Bleeding Fiction

I sent out three more grad school applications today (those for University of Washington: China, Cornell and University of Pennsylvania), bringing the grand total of applications sent to four. To go out tomorrow or Wednesday are University of Washington: Japan and University of Arizona. And then I'm done. It'll be nice to be through with them all, but I'm not looking forward to the wait. I'll just have to throw myself into other things and try my best to forget about it all until the responses start showing up in my mailbox.

Meanwhile, Thanksgiving has come and gone. I have a hard time expressing how much this holiday means to me, mostly because I'm not sure why it does mean so much. Suffice to say it does and I'll get back to the idea of why some other time, like next year. For now, let's just say that I enjoyed the holiday immensely again this year, ate dinner with my mum's family and got to hang with my completely adorable little cousins.

Other than that, the weekend was pretty much a wash. I watched 5 hours of Kim Possible, got a haircut, helped my folks move their furniture, did my laundry, bought Christmas gifts for my grandparents and my mother, wrote some notes and did some research for a short story I'm going to write next weekend and did the outline/scene list for the second draft of my first novel. Which, looking at it, is a pretty big list of things, but I still don't feel like I had a productive weekend. Mostly that's because I didn't actually write anything, but the outline needs tweaks before I'm ready to have a go. The wordcount on the second draft will wait a bit, probably until I return from Russia, unfortunately.

I sent in my last two grad school applications on Thursday, so that's it. Khattum Shud - completely finished, over and done with. I'll give each of the schools a call on Tuesday to make sure they've got everything and then I'll stick true to plan and not think about them at all. I promise I'll let everyone know what's going on when I start to get responses.

In further news, InterExchange is changing offices and we spent this week packing. It was a big pain, but it's over now. Monday morning I'll walk into a brand new office. With a window!

So, here is some of the text of an email I received from a woman in the Asian & Middle Eastern Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania this morning:

We are in the process of reviewing applications for admission to our graduate program in September 2004. I cannot tell you anything official yet, but unofficially I am certain you will be admitted. We are now working on fellowships. We plan to make every effort to be able to offer you a fellowship for next year.

I know Prof. Hurst called you last week to let you know how impressed we are with your application.

Dear Jeffrey,

I might get in, I might not. I've got no way to know yet. But an email like this doesn't make me feel good about my chances and if I don't get in then the email just becomes cruel. And I was doing so well at not thinking about it, too...

note: the order of the quoted text above was changed for dramatic effect.

After I received that email on Sunday, I sent a nice reply to the woman at UPenn. I told her that I wasn't named Jeffrey, nor did I receive a call from a Prof. Hurst. I mentioned that I did, however, apply to UPenn and hoped that the email was meant for me but only slightly mistaken in the facts. If, however, I went on, the email was not for me, well, then I hoped my application was impressive nevertheless and that the email got to the proper person.

Here's the response:

Thank you for sending this. It was intended for someone named Jeffrey. I have not read your application. Probably it is in a field far different from mine. I am sorry about the confusion.

So now I make some deductions. First, as I have not received a phone call, my application was less exciting than Jeffrey's. Second, this woman (and I am intentionally preserving her anonymity here, although I realize a quick search makes that point moot) very likely did, in fact, read my application. After all, she didn't pull my email address randomly off of the web and she is the Graduate Chair.

This leads to the conclusion that she's lying to me. There could be any number of reasons for this, but the simplist explanation is that she wants to forestall my asking about the status of my application. Unfortunately here is where the causal chain breaks down. There are too many possibilities. It may be that my application is still under heavy review and she'd rather not say one way or the other while said review is going on. It may be that my application is not up to snuff and will be rejected and she would rather avoid the conflict of a personal declaration of such. Other reasons abound.

So, I'm left with a few questions: Did this woman think I wouldn't see through her transparent lie? Do I do anything about it? Do I call her on her lie? Would that be too insulting or would it demonstrate my intelligence? Do I take the subtle approach and express concern that, oh, well, maybe my application isn't complete if she hasn't seen it yet? Or would that display an inability to complete tasks and follow up? Or am I just thinking about this too much?

Well, I'm open to suggestions.

Got my first grad school rejection tonight. I expected a few, so it's not a surprise or anything. I'm fully aware and accepting of the fact that I may not get in anywhere at all.

It's just a little upsetting that the rejection came from Berkeley, seeing as the rejection came less than a week after my trip to San Francisco. Berkeley is, you know, right across the bay from San Francisco. It's on the same public transit system. After my trip I went and thought "hey, you know, I like this town a whole lot. I think I'd really like it if I got into Berkeley. I'd be very happy spending a few years here."

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call "tempting fate." Also "irony."

Well, back to not thinking about it and more waiting.

The response from Berkeley came via email. I forgot to mention that earlier. I guess it saves them a few bucks on postage to do it that way, but I think that's a tacky way to get an important bit of information. To be fair, I did send them my application by email, but I also paid them $60 for the privilege so hey.

Anyway, the day after I got the email I sent a response, asking if I could appeal the decision or get on a waiting list. I mentioned that I'd just been to the San Francisco Bay Area, spent a day in the Asian Art Museum, briefly toured through Berkeley and fell in love. I don't expect it'll help, but they've already rejected me, so it's not like it could hurt.

