I was having a relatively great few days until dealing with the confounds of a) UvA financial aid and b) UvA doctors.
What an infernal piece of crap system.
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Gravity
What goes up...
I was having a relatively great few days until dealing with the confounds of a) UvA financial aid and b) UvA doctors.
What an infernal piece of crap system.
I was having a relatively great few days until dealing with the confounds of a) UvA financial aid and b) UvA doctors.
What an infernal piece of crap system.
Breakthrough
Worked on a paper for my other class last night (Sociological Perspectives). Final paper, 60% of my grade. Due the 27th, 2000-2500 words. Research proposal. Guess what? I had a ton of fun with it. I get to choose any topic, no need to get pre-approval on the topic so long as it incorporates two of the five topics covered in the previous five weeks. I had an idea to start with and as I was compiling the bibliography for it that idea kept changing, as in - getting better and closer to heaven. The topic I am working on is one I have been writing in my head for a couple of years. It has to do with the freeway off-ramp panhandlers that mark the landscape of Seattle. I am writing it as it's relationship to my doxa - the inherent bias formed by one's life experiences coupled by their institutional learning. Doxa is like the water in which a fish swims - they are not aware of it. Pairing freeway panhandlers with my doxa led to a bursting of ideas. I could not write fast enough to capture them. It was like an elaborate opera unfolding. It is the creative flow that made me remember why I love(d) school and these writing assignments.
Switch over to the other coursse and I can now see why I have been such a mess lately. Comparitive Organisations and Labor Studies. Oy. I mean, it's interesting, and I have learned a lot. But most of the course content and the concepts are new to me. Every day it is swallowing more hot food before it has a chance to cool off and then eating some more. Just too much. European labor markets, skill formation schemes. Varieties of capitalism. Liberal market economies versus Coordinated market economies. A lot of shit I just have no background in. So when I try to come up with something for a term paper proposal or worse -- a thesis topic -- then I just go dead inside. I try to fish for some jewel in the rubble, something that I can get excited about spending the next six months focusing on but so far the two ideas I presented were not good enough, were not close enough on track to satisfy the instructor.
I could try to bullshit my way through it like pick anything and just write about it. But that doesnt work for me. Writing about, or researching, homelessness, poverty, the eviction industry, poverty...things related to the underclass and the underground economy -- those things are more my interest and what I read in my spare time, or time away from school. Those are the things that grip and fascinate me and capture my interest time and again. I am having so much fun writing the SP paper that I care not about the grade - I know it will be fine. I have the technicalities of a paper pretty well locked down: formatting, sections, citations, operationalising a a proposal...shit like that. So it is the content where the heart of the paper lies for me. Once I get a topic that I am hot for I am out the chute running and grinning.
So, ok, I probably chose the wrong track for this Masters. I would have been better off in a class, inequality, poverty-type learning track. But it is too late to change. I am already here and two months in so just make the best of it, find little pieces of joy where I can. My next course, to replace the SP class is European Labor Markets. Shit. When I signed up for it I thought I would care about European Labor Markets. But I dont. Yes, I concede that labor markets in EU are relevant to what is going on in the US, and yes, I can still take my MSc degree to the US and get a job working with the underclass -- maybe policy or better yet, a non-profit. I am not an academic, in the sense of studying and writing for the sake of getting published and writing more. I have no ambition to make a name for myself in academia. I like talking with people or more specifically, initiating conversations and sitting back to listen. This is quite easy when dealing with the marginalised, as they are usually lacking for an audience. I'm talking about the guy or gal on the bus talking to themsleves that people try to avoid., THATS the one I sit next to. They usually have a real fucking fresh perspective on what is going on around them.
No class between last Tuesday and I think the 27th. My mood has improved a shit ton already. I like school, and I can deal with difficult text. I just hate GOING to school and I cant even tell you why. I dont know. I just feel better when I am working by myself and my company is strangers I meet while out walking, dogs and cats and birds I meet while out walking, and people at AA and NA meetings. I have nothing in common with the fresh faced youth of Europe out to save the world. I'm past it. I havent the heart to tell them they will not save the world and its unlikely their efforts will make a drop of difference and it doesnt matter if they recycle or not.
