we like lists: top five reasons i hate grad school

A new list thread is coming soon, but first I must use my poor, neglected blog to complain about why my blog is neglected. This is not a participatory list - it's an extended whine.

I am very glad I am on the road to making a career change, and very hopeful about my prospective new career. I'm super excited about becoming a librarian. So far, my library-specific courses have been extremely interesting; the one I'm taking now - Intro to Reference - I love.

But being in school sucks. Here's why.

1. I hate always having to read for school rather than what I choose to read. Even if I have a bit of time in which I could be reading something for myself, I don't - the need to read for school is too pressing, plus my mind is so crowded and over-stimulated, pleasure reading isn't even pleasurable.

2. I hate not having adequate time to blog. Other than papers for school, blogging is my only writing outlet. I need it. I don't have enough of it.

3. My schedule is too tight. There is no give. Yesterday I had a hair salon appointment and a couple of errands to run, and that put me behind schedule. Without a partner who does most of the housework and errands, I don't know what I would do.

4. I resent having to take required courses that are either redundant or well outside my career goals.

Everyone at the iSchool - whether library, archives, knowledge management, whatever - takes four general courses on "information and society". There is widespread agreement among students that these could be condensed into two courses or even one. Contemplating the big picture is useful, but there are easily a dozen library-specific electives that I'd rather take, that would be much more useful to me, and that I won't be able to fit in.

This term I am slogging through the dreaded "Research Methods," which is intended for students going on for their doctorates, yet required for all. The school pushes students to get their PhDs; I've heard that's how funding is determined, and although I don't know if that's true, it would explain a lot.

Instead of this suffering through this class that I'll never use, I could be learning more about becoming a librarian.

5. I hate having to be so disciplined. I have to say no to so many things I'd like to do. I have to go to sleep at a certain time to be alert enough for morning classes. I have to swim on the only days I have available, and if I don't, there goes my exercise for the week. And so on. I've always been a disciplined person - writing while having a series of day-jobs demands it, and my health issues add to that need. But working, going to school, being an activist, and taking care of myself, which includes getting some exercise and having some down time, requires more discipline than I really want to bother with.

* * * *

By now I recognize the pattern: I write posts like this in November and March. This is a bit early, but blame that on Research Methods.

I keep Impudent Strumpet's comment on the wall next to my desk:

It's March. You're in university. Of course you're a mess. You're going to be a mess for a month and then emerge, blinking and befuddled, somehow having completed all your coursework, into a beautiful spring where you'll watch baseball and blog as much as you want.

My term ends a week later this year, so I'll be watching baseball while writing papers and studying for a final. But here's to April, it can't come fast enough.

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we like lists: list # 8: downtime pleasures

This week I handed in two assignments, due on consecutive days, one being the worst assignment for the worst class of my entire degree. I am feeling a huge sense of relief at having that behind me! Now I have no deadlines until March. Brilliant.

I am in sore need of some serious downtime, to veg out (as we used to say), to be a mush-brain, a couch potato. Truth be told, during the school term I am a couch potato four nights a week, but it feels so much better with these papers behind me!

What's your preferred method of recharging? This is total downtime, when your brain needs a rest and you need an escape. These are the pursuits sometimes called "guilty pleasures," but I think we should never feel guilty about pleasure.

My number one downtime pleasure, no contest, is baseball. Nothing takes me out of myself - there is nothing I find both so completely relaxing and absorbing - than watching baseball. In times of great stress, baseball is a mental balm.

Another of my prime downtime pleasures is a bit embarrassing, and not something I do very often. If you've been reading this blog long enough, you know about my obsession with "Dallas", the cheesy 1980s nighttime soap. "Dallas" may be my favourite, but it's only a symptom of a larger disorder: I have the potential to be addicted to soap operas.

I prefer the nighttime variety, and although I have watched very few of those shows (since I watch very little TV), it wouldn't take much to get me involved in any of them. Then a few years ago I started watching "Coronation Street" once a week, while folding laundry. It wasn't long before I'd look at the clock and think, can I get in an episode of Corrie in before the game starts...? And now I am addicted to Corrie.

The wonderful thing about this particular downtime pleasure is that it's so readily available, a mental mini-vacation almost every day.

Where do you get your R&R? Let's do five of these.

1. Watching baseball

2. Watching certain soap operas

3. Walking, especially in the woods

4. Sitting in our backyard, watching our dog(s) play, watching birds flit around

5. Watching movies or favourite comedy series

You?

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we like lists: list # 7: hanging out in history

This is one of those lists that, for me, feels nearly limitless: 12 people from the past who you would like to meet. I'm sure I could name several dozen.

