six years ago today [obligatory Boston anniversary post]

Simmons College Library, September 2007
self-portrait

Six years ago today, I arrived in Boston a bright-eyed youth of twenty-six, with a rental car full of worldly belongings and paperwork confirming my enrollment in Simmons' dual-degree history/archives program.

Within a week of this self-portrait taken at the Simmons library, I had met my future wife, within a month I had remembered why I loved history and hated school, and within the first semester I'd resigned my position as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble to work as a library assistant at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Arnold Arboretum, May 2013
photograph by Joseph Tychonievich

The world is so often an unexpected and adventuresome place.

Update: For the interested, here are my posts from 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.

one thousand eight hundred and twenty days [2007-2012]

This weekend marks the end of my fifth year in Boston, and it's become something of a tradition since I began this blog to post some thoughts about where I'm at in my relationship with the city and the grown-up life I'm building for myself here (see previous installments one, two, three, and four).

Five years. Half a decade. While I'm under no illusions that such a period of time makes me a New Englander, it does mean that I've lived in Boston for enough years that the geography of the city is populated with personal memory and meaning. Hanna and I are making certain pathways and places our own. And at some point during this year, I realized that I'd stopped asking myself where we might move next in the national sense (San Francisco? Portland, Oregon? Chicago? Vermont?) and instead begun thinking about where our next household might be in terms of Boston neighborhoods. I walk through the city now and think to myself, "Could we live ...?" "How far from the grocery store is ...?" "Does the bus run ...?"

More about that in the months to come, I imagine, since after six years (for Hanna, at least; four for me) in our current apartment we've pretty much decided to start looking for a new place in the new year. We'd like a place better set up for an old married couple (rather than two roommates) and kitties, and we're finally in a stable enough situation financially that we have some flexibility when it comes to paying a little more for extra space or a garden in which our cats can cavort in safety.

But that's all in the future. (And the 70+ moving vans I've counted in our neighborhood this morning are enough to make you want to stay put permanently!) This is a moment for reflecting back on how much change has passed through my life in the previous five years (aka two hundred and sixty weeks, aka one thousand eight hundred and twenty days).

My, it's been a busy half-decade!

