(no subject)
So I've been really bad about updating lately. That's mostly because there hasn't really been much going on - work takes up almost all of my time, and as much time as I spend thinking about it and issues related to it I don't really want to put those thoughts up in public on the internet. Other than that, life is Russian lessons, swimming (not nearly often enough - I'm dangerously close to falling off the wagon on this) and hanging out with people in bars. All of which is fun (and Russian is awesome), but not much of which makes for interesting reading.
One very exciting thing is that my friends Griffin and Warren came down for the weekend last week to see Mary Zimmerman's production of Candide at the Shakespeare Theater. It was amazing. Mary Zimmerman is a director who's known for having a really powerful visual sense, and the production was absolutely gorgeous. Hidden trap doors, a cardboard chandelier, a dress that was green on the outside and blue on the inside being used to represent a river with a canoe going down it, a stage that sprouts flowers and a marvelous, marvelous moment where a huge, green veil is laid on the floor and Cunegonde rises up on a couch from a trapdoor underneath it. All this with gorgeous music by Leonard Bernstein. It was one of the best things I've seen in a while. Not that I've seen much in a while...
So now that I'm a little more than six months into this job I've been thinking pretty hard about what I want to do next summer. I've had a few thoughts. Default option is I'm going to move back to London and try to get a job with a thinktank or an NGO - if all the stars align with the Open Society Institute, which is George Soros' outfit that does development work in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, among other places, which would rock. Option 1a is if I can't get back to London, trying to do a similar thing here in the States or somewhere else. There's also a small chance there could be an opening in Brussels related to one of the projects I'm working on now. So that's kind of on the table. Option two, which I've been thinking hard about, is Peace Corps, which I think I would love and I think I have to do it early, before I have so many commitments that it becomes impractical.
Option three is more school, which I had been pretty opposed to for a long time. My thoughts have been changing, though. My assumption is that if I get a PhD I will have to go into academia - I don't think PhDs in the humanities and social sciences are generally good for much else (with a few exceptions like economics). I had been thinking of academia as mostly a way to give me a steady, if boring base of support that wouldn't totally eat my life and would give me time and space to do things that I like. Then the other day I stumbled on the World Oral Literature Project, which reminded me that some academic research (even in the humanities!) is not just intellectual masturbation and can be very, very exciting in its own right. I have to be honest, I found that website and went, "That is what I want to do. And I want to do it now."
So long story short, I'm researching the possibility of doing a degree in field linguistics. I don't quite have the background for it - I'd have to go through an(other) master's first - and I need to talk to people, find out if it's the kind of thing that can be broken into and a living made at, specifically the oral literature aspect of it, which ties in with other linguistics studies I've done and which I find endlessly fascinating. So we'll see. For right now this is only a thought, and there are a variety of concerns and challenges, but we'll see.
One very exciting thing is that my friends Griffin and Warren came down for the weekend last week to see Mary Zimmerman's production of Candide at the Shakespeare Theater. It was amazing. Mary Zimmerman is a director who's known for having a really powerful visual sense, and the production was absolutely gorgeous. Hidden trap doors, a cardboard chandelier, a dress that was green on the outside and blue on the inside being used to represent a river with a canoe going down it, a stage that sprouts flowers and a marvelous, marvelous moment where a huge, green veil is laid on the floor and Cunegonde rises up on a couch from a trapdoor underneath it. All this with gorgeous music by Leonard Bernstein. It was one of the best things I've seen in a while. Not that I've seen much in a while...
So now that I'm a little more than six months into this job I've been thinking pretty hard about what I want to do next summer. I've had a few thoughts. Default option is I'm going to move back to London and try to get a job with a thinktank or an NGO - if all the stars align with the Open Society Institute, which is George Soros' outfit that does development work in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, among other places, which would rock. Option 1a is if I can't get back to London, trying to do a similar thing here in the States or somewhere else. There's also a small chance there could be an opening in Brussels related to one of the projects I'm working on now. So that's kind of on the table. Option two, which I've been thinking hard about, is Peace Corps, which I think I would love and I think I have to do it early, before I have so many commitments that it becomes impractical.
Option three is more school, which I had been pretty opposed to for a long time. My thoughts have been changing, though. My assumption is that if I get a PhD I will have to go into academia - I don't think PhDs in the humanities and social sciences are generally good for much else (with a few exceptions like economics). I had been thinking of academia as mostly a way to give me a steady, if boring base of support that wouldn't totally eat my life and would give me time and space to do things that I like. Then the other day I stumbled on the World Oral Literature Project, which reminded me that some academic research (even in the humanities!) is not just intellectual masturbation and can be very, very exciting in its own right. I have to be honest, I found that website and went, "That is what I want to do. And I want to do it now."
So long story short, I'm researching the possibility of doing a degree in field linguistics. I don't quite have the background for it - I'd have to go through an(other) master's first - and I need to talk to people, find out if it's the kind of thing that can be broken into and a living made at, specifically the oral literature aspect of it, which ties in with other linguistics studies I've done and which I find endlessly fascinating. So we'll see. For right now this is only a thought, and there are a variety of concerns and challenges, but we'll see.