Just had our first "house" meeting.
I'm so excited about our house this year! This is going to be so great! I still can't believe that I'm a senior! They started talking about senior banquet, and I definitely got butterflies just thinking about it. I even tried to start thinking about what wills I'll be giving people, hehe.
I'm almost feeling ready to go. To leave Smith. I wouldn't have thought it possible four years ago, but I think that as trying of an experience as the Paris program was for me, I would not feel as ready to get on with my life after Smith had I not gone abroad. This community is so wonderful and accepting, which is precisely why I think it was hard for me to branch out and grow accustomed to the French way of life. As shitty as it is to train myself to live in... less than accepting environments, if I had stayed at Smith all four years, I don't think I would've ever felt ready to tear myself away from the comfort that it provides.
Which is not to say that Smith's Paris program wasn't comfortable. I never felt completely out of my element, and I always knew that they would have my back if something absolutely horrible happened. I guess I've come to rely on the fact that someone would always be there to get me out of trouble, if I really needed it. But.. dealing with the French bureaucratic system and our "French" directors, I quickly learned that I could rely on myself to fix my own problems. So.. in a sort of roundabout way, by relying on Smith faculty for everything, that sense of reliance on being able to fix my problems shifted from them to me.
I'm not sure that that made any sense, but long story short = I'm glad that I'm more self-reliant now than I was when I started Smith.
I also can't even put into words how happy I am that Shanna's coming up super soon!!! It sets my heart all a-flutter just thinking about her arrival. We're going to have so much fun!
I can't believe how lucky I am. I keep thinking about this song from The L Word soundtrack (I know; how gay can I be?), and it just goes "Everything is perfect now." That's what I feel.
(Song with captions, but the words don't start until like 2 minutes in : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqCzqmtvYJM)
I think I'm going to finally finish my book tonight. I bought English with an Accent at the Book Mill my first year, and I hadn't started reading it until this summer. It's really good! It's all about how "Standard English" is not a norm, but an abstraction, just as any accented version of English. Clearly, also a very privileged, white, upper-middle class thing to say that nothing but the standard is acceptable. Which also got me to thinking about the underground grammar nazis at Smith. I was originally a fan of them, pointing out the differences between "fewer" and "less", correcting grammatically incorrect but generally socially acceptable turns of phrase. Why should we feel the need to correct everyone's usage of English? If we can understand each other, a feat in and of itself, shouldn't that be more important than upholding traditionally exclusive standards in order to perpetrate a racist, classist view of language so that only a select few have the power to be heard.
I think it's pretty darn interesting. It seems like such an evident truth that written language and spoken language are two different beasts, and that the "right" way of speaking is just a shitty way of protecting the elite. I love this book.
I'm almost feeling ready to go. To leave Smith. I wouldn't have thought it possible four years ago, but I think that as trying of an experience as the Paris program was for me, I would not feel as ready to get on with my life after Smith had I not gone abroad. This community is so wonderful and accepting, which is precisely why I think it was hard for me to branch out and grow accustomed to the French way of life. As shitty as it is to train myself to live in... less than accepting environments, if I had stayed at Smith all four years, I don't think I would've ever felt ready to tear myself away from the comfort that it provides.
Which is not to say that Smith's Paris program wasn't comfortable. I never felt completely out of my element, and I always knew that they would have my back if something absolutely horrible happened. I guess I've come to rely on the fact that someone would always be there to get me out of trouble, if I really needed it. But.. dealing with the French bureaucratic system and our "French" directors, I quickly learned that I could rely on myself to fix my own problems. So.. in a sort of roundabout way, by relying on Smith faculty for everything, that sense of reliance on being able to fix my problems shifted from them to me.
I'm not sure that that made any sense, but long story short = I'm glad that I'm more self-reliant now than I was when I started Smith.
I also can't even put into words how happy I am that Shanna's coming up super soon!!! It sets my heart all a-flutter just thinking about her arrival. We're going to have so much fun!
I can't believe how lucky I am. I keep thinking about this song from The L Word soundtrack (I know; how gay can I be?), and it just goes "Everything is perfect now." That's what I feel.
(Song with captions, but the words don't start until like 2 minutes in : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqCzqmtvYJM)
I think I'm going to finally finish my book tonight. I bought English with an Accent at the Book Mill my first year, and I hadn't started reading it until this summer. It's really good! It's all about how "Standard English" is not a norm, but an abstraction, just as any accented version of English. Clearly, also a very privileged, white, upper-middle class thing to say that nothing but the standard is acceptable. Which also got me to thinking about the underground grammar nazis at Smith. I was originally a fan of them, pointing out the differences between "fewer" and "less", correcting grammatically incorrect but generally socially acceptable turns of phrase. Why should we feel the need to correct everyone's usage of English? If we can understand each other, a feat in and of itself, shouldn't that be more important than upholding traditionally exclusive standards in order to perpetrate a racist, classist view of language so that only a select few have the power to be heard.
I think it's pretty darn interesting. It seems like such an evident truth that written language and spoken language are two different beasts, and that the "right" way of speaking is just a shitty way of protecting the elite. I love this book.