I also located a chiropractor that I can afford and is fairly close. I go in tomorrow. Thank the christ. I am so out of alignment that it is also to blame for much of my grouchiness of late. Oh and I located a public pool with a JACUZZI that is a 5-minute bike ride from my apartment. With my student ID it's €37 for ten swims. Yee haw! Hydrotherapy, at long last. Today I go to the UvA doctor to request a referral for Acupuncture so I can hopefully get reimbursed. My insurance will cover €30 per Ac treatment for up to twelve treatments. I found an Ac for €55 a pop. I've been averaging thirty minutes a day stretching and rolling but my body is still completely fucked.
That's the news for today.
Switch over to the other coursse and I can now see why I have been such a mess lately. Comparitive Organisations and Labor Studies. Oy. I mean, it's interesting, and I have learned a lot. But most of the course content and the concepts are new to me. Every day it is swallowing more hot food before it has a chance to cool off and then eating some more. Just too much. European labor markets, skill formation schemes. Varieties of capitalism. Liberal market economies versus Coordinated market economies. A lot of shit I just have no background in. So when I try to come up with something for a term paper proposal or worse -- a thesis topic -- then I just go dead inside. I try to fish for some jewel in the rubble, something that I can get excited about spending the next six months focusing on but so far the two ideas I presented were not good enough, were not close enough on track to satisfy the instructor.
I could try to bullshit my way through it like pick anything and just write about it. But that doesnt work for me. Writing about, or researching, homelessness, poverty, the eviction industry, poverty...things related to the underclass and the underground economy -- those things are more my interest and what I read in my spare time, or time away from school. Those are the things that grip and fascinate me and capture my interest time and again. I am having so much fun writing the SP paper that I care not about the grade - I know it will be fine. I have the technicalities of a paper pretty well locked down: formatting, sections, citations, operationalising a a proposal...shit like that. So it is the content where the heart of the paper lies for me. Once I get a topic that I am hot for I am out the chute running and grinning.
So, ok, I probably chose the wrong track for this Masters. I would have been better off in a class, inequality, poverty-type learning track. But it is too late to change. I am already here and two months in so just make the best of it, find little pieces of joy where I can. My next course, to replace the SP class is European Labor Markets. Shit. When I signed up for it I thought I would care about European Labor Markets. But I dont. Yes, I concede that labor markets in EU are relevant to what is going on in the US, and yes, I can still take my MSc degree to the US and get a job working with the underclass -- maybe policy or better yet, a non-profit. I am not an academic, in the sense of studying and writing for the sake of getting published and writing more. I have no ambition to make a name for myself in academia. I like talking with people or more specifically, initiating conversations and sitting back to listen. This is quite easy when dealing with the marginalised, as they are usually lacking for an audience. I'm talking about the guy or gal on the bus talking to themsleves that people try to avoid., THATS the one I sit next to. They usually have a real fucking fresh perspective on what is going on around them.
No class between last Tuesday and I think the 27th. My mood has improved a shit ton already. I like school, and I can deal with difficult text. I just hate GOING to school and I cant even tell you why. I dont know. I just feel better when I am working by myself and my company is strangers I meet while out walking, dogs and cats and birds I meet while out walking, and people at AA and NA meetings. I have nothing in common with the fresh faced youth of Europe out to save the world. I'm past it. I havent the heart to tell them they will not save the world and its unlikely their efforts will make a drop of difference and it doesnt matter if they recycle or not.
I also located a chiropractor that I can afford and is fairly close. I go in tomorrow. Thank the christ. I am so out of alignment that it is also to blame for much of my grouchiness of late. Oh and I located a public pool with a JACUZZI that is a 5-minute bike ride from my apartment. With my student ID it's €37 for ten swims. Yee haw! Hydrotherapy, at long last. Today I go to the UvA doctor to request a referral for Acupuncture so I can hopefully get reimbursed. My insurance will cover €30 per Ac treatment for up to twelve treatments. I found an Ac for €55 a pop. I've been averaging thirty minutes a day stretching and rolling but my body is still completely fucked.
That's the news for today.
Sunday, October 15, 2017
October 15
Killed the facebook page last week. I had just emerged from seeing the new Blade Runner 3D at Eye Film museum. It was a long film, 2h40m. It was a treat. €11 with my student ID. I felt righted, mellow. I love post-apocalyptic stories for putting my troubles of today into perspective. That perspective being: it's really all just bullshit so bide your time til its over.
