Graduations -- Eighty Ninth Post

Fun fact: I'm about to graduate from my undergraduate university. I have a grad school all lined up, I'm all confirmed and working on a roommate and apartment for next year, and I can safely put off loan repayments for at least five years. Because I'm in chemistry grad school, I will be paid to go to school and get my doctorate. I'll have to work my butt off to get that money, but it's better than having to work to pay tuition on top of living expenses (i.e., food, shelter). Still, graduating puts one in a strange frame of mind, regardless of whether it's high school or college (college = uni, for any UK denizens reading this). I feel like reflecting on where the hell the past four years went, all of a sudden. I feel like giving advice to anyone who looks younger than me. I feel like making jokes about common lab glassware. And, of course, I feel like blogging about it instead of doing my homework.
I also feel like all the grown-ups in my life who always make weird statements about "how fast life goes" were right all along. I mean, where did the last four years go? I had to recap them just to prove that it really has been three years and nine months since I got here.
Freshman Year: 2009-2010
Cried when my family left
Became vegetarian
Made friends on hall
Didn't really make other friends
Found out that college is hard
Discovered Heroes and became addicted
Found spiritual home in shotokan karate
Had nervous breakdown in advisor's office over physics
Was angry in class most of the time
Passed Physics 1
Took 3 lab classes at the same time
Survived taking 3 lab classes, arguably
Started realizing that personal beliefs line up remarkably well with feminism

Sophomore Year: 2010-2011
Lost touch with freshman year friends
Kept doing karate
Took Ochem and German at same time
Made new friends
Applied to study abroad
Was accepted to study abroad program
Was accepted to University of Sunderland
Didn't do much else
May have survived taking OChem and German at the same time
Gained lots of confidence from karate

Junior Year: 2011-2012
Studied abroad in England
Made lots of new friends
Did lots of new things
Pierced nose
Discovered self outside of family-and-friend network
Liked who I found
Visited and fell in love with Edinburgh
Visited and didn't enjoy London
Had computer stolen
Came back to States
Promptly took hardest undergrad course load ever and didn't have a breakdown
Was sick all the time due to rain and cold, drafty, poorly-lit house
Missed England

Senior Year: 2012-2013
Missed England
Kept friends from sophomore year
Got new job in a teaching-ish position
Loved new job, much to my surprise
Took GRE
Did okay enough on GRE to get into grad school
Took lots of really hard classes and didn't have a breakdown
Got yellow belt in karate
Applied to grad schools
Got into top choice grad school
Kept missing England
Got green belt in karate
Lost motivation for last two assignments of undergrad like you would not believe

So, okay, it really has been four years. And if you want advice for college, here is my advice to you: Everyone's experience is different. If there is one thing I would love for everyone to do, it's study abroad, but I know that it's expensive and sometimes difficult to manage with a busy course load. So go, live your life, and enjoy what comes your way. If you need fantastic grades to get into your post-graduate whatever, then try hard. If not, well, I got into grad school with a solid B average. I don't get honor cords, which is kind of depressing given that I was valedictorian in high school, but whatever. The point is, I'm done and I did my best. Do I have regrets? Sure. Would I change anything? Nothing but keeping in touch with people and remembering to clean my hair out of the shower sophomore year.

Also, I can't help but include another fun fact:
The difference between a University and a College in the States is in the graduate programs. My school is a university; another school in Eastern Washington that starts with "Whit" is a college. Ugh, get it right.

Let's talk about feminism -- Eighty Eighth Post

It's time to make this blog serious business and tackle some serious issues. I'll probably switch back to our regularly scheduled programming, also known as "whatever random crap crosses my mind," soon, though.

Rights are belong to glnicol on The Lilith Effect, as far as I know.

I have a problem where, when I try to talk coherently and rationally about something that I really care about, I can’t. I set out to be logical, and it turns into a stream of consciousness thing that really only makes sense to me. And it doesn’t usually make that much sense to me if I come back a few weeks later.

This is a problem because when I get really passionate about something political or human rights-ish or why you should study abroad or what have you, I have a really hard time conveying that passion. Examples that make sense in my head don’t translate well onto paper or into spoken word. For instance, a real train of thought I had: I am a feminist. Also a normal person. Well, actually I’m kind of a dork, but it’s okay! I like karate, so this is clearly valid. Women can like karate and it’s okay! I also like baking and am still a feminist!!