A letter came in the mail today. An honest-to-God letter in a really-and-truly envelope that was sitting in my actual, physical mailbox. I thought that was a nice touch. The letter came from the Japan Studies Program at the University of Washington and informed me that they "are recommending to the Graduate School that [I] be offered admission to [their] program for Autumn 2004." The letter went on to say that the Japan Studies people "expect that [the Graduate School] will concur in [their] recommendation and send [me] an official offer."

Take careful note of what's going on here: The program that I want to go to wants to accept me, but it's concievable that the school will say no. I've been in a situation like that before, only replace the "Japan Studies program" with "a girl I used to date" and the "Graduate School" with "her insane parents." I'm thinking of reasons why the Graduate School might disregard the Japan Studies Program's recommendation and turn me down, but all of the ones I can come up with involve circumstances that are a bit beyond the every day. Not that those have ever been lacking from my life...

The whole thing gets even more fun when you look at the form that came with the letter - the form I fill out and mail back to the Japan Studies Program in order to accept their offer of admission. The offer of admission that might never actually come. It'd be like buying tickets to see a movie that was never actually going to be released.

What makes this news particularly apt, though, is that it comes the day after Adi's birthday party, where the delightful Jeni Garber told me she planned to move to Seattle at the summer's end. How's that for timing?

And for the record: I'm waiting to send that form back until I a) get the actual admissions offer from the actual Graduate School and b) hear back from the other school's I've applied to. Yes, UW is my top choice, but I'm torn between their China and Japan Programs and if someone else offers me more money... well, sometimes want must bow to need.

I got an email today from a Graduate Assistant at Berkeley. When I sent out that email to ask for an appeal, I guess she was the person it went to. I guess that original email denial came from her mailbox, which makes the whole process at Berkeley even more tacky. Thinking about it, being a Graduate Assistant must suck. You're basically a secretary/intern/general grunt, doing the dirty work and without any say in what you do. Only you don't get paid for it (at least not much) and the people you're working for are people that you also need to learn from. At least as a Research Assistant you get to do research and as a Teaching Assistant you get to teach. To think I may be putting myself through Graduate School by doing this.

That's one thing I'll really miss about working at InterExchange. There, I have so much freedom in what I get to do and so much input into the way the program works. I may have a boss, but I have very rarely felt as if I were anything less than an important member of the team. At least in terms of dealing with the Camp USA program. The company as a whole, well, that's a slightly different story.

Anyway, the Graduate Assistant said she'd forward my message on to the Graduate Chair (the woman I thought I was writing to begin with) and one of the two of them would get back to me. I have to say, knowing that I've pretty much almost certainly gotten into UW, I'm a little less eager to get a turn-around on the Berkeley thing, and I will feel sort of bad if they admit me on appeal only to have me turn them down instead, but I'll live.

I got home today after a very, very long day to find a nice letter from the Graduate School at the University of Washington waiting for me . They've decided that they agree with the Japan Studies program, after all, and have extended me an offer of admission. So I can now say with a degree of comfortable certainty that I'll be going off to graduate school in the fall.

This is a good thing, but the timing on it is a little awkward and makes me pause to reflect. We placed thirty applicants at camps today. There are now thirty more people in the world who will have a chance to share their lives and cultures with Americans and take something of the US culture back home. There are thirty more people in the world who will have a chance to spread the idea of the global community, who can help to break down the barriers that exist between peoples and nations. Thirty young men and women from a dozen nations who are the future leaders of their communities and who will become small heroes in the world's search for peace.

When I go off to grad school, I'll be taking steps forward for me, personally. I'll broaden my personal horizons and abilities and opportunities. But I will leave behind a job that has more meaning and value to me, that does more for the world, than anything I have done before and anything I am likely to do after. I'm not trying to make myself out to be Gandhi; I know the victories I achieve are small ones. But, a person at a time, they are victories all the same. Come autumn I'll lay down the work I do now with a very heavy heart indeed.

I got my last email from UC Berkeley this evening. They reviewed my application and were unable to reconsider their decision. This isn't a surprise or anything, or even a big disappointment. I didn't really expect them to change their minds.

What aggrivates me, though, is the text of the email itself. Now, I do appreciate the time the woman took to write to me and even more the time she took to explain their reasoning; that was very kind and certainly more than they had to do. But there was one particular phrase in the email that really aggrivated me. It said "your statement for the FLAS fellowship...was not considered a sophisticated argument." Ouch.

Now, leaving aside the fact that my application for a particular fellowship shouldn't directly impact on my admission into the school or program at large, the woman had many solid reasons to restate my rejection from the program without citing my lack of a sophisticated argument. For example, she also cited the fact that I'm "not as far long on [my] language training [as the other applicants]." This is true and certainly the first reason that I would have to reject me from the program. She could easily have stopped there.

I can't, unfortunately, remember what statement I made for my FLAS fellowship application. For all I know it may well have been an "[un]sophisticated argument." I do make those from time to time. It may well be, and likely is, that I'm reading far too much into this. I want to stress that I'm not taking this personally; I know the woman and department haven't got it in for me and I bear her and them no malice, I know I wasn't the strongest applicant. It's just that I thought the tone of the statement - with its typos and use of the weak passive voice - was a little on the insulting side.

My second letter from UW came in the mail today. It was a brief and formal rejection. At least it was actually signed, with a pen, by a human being. Presumably the one whose name was attached to the letter.

So, I didn't make it into UW's China Studies program. I'm disappointed, of course, but in some ways this letter comes as a relief to me. Having to make the choice between UW's Japan and China programs was not something I was looking forward to; there are too many interesting things to study in each field and without the weight of location to help me make up my mind, the decision would've been difficult. I would've managed well enough, but now the problem's solved.

