Being retired

So the other day I mentioned that being in grad school was similar to being retired. I meant it as a joke, but then as I settled in to watch my second hour of M*A*S*H I realized that I actually live the exact same life as my 65 year old retired father.

Everyday I wake up around 9:30-10. My Dad wakes up around this time too. If you ask him, he'll say he wakes up earlier but he'd be lying.

Next I drink coffee with a lot of sugar, so does Joe D.

Then I shower and come back and watch TV, so does he

I catch up on the news and get mad at the world, so does he, only he gets madder because he watches Fox news and I just read fox news.

Then I get dressed to go get more coffee and a sandwich. He makes a sandwich then goes and buys a Strawberries and Cream from Starbucks.

I come back to watch more TV, he comes back for his nap. I swear the man sleeps like a koala bear.

I eat dinner at 4, so does he. Why wait all the way til 6?

I watch M*A*S*H while eating dinner, so does he.

I chill out until the boys get home, he chills out until my mom comes home.

He lives with two girls (Mom and Riley) I live with two boys (John and John)

About once a week he buys khaki pants, about once a week I buy a new shirt

He still has court or appointments (he's a lawyer not a convict) twice a week, I have class twice a week.

He plays golf once a week, I get drunk once a week

The exact same life, except he drives.

In defense of being shallow

So yesterday was the first day of class. I had structure and style, or was it style and structure? No clue, but anyway I digress. In class we had to do that very annoying first day of class thing where we all sit in a circle and have to talk about ourselves like an AA meeting.

So we were all going around the room. Everyone was an experienced writer, each one cooler than the next, expressing their love for the written word and other authors, most of whom I have never heard of it. I think someone mentioned F. Scott Fitzgerald but that was the extent of it.

Anyway they get to me and I openly declare that I am a shallow 22 year old girl from middle-class America. Now admitting you're shallow to a bunch of writers is sort of like chumming the waters and then jumping in dressed as an injured seal. The Professor jumped on me within 2 seconds and then asked how other's felt about me being shallow. It was awkward, especially when one woman called it refreshing.

But here's the thing, every writer, every artist, every "intellectual," thinks that they're deep, and I would argue that if you think you're deep you most likely aren't. When you have actually seen some whose been to hell and back, it's hard to relate with "oh I totally get that, someone broke my heart."

The truth is, I gave up my dream career of peace work for writing and what's shallower than writing? You just chill out in your head all day. If that's not narcissism than I don't know what is.

The concept of being deep is manufactured and it doesn't really exist. I read books, follow politics and my favorite color is black, but I also really like the mall and smiling. If being deep is about being pretend tortured count me out. I'm only 22, my teenage angst won't be considered true character until I hit 25. Until then, I'll be at the mall.

The time I went to pre-teen, feminist, computer camp...

When I was about 8, my parents had no idea what to do with me. I wasn't fitting into a normal niche and was playing a lot of pokemon. By 8, it had become clear that I would never actually enjoy playing sports, but I also couldn't put my hair in a ponytail, let alone be girlie yet. On top of this, I couldn't understand out how to read until about 10 (for the record, I'm pretty good at it now) so it wasn't looking like I'd be a brain either. My best friend at this time was a Chinese girl who we'll call Molly for the sake of this blog. Unlike me, Molly was incredibly bright as were both of her parents. Molly was very cold and structured, there was nothing particularly fun or interesting about her but she did have a really fun backyard. In an attempt to get rid of me during the summer and hopefully have some of Molly's brain rub off on me, my parents talked to Molly's parents and they decided to sign us up for a computer camp just for girls. The camp was local and only lasted a week, but the impact lasted a lifetime.

On the first day of camp I was super nervous. It was the first time I had ever been to a camp before. Boy was I glad to have my bestie with me though. I knew this would bring Molly and I closer together and at the very least would cement the fact that we'd be lunch buddies for another year. As we walked into camp, I quickly realized I was the youngest girl there. I was also the only girl who hadn't walked in harboring a resentment towards Men. The Camp Director, Linda was terrifying, and going through a divorce. She hated men, but she really hated little girls who didn't hate on men. I was forced to make a decision, to choose between Linda's respect and loving my Dad. Molly could sense that I had commitment issues and that I wasn't exactly camp material and subsequently dropped me like a hot potato within the first hour.

