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Mllerustad
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Name: Karen
Country: United States
State: Minnesota
Metro: Minneapolis
Birthday: 12/11/1986
Gender: Female
Interests: modern physics, politics, T.S. Eliot, music, la vie quotidienne, world affairs, filmmaking, the free culture movement, gay rights, French, frisbee, comics, etc...
Expertise: What is expertise?
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
3/19/2004
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| It's been a postless summer. Now is as good a time as any to officially cut it off. Xanga, we had some good times together, but it's over now. I've moved on. I need the open control and sexy features of a self-hosted blog. Nosve knows how to treat me right. (And LiveJournal is always a good fling every so often!)
I'll leave the account open for the sake of reading other folks' blogs, but I don't imagine I'll post here anymore.
Peace, yo! Time to mambo!
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| Got home Saturday. Have not hung out with anyone yet.
I *have*...
...unpacked, bought groceries, mowed the lawn, planted flowers, played with GarageBand (a LOT), drooled over the new MacBook, visited Red Wing, saw "South Beach" for the first time, wandered about teh Interweb, and visited the new Trader Joe's in St. Louis Park.
Which has kept me occupied more or less successfully the last few days.
That said, I probably should cram in some sociability in the next week and a half before I leave. So if you're doing stuff (or not doing stuff, but want to be) you should get in contact with me.
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| Two weeks and I will be home, relaxing, spending time with my family, a bunch of y'all (hopefully), and my poor old kitty.
End of May, I will be leaving for Philadelphia, where I will be interning at Accessible Knowledge. Enter two and a half months of drawing illustrations to children's stories, doing web design, and living on my own in English. It will be an adventure.
On July 1 I will be home temporarily for a Rustad family reunion.
Early August, I come home again to hang out with people and prepare for studying abroad.
August 26, I leave for Copenhagen. Thus begin four months of living on my own in Danish, with a lesser academic load (fewer papers!) than Scripps'. Hopefully I will do a lot of adventuring in the rest of Europe, too.
Spring semester 2007, I will be taking two production courses for my major (finally!) and two other classes for fun. I'm hoping my schedule will be nearly paper-free.
And after that... two more summers, senior year, graduation, law school, and the wide expanse of the future.
Essentially, the only thing that stands between me and the rest of my life is this goddamn paper.
Bring it on.
Four pages done, six to go.
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| This whole "getting a massive headache every time I go to write a paper" thing is getting really annoying... My stomach's angry with me for some reason, too.
Yeah. Still haven't written the damn thing. Worst mental block ever. I want to do anything--run errands in the Village, waste time on YouTube, edit other people's papers, do IR reading, attend "Un Dia Sin Immigrante"/A Day Without an Immigrant/May Day Boycott protesting, listen to Carolyn's Jarabe de Palo CD... anything but this!
Okay, what's this paper about... It's first about explaining bell hooks' whole idea about "eating the other" as a covert form of racism, and reading Chrystos' poem "I Am Not Your Princess" as a protest of that exoticizing tendency. Then it gets to how "eating the other" is a characteristic of a lot of protests themselves, where feminist organizations think as an afterthought "Hey, we should get a black feminist to come speak for our conference" (Audre Lord's essay/rant) or white communists trying to recruit black people (see Mary and Jan in Native Son). There, though, it's less exoticization and more trying to assuage guilt--having a woman/minority in the org means they can point to them and say, "See?? We're not racist/sexist!!" It's the whole "token minority" thing. For the privileged classes, minorities have a legitimating power--get their assent, and the privileged class is removed of all racial/sexual/colonial/hierarchical guilt (see Hunt article). Hell, even the practice of protest itself has those same overtones. To be a committed activist, or a hardcore punk, is to give oneself that legitimating "minority" status...of a sort. (For one of the most overt pseudo-activist appeals to middle-class guilt that I've noticed, see TerraPass.)
Which then, in the conclusion, throws the gaze of the essay upon the students themselves. What are our reasons for taking this class? For reading protest literature? Does it make us feel all hip and activist? What is the purpose of Scripps' Race/Ethnic Studies requirement? Are we to think, "Okay, I passed a class, now I understand racial issues!"? (This part is mostly outside the understood scope of the essay... but in the conclusion, pretty much anything goes, right?)
The ideas are all there. I have the books in front of me (the hooks book just got turned in today!). I have a Word document open; the cursor is blinking at me.
It's midnight. Waaaahh....
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| Migraine, PMS, an unstarted 10-page research paper due tomorrow. And every copy of "Eating the Other" is checked out of the library. I am NOT in a good place right now.
Two papers, two weeks' worth of overdue reading, Free Culture crap, the final dance project, the last CS assignment (after getting 50s and 60s on the last several homeworks), and finals? Having missed too many classes to skip any more? I don't think I can survive the next two point five weeks. I really don't. Dropping out doesn't seem so bad anymore. Get me the hell out of this racist, sexist, classist, and, most importantly, OBLIVIOUS institution--Scripps isn't the school for me. Get me out of this dorm room--spend too long in your asylum cell and you'll go nuts. Fuck you, liberal arts!
I'm ridiculously tired of academia, of LA, of this life. All I want is to scrape together survival somewhere and make pretty things and hug Nelson. Maybe make a difference somehow, if I'm lucky. I'm not brave enough to do it, but it's what I want.
But I NEED academia. It's the trajectory chosen for me. So far, history tells me I can't get a job--can't get an *internship*, even!--without a college degree. I don't know why businesses hate me, but apparently they do. Some daVinci code in my resume that says 'REJECT.' I'm not qualified for anything except writing papers and cleaning toilets. Now just cleaning toilets.
FUCKING PAPER! I'D RATHER WRITE ABOUT HOW THIS WHOLE DAMN CLASS IS AN EXERCISE IN VOYEURISM, A BUNCH OF MIDDLE-CLASS WHITE GIRLS GETTING THEIR RACE/ETHNIC STUDIES REQUIREMENT TAKEN CARE OF WHILE FEELING TRENDY AND PROTEST-Y AND PUNK! I KNOW IT'S TRUE BECAUSE I'M ONE OF THEM! SEE JANE. SEE JANE RANT! WAAUILGUWUIROQIGVQ
It's like senioritis, only worse. I keep hitting things and swearing. The headache's talking.
I don't know what to do, guys.
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