links, television, and minor life crises
Via kernezelda, this is one of the more poignant things I've read about the oil spill: But this fear. This hysteria. This horror. It is not irrational.
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A very interesting article about how self control may be exhaustible. If this is true, it explains SO MUCH about my life! How I can be a productive academic OR a balanced human being, but never both at the same time, for instance. Or why when I fantasize that having a 9-5 job in which someone else tells me what to do and how to manage my time would enable me to balance work with the rest of my life, I may not be delusional. I've always beaten myself up a bit about my self control. Obviously I've got pretty decent powers of self control and self motivation--it's impossible to do a PhD without it--yet things like fixing dinner so regularly defeat me: how can I write a dissertation yet fail at grocery shopping? Perhaps I've been failing at grocery shopping because I was writing a dissertation.
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Speaking of which, it's time once again for my semi-regular period of disaffectation with academia. At least this time leaving academia would not also mean quitting grad school. That feels like progress (or evidence that I've perpetuated the masochism long enough to almost have a few more letters after my name to show for it). I have, however, found a very handy website on Leaving Academia, and it's all full of concrete advice rather than the usual dire academic navel-gazing. Right now I'm poking at it like I poke at fantasy trips on google maps or real estate listings in places I might someday want to live, but I do feel better knowing it's there.
Another relevant article to my current state of mind was this one on the academic love affair. Academics love to use relationship metaphors to describe what we do, and I suspect it's more apt than in a lot of other lines of work: this is a vocation more than a job, and most people don't manage to get to the middle of a PhD, much less the end of one, without a lot of love. Of course, lately I've been thinking of this, the great love affair of my life thus far, most often when I listen to breakup songs.
The other day I was musing about fannish 'shipping and pointed out that the thing that most draws me to fictional pairings is the whole question of whether a relationship is worth it, preferably with a strong suspicion that it may not be. And I've always found this a vaguely strange button for me to have, since I'm in various other ways so uninterested in romantic relationships. But then it occurred to me that in my life it's a metaphor: my relationship is with my career, and it remains to be seen whether or not it's doomed. Like Scully back in season 1, though, if you'd told me eight years ago to run away, I wouldn't have listened.
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I've been distracting myself from the current impulses to fly the coop with more Alias. I continue to have great love for Irina Derevko and her awesome arm muscles. Sydney is growing on me, though I've gotten very distracted by the fact that at least at this age/in this role, Jennifer Garner constantly reminds me of Melissa Gilbert as Laura Ingalls (though not so much of Melissa Gilbert acting badly on Babylon 5). I still don't particularly care about Jack as an individual, but while we're on the subject of doomed relationships, OH HAI THAR JACK/IRINA!!!!!!!! Yeah, totally shipping that. You're not surprised. I even have an icon now, because nothing says "is this worth it?" like jewelery laced with explosives.
**
A very interesting article about how self control may be exhaustible. If this is true, it explains SO MUCH about my life! How I can be a productive academic OR a balanced human being, but never both at the same time, for instance. Or why when I fantasize that having a 9-5 job in which someone else tells me what to do and how to manage my time would enable me to balance work with the rest of my life, I may not be delusional. I've always beaten myself up a bit about my self control. Obviously I've got pretty decent powers of self control and self motivation--it's impossible to do a PhD without it--yet things like fixing dinner so regularly defeat me: how can I write a dissertation yet fail at grocery shopping? Perhaps I've been failing at grocery shopping because I was writing a dissertation.
**
Speaking of which, it's time once again for my semi-regular period of disaffectation with academia. At least this time leaving academia would not also mean quitting grad school. That feels like progress (or evidence that I've perpetuated the masochism long enough to almost have a few more letters after my name to show for it). I have, however, found a very handy website on Leaving Academia, and it's all full of concrete advice rather than the usual dire academic navel-gazing. Right now I'm poking at it like I poke at fantasy trips on google maps or real estate listings in places I might someday want to live, but I do feel better knowing it's there.
Another relevant article to my current state of mind was this one on the academic love affair. Academics love to use relationship metaphors to describe what we do, and I suspect it's more apt than in a lot of other lines of work: this is a vocation more than a job, and most people don't manage to get to the middle of a PhD, much less the end of one, without a lot of love. Of course, lately I've been thinking of this, the great love affair of my life thus far, most often when I listen to breakup songs.
The other day I was musing about fannish 'shipping and pointed out that the thing that most draws me to fictional pairings is the whole question of whether a relationship is worth it, preferably with a strong suspicion that it may not be. And I've always found this a vaguely strange button for me to have, since I'm in various other ways so uninterested in romantic relationships. But then it occurred to me that in my life it's a metaphor: my relationship is with my career, and it remains to be seen whether or not it's doomed. Like Scully back in season 1, though, if you'd told me eight years ago to run away, I wouldn't have listened.
**
I've been distracting myself from the current impulses to fly the coop with more Alias. I continue to have great love for Irina Derevko and her awesome arm muscles. Sydney is growing on me, though I've gotten very distracted by the fact that at least at this age/in this role, Jennifer Garner constantly reminds me of Melissa Gilbert as Laura Ingalls (though not so much of Melissa Gilbert acting badly on Babylon 5). I still don't particularly care about Jack as an individual, but while we're on the subject of doomed relationships, OH HAI THAR JACK/IRINA!!!!!!!! Yeah, totally shipping that. You're not surprised. I even have an icon now, because nothing says "is this worth it?" like jewelery laced with explosives.