• House and home. 
• [2007] I started out my Boston adventure living in a tiny dorm room at Simmons College. While not inadequate (and I appreciated pre-assigned housing as someone moving from out of state), it was only the second experience I'd had living in a dormitory -- the other being when I studied abroad in 2003-2004 at the University of Aberdeen. I had not anticipated how moving into a dorm and starting graduate school was going to make me feel immature and trapped, rather than ripe with possibility. It was not the best psychological twofer ever.
• [2012] Since moving in with Hanna in May of 2008, I've been living on the border of Allston and Brookline here in the Boston metro area, roughly three miles from the MHS. We walk to work most mornings and often home again as well, through several of our favorite city neighborhoods. Over the past four years, we've shaped and re-shaped our apartment from being a space for two roommates into being a family home -- not to mention eeking out space for about 800 books! As I wrote above, we're slowly making the Boston area our habitat for at least the next five-to-ten years. Which is a much happier, healthier state of mind and place of being than I was right after the move.
• Relationships and romance.
• [2007] As I've written about extensively in other posts, I came to Boston with a (romantic) relationship history of nil and no friends in the area, other than the few contacts I'd had with Simmons students in preparation for my move (Hanna being one of them!). It was the first major move away from my hometown, away from my established support network of family and friends. And during the first twelve months of my time in Boston I was majorly stressed -- as in panic attacks, nausea, and extreme sadness over the geographic distance from loved ones. I wanted and needed, to leave West Michigan -- but the transition was not an easy one. 
• [2012] Since then, obviously, Hanna has happened! In ways that have been fairly extensively documented here (are you all tired of wedding-planning posts yet?). So in five short years I went from being single to nearly-married, and from being non-directionally sexual to being in a lesbian relationship. Both of which have had fairly major effects on how I organize my self-understanding and relational life. In addition, Hanna and I are slowly-yet-steadily building a network of friends near and far: People we go to the movies with, have over for dinner, who kindly watch our cats and pick up the mail when we're out of town for the weekend. People we blog with, email with, host while on visits from afar. This is a major part of what makes Boston start to feel like home.
• Learning and schooling.
• [2007] As most of you know, I moved to Boston for graduate school -- like so many other people who relocate here! For most of my five years here, I was enrolled at least part time in the Simmons library science and history program. It had its highlight and lowlights, as chronicled on this blog. I'm super-proud to have completed my Master of Arts in History through documenting the founding and early history of the Oregon Extension program, and my Master's degree in Library and Information Science opened the door to my current work as a reference librarian, which really was my career objective when I started the program (inasmuch as I had one). So while I found the process psychologically and emotionally exhausting, and perhaps not as intellectually stimulating as I'd hoped, it did position me to move forward outside of the academy as a scholar.
• [2012] Five years later, I'm no longer in school -- and so pleased about that state of affairs. I've come to the conclusion over roughly eleven years in formal schooling (1998-2005, 2007-2011) that institutional education is not healthy for me, despite the fact I perform well therein and many of its resources are useful for my intellectual explorations. So I completed my Masters degrees back in January and May of 2011 and have no plans to return. Meanwhile, I am committed to being a working historian as well as a reference librarian: learning, for me, has never been bound by the schooling. So we'll see where the next five, ten, fifteen years takes me!
• Work, work, work.
• [2007] I moved out to Boston with the promise of financial aid and a part-time position at the Barnes & Noble store in Boston's Prudential Center (an internal transfer from the store where I had been working in Michigan). It became clear almost immediately that the $9/hour they were paying me -- while a raise from my hourly wage in Michigan -- could not cover Boston expenses. So I began looking for other work, particularly pre-professional library work. I interviewed at a few places with no success before landing a position as a library assistant at this place called the Massachusetts Historical Society, which caught my eye in the job postings because I'd heard my friend Natalie talking about her research there. This October 12th will mark my fifth anniversary as a member of the MHS staff.
• [2012] I had other jobs as a graduate student, of course (we all juggle multiple things to make ends meet): teaching assistant at Simmons, archives assistant at Northeastern, internships. It was good experience, but the MHS has always been my professional home. As I'll be writing about more extensively soon, I've recently accepted a promotion from Assistant Reference Librarian to Reference Librarian, a position left open when a colleague departed for the wilds of Rhode Island. The folks I work with have been unfailingly supportive in my professional endeavors and I'm looking forward to a part of the team for years to come.
• Writing of many kinds.
• [2007] I started this blog in the spring of 2007 to chronicle my graduate school and relocation experiences. As I remarked in an email to a friend recently, I'm a compulsive self-chronicler (an observation that will come as a surprise to no one reading this post). When I'm not blogging I'm journaling or emailing or jotting down notes for future projects. I think better with a pen or pencil in hand; this has been true pretty much since I learned how to write (though I was a bit of a late bloomer in that regard). 
• [2012] Nine hundred and ninety blog posts later, I'm still writing, writing, writing: blost posts, fan fiction, academic papers, post-academic papers, emails, journal entries -- even documentary film scripts! Looking ahead to my sixth year as a Bostonian, I'll be completing a free-lance documentary film project with my friend Heather, which involves charting a family's genealogy in video form; I'll be forging ahead with my research on Nellie Keefe; I'm musing about a collaborative project on sexual fluidity with a couple of friends; I have half a dozen fan fics (Supernatural, Downton Abbey, Upstairs, Downstairs) waiting for completion, and I've been enjoying my gig as an occasional blogger at In Our Words. 

Shorter me: I'm becoming (have become?) the Crazy Lesbian Librarian Cat Lady of my dreams! Also, Elizabeth Brown.

grownups by xkcd

I'm looking forward to sharing the next five years -- at least! -- with all of you right here at the feminist librarian. My internet home.

four years ago today: "something like the five stages of grief"

Part of an ongoing series of posts highlighting primary source material from my first semester at Simmons during the fall of 2007.


