Vigilante Librarians

Best advice I've received from a professor in a long time: If you're not nice to librarians, you're an idiot!

One of my dearest friends is a librarian, and I'm sure she'd concur.

Brilliant Irish Studies Professor (BISP) also told us that if we were mean to librarians, we should consider going into hiding. Now, I've taken some time to mull that one over. It sounds like there could be a network of vigilante librarians out there. I'm a little worried. Armed with encyclopedic knowledge and the mysteries of the Dewey decimal system, who knows what could happen?

While my dream of librarians riding cardfiles into the sunset isn't realistic, the truth is we need some vigilante librarians around here. We need some card-stamping, metadata-slinging, librarians to hit some people over the head with the books they're not reading. While some argue that reading online (eegads, you're reading this schlock aren't you?) IS reading, it's not like reading books. What we miss when we move away from books is the ability to sustain an interest in a topic. I see this inability on a daily basis. We are a generation of very short-term attention spans, people. Hold on, I'm getting IMd here, ok, so where was I?

Oh yeah. We can't pay attention to things.

As much as the book snobs disparage Oprah's Book Club, at least she's gotten people to read. And that, my friends, is worth something.

Death by Grad School

The first week of school is one of anticipation for most students. We wonder what our teachers will be like or if we'll like our classmates. And when you get to college, especially beyond baccalaureate work, you wonder how tough the work is going to be.

I had my first class of the new semester, and as a newly minted doctoral student, on Monday. It didn't seem so bad. I might finally learn how one prepares for conferences and gets published--you know, typical tenure-track professor kind of stuff. Just the sort of thing I'd managed to avoid by doing a master's in creative writing. I'm a little stoked because I think it will help me jumpstart my studies and perhaps help me add to my CV along the way.

Yesterday was my first class with Brainy Linguistics Professor. I had an idea of the pain to be when I bought my books last week, but I now know that my life, as I know it, is over. I don't even want to get into it, except that my friend said the first time she took this class (why? why would you take it again for fun?!) she had to leave the room because she had a panic attack. Um, right. Sometimes I can't even get through a night of sleeping because I have panic attacks, so I'm sure that lectures on semiotics, semantics, and symbols (ok, that's redundant) are really going to be panic-inducing.

And I thought being a tortured poet was hard. Jeez.

I have resigned myself to a life of agony, because really, who doesn't like a little pain? Now I'm actually going to have to read Chomsky. I haven't felt like the dumb kid for several years, but there's nothing like the mention of Foucault (or Derrida, or Heidegger, or bleepin' Kant) to jolt you out of a smug existence into the reality that you're a total dumbass.

Itchiness

The end of summer makes me itch. I often wake myself in the night because it feels as though tiny bugs are crawling all over my stomach and back. Lest you think that I have bedbugs (although I've read they're making a comeback), it's just my seasonal allergies acting up. Just writing this post makes me itch in fact.

And I think the itch is coursing through our household. The dog seems to be plagued with it as well. She's licked her abdomen raw and seems to be in perpetual agony as long as she's awake.

I know this rawness that she feels. In addition to suffering from ragweed, I'm overcome every August by this, well, ennui. Yes, the end of the summer brings me to the beginning of the school year, and God knows I love school. A new school year is a new beginning. New teachers (if you're a student). New students (if you're a teacher). All this newness is great; however, that also reinforces the sense that I'm somehow flailing along in life. You know, it's the whole "why am I here?" thing. As a girl in my 30s (gasp!) there are a few things that come to mind: career, marriage, kids. Probably in that order.

I guess I sort of have the career in control. I have a job I love (when I don't hate it), and I have the lifestyle I've always wanted. I get to be home quite a bit rather than stuck in a cubicle all day, which I hate and always knew I hated despite the 5 years I spent off and on in cubicleland trying to convince myself that I could potentially like it.