Half of the wait, then, is over. I've still got three more schools to hear from. Hopefully those letters'll come soon. I'm getting a little tired of this.

I am on a fuckin' roll here. Today's letter came from the University of Pennsylvania. Apologies to Bekah but despite her best efforts over the past few years it looks like I still won't be moving to Philly. This particular rejection comes as no surprise, given some of the email I had previously received on the subject.

The letter said, in part, that the writer trusts I "have been, or will son be, admitted elsewhere to a university of [my] choice." Delightful. As a matter of fact, I have. But what if Penn was my top choice? I mean, I didn't tell them that I'd applied to other schools and Penn's a great school with a solid program. What if I'd had my heart set on going there? Well, then the letter would just be rubbing some salt into the wound, eh? I understand that the people writing these things are just trying to make a hard blow land a little softer, and I appreciate that, but I think they should consider more carefully exactly how they do that. Eh. I'm sure people would complain just as much if they did it some other way.

As the deadline to respond to UW's Japan Studies program closes in (it's April 15th and keep in mind that my form still has to cross the country via your friends in the US Postal Service...), I've begun to pester the last two programs I need to hear from. I figure they should've responded to me by now...

Today I spoke to the fine people at the University of Arizona. I'll get my official letter in the mail in a week or so, but they were kind enough to send me an email to tell me that I was rejected, so that I could go about making other plans. I appreciate that, even if they should've gotten back to me two weeks ago.

The woman who wrote me the email was even kind enough to tell my why I got rejected. Here, of course, is where I get annoyed. According to the email, I was denied because my "Academic record was not competitive and [I had] low standard test scores." Alright, I'll give them a non-competitive academic record. I was never exactly what you would call an "achiever" in school. I was, to put a not-so-fine point on it, a slacker. That's not to say I didn't do well; I graduated with a 3.25 gpa overall and a 3.5 to 3.75 gpa in each of my major fields. When you consider that the scale only goes up to 4 that's not too shabby. But yeah, they're right: in the world of graduate school applications, that's not competitive.

However, that part about the "low standard test scores?" Bullshit. The only standard test that I took to get into grad school was the GRE, and I made that test my bitch. There are three sections to the GRE. First, analytical. I scored an 800 out of 800. It was literally impossible for me to have done any better. Second, verbal. I scored 760 out of 800. That was better than 96% of the other people who took the test. In what way are these two scores "low?" Am I to believe that my score of 650 out of 800 on the quantitative section of the test, which was only better than 76% of the other people who took the test, did me in? Are they seriously telling me that my math skills weren't good enough to get me into a program that has nothing whatsoever to do with math, but is rather about my ability to understand complex written material and formulate and communicate a written argument?

Further, am I expected to respect the decision of people who confuse the word "standard" for "standardized" and who use phrases such as "the deny reasons" and "you will be receiving" in their communications?

This is, I know, not the first time I've criticized the grammar of the grad school people, but I don't feel I'm unjustified in this. These are graduate-level academic departments at respected universities I'm talking about here. In the program I work in, which brings teenagers who do not speak English as a native language to work at summer camps (and I will be the first to admit that if there's one thing camp is not it is academic), we actually pay a professional to check over our form letters and make sure that we've weeded out things like the passive voice. It's not a hard thing for a person to do.

Alright, I'll stop now. I don't need to hear more of this, much less anyone else.

The letter came from Cornell today. It's really sad that I didn't get in there. I didn't particularly want to go there but... well, Jesus, I got in last time, you know, I really figured I'd get in this time, too. Eh, they probably rejected me just for harassing them so much.

Cornell has a nice logo, though. It's just a red square with the word "Cornell" in it in white.

The letter was a bit late, though. I gave up on hearing back from Cornell and mailed out my acceptances for UW yesterday. That's three letters, by the way. I think I've got a bureaucratic nightmare ahead of me...

To get into the Museology (read: Museum Studies) Certification program at UW, which is a 12-credit program beyond my 30-credit Master's degree, I had to send a little email with a paragraph or so explaining why I was interested. It took me a while to come up with a reason for doing the certification program that wouldn't get me the response "Why didn't you do a Museum Studies Master's then?" Here's what I came up with:

As you know, I'm interested in the Museology certification program. The "why" for that is pretty simple: I want to work in a museum. I think the better question is why I'm after a Museology certification instead of a Master's.

I grew up in New York City and spent much of my childhood at the different museums around here, big and small, and what I saw enchanted me. I've always been a fast reader with a good retention, but there's a certain visceral quality to museum exhibits that capture a physicality that text and picture can't come close to. A museum is, to me, experiential learning.

It's that sort of experiential learning that I'm hoping for by combining my Master's program in Japan Studies with a Museology certification. I'll be able to see the immediate usefulness of what I learn in the Japan program by considering how to apply it to a museum based on what I've learned in Museology and likewise the practicalities of Museology with, I hope, enhance my study of Japan as it clues me in to specific ideas to apply there. I used this same approach in my undergraduate career, where I tripple-majored in Anthropology, History and Religion, and applied the concepts and theory unique to each to enhance my understanding of the others in turn.

I got a fun email from the University of Washington today. This letter relates to my second-year tuition. UW being a State school, tuition is less expensive for Washington State residents than it is for non-residents. Traditionally, second-year graduate students can apply to register as if they were residents, thereby paying a substantially reduced tuition. "Substantially" as in "the amount of money I pay would be cut by more than half."

Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. UW changed their policy so that now the only way to get the reduced tuition is to prove actual, non-education-related residence in Washington State. I can't think of a reason for them to do this other than money and that just pisses me off. Of course a University is a corporation; I know that. They have to make money to survive. But is it strictly necessary to penalize the people who've uprooted their entire lives to go study with you? Sure, many of us are there only because of school. But we still rent apartments, buy food and gas, go out to bars and restaurants, see movies and shows and pay taxes. What else does a person need to do to be a resident of someplace?

As it happens, the email told me. I'd have to be, I'm told an "active member of the community" or demonstrate "community ties." This can include "the purchase of real property, children in local schools, a partner or spouse employed locally, and roots in the community such as local clubs or organizations, or local volunteer internships."

Obviously I can't afford to buy property and I don't have children or a partner or spouse. I'd considered getting involved a bit with the writing community while I was out there, maybe helping out the folks who organize Westercon or Clarion West, but that's an unlikely plan at best. Westercon won't be in Seattle for at least two years (likely more) and Clarion's a sort of odd bug, being a writer's workshop. I have every intention of getting involved with some of the museums out there (Seattle Asian Art Museum and Experience Science Fiction say what?), but given my course of study that's academic work, not voluntary. I'll have friends out there, of course, and some of them (the delightful Jeni Garber, for example) will even be unrelated to school. But will that be enough?

I fuckin' hope so.

Blog: Slightly wonked due to a hacker. Bastard. Host is cool, providing on-site visits and discussions of poetry. Also, she fixed the blog. Mostly. Last update along these lines lost to the digital ether. Good riddance, I say.

Vitaly: Got married recently. Yay! Nice wedding, very traditional, right down to the break-dancing-Brad-Pitt-look-alike rabbi.

Kiki: Now engaged. About damn time. She and Raphael have only been dating for eight and a half years.

Erin McKeown: Free show at South Street Seaport past Thursday. Excellent music, as always. Open air = poor acoustics but great breeze. Too much sitting, not enough dancing.

Visitations: Something Positive went pro; creator-dude Randy got mad donations and quit his job to do the comic. That's cool. Also, Bekah started a livejournal. Its bilingualness astounds me. Go be astounded too.

Lena: What I said I'd write: Everything she says about why she and I should not be together makes perfect sense. But my life bleeds fiction and makes no sense, so there. Plus, I love fairy tales and happily-ever-afters.

Mother: In hospital for non-serious, non-diabetes problems. Yeesh.

Borges: My current reading. Witty and self-deprecating. Major images are mirrors, labyrinths and knife-fights. Very cool.

Saved: A movie. Pokes fun at very religious types. Funny as hell. Go see it. I want to see it again. And own it on DVD.

Work: Increasingly less busy. Or decreasingly busy. Whichever. Yay.

School: Registration papers to arrive... soon?

Writing: It's June. Leave me the fuck alone.

Back to a regular schedule presently.

I have to confess that no matter what I've written in the Foundations to the left, I haven't been working on Fire and Jade lately. It's the summer, which means I've had a lot of distractions lately. Combine that with the nitty-gritty crap that I haven't spoken about much here, the stuff I need to do to move to Seattle, like packing and storing stuff at my parents' house, finding a moving company, finding a place to live, I just haven't gotten any work done on it. That's not meant to be an excuse, just a statement of fact.

In the meanwhile, it's not like I haven't gotten any writing done. I have, in fact, been doing a whole lot of research and note-taking for a few different things and actual scripting for another project. A project that will see the light of day, and the eyes of readers, much sooner than my massive pseudo-Chinese epic.

But once I'm off at school, I'm going to get back to that epic. When I do, though, I think I might be in some sort of trouble. See it's recently come to my attention that I have no idea how to write a best selling fantasy novel. Let me run you through the paces of what I've learned and tell you how I don't stack up:

1. Create a Main Character... 2. Create a Quest.

Most of the people who read your book will be unconfident males. So make your main character a Loser. Aimless, shy, cowardly, guilty, ill, lazy, rural - any of these will do... Out of the blue, the Loser must be suddenly told that the fate of the whole world – or some other world - rests in his incompetent hands.

Let's see... Guan Wen's unconfident, yes, but that sort of comes from standing around the greatest heroes your country's ever seen. You'd be pretty unconfident if you had to fight, say, Darth Vader, too. Of course, he's not saving the world, so much. No apocalypse looms. If he screws up, the worst that happens is some people die and his country gets taken over by a foreign power.

3. Create a Motley Bunch of Companions.

The Loser/Hero must have a Motley Bunch of Companions drawn from different human species e.g. dwarf, elf, Rotarian etc. Each of these companions will have one particular skill such as sword fighting, lasso twirling etc which will come in handy at a particular part of the story.

This is where I start to run into trouble. I've got no pointy-eared, thin and wispy types for girls to swoon over, no short, fat, bearded guys to make folks laugh. Do the hero's friends even have skills? More or less...

4. Create a Wise but Useless Guide.

The Guide is wise adviser who knows all about the Quest, but never fully reveals it. He also appears to have immense powers but will not use them when they are most required.

Gandalf will not be making an appearance in this book. Nor will Allanon, Zedd, Moiraine, Fizban, Zifnab or aging wizards of any other stripe. The closest I've got is a doctor. He's a really good doctor. That's about it.