To narrow it down, I'm arbitrarily defining "the past" as people who have been dead at least 50 years. (I turn 50 this year, and I'm deciding I can't use anyone who was alive during my lifetime.) So I can't hang out with Howard Zinn, and Cesar Chavez is out, along with my first writing hero, John Steinbeck, and my pal Woody Guthrie.

They must be people who are known by name. I would love to time-travel and hang out with an ordinary pre-contact Incan, an ancient Mesopotamian, the people who built Stonehenge, some radical labour organizers from the early 1900s, World War I war resisters, Europeans who hid Jews from the Nazis. And on and on. But for this list, we'll name specific people whose names we know.

Please put aside any concerns about how overwhelmed you might be, how silly you might act, how inarticulate you might feel. We'll just assume we could have a pint, talk about life, find out who these people were. No language barriers, either.

I've chosen people I revere and admire, but I know some readers will choose people they revile. I expect a few dictators will pop up in these lists.

I'm finding it really difficult to limit myself to 12! But here are 12 of the many people in history who I would like to meet.

1. George Orwell

2. Margaret Sanger

3. William Shakespeare

4. Lou Gehrig

5. Harriet Tubman

6. Amelia Earhart

7. Michelangelo

8. Charles Dickens

9. Samuel Pepys

10. Emma Goldman

11. Oscar Wilde

12. Mark Twain

Your turn.

[Update: My number one "should have included": Clarence Darrow. Not sure who I would lose - Wilde or Twain.]

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we like lists: list # 6: five strengths

Our last list - alternate realities - didn't get a huge response. Perhaps the topic didn't resonate with many readers, or maybe the timing was off. Or it could have been a fluke, who knows. That thread is still open if anyone wants to chime in.

"Alternate realities" was our dreams of people we might wish to be. Today's list is the flipside: positive aspects of the people we already are.

I'd like you to list five things that you do well. Not the top five things you do best; just five things that you do well, things you are good at, qualities about yourself that you like. Five strengths.

And these are the rules: no apologies, no disclaimers, no qualifiers. No acknowledging that other people might do these things better. No telling us that others may disagree with your list or that our mileage may vary. Only this: five positive statements about yourself, affirming five personal strengths.

Here's mine.

1. I write good letters.

2. I'm a good organizer.

3. I am fully at ease with all kinds of people - a diversity of age, background, ethnicity, ability, and so on.

4. I deeply appreciate human creativity - music, writing, handwork, performance, visual arts, etc.

5. I love having new experiences.

Now you try. Mind the rules!

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we like lists: list # 5: alternate realities

Our last list recounted fantasies that money can buy. Today we'll list the ones money can't buy. (I promise the next list will be less wistful and more affirming, but let's do this one first.)

Name five things you wish you could do but can't or won't. Not something you can't afford - that's the lotto list - but something outside your capabilities or your life path - activities or lifestyles out of your reach, but that you would love to be able to do.

Here's my list. Only the first item makes me sad. The rest are just dreams.

1. Write a truly great novel, something read for generations.

2. Sing with a band. When I was younger I wanted to be Chrissie Hynde. Now I'd go for Lucinda Williams.

3. Be athletic enough to play any sport reasonably well. I'm not talking elite-level here. Just to be competently athletic, enough to have the confidence to try any sport or physical activity without fear or embarrassment.

4. Have no fixed address. Be a perpetual traveler, living wherever I set down for a few months, then moving on.

5. Run an animal sanctuary. Have a huge plot of land where dogs, horses and other animals that were going to be killed could have a safe, loving home - especially dogs considered unadoptable.

You?

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we like lists: list #4: you've just won the lottery. now what?

We did ordinary joys, and ordinary irritations. Now we move to the stuff of fantasy.

You hit lotto. It's a huge jackpot, enough to afford anything money can buy for the rest of your life. What do you do? Top 10.

1. Travel. Go everywhere. Travel for three or four months a year.

2. Fully fund the War Resisters Support Campaign so we never have to fundraise again. (If this no longer applies, fully fund other grassroots military-resistance/peace organizations.)

3. Fully fund pit bull education, advocacy and rescue programs, like this one.

4. Create a foundation to support progressive grassroots activism. Hire great administrators to give the money away.

5. Give a ton of money to the National Network of Abortion Funds.

6. Adopt a whole bunch of dogs. This appears to clash with travel, but I'll figure it out.

7. Drop money on various friends and family who need a mortgage or school loans paid off.

8. Buy a small house on a lake, to live in quiet semi-solitude when not traveling. Nothing huge, just a comfortable, rustic-style house with a deck, a view and two fireplaces. Fill it with pottery, rugs and art from native peoples of the Americas.

