It is a rare afternoon alone in my apartment, and I have finally found my way back to the good old blog. I have missed this. Grad school does like to get between you and your hobbies, doesn't it?
Things I like about grad school:
- The ecologists at UCSB are a lovely bunch.
- I get to be outside for "work."
- I am "doing something with my life."
- I am kept busy.
- I am pushing myself to new academic heights.
- I am working toward my goal of acquiring 70% of all knowledge.
- Santa Barbara is beautiful. I love the natural beaches and above all the look of the mountains on a clear day. Or how they turn the best purples and blues at sunset.
- I joined an intramural soccer team! And we get to play on real grass!
Things I am less keen on:
- I miss (really, really, really miss) being able to get around without a car. These days it almost feels like I'm under house arrest. We should get a car, and we're slowly looking into it, but one doesn't have lots of extra funds to bandy about on a grad student's salary.
- I am unbearably homesick for Berkeley. For knowing where everything is, for there being cool things in walking distance of my apartment. I miss being able to go to see music. I miss playing music at all, which I could do here, but I don't -- it almost feels like an activity attached somehow to my life in the bay. And above all, I miss my friends. I am making new friends here, which I am pleased about since I'm not generally good at that, but it's nothing like having old friends.
- I don't seem to do art anymore. I feel like I've lost some of my favorite parts of me there. And most of my stress releases.
- Lots of people have been dying lately. Suicides. Three so far this year. Two in one week this March. That brings me up to nine suicides and attempts of people I know or knew. That is a lot. And it doesn't become passé after the third or fourth time. Even if the routine of it becomes familiar -- the shock, the guilt, sense of closeness with the survivors -- the weight of each one seems to snowball. This time the suicides were people I had met and was looking forward to getting to know. I am finding that that has made it harder to grieve. The one guy in my department was supposed to take the Ecology Written Exam with us. He came to our first reading group meeting, and he seemed so cool and intelligent. I remember feeling excited that he'd be there to help us and that I'd get to know him better. His advisor had moved to Switzerland, and he was going to sit in with my lab and join our seminar. And then he was gone. I didn't go to the group session the set up with the counseling center since I felt awkward nosing in when everyone else had known him better. I'd gone with my office mate to help clean out his office earlier that day so we could donate the rest of his books to the department library (or something), and I offered to carry back his binders, but my office mate who is normally so cheery and upbeat couldn't bear to see his handwriting and decided we'd grabbed enough. I could tell he was experiencing this all in a much more personal way, and I felt as if I'd be co-opting their session to battle my old demons. I may still ring up the counseling folks for myself, but I feel a little embarrassed.
- I know Hawaii is glamourous in theory, but I find myself dreading going there. When I'm up to my ears in shrubs or getting slapped by a tree branch, I'm pretty happy. I have a sense of purpose when I feel like I know what I'm doing, but I do not find it beautiful. I don't like needing to move or find a subletter every three months -- since apparently I'm spending two of the next four quarters there, and not consecutive ones. I don't like being separated from Matt for the three months before our wedding. I don't like that he moves back to Berkeley each time I go. Honestly, the logistics of it all make me question my commitment to ecology. Being there doesn't feel like being in a tropical paradise. It feels like being stranded on what I believe is the most isolated chain of islands in the world.
- My grandmother is due in for a surgery. She's either 85 or 89. I believe it's open heart surgery. I felt like such a pansy with all my inner turmoil over having my wisdom teeth out last month when the worst thing that could have happened was losing my sense of taste. And her doctors aren't sure she'll survive the surgery. She is the last grandparent I've got left. Being so close to the end seems to have made her cheery, appreciating every moment. She went from thinking she wouldn't make it to the wedding to be close to her doctors and take it easy to being the first to book a hotel room. She's an hour away, and I rarely see her.
