Or should I say, I have a bazillion-and-one things to post about, but don’t have the energy to seperate them out into coherent thoughts.
This is why I’ve never sucessfully kept a written journal.
I easily have 200+ pages of reading to do this week. I’m not quite halfway there…
Life is good. God is good.
I’ll write more later.
I’m trying to raise extra money for a trip this semester, and have decided to sell some of my prints. Check it out, yo:
Because generally, my sister is an incredibly bright, creative and happy person. But she’s 12, which means she’s more emotional, more sensitive, and more reflective, which combined with that intelligence and creativity can produce truly amazing stuff. She’s drawn things that make *me* want to cry. And she wrote this poem today…
When I think of You
When I think of
your smile, I smile.
When I think of
your laugh, I laugh.
When I think of
your heart beating,
I get goose bumps.
And when I think of
your face, I light up!
But when I remember how you died
I can’t breathe.
I was telling Becca, a fellow biology-to-anthropology transplant, that scientific reading seems to have ruined my ability to write a reflexive essay. I simply cannot add my own voice to a paper. Sure, I can support text using text…but my own critique and analysis? We were told, in so few words, scientists don’t do that.
Whether or not that’s entirely true, over my year as a biology major I perfected the art of using someone else’s words to prove my point. I also mastered whittling a paper down to it’s most concise form, also not terribly useful when seeking to write a 1,000 word essay on, you guessed it: my opinion.
But it’s not just a matter of developing my perspective, it’s having the guts to share it. Because deep down, I’m afraid that someone will realize I really don’t know what I’m talking about. That they’ll see me for the fumbling, short-sighted undergrad that I am, with only the barest knowledge of anthropological theories and methodologies. Using big words? Not so much of a problem for me. But yet I’m scared to come across as pretentious, or quite simply full of crap.
“Nothing like upper level courses to bring out your insecurities,” I told Becca. She laughed, and she agreed.
Up until this point, I’ve never been so intimidated by what I’m being asked to do. Before, I was just the freshman, just the sophomore, just the undeclared student skimming through introductory courses. And even when I started taking advanced science courses, the professors didn’t let us forget for a second that we were amateurs.
But the anthropology courses are becoming much more collaborative. We’re creating text to be published, audio and video to be aired. We’ll be writing research papers that will be considered by heads of tourism boards. I’m looking into grad schools and internships. I’m supposed to be marketing myself to employers as someone with expertise in the field, and all the while I’m thinking, Are you kidding me? I can’t do this. I’m just…
A kid?
Not anymore.