6. Create the Enemy

Every Fantasy Land has a Dark Enemy, an almost omnipotent ArchVillain who is trying to utterly destroy it. It is not clear how the ArchVillain benefits from this. This Villain always has access to vast armies which require no food, payment or other provisioning and can travel thousands of mile and lay siege to cities without any need for a catering corps. For all this, the Enemy is completely dependant on some insignificant object such as a ring or a piece of rock for his power.

Shit. I knew I forgot something. Conflict? Conflict I've got in spades. Villains... hhm... maybe... Nope. Not a one.

Bad Expendables.

It will be necessary to create Bad Expendables. These are the orcs, goblins, trolls, dragons, wights or any other creatures that we are happy to kill in their thousands. They are usually black, hairy, sweaty or in some other way unacceptable by middle class Caucasian standards. Often they are deformed, based on the traditional belief that an ugly body reflects an ugly soul. It is our way of doing a service to the sick and disabled by reminding readers that people who are disfigured look that way because they’re evil.

Which means it's probably bad that, with one possible exception, every last character or extra in my book is human. Damn.

Note that in Fantasy Lands the concept of reform or rehabilitation is unknown. All allies, minions, vassals and instruments of the Enemy must be summarily killed even if they served their master primarily out of fear.

Also bad for me, in that the humans switch sides when they lose, what with them not wanting to die and all. And the army commanders take the troops, of course, since it gives them more soldiers fighting on their side.

Pure Maiden Warriors.

Losers are scared of sexuality or dependency in women, so women in fantasy novels are so powerful and pure they make Joan of Arc look like Pamela Anderson. They are strong, noble, loyal, brave, high-bred and usually die in the end – well what else are we going to with them? They’re too scary to marry, and no one in Epic Fantasy Novels ever has sex.

Uhm... I've got women, yes, and I'd like to think I'm writing a few strong female characters. But none of them are "pure maiden warriors" by any stretch of the imagination. Don't have any sex scenes, either.

Body Types.

Skinny people are wily and intelligent, big strong bear-like people are invariably dumb.

Things work a little differently in Chinese literature, where the wily ones are typically extremely obese. Because they're eunuchs. The going theory being that they've got plenty of time to eat and plot and scheme, what with them not having a sex drive and all.

Note: Fantasy Worlds never have working economies. Very few people work, there is little agriculture and it is not clear where food comes from.

And yet I keep putting all these damn farmers everywhere!

Of course, considering my initial idea when I sat down to write this thing was to get away from the stereotypical fantasy novel, which had become stale and boring and repetetive to my eyes (and clearly to the eyes of other people, if they're writing things like the web page I've been talking about, I think I'm succeeding admirably. Now I just have to, you know, finish.

I had a strange moment at orientation today wherein my graduate advisor effectively turned to me and said "Why'd we let you into this program?" It did wonders for my self-esteem, since I've been asking myself that question all summer. I considered asking to transfer out to the school's Comparative Religion or Russia, East Europe and Central Asia program, but I realized that my situation wouldn't change much, linguistically, in the former and I wouldn't be admitted into the later. So, I'm stuck here, which may be for the best.

I met a few people today, some of them in my program. The folks in my program are mostly coming fresh off the JET program, which means both that they have a common bond which can (at times) leave me out in the cold and that their Japanese is much better than mine. I think, just from research interests, I'm going to be the crazy fringe guy in the program, which is a bit expected and also suits me just fine. It's what comes of approaching Japan purely from a pop-culture perspective and looking at things, more than ever these days, as informative for strange fiction.

Speaking of fiction, or of strangeness, my stuff will arrive to me sometime around the fourth or fifth of October. My car will come about a week thereafter. Tomorrow I head off to the local mall to buy a sleeping bag; it would be plain silly of me to stay in a hotel for the next two weeks, and too expensive besides.

Aside from that, I deal with the necessities of life and wait for the day when I won't be ready to lay down and sleep at ten in the evening. I have the worst trouble with the time change between the Right Coast and this one. Perhaps counterintuitively larger shifts are easier to manage; they throw me up into the air along with my regular schedule and, when I come down, I land right into the new schedule. These smaller shifts are more difficult; they just mean that I wake up and get tired earlier.

More on time zones tomorrow. For now, I debate the relative benefits and drawbacks of committing acts of fiction while tired.

Let me first point out that I've noticed an unusually large number of Ravens here at UW. It's a little intimidating.

That said, amongst my errands for this morning was Registration. It was a battle against bureaucracy almost worthy of Ben. (Speaking of: Ben, do you know what's up with this pdf and your picture being on it?) I visited four different buildings on a journey that covered about two miles of ground (and resulted in me being right back here in my apartment to register online). Thankfully, I won't have to go through any of it next time around.

My classes this quarter are a mostly predictable set. I'm taking Japanese (second year, for now - we'll see if I have to drop down to first year or not once class begins), Introduction to Japanese Studies and Japanese Society. Both of the listed books for that last class are gender studies-type books. As an undergrad, I really hated the way women's studies had taken over all of academia. I hate it no less now. Nothing wrong with women's studies, mind you, just that it's not so much what I wanted to study. Ah, well. I've only got eleven actual classroom hours to clock in a week.