Wut.

If I don’t care about something, I can write really logically and dispassionately. I can argue both sides with total abandon, which is really helpful in discussion-based classes. I can really get into the motives behind why people think the way they do, indicating that I have chosen the wrong profession. However, as soon as I try to really persuasively argue for a side, it all goes to hell. I become fervent, passionate, and incoherent. I can’t understand why anyone would ever believe anything else. It’s a major failing, indicating that maybe science is for me after all.

So when I set out to make a post about feminism, I sat on it for a while. I edited it three times. I used the example from earlier, then took it out, then put it back in, edited, in another place. I still didn’t click the “publish” button. Now, I’m going to try to collate the ideas from that post, which shall remain unpublished in its current form, into something coherent.

Outline

1. My experience with feminism.

            a. Pre-college

            b. College - present

2. Feminism is not one-size-fits-all

            a. Differences between me and some straw feminists

            b. Gender roles

3. Activism

I had zero experience with feminism until I hit college. It seemed unnecessary to me, honestly. Growing up, I was very lucky to have lots of positive, supportive, encouraging female role models, and my mom and dad were both really great at letting me do my own thing most of the time and holding me to high academic standards. I vaguely knew that women hadn’t always had the vote or the right to work outside the home not as secretaries or the right to wear trousers, but that seemed like it must have been a long, long time ago. Anyway, I can wear whatever I want, to the point of ridiculousness, so that’s sorted. Feminism is dead.

The entire science department at my high school was female. My chemistry teacher had worked in power plants and in research at PNNL before she taught high school and middle school science, and I still think of her as pretty much the coolest person ever. She really inspired me to do science and seek opportunities in that field.

Also, the entire lab group where I interned in high school was female. My mentor was female, her boss was female, the other interns' mentors were female. Half the post-docs in my office area were females from various ethnic backgrounds. Who needs feminism when we’ve come so far?

Once I got to college, 5 out of 6 of the chemistry professors were female. They had PhDs and families and reasonably-paying careers. I lived on a hall with girls who are going on to start businesses, translate plays from French to English, and work for change in the education, judicial, and foster systems in America. It never occurred to me that people still believe that women should limit their dreams because we are women.

I had never personally encountered nasty sexism, either. No one made “sandwich” jokes at me or told me I belonged in the kitchen. I had been encouraged by male and female role models alike to reach for the stars and pursue a career in science. I also benefited from being a woman in the form of lower car insurance rates as a teenager and better odds of getting a job via equal opportunity than my male friends. Feminism seemed like it was done. The only encounters I’d had with “feminism” was with caricatures of radical, man-hating feminists who get mad when a man holds the door for them. I didn’t want to be like those women. I like my male friends, and I have no problem with door-holding. Heck, I try to hold the door when I see someone walking in close behind me. It’s called common courtesy.

Then, spring semester of freshman year, I took a class called “Women Writers” to get my “American Diversity” credits out of the way or whatever. Remember, my experience with feminism was with straw feminists, so I was pretty pessimistic about the class and expected it to be pretty much a time-suck from my three lab classes.

It was pretty easy. I breezed through the coursework, got an A, and then went back and re-read the books I’d skimmed and analyzed at a pretty superficial level. My favorite books were The Story of Avis and Reading Lolita in Tehran. Avis is fictional, but it sparked a question in my mind about how I was expected to live as a woman in modern society, and what people give up. Reading Lolita is a memoir by a female professor of English literature at the University of Tehran during the overthrow of the Shah and the rise of a Muslim government, and it opened my eyes to how women in other cultures are treated. I began to realize how privileged I am to have choices in how I live my life.

Around this time, I also learned about the discrepancy in pay. If learning about the plights of women in more oppressive cultures tugged my heartstrings, the wage gap  really brought it home to me that women are still not considered equal to men. Even though, as my grades routinely demonstrated, I was at least as competent as the average male college student. I graduated at the top of my class in high school, beating every male in the class in GPA while working a part-time job. I took AP classes and did as well as or better than the boys in those classes. College was proceeding in a similar manner; I’m about average for the courses I take. I’m not that fantastic, but I’m not stupid, either. I got into graduate school. It logically makes no sense to me that I should do the same work as a man with the same qualifications and get paid less. This is where I get really incoherent in my arguments, because I have a hard time moving past “that’s STUPID.” as my opening point, rebuttal to all points, and closing argument. It makes no sense to me why anyone would support that.