9. Write. Set up a luxurious writing discipline to frame the rest of my life.

10. Travel.

And you?

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we like lists: list # 3: pet peeves

Our last list celebrated the joy and wonder of life's many simple pleasures. This one is exactly the opposite: the irritation of life's little annoyances. The things that make you grit your teeth, rant to your partner, and mutter words not safe for work.

Let's be specific. "People who annoy me" is too general. And let's think small. "Social injustice" or "racism" are not pet peeves.

We'll make this one an even dozen. Some years back, I could have filled 12 spots just from annoyances related to the riding the subway: door-blockers, men sitting with their knees a meter apart taking up three seats, percussion groups extorting money from a captive audience. But that's all gone now. Here are my current top 12.

1. So much advertising during baseball games.

2. People walking without picking up their feet, causing a shushing, scraping noise.

3. People talking while yawning. (Stop talking for a moment, yawn, then finish your sentence!)

4. People who ask me for help then don't say thank you. (Please tell me in advance if you don't plan to thank me, so I can decline to help you.)

5. People who email me comments instead of leaving them on the blog - not because they want to tell me something personal offline, but regularly, as their method of commenting.

6. Whistling.

7. Salespeople - including those selling religion - ringing my doorbell.

8. People recounting extremely detailed stories of what they were doing on September 11, 2001, because I am from New York City. This is always someone who was nowhere near any of the incidents and has no personal connection to the events, telling me when they heard, who told them, how they felt, and so on.

9. People bragging about how cheap they are - i.e., what a great deal they got, how they saved money by not paying for parking, how they paid less than me for something, often by buying a lower-quality product.

10. Bad customer service.

11. Having to hear other people's cell phone conversations on above-ground public transit. (This has replaced subway annoyances, but is mitigated by an mp3 player.)

12. "Lite FM" background music in restaurants, offices, stores or public spaces.

Yours?

Update!! I can't believe I forgot this one. I meant to include it all along.

13-100. People who complain about privilege. When I was a nanny, my employer used to complain to me about her son's tuition - private school that cost $5,000 a year - for a 7-year-old - in the 1980s. And she would complain to me. Co-workers who complain about the travails of building their McMansions, the vicissitudes of finding the perfect couch. Acquaintances who complain about the traffic on the way to the cottage, one of two houses they own. These are not everyday complaints about everyday annoyances. It's the myopia of people who don't appreciate how good they have it. If you can't stand the traffic on the way to your second home, stay the hell at home!

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we like lists: list # 2: simple pleasures

When I posted a recent Facebook meme - listing your top 15 most important or influential authors - Allan suggested I start a regular list series. I surprised both of us by going for it. I've never wanted to do anything like this with my blog before. But it's fun! I like seeing what readers post; I like the tangential discussions that develop. I have lots of lists in mind, some thoughtful, some frivolous.

I'll label the list posts, so it will be easy to join in older threads at any time. Borrowing (vaguely) from Allan's popular "Everybody Loves A Contest" series, I'll call the series "we like lists". The "15 authors" post is the first in the series.

As for rules, we won't use artificial time limits like "the first 10 that come to mind" or "15 in 15 minutes". Take your time. Brief explanations - a phrase or a sentence - are welcome. Long explanations detract from list-making fun, I think - but I won't kick you off the thread if you digress.

Order doesn't count. Let's not waste time worrying about if something is your number four - or is it number six - favourite or most hated whatchamacallit.

* * * *

Since I'm in the US for Thanksgiving, spending time with people I love, relaxing and eating great food, I'll suggest a list of simple comforts.

Simple Pleasures: name 10 things that cost nothing or very little that can make you feel good. This isn't "top 10 things I love to do". It's small moments that sometimes bring you great joy.

1. A great cup of coffee
2. A great cup of tea in the afternoon
3. Crisp autumn weather
4. Reading a good book
5. Watching a contented dog relax outside
6. Watching dogs play together
7. Walking in the woods
8. Feeling part of a community
9. Seeing beautiful natural scenery (mountains, coastline, lakes, sunsets, trees)
10. Having a whole day to myself

Your turn.

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in which i succumb to a facebook meme

I could not resist this memelike thing from a Facebook friend. It's a great insight into your friends' influences and loves.

"Fifteen authors":

Which authors have influenced you and will always stick with you? If you're game, list the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me; I'm interested in seeing which authors you choose.

My list:
George Orwell
John Steinbeck
Charles Dickens
Howard Zinn
William Shakespeare
S. E. Hinton
E. B. White
Emily Bronte
Saul Bellow
Toni Morrison
Graham Greene
William Kennedy
Paul Zindel
Gloria Steinem
Michael Pollan

Yours?

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