I'm also taking Russian, though I'm doing that unofficially. If I were actually getting credit for the class, I'd have to pay UW an extra $1600. Since those credits wouldn't do anything for me in terms of requirements, I spoke to the professor who said I could just sit in and learn. Woo hoo! I'm going to learn Russian! (at an extra four unofficial classroom hours)

Speaking of things Russian, UW has a Red Square. Here's a picture:

Nowhere near as impressive as the actual one in Moscow. Why, though, does everywhere I go seem to have a Red Square or some other Russian reference? Or is it just that my brain is cued up to notice this sort of thing?

My first two classes today were language classes. Japanese in the morning, Russian in the evening. My Japanese fucked me up the add with a knobby baseball bat and left splinters behind when it pulled out. It was, in other words, a bad experience. When I got into class, there was something written on the board. It turned out that it was our homework assignment, but I know that only from inference because I couldn't read it. It was in Japanese, you see. I wrote it down, to try and translate when I got home. No such luck. The kanji she used are in the first-year Japanese book. I understood pretty much nothing of what was being said in class today. Nothing.

I am, for the record, screwed. I can't take second year Japanese. But if I can't and have to move down to first year, there's the very real possibility that I'll get booted from my program. I'm not entirely sure I care. Watch as depression sets in!

That said, I owned my Russian class. It's a pity I'm not in school to study this shit. Now, admittedly, I have something of a leg-up in Russian, what with the intense exposure to the language over the past four years and my already knowing how to read Cyrillic. That made it very easy to handle today's class. That advantage won't last.

It's interesting the way they teach language here, by the way. They opt for total immersion from day one, not speaking English if it's at all possible. It's pretty cool, I think, and likely to be much more effective in the long run. But it's also a reason that I'm so tremendously far behind in Japanese.

Yeah, I'm screwed. Pity me.

It's not a very entertaining article, but I love the headline: "Models May Underestimate Climate Swings". Of course the article's talking about how current statistical analysis may have sold short the wide range of climactic conditions that our planet may have experienced before we were around to record such things and the wide range of climactic conditions we may yet encounter ("'Things can get pretty incendiary,' says Thomas Crowley"), but I've got the image of a bunch of Victoria's Secret models, complete with push-up bras and feathered wings, frowning thoughtfully in front of a weather map stuck in my head now.

In other news, my local volcano may erupt soon. I've never had a local volcano before. It's been pleasant, so far. There have apparently been three to four earthquakes every minute around the volcano, but I haven't felt a one. I hope it remains that way. I'm about a two hour drive away, which I'm guessing means about one hundred miles. The parks people have only evacuated a twelve mile radius, so I'm most likely safe. I guess we'll see.

If you want to watch a picture feed from the Mount St. Helen's VolcanoCam, you can do that here, but I warn you: like most things of its type, it's extraordinarily boring. Especially at night.

Lastly, school. I wasn't kicked out today. I'm dropping down to a first-year Japanese course, and probably start in winter quarter. My advisor stressed how difficult it'll be for me to complete the program in only two years by starting at first year Japanese, but said that if it was really necessary, we wouldn't have a choice. I wonder, but only vaguely, if maybe I wouldn't've done better to be kicked out.

(Russian class, by the way, continues to be fun. We had to pick Russian names for ourselves for class discussion; I picked Kostya, for obvious reasons. The name of the girl in today's example dialogue was Lena, which just made the exercise odd.)

My worldly possessions have still not yet arrived with me here. I did, however, receive a call this morning from the men who have my goods. I expected them to say something along the lines of "we haf ze documents. Eef you wish zem returned to you, you vill deliver fife meelion of your dollars to..." and so on. But no, I was simply told that my stuff's in Oregon and should be to me on Wednesday. Only a week after the due-date on the contract, so not too shabby.

In other news, I got back my first paper in my lame-ass Intro. to Japan Studies class. I got a B, which was better than I was expecting, and about what the paper was worth. However, I find it a little difficult to take advice on writing from someone who circles the "more so" and asks "is this a word?" First, no, it's two words. Second, yes, it is a perfectly valid phrase. In theory I'm meant to learn something while I'm here, right? I mean, besides how to be even more obnoxious, self-righteous and conceited than I already am?

Beyond that? Due to the lack of anything remotely comfortable to sit on and for other reasons which will soon become apparent, I'm feeling incredibly restless. I'm so easily distracted I may just stop this post in mid-

If it's not one thing, it's another. First heartbreak, and now I found out that the Museum Studies Certificate program has been suspended. As in "is no longer available to take/get."

I should, perhaps, take this opportunity to point out that when I was wrestling with the final decision of whether to go to UW or not, whether to incur the expense of another two years of schooling, whether to quit my stable and largely enjoyable job that had a positive impact (however small) on the world at large, it was the Museum Studies Certificate that pushed me over the edge. "Sure, there are a lot of down sides," I said to myself, "but at least at the end I'll be able to work in a museum, and that will be way cool." Not so, as it turns out.

I'm meeting with my advisor on Monday and find out if I have any real options. Can I, for example, transfer out to another program (The Museum Studies program, for preference, but the general International Studies program would serve me almost as well, just in a different area of interest)? In all likelihood, though, that will not be a choice. My choices will most likely come down to 1) Stay in school, spend a ton of money over the next two years, graduate with a Masters degree that will not help me at all in any career that I want to have or 2) Drop out of school, having wasted some four-thousand dollars or more in tuition and... do what? I don't have a job to go back to. I don't even have a room in my parents' house. And I don't want to talk about the wasted cost of shipping my car and things out here, only to ship them all back. But what else do I do? Stay here? Why? For how long? Doing what?