I now consider myself a staunch feminist, or “women’s rights activist/supporter” if you prefer. Supporter is probably more accurate because my only activism has taken place on facebook, really. I don’t think that should count.

Feminism is not one-size-fits-all. Remember that shirt from the beginning of the post? I know it was a long time ago. Anyway, I found that on a google search, which brings up a lot of different images including men and women and groups of kids and trolls. Much as there are a lot of differences between people in real life, there are a lot of differences between people who support women’s rights. That doesn’t mean that we don’t agree on big things, like women should be treated equally under the law, just that we have some religious and/or philosophical differences. A main platform of the feminist movement is abortion rights. I’m not sure where I stand on that matter. Many feminists are not particularly fond of men (man-haters); this is often because they have been personally victimized or abused by men. I’m rather fond of the sex as a whole, even if individual members can be exasperating and even worthy of hate. Then again, I’ve never suffered sexual harassment or abuse or rape. I can’t, literally cannot, bring myself to judge anyone who’s suffered horrible abuses for hating anyone who reminds them of that abuse. This holds true for anyone victimized by anyone, including (but not limited to) women victimized by men and men victimized by women (oh, yes, I believe they exist). The closest I can come is that I have a really hard time eating canned green beans because I once opened a can that had gone rancid and it was a terrible, disgusting experience. Note: this is not to compare rape and various abuses to rancid green beans. Rape and abuse are much worse. I’m just saying that I’ve been lucky so far.

This is the part about gender roles now. I’m leery of getting in too deep here because all I have to go on is some light internet reading and my own experience. My parents had pretty fluid roles in their marriage, with both working from home and sharing cooking, cleaning, and other duties based on who was less likely to fall asleep while working, who was allergic to what, and who was doing something else at the time rather than on who had lady parts and therefore belonged in the kitchen. My mom went back into the workplace before my dad did, and she makes more money than him. As far as I know, this was only tough on them when my dad got laid off, which would be tough on anyone with two kids.

I expect that I’ll do a lot of cooking in my future, but that’s because I love cooking. Something about making cookies is really appealing when doing homework. In addition, I vastly prefer to cook my own food rather than spend lots of money to eat junk food. For me, cooking is like science you can eat. I also anticipate keeping up my habit of knitting. I really like knitting. It’s relaxing and useful. I mostly make scarves; my neck will never be cold. I don’t have a problem doing “traditionally feminine” things, but it bugs me when people expect that because someone is female, she will do the housework and housewifely things and that because someone is male, he will do tough manly things. I think women who want to stay home and raise families should absolutely do that. Raising kids is a full time job, and I have nothing but respect for women who devote their lives to that. They are at least as important as women who go out and get in the news for being awesome. I just also think that I shouldn’t be required to do that simply because I have a uterus.

Speaking of “traditionally gendered” things, I love science. While science does have a long tradition of fantastic women, it also has a longer tradition of being peopled by jerk faces. People I actively dislike include Watson and Crick because they were jerk faces who screwed over other scientists and stole their results. Still, I love it. I occasionally freak myself when I think too much about how incredibly tiny atoms are (but what’s in the space between air and water molecules?!) or about how I’m a system of biochemical processes happening all the time including right now and here I am studying biochemical processes while they’re happening in my body. I am following in the footsteps of some of the coolest, most awesome people in history (see: Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, Dorothy Crowfood Hodgkin, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and company) just by being interested in this stuff and pursuing a career in science. And maybe, just by being me, I can help push the scientific community to stop screwing people over.

What I’m getting at with all this is that it’s time for people to stop marginalizing women simply because we’re not male. It’s also time for people to stop telling women what we can and cannot do with our lives. I should be free to stay home or go to work as I see fit; I am not a delicate little flower who will get broken if someone doesn’t tell her what risks she's allowed to take. We are all of us capable of genius and strength.

This "all of us" I speak of includes everyone, by the way. Not just women, not just white people, not just heterosexuals, not just English-speakers, not just persons raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition. All. Of. Us. Humans.

