(no subject)
I'm back from Fayetteville, more amusingly known as "Fayette-nam" to North Carolinians.
To anyone reading this - no need to go there. If you've seen one depressing combination of parking lots and fast-food joints, you've seen them all.
I just destroyed, I mean utterly destroyed a photovoltaics test. This is not necessarily a good thing. I only studied for it this morning, and I'm in grad school for shit's sake. Physics pushed me harder, way harder. To an extent, music did too. If I don't have high expectations, I'm afraid I'll just get comfortable. There's the P3 project, which is awesome (and I'm gonna be working on it tonight) but I don't know if it'll continue after we go to DC. I'm leaning towards doing something with rocket stoves even if those people don't contact me.
It's navel-gazing, but it's funny to think about how things can change. To a large extent, I live my life as though consequences didn't exist. I don't mean to imply that I'm some daredevil driving off ramps and having unprotected sex with sorority girls ... I just assume that things are going to work out. That's probably because that's honestly the story of my life so far. Sooner or later that karma's going to run out.
Learning about some of the environmental and poverty-related things going on in the world (and seeing a tiny, infinitesimal piece of it myself) occasionally makes me realize both how good I have it and how that is not necessarily likely to continue, but only occasionally. I'm an American alright.
Part of me is resistant to the idea of traveling to so-called "developing countries" because it's easy to see as something that rich people do to feel better about themselves. Do a token amount of work, take pictures of yourself hugging some brown children, assuage your white-guilt, fly back to America and seem more interesting at parties. Now you have cause to always seem a little older, a little wiser, and you can laugh at your naive friends and nod knowingly, whether or not you do.
I have the impression that Africa (and maybe, for a short while there, Haiti) has no shortage of seemingly well-intentioned white people. How many of those people have ever set foot on the bad end of their own town?
Of course, maybe it's just that I realize that such experiences would probably make it harder and harder for me to return to that comfortable shell. I know people that have done work in other countries who wouldn't fit that previous description, and I'm not cocky enough to think I know all that much about the world, or other people.
To continue a trend: if Americorps taught me anything, it's that good intentions, patience and what some have described as nearly-unlimited cheer does not change make.
All this sound and fury on my part signifies nothing. I have a vague sense of where I want to go, and I know what's right in front of my feet right now. The first step is competence. The second step is to stop taking my life so seriously. The third step probably involves ale, or so I hope because all this existentialist typing makes me thirsty.
Also, I may have accidentally nearly given myself a mohawk.
To anyone reading this - no need to go there. If you've seen one depressing combination of parking lots and fast-food joints, you've seen them all.
I just destroyed, I mean utterly destroyed a photovoltaics test. This is not necessarily a good thing. I only studied for it this morning, and I'm in grad school for shit's sake. Physics pushed me harder, way harder. To an extent, music did too. If I don't have high expectations, I'm afraid I'll just get comfortable. There's the P3 project, which is awesome (and I'm gonna be working on it tonight) but I don't know if it'll continue after we go to DC. I'm leaning towards doing something with rocket stoves even if those people don't contact me.
It's navel-gazing, but it's funny to think about how things can change. To a large extent, I live my life as though consequences didn't exist. I don't mean to imply that I'm some daredevil driving off ramps and having unprotected sex with sorority girls ... I just assume that things are going to work out. That's probably because that's honestly the story of my life so far. Sooner or later that karma's going to run out.
Learning about some of the environmental and poverty-related things going on in the world (and seeing a tiny, infinitesimal piece of it myself) occasionally makes me realize both how good I have it and how that is not necessarily likely to continue, but only occasionally. I'm an American alright.
Part of me is resistant to the idea of traveling to so-called "developing countries" because it's easy to see as something that rich people do to feel better about themselves. Do a token amount of work, take pictures of yourself hugging some brown children, assuage your white-guilt, fly back to America and seem more interesting at parties. Now you have cause to always seem a little older, a little wiser, and you can laugh at your naive friends and nod knowingly, whether or not you do.
I have the impression that Africa (and maybe, for a short while there, Haiti) has no shortage of seemingly well-intentioned white people. How many of those people have ever set foot on the bad end of their own town?
Of course, maybe it's just that I realize that such experiences would probably make it harder and harder for me to return to that comfortable shell. I know people that have done work in other countries who wouldn't fit that previous description, and I'm not cocky enough to think I know all that much about the world, or other people.
To continue a trend: if Americorps taught me anything, it's that good intentions, patience and what some have described as nearly-unlimited cheer does not change make.
All this sound and fury on my part signifies nothing. I have a vague sense of where I want to go, and I know what's right in front of my feet right now. The first step is competence. The second step is to stop taking my life so seriously. The third step probably involves ale, or so I hope because all this existentialist typing makes me thirsty.
Also, I may have accidentally nearly given myself a mohawk.