Have you ever had one of those months where you feel your life's just falling apart?

I spoke to the woman in charge of the Museum Studies Graduate Certificate yesterday. She took some sort of pity on me and let me into the program, despite the fact that it has officially closed and they have no more funding and usually only PhD candidates do something like this and so on. It's alright. I can take her pity. It's not like I begged for it or anything.

So, I'm not dropping out of school. I'm going to get a Master's degree with a Certificate in Museum Studies and, in theory, will get a fun job after that. That's pretty cool.

But with the results of the election last night, it's also sort of a pity. As I've said before, I do not want to live in a country in which Bush is president. It disappoints me to no end that Bush's party has won so many seats in Congress. It frightens me that he may have the opportunity to appoint three Supreme Court Justices in the next four years.

I'm not much in the way of conspiracy theories. I'm not inclined to believe that Bush stole this election. Honestly, I wish I could. Because the alternative, the true situation wherein the majority of the people in this country actually want Bush in the office, is infinitely more frightening to me.

But the fact of the matter is that things aren't over yet. The death knell hasn't rung on this whole "democracy" thing. Patriot Act aside, this isn't a fascist state. Things will doubtless get worse in the next four years, but after that there's the chance that things can get better.

That doesn't mean I want to be here and sit out those next four years, though. Any suggestions on where I can go and what I can do once I get there?

my Japanese speaking skills + Alcohol (within limits) = Better Japanese speaking skills

Given: I have a bottle of vodka in my freezer.

Given: I had my Japanese oral exam today.

Conclusion? I should have had a few shots before I went to take the exam.

Unfortunately, my math skills are not good enough for me to have realized this until after the exam.

Also, my math skills are not good enough for me to express the above equation in a way that would come off as... uhm... clever? Accurate? Cool? Funny?

Help?

Update: I got 94% on my oral exam. Which means either that my sober spoken Japanese is much better than my conscious mind is willing to comprehend ('cause my conscious mind is telling me about all of the things I said things wrong or didn't understand) or my Japanese teacher has a crush on me.

I said that I was going to like my classes much better this term because they were going to be things I was actually interested in. Well... sort of.

My museum class is actually a Museum Management Seminar. Anyone who's been to a management seminar before will know that they're boring as shit. Now picture that boredom and add in homework and you'll know the sort of agony this class is going to cause me over the next two and a half months. I'm surprised that the professor hasn't yet told us to "think outside the box."

My Seminar on Buddhism should be more interesting. It's about Buddha Nature which is... well, hard to pin down. Mostly the qualities of being a Buddha. But the class has already given me some insight into some fiction-related stuff so I'll consider it "good." (Yes, that's primarily what I look for in a class and what leads me to call a class "good." Always has been, even before I started actually, you know, writing.) Funny thing, though: the professor seems to want us to achieve enlightenment before the end of the term. I'd better get to it...

Words and phrases used by the professor today in my Seminar in Museum Management Theory class:

"Agenda Items"

"Action Steps"

"Strategic Planning"

"Visualize"

"Goals and Controls"

"A Team Consult"

Today the man told us that there are three ways to become a leader and that they are: 1) Be born a leader, 2) come to it gradually through the ranks or 3) have it thrust upon you unexpectedly.

I have to take a class for this?

I think I'm going to stop paying attention and just write or something. It'll be better for my brain.

The Henry M. Jackson School For International Studies here at the University of Washington ("The Wash") is one of the more prestigious schools of its type in the nation. It ranks pretty close to the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University ("Life Under the Doomshield") and the Elliot School for International Affairs at George Washington University ("The School I Couldn't Have Afforded To Go To"). Although I have no real school spirit whatsoever, I'm actually very proud to have done (some of) my undergraduate work at Maxwell and to be doing my graduate work at Jackson. But there are times when I have to wonder if that pride has been misplaced. This is an excerpt from an email I received today, about a class I might be interested in:

The Center has another Canadian Studies class available for spring quarter -- Canadian Values and Symbols. The course if very popular and can only accommodate 15 students. This seminar, a response to the events of September 11, 2001, is a review of the factors in Canadian life, history, and experience, which have contributed to the formation of national values that shape Canadian life. It also examines the role of symbols in Canadian life, including the monarchy and the crown, peacekeeping and compromise, willingness to accommodate a wide variety of peoples within Canadian society and, wherever possible, draw on the values of other cultures.

I had my second oral exam for Japanese today, wherein my teacher and I were supposed to have a brief conversation. It went about as poorly as the last time. My Japanese teacher said "Nihon ni itta koto ga arimasu ka," which means "have you ever been to Japan." I thought she said "Nihon ni ikitai desu ka," which means "do you want to go to Japan." So I answered in the affirmative, and things got worse from there. I realized, when she asked me when I went, that I had made a mistake, but it was really too late to go back at that point.

I swear, if I get anything more than a D for this exam, it is because my Japanese teacher is truly, madly, deeply in love with me.

Update, 3/12: Just got my oral exam score. 91%. An A-. Yeah, she totally loves me.

I applied for a Foreign Language Area Scholarship for next year. It's pretty keen. It covers tuition and give me 14k on top of that for the year. It would make things a whole lot easier next year.

I didn't get the scholarship. The letter came in the mail today.

I'm not disappointed. I mean, it's a hard scholarship to get, high requirements, only a few of them to go around and so on. I wasn't really expecting to get it, so it's not much of a surprise that I didn't.