This leads me to my next point, activism. My version is currently limited to facebook and, more recently, twitter. However, I tend to feel simultaneously inspired and guilty when I hear a feminist message (see: Miss Representation, a movie that has the opinions of some of my favorite actresses and politicians and people as well as some of my least favorite, which makes none of their ideas less valid). I’m inspired to go into political or social work, and I feel guilty because I know full well that I won’t be going into those fields. I’d be a terrible politician and a worse social worker. My passion lies in science, and I remember that after the glow of righteous indignation wears off. I still wish I was suited to politics because lord knows something needs to change there, but I’m really not. Right now, my life is headed in a laboratory direction, and I think I can do good from there. I might have a high school intern who sees a woman doing science and thinks to herself, I can do that too. Or I could have an intern who sees a woman doing science and thinks to himself, women can do science. I might have a niece who sees her aunt living her own life and thinks to herself, I can be whatever I want to be. I will for sure have undergrad lab students who see a female grad student teaching and being generally awesome, who think to themselves, women can do what they want. I don’t think you have to go out and march in the streets or be highly visible in the public eye to be a women’s rights activist; I think you just have to be the best you possible and share your beliefs with anyone who asks. 

Also, "eighth" is a weird word.

School is starting back up -- Eighty Second Post

I find myself in an oddly familiar state: Denial.
I get like this every time a big life-changing event comes around. I was in denial up until two weeks before high school graduation.
I can't afford denial this time around; I have to register to graduate (occurs in May) by late November. I have to take the GRE, which is not stuffed down my throat like the SAT was. I have to apply to grad schools, which will be considerably less easy than my "apply to one school with a special no-essay-no-fee early application, get in, and don't apply anywhere else because that's where you wanted to go in the first place" method from high school. I researched schools for about twenty minutes over two months that time around; I've been looking at schools far more intensely for a little while longer this time.
This is my last year of undergrad, come hell or high water. If I don't graduate, well, I'm out of money. So.

Anyway, this was all brought on by wandering around campus and seeing all the freshmen. It suddenly struck me how young they all look, and I realized that everyone on campus except the 1990 summer-born seniors and the odd fifth-year senior is younger than me. That's about five eighths of the university population. A lot of people are still the same age as me, but it's still so weird. SO. WEIRD.

I feel like this warrants a "what I wish I had known" post, but I honestly enjoyed my period of learning. For the most part. Except for the first half of first semester freshman year...
So here's the things that I would go back in time and tell myself.
1. You do not have to eat all the food in the cafeteria. I know there's a lot of food, but you just became vegetarian. You can't afford to get all your protein from cheese. Try for a salad with beans, even though you don't like cold beans. Just try it once a week. Maybe then you won't be crippled by a dislike of salads FOUR YEARS LATER.
2. College is harder than high school. I know you were the smart kid in high school. You coasted through and didn't actually pick up any study skills. Sure, you can write a decent essay and do some pretty good math, but your college professors aren't teaching classes of ten or twenty people. Lots of first year science classes are packed with non-majors, including yourself, and they aren't going to make review sheets with everything you need to know. You have to study, and you'll still get Bs. In fact, you'll fail some tests regardless of how hard you study. Get over it, princess. If you don't just roll with it and summon the willpower to do better on the next test, you'll have a breakdown in your adviser's office.
3. Study abroad. You already want to, now just do it and don't look back. Go with an open mind and a fairly empty suitcase and come back laden down with memories.
That one was cheating, because I actually did that. But you should, too.
4. Make sure you clean your hair out of the shower every time you use it sophomore year. You have really long dark brown hair, and it bugs the crap out of other people when you leave it on the floor. It's just polite to clean that up, if only so they don't blame you instinctively for the clogged drains.

There are lots of things I feel obligated to add, like "open up more in class" and "relax around other people" but I really don't want to. I like who I am and who my friends are now, and I look back fondly on the years before I met my current close friends. I'm kind of the quiet one in class; my housemate said she mentioned me in conversation with other chemistry majors in our year and had to describe me as "the quiet girl with the really long brown hair." This elicited an immediate "oh, yeah," response from everyone.
I'm okay with this. It might bother a lot of people, but I don't go to class to socialize. I'll sit with people I know and chat before and after class, and I'm friendly with people in the class, but I don't need my friends around to feel comfortable.
Introverts of the world, nothing is wrong with you. You don't have to be BFFs with everyone in your class, and you don't have to relax around large crowds if you don't want to. It's okay to be "the quiet one" as long as you're happy and comfortable in your skin. You do still need to learn how to deal with an extrovert-focused world, but you don't have to change who you are.

