. I like to think that all of you take turns coloring my world in.

Thanks for making me who I am. I owe you all my very life as I know it. Blessed be.

-Maya

Go ahead, grab a pen. There's space left there somewhere, promise.

Additional Weirdness

I have also realized that when I spend these 5 weeks at home once I leave Chicago (*tear*), it will most likely be the longest consecutive amount of time I spend in ML and/or with my mom and siblings for the rest of my life. 

That's actually really scary and makes me feel superold. It also makes me want to have awesome adventures with my friends while I'm home, because omg we're getting old and not going to have much time left together to do these things. D:!

So weird.

I realized some weird things this week.

1. This week marks exactly two years since I've been in a relationship. That doesn't bother me as much as I'd once imagined it would. 

2. My skinny-white-girl-from-Michigan roommate owns and regularly uses a flat iron, and I don't. Of course, she calls it a "hair straightener" though. XD

3. If I was my mom, I'd be three months pregnant with me right now. How freaky is that?! :O 

"..."

^heh, that could be a funny emoticon. A cookie for you if you can figure out what face that's making, XD


Anyway, this is a post about a quote! The last words of the last chapter I read of this book before bed last night have been on my mind all day...