And of course, I do have dear mortgage partner. We've been together nearly 7 years now and have owned our lovely house in the hood for 2. Our relationship is great: he's my best friend, my biggest champion, and my own personal source of entertainment. I do, however, go these phases where I think about being more "normal." Like maybe we should get married. Maybe we should want to have kids. And then I get withdrawn and/or angry, and we have "that" conversation.

We haven't had "that" conversation yet, but once he reads this post we probably will. A big part of me doesn't want to want the conventional, but another tiny, and potentially growing, part does. And all I can do is itch it when it wants to wake me in the night.

Leos of the World Unite!

Today is my birthday, and I'm gonna blog about it. See, that's what we attention-seeking, life-in-the-limelight, royal divas do. (I don't know the masculine version of diva, sorry. I know you're something equally sparkly and fantastic.)

I know no less than 6 other people with this birthday. I also know at least 5 more with birthdays within a week of today. What gives? I personally think it has to do with cold-weather lovin', but I also think the universe has a funny way of putting us Leos together. My stepdad, a Russian teacher, two high school friends, one college boyfriend, and another person I just met have this birthday.

So while my post of yesterday was the introspective Leo, today I'm giving a shout-out to Leos around the world. I guess that makes me sound like more of a Gemini, but whatever.

Happy Chompo Bar to Me!

Becoming

I like this word. It means turning into something or attractive (related, I imagine, to comely).

Tomorrow, I am becoming more of a 30-something. What this means is that I have to own my 30s--the first dreaded decade for women everywhere.

My sister said turning 30 was a relief. She said that she felt even better about herself upon turning 40. My sister is a freak of nature. She has 5 children, runs marathons, is an EMT (essentially for fun), and bakes like friggin' Martha Stewart. I'm not sure we're related.

I have assumed the outer appearance of someone who is plenty fine with being 30 (tomorrow 31). I know I don't "look my age"--whatever that means. The reality is I'm becoming concerned about my reality. What if I can't lose the last 10 pounds? What if I never finish my dissertation? (I guess I'd have to start it first.) What if I end up just another crazy cat lady whose house smells like tuna?

What I'm becoming is someone who can't use my 20s as an excuse for not eating right, not having a career, and not being married with children. Now that I'm 30--in my 30s--the excuses seem just that, excuses.

Normal people make resolutions on New Years' Day. As it's been previously ascertained, I'm not normal. My birthday has often been the day of reckoning, the day to evaluate or reevalute who I am and what I'm about. This year I've been thinking about what I'm becoming. I'm doing what I love (educating the future of America) and working on my PhD. I own a house with DMP (dear mortgage partner or damned mortgage partner--depends on the day). I have family, friends, and pets that love and nurture me. But sometimes I don't feel any stronger or smarter than the naive 21-year-old who moved here 9 years ago. So where does this leave me?

I'd like to think that we never stop becoming something. So for this year, I'll strive to keep on becoming whatever it is I'm meant to be. And I'll try to be ok with not knowing what that means exactly.

redundancy

So, since I'm a word person, I thought I'd start this blog off with a little dictionary wisdom.

When thinking about what to name my blog, I wanted something that described me and my love of words. And by extension all things witty. For some reason, repartee came up. I'm thinking it might have to do with all those years of French. And being a linguistics nerd probably adds a little to that interest as well. So why is it that we often see "witty repartee," when in truth, wit is enveloped in the meaning of repartee in the first place?

That brings me to redundant, which the dictionary describes as "superfluous repetition or overlapping." A lot of things are redundant lately. When people are laid off from a job, they are made redundant. When the bridge collapsed in Minneapolis last week, experts in the field of engineering said there weren't enough built-in redundancies in the structure. When people write "at this present time" rather than using "currently" they're being redundant. Or maybe they're just being wordy; that's probably up for debate.

So back to repartee and why I picked this word in the first place: this blog is a place for "a quick, witty reply." Since the root of this word is from fencing, I'll start the conversation, and you can hit me with your best shot.

Bring it on!

Coming soon! More overly inflated language for overly educated people.