Those Things You Wear On Your Legs -- Seventy Fifth Post

I have a bit of trouble with the term "pants" now. After new years eve in England, the guy whose house my friends and I stayed at dropped me off at the train station, seeing as I didn't have a car. We spotted some men's briefs in the parking lot, and he repeatedly corrected my calling them "underwear" to "pants".
So, now I have a hard time thinking about the word "pants" as applied to outerwear such as you would leave the house in. Like jeans, slacks, trousers, shorts (which I believe can also be british for underpants), capris, etc. However, I long ago attempted to instate "Fuck Pants Friday" on which I wore skirts and feel the need to bring it back. The problem is that I now feel like I'm encouraging people to go commando. You can do that if you want, but I wouldn't recommend it. And "Fuck Trousers Friday" just really doesn't have the same ring to it.
So, I guess I'll keep calling it pants, even if the english guy takes issue with that.
Actually, I won't do it this friday because I have great plans to use my housemate's printer and print off some new improved resumes and cover letters and go to some stores and fill out applications in great hopes of getting employed and stuff. I'll be wearing some of my fancypants, by which I mean slacks or trousers or something. "Fancypants" strikes me as something one would find in Victoria's Secret or La Senza or a similar sort of venue (i.e. lingerie store, if you're male and/or live in a hole).
I'll wear a skirt in the morning, if I bother to change out of pyjamas before noon. I have a fairly legit kimono, and it stifles my desire to wear real people clothes.
Because I need to share this with the whole internet, it's an awesome kimono. Sure, it's a little battered and also 100% polyester, and made by a costume company, but it's also got the funny extra bit that hangs down on the sleeves, and it has ties at the hips just like a karate gi (or will as soon as I get some fabric), and it's a really gorgeous red and gold brocade-style pattern with a pale yellow trim, and it won't be too hard to make a belt that has no velcro, won't attack the rest of the fabric, and will actually fit my waist.
Sentences die on my blogs... I really can't be asked to fix it.
 Back to the kimono, it's pretty well-made, and is even machine washable, if not dryable. It was also a whopping $8. I love thrift stores. Support your local thrift stores. It's cool now, and sometimes you find something really cool, then you wash it to get rid of the old lady smell ingrained in your $6 wool-polyester mix winter Coat that becomes so central to your wardrobe that it gains a capital letter. That one I had dry cleaned, it's true, but that cost less than buying a brand new coat even combined with the cost of the coat.
And I couldn't find a coat where I liked the style and the cut and the number of buttons and the weight and the color at all, even for exorbitant prices. I wore The Coat just about every day in England. I should probably get it cleaned again (support local businesses that way, too! Yay!) or I could buy the "dry clean in your dryer" packets that my mom found and that I used on a silk shirt to great results.
I'm always torn between frugality and being a good citizen. I also don't have a car or a working bicycle, which doesn't help. Not a whole lot of thrift within walking distance of my university, which is the main thing that I want to live within walking distance of given the lack of wheeled transportation; our buses are expensive and, in my opinion, infrequent for a university town. Plus, my uni starts classes at odd times within the hour (8:00, 9:05, 10:25, 11:45, 12:50, 13:55, 15:15, etc) and buses run on half-hour schedules at equally odd points in the hour. It also takes at least an hour to really get anywhere that's worth the bus fare.
So, I make an hour walking round trip every now and then to cheap groceries, and rarely buy anything of interest during the semester because I can't find interesting thrift stores within half an hour's walk. I could drag friends with cars along, but I hate grocery and thrift shopping with people. I bargain hunt, I comparison shop, I lug things around for hours then put it back, then leave five thrift stores with probably nothing but possibly a wall hanging, possibly a box for tea, or possibly antique Sherlock Holmes novels. You just never know. Most of my possessions that I care about were found at thrift or antique stores.
This has been a very strange, ambling post.
I'll just wear a skirt under my kimono. Maybe walmart will want to hire such a free spirited, bold person.