Lately when I get up the only thing I look forward to is bedtime.
I was rounding off from a meltdown, a sort of crisis of intellectual faith. Did I even have what it took to do this program? I had yet to receive a grade on any of the work I turned in from the same professor who rejected two of my proposals. I weighed in on quitting and what my options were - should I quit and return to the US? Only cos I refuse to learn another language right now and without that I could either (maybe) work in the UK or get some kind of grunt work off the books here in Dutchie land. Neither sounded appealing. But if I am wracking my brain to absorb this material, and not getting it (little is clicking, it is all uphill) then what's the point of dragging it out?
As a last resort to the challenge of that day I emailed a couple of classmates asking how they came up with their term paper topics, as I was hitting dead-ends. One mailed me back the next day, expressing shock that I doubted myself, that the prof told her that I am one of the two strongest students in the course.
What?
Long story short, I got through the readings for that week, and thank christ the next weeks topics were something I could relate to. I was able to pull myself out of the funk by killing off everything save reading and my morning & evening walks. I turned in a weekly assignment that actually had some fire under it (I gave a shit about the topic matter) and yesterday saw the grades list posted on the course website. I do indeed have the highest grades in the class. Go the fuck figure. Even though the assignment he returned to me was chock full of advice on how it could have been better, got a high score.
Then I saw that the assignments from past courses he uploads for us to use as examples of high-scoring papers are ALSO filled with only comments on How This Could Have Been Better.
I heard that the Dutch are "very direct". Prior, I took this to mean that they say what's on their mind without all the pussyfooting around like polite society in the U.S. Imagine my state then when a couple of my typically blunt comments were met with expressions of shock. I have a new understanding of this "very direct" thing. I think it just means that they say whatever they want and give no fucks whether it is logical or matches their actions at all. Like, subjective and void of accountability. Fair enough.
This upcoming week is rest week. Well, the university calender calls it study week before exams week beginning the 23rd but for me, it is rest week because I have only one class. I get to work mostly from home, without my thought flow being interrupted by going to campus. Of all the adjustments I have made, the hardest has been a return to a campus-environment after three years of online school. I still hate being on campus. When no one is around (late Friday afternoons) it is bearable. Well, I wanted to see if an on-campus environment would be any different for grad school then it was in community college Fresh-Soph levels. It is not.
In other news Mata Hari has begun at the National Opera and Ballet. My student ID gets me rush ticks for €15 day of show. That is my next treat to myself. Today and all this week (and most of last week) there is no rain. Today is sunny and gorgeous. I have taken my walk, rode to get groceries, am now back in my cave with the curtains drawn, and happy to spend a couple hours working on an annotated bibliography for a term paper whose topic I am pulling together by threads.
I have a goal to finish this course by June 30th and travel this continent for at LEAST a month. If I go back to the US it will be to California. Where I belong.
I still haven't figured out how to reply to comments on this thing, so I am afraid it is a bit of a one-way conversation for now. Which sucks as I look forward to actually engaging with people. One help page I found suggested that since this blog is a part of G+ that I can only respond to those comments by persons who have me included in their G+ circles. What a piece of crap. O well. Nothing is free.
A good deal of my grumpiness has to do with the drastic reduction in physical well-being tools at my disposal. Back home I had an acupuncture clinic 5 minutes from my doorstep, at 10 treatments for $175 it was user friendly. My chiropractor was $48 a pop and the gym ten minutes from my house was where I could plunk into the jacuzzi for ten minutes. To top it all off, the Chinese massage place up the road was $30 for an hour. Bear in mind I was earning $3k/month. Now I've roughly €500 per month to live on, chiro is $80 (haven't gone) cheapie massage is €40/hour (went once), no jacuzzi in site. Living without a car is mostly OK but after a treatment I do not want to get on a bike and huff it back home. Whatever. In my grumpy state I come up with a lot of reasons why I cant do something, but the reality is that I dont have the money I used to. So, I do more stretching, foam rolling and tennis balls under my feet.
Lately when I get up the only thing I look forward to is bedtime.
I was rounding off from a meltdown, a sort of crisis of intellectual faith. Did I even have what it took to do this program? I had yet to receive a grade on any of the work I turned in from the same professor who rejected two of my proposals. I weighed in on quitting and what my options were - should I quit and return to the US? Only cos I refuse to learn another language right now and without that I could either (maybe) work in the UK or get some kind of grunt work off the books here in Dutchie land. Neither sounded appealing. But if I am wracking my brain to absorb this material, and not getting it (little is clicking, it is all uphill) then what's the point of dragging it out?