Alone, in a feminist camp, we spent the day talking about email and chatrooms. I sat in the back hoping that there would be another father loving outsider to hang out with but she never came. Matters only got worse during lunch when my loving mother packed me a ham sandwich and a diet coke, lovingly kept cold in a Hooters beer cozy. Try explaining that to terrifying man-hating, feminist Linda. To this day, I wonder if my parents did that on purpose as some sort of cruel joke?

Each day in camp was worse than the one before. We went to look at lasers a lot, then we'd come back and look at pictures of models of all shapes, colors, and sizes. I got yelled at because I thought the skinny blond model was the prettiest. They had an intervention with me of sorts to inform me that she was in fact ugly and deformed and that I had been brainwashed by the male dominated media. A concept I couldn't exactly grasp at 8. Then the worst thing yet, on day 4, I got caught playing with my tomigotchi so they took that away too.

As the days progressed, we played with more lasers and liquid nitrogen. I had turned my Hooters beer cozy inside-out and then duct tapped it, so it looked even classier now. By day 5 I was mentally, and emotionally drained. I had lost a good toy, a bad friend, and any interest in computers.

I think this is why I only use Macs, I have no Chinese friends, and divorced feminists scare the shit out of me.

Egypt

The situation with Egypt has been getting intense. I love a good revolution because theres nothing better than the people of a nation saying "We're not gonna take it" to a corrupt government. I haven't been this excited since the protests in Iran. Anyway, if you want to follow what's going on follow it on Al Jazeera's live blog.

How to be in grad school...

I had all month off from my grueling academic schedule. Tomorrow I go back to learn about style, structure, and how to make millions of dollars through the written word. After a full semester I know have the whole grad school thing down to a science. So here's how you do it:

10. Never just say that you're JUST a student, god you wouldn't want someone to think you were undergrad. Been there, done that. Throw around the term "Masters" as much as possible. You are training to become a master of something, even though you are still incredibly clueless.

9. Stay away from the undergrads. It's sort of like a caste system. You should only eat in the postgrad cafeteria, don't talk to those young, naive, children running around from class to class. You are above that now. so what if most of them are your age? if not older? maturity wise, you are years beyond them

8. Don't do any work ever. When I was an undergrad I hustled hard. I was busy pretty much 24/7 with clubs, campus activities, class, drinking. Now, I only have class two times a week which means I do a lot of not studying. But As a grad student, like as a CEO, you deserve to do nothing at all.

7. Even though you literally never have work to do, make sure you seem very busy and stressed about everything you have to do. When someone asks how you are say something like "ughhh gradschool is killing me!" It's not, but they don't need to know that. It's like being on a secret vacation.

6. Drink more than you did in college. When I was doing my undergrad, I went out about 1 night a week. It was usually Friday and I was usually back by 2:30 AM at the latest. Now, I go out more often, because I can and when I do go out, I'm usually not back til 4 AM. I think this has to do with all that goddamn free time, but I tell people it's because I'm so stressed from all the hard work I'm doing.

5. Eventually you'll get bored enough that you'll start giving yourself chores and tasks to do. Hence this blog, hence the 3 news sites I read a day, hence my book a week rule. You need intellectual stimulation, but you also try and sneak it so no one calls you out on the fact that you're not doing enough in school.

4. When you get together with your grad school friends, begin by talking about books and current events, then realize you're all in the same boat and you're all faking and start talking what you really want to talk about, sex, celebrities, and movies.

3. Feel bad that your flatmates come back after a long day of work. You literally did nothing but read a little bit, take a walk, and buy a sandwich. Start to wonder what it feels like to actually be exhausted.

2. On the two days a week that you have class, come home all tired and bitchy just to fit in with your exhausted flatmates.

1. Finally realize that you won't live this lifestyle again until you're retired and enjoy the hell out of it without an ounce of guilt.

