untangling mixed feelings is always bittersweet. i spent the first half of the bus ride over here being social and the second half contemplating what on earth i want to be doing with myself - the recently perennial question, "is being a grad student right for me?". i don't remember much of today's installment, but it was largely love/hate; that is ( Read more... )

today was a particularly lonely day. i think i overcommitted a bunch of good mood to last week, or something ( Read more... )

i feel like google+ is a more comfortable/established place for me to discuss sexism issues, so i have moved over there for doing so. nevertheless, here is a cross-post of what i have to say.

another thing i'm trying to work on in this self-confidence project is channelling it into doing my work and research. it's interesting to think about reading papers, writing code, and grading as things that to be proud of myself for, instead of just things that i do because i have to. there comes a new level of joy in talking with people about ( Read more... )

( musings on confidence )

"i can't express myself because nobody understands me" is a particularly nasty pit of quicksand. today i am going to talk about it.

i've had this problem for a while where unexpressed thought and feeling builds upon previous unexpressed thought and feeling. soon enough i can be left with some tangled complicated mess that i'd like to somehow share ( Read more... )

over here i was talking about the gender option on google+, and a nagging question arose while i was explaining my opinion. the prompt is that google+ has a "gender" option for your profile that (a) is unavoidably public and (b) offers only the choices "male", "female", and "other".

my complaint with the system is that while i am male, i am not ( Read more... )

i was biking home from brunch today along 5th, on the sidewalk, slightly behind another biker who was on the road, when i saw somebody a few cars behind the other biker lean out his passenger-side window and yell angrily at her: "ride on the sidewalk! why can't you ride on the sidewalk, like him?!" (i.e., me). i sped up a bit to be even with him, ( Read more... )

today i am feeling rambly! i don't need to have a central point in everything i post so there.

there is this sort of process of learning to be okay with doing whatever i feel like doing at the time instead of what i imagine i should do given history or experience or whatever. example: if i am super grateful to masqueradestar for inviting me along to a great sushi ( Read more... )

"i have no clue what next year will be like." "different than all the others..."

sometime before the semester started, i thought oh, i'm only going to have one class, so i'll have plenty of time to focus on other sources of fulfillment - cooking, running, improving social confidence, optimising for happiness in general. it turns out this is itself a ( Read more... )