I'm actually a lot more concerned that my iPod has decided to get stuck in the "on and frozen in the middle of a song without actually playing it or being paused or responding to any outside stimulus" position. I've tried plugging it in to charge, pushing the buttons and plugging it into my computer (which doesn't recognize it). I've now moved on to "wait for the battery to run out, recharge it and see what happens then."

Well, at least it's under warranty...

one

I'm only taking two classes this term, but they're keeping me very busy during the week. It's probably going to be one of my busiest terms. I suspect this is because I'm actually doing all of the reading. I suspect the reason for that is that I'm required to take and turn in copious notes on everything I read. Bastard professors.

two

To be fair, I'm taking two cool classes this term, with interesting reading. They are "New Religions in East Asia" (aka "Japanese Cults") and "History, Culture and Conflict in Japan" (aka "Japanese Protest Movements"). These two courses are pretty much going to form the basic research of my Master's Thesis, whatever that ends up being about, so I figure it's a good idea to pay close attention.

three

In my readings I've gotten to "reacquaint" myself with some "old friends." Which is to say I get to read about the writings of anthropologist and religious types that I read as an undergrad. Guys like Weber and Durkheim and Geertz and Marx. Also Foucault, who (to grossly stereotype, as is my wont) is one of the only cool French people. Ever.

four

There's a weird cycle of secondary vs. primary sources going on here. As an underclassman, I read secondary sources (i.e. Scholars writing about shit they had read or observed). As an upperclassman, I read mostly primary sources (i.e. Writings that were actually from a given time period in history, actual religious scripture, etc. Usually in translation.). Now I've gone back to reading secondary sources. Some folks have some interesting ideas (see above), but it's sort of frustrating.

five

There's a girl in my Culture & Conflict class who looks a lot like Ann. It's sort of creepy.

six

I watch the Daily Show every night. They have journalists on a lot, who write books. They write books about the government, but also a lot about what's going on in the world today. Which is, I guess, what journalists do. Academics do the same thing. Hunter S. Thompson, he went to ride around with the Hell's Angels for a while and then published a book on them. That's journalist, sure, but it's also anthropology. I mean, exactly the same thing. So, what's the difference?

The differences are speed and depth. The most recent stuff I get to read in class was published maybe five years ago, and was probably in research for two years and then peer review for another year after that. Which means I'm reading about phenomenon that are eight years old. That makes it tough to dealing with contemporary culture, which is what I'm trying to do. How do you make predictions when the movement you want to make predictions for is already gone? At the same time, a scholarly work is (in theory) deeper, more critical and more accurate for having taken so long and been so carefully looked at.

But I wonder if this carefulness doesn't make scholars too slow. How can scholarship stay relevent when it's continually out of date? I wonder if there maybe isn't a way to speed scholarship up a little, to reach some comprimise between depth and speed. I think maybe not publishing more or less exclusively through academic presses is a good place to start; being, instead, like journalists and publishing through the mainstream media.

I wonder if this is actually a good idea, or just seems like one at nearly two in the morning...

seven

Part of course readings early in the term, even for graduate courses, is what I call "getting on the same page." You read a brief run of introductory philosophy stuff, the sort of stuff I was talking about under three, and you frame the terms of the debate for the rest of the class. It feels like reinventing the wheel a lot of the time, but all in all it isn't a horrible idea. So, we were trying to define "religion" the other day. This is particularly relevant for the New Religions in East Asia, 'cause a lot of them don't have much in common with what most people think of as religion.

But every approach, every thinker, has his flaws. Social Science theory's been stuck for a while with this very West-centric bias, these Enlightenment and Economic models that really don't effectively describe what we observe in the world. I mean that right now, the way people (and I mean politicians and lawyers and journalists - the people who ostensibly hold the power in our society - as well as the "common folk" like you and I) look at the world is rooted in theories that have their start in the Enlightenment and with Marx's conception of class struggle and Nietzsche and it's all wrong.

And thinking about that, I thought about some psychics theory that I was learning from Ogre this summer (clearly nothing involving actual math - just conceptual stuff), and I realized that what the social sciences need is the same break physics had. Physics went from Classical to Quantum mechanics. Someone needs to figure out a Quantum Theory for the social sciences. If someone can do it right, it'll spread and we will have a new way of looking at the world.

It'll take a while, of course. A generation, maybe two or three. But if someone figures out how, we can change the way people see the world for the better. This is the responsibility for social change that academics have - to change the way people think about the world, and to change it for the better.

Or, I dunno, maybe I just like the phrase "quantum social science theory."

eight

Quarters suck as compared to semesters. I've done both now, and I say this after careful observation. I am not covering a greater amount of material in class and I am not covering it in more depth with quarters than with semesters. I may, in fact, be covering less material; at the very least, I have less time to discuss the material (fewer actual in-class hours per class) with classmates and professors, so I may be covering it in less depth. But group-learning aside, with less time in which to process the same amount of material I am able to absorb less of it and think about it less critically before I'm forced to move on to something else, and I am therefore getting a poorer education.

I am covering the material in less time than under semesters, but I'm taking fewer classes at once, so the actual rate of education has not increased, either.

I'm taking procrastination to a whole new level tonight; I'm reaching a personal best. I've got a paper due tomorrow (well, today), just before noon. I didn't start writing this paper until ten o'clock this evening. I wasn't busy this weekend