Flu-zy

Well I tried to blog on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday but it turns out that I am not witty, charming, or any fun when I'm high on cough syrup and flu medicine. In fact, I'm just a hot mess. There was a bright side though, through my Nyquil haze, I learned quite a few things while I was sick. Now that my fever has finally left the building it's time to get back on the grind and share with you my new epiphanies:

10. Everyone should get married, unless they are very very rich. Everybody should get married so that someone is legally required to take care of them even when their head is melting, unless they are very rich then they should look into hiring a live in maid and/or butler. All week I couldn't help but think, damn this would be so much more enjoyable if someone would make my soup for me. Hopefully I'll be rich or hitched next time I come down with the flu.

9. Life would be easier if they had they same medicine here in London as back home. I want Tylenol PM, it doesn't exist here, it's called Paracetamol, which is really easy to remember when you're half-conscious.

8. I'm very protective over Charlie Sheen. Not in the "oh I hope he gets better and sorts out his life" way, but in the "Leave him, his briefcase full of cocaine, and his house full of hookers alone." I was actually upset that they made him go to rehab which subsequently means Two and a Half Men has just gone on hiatus. Leave the man be.

7. The internet actually does get boring. After 3 days of not leaving the house and being forced to surf the web non-stop, I actually ran out of things to google. There are only so many times you can compare Kim Kardashian before and after her plastic surgery. Maybe if I was a 13 year old boy I could have kept busy, but I really didn't have any interest in porn or World of Warcraft.

6. Flu medicine and alcohol should never be mixed. On Saturday I was feeling better so I went out to meet a friend. I had some wine and I got absolutely wasted in about 5 seconds. The next day I woke up re-sick and hungover. It was an awesome feeling that forced me into the fetal position for an entire afternoon.

5. Makeup only does so much. I didn't wear anything for a few days and it was mess to behold. Then on Saturday I got dolled up. I double checked right before I left and I looked amazingly similar to those goth kids that hung outside of Hot Topic circa 1998. As you can imagine, between that and my whopping cough, the boys were lining up.

4. In England, they play the exact same Everybody Love Raymond episode about 4 times a day on Comedy Central. On Thursday I watched it all 4 times. But it's ok, it was the one where Ray and Debra fought about the new can opener. So good.

3. Soup in England needs more salt. Back home we like our salt, no scratch that, we LOVEEE our salt. I like my soup to taste like the Dead Sea, anything less and it's just a little too bland for me. Needless to say, the soup over here required heaps and heaps of rock salt.

2. The revolution in Egypt is way more exciting than the Jersey Shore. Fight the power!!!

1. You're not sick anymore when you start craving Pad Thai

Sick Day...

Sick day's used to be the coolest. They meant that you got to skip homeroom and math class and you got to sleep in past 10 on a Tuesday. The best was when you knew that a cold was coming on so you could also skip doing your homework. You had the TV all day to yourself and your mother would wait on you hand in foot, bringing you soup. The next day when you came back to school, rested and refreshed, you'd be welcomed with hugs and well wishes. It was like coming back from war, except really you were just coming back from an all day Golden Girls marathon and turning your mother into a servant.

Fortunately, I never really got sick growing up. I had a bad case of chicken pox when I was about two, but I can't really remember it so I'm not sure if it really counts. My general good health is the result of me eating dirt, dog poop, leaves, and pretty much everything else bad for you when I was a kid, which subsequently made me immune to almost everything under the sun. It's my theory that those weird germaphobes who constantly slather on antibacterial get sicker, more often. I'm sorry but I do get some sick pleasure out of seeing those antibacterial freaks with a cold.

Sadly, despite my hard work trying to increase my immunity to all germs and viruses, today I'm sick. I'm sitting in front of the fire, in my dad's sweater wishing my Mom would fly to London to bring me Won-Ton soup and some orange juice.

Since I usually have the flat/tv to myself on a daily basis I get to watch Everyone Loves Raymond all day anyway. The only thing that really changes is now I probably won't be taking my daily walk and no one is contractually obligated to bring me soup or my favorite blanket. So here I sit, curled up like a dumb baby wishing and praying that the kitchen was closer. Long story short, being sick rocks when your 13, but this shit is lame at 22.