As a last resort to the challenge of that day I emailed a couple of classmates asking how they came up with their term paper topics, as I was hitting dead-ends. One mailed me back the next day, expressing shock that I doubted myself, that the prof told her that I am one of the two strongest students in the course.
What?
Long story short, I got through the readings for that week, and thank christ the next weeks topics were something I could relate to. I was able to pull myself out of the funk by killing off everything save reading and my morning & evening walks. I turned in a weekly assignment that actually had some fire under it (I gave a shit about the topic matter) and yesterday saw the grades list posted on the course website. I do indeed have the highest grades in the class. Go the fuck figure. Even though the assignment he returned to me was chock full of advice on how it could have been better, got a high score.
Then I saw that the assignments from past courses he uploads for us to use as examples of high-scoring papers are ALSO filled with only comments on How This Could Have Been Better.
I heard that the Dutch are "very direct". Prior, I took this to mean that they say what's on their mind without all the pussyfooting around like polite society in the U.S. Imagine my state then when a couple of my typically blunt comments were met with expressions of shock. I have a new understanding of this "very direct" thing. I think it just means that they say whatever they want and give no fucks whether it is logical or matches their actions at all. Like, subjective and void of accountability. Fair enough.
This upcoming week is rest week. Well, the university calender calls it study week before exams week beginning the 23rd but for me, it is rest week because I have only one class. I get to work mostly from home, without my thought flow being interrupted by going to campus. Of all the adjustments I have made, the hardest has been a return to a campus-environment after three years of online school. I still hate being on campus. When no one is around (late Friday afternoons) it is bearable. Well, I wanted to see if an on-campus environment would be any different for grad school then it was in community college Fresh-Soph levels. It is not.
In other news Mata Hari has begun at the National Opera and Ballet. My student ID gets me rush ticks for €15 day of show. That is my next treat to myself. Today and all this week (and most of last week) there is no rain. Today is sunny and gorgeous. I have taken my walk, rode to get groceries, am now back in my cave with the curtains drawn, and happy to spend a couple hours working on an annotated bibliography for a term paper whose topic I am pulling together by threads.
I have a goal to finish this course by June 30th and travel this continent for at LEAST a month. If I go back to the US it will be to California. Where I belong.
I still haven't figured out how to reply to comments on this thing, so I am afraid it is a bit of a one-way conversation for now. Which sucks as I look forward to actually engaging with people. One help page I found suggested that since this blog is a part of G+ that I can only respond to those comments by persons who have me included in their G+ circles. What a piece of crap. O well. Nothing is free.
A good deal of my grumpiness has to do with the drastic reduction in physical well-being tools at my disposal. Back home I had an acupuncture clinic 5 minutes from my doorstep, at 10 treatments for $175 it was user friendly. My chiropractor was $48 a pop and the gym ten minutes from my house was where I could plunk into the jacuzzi for ten minutes. To top it all off, the Chinese massage place up the road was $30 for an hour. Bear in mind I was earning $3k/month. Now I've roughly €500 per month to live on, chiro is $80 (haven't gone) cheapie massage is €40/hour (went once), no jacuzzi in site. Living without a car is mostly OK but after a treatment I do not want to get on a bike and huff it back home. Whatever. In my grumpy state I come up with a lot of reasons why I cant do something, but the reality is that I dont have the money I used to. So, I do more stretching, foam rolling and tennis balls under my feet.
Monday, October 9, 2017
A City With No Logos
Imagine a city with no billboards, no public adverts, no logos. I couldn't either.
I am researching for a paper and came across Tony DeMarco as the photographer who best captured the city of São Paulo, Brasil after a 2007 legislation banned all forms of public advertising in that city. Here is a story on the story. For this blog post, I simply present DeMarco's photos.
It's surreal, to me. It's signs of life.
I am researching for a paper and came across Tony DeMarco as the photographer who best captured the city of São Paulo, Brasil after a 2007 legislation banned all forms of public advertising in that city. Here is a story on the story. For this blog post, I simply present DeMarco's photos.
It's surreal, to me. It's signs of life.
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