From: Anna
To: Janet
Date: Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 2:51 PM
Subject: Mid-week touchstone 


Dear Mum, 


I'm sitting at the Mass Historical Society desk for the afternoon. Being here reminds me of all those hours I spent in middle school doing "homework" in the Holland Museum lobby, waiting for tourists to appear :).


This is my second full day at the MHS. This morning, I was photocopying papers, I turn to the next paper, and what do I see? A letter from M. Cary Thomas -- turn of the century woman scholar, educated at Johns Hopkins, founder of Bryn Mawr college -- written in her own hand when she was president of Bryn Mawr! Oh. My. God. It's so surreal just to find something like that, and know once she was holding it, and then find myself putting it on the photocopier!

at the front desk of the MHS (October 2008)

It's strange and not at all comfortable (given my personality) to be a novice at this job. I have certain skills to draw on, of course, but there is so much to learn in terms of the conventions of an archives versus a bookstore or library or museum. Particularly, there is so much more need to monitor the documents, since they are moving around the building -- rather than in stable exhibits -- and are one-of-a-kind, extremely rare items. So I am learning new procedures as well as the usual learning of everyone's names, and where the bathrooms are located, and how to use the email system, etc.


I am enjoying it, although it's been a rough few days physically, which puts a damper on my mood. While usually my cycle isn't particularly taxing, it can be a bad combination if I'm already weary (which is just the general state of things this fall . . . I know it will be got through, but annoying while it lasts). Headaches, which lead to Excedrin which leads to insomnia, etc. Yesterday, I intentionally drank coffee like a fiend in the afternoon to keep myself going through my book review assignment (more below), so today I'm feeling rather hung over (and it's a long day, with class this evening from 6-9). Whine whine whine. 


I wrote this book review, which for some unknown reason (or reasons) I've been dragging my heels about for three weeks and absolutely panicked about finishing. I think it became a convenient locus for my anxieties. For a few days, I couldn't even think about the project without panicking and/or falling asleep (which is my physical defense mechanism--I literally can't stay awake). And then, it came down to last night, when I was pretty willing to just blurt on paper and print it out to turn in. I didn't even really proof it. Oh, well. Not my finest scholarly hour, but I sort of feel like I can afford to have an off-semester as I'm getting adjusted. I can't imagine (my own hubris, I know) that an "off" semester will be anything worse than "B" work. And I know my history class -- where I put my best energy -- will be a clear "A" (again, hubris) so I'm not too anxious in terms of keeping my scholarships. 


I was thinking last night (haha) that my approach to academic projects is something like the five stages of grief: (1) I have totally unrealistic self-expectations about what I can get done and what I want to get done (denial); (2) when it becomes clear that I'm not going to get my ideal project done, I start resenting the project and the professor, and castigating myself for the unrealistic expectations (anger); (3) I debate internally with myself over what sort of project that's less-than-ideal I can get done, and maybe argue with the professor about altering the assignment (bargaining); (4) if none of these approaches work, it's time to start despairing about the entire educational system and wondering what I'm doing there, and imagining I will never complete the assignment and probably drop out of school (depression); (5) finally, when I get tired of feeling crummy and/or it gets down to the wire, I finally give up on the ideal project altogether and just patch something together (acceptance). 

The book I had to review was actually quite interesting, so I'm not entirely clear why I got hung up about it. It was on the history of passports, and there's lots to say about the history of identity papers, and how they relate to actual persons, and how they connect persons to governments. Part of my problem was no doubt lack of FOCUS, which is usually provided for smaller assignments by class discussion and course readings--but in this case the assignment was poorly written and I just got off on a muddled foot.


I think, in general, it's been like pulling teeth intellectually to focus on abstract intellectual ideas right now, with so many external changes going on. I've never been good at focusing in the best circumstances, which for me means an utterly non-distracting environment (why I can't study in libraries, ironically enough, since they're not spaces I can take for granted and ignore). Well, right now, my whole world is a distracting environment! So I feel lucky when I manage to have a more or less coherent thought that's defined enough to put into a short response paper :).


I had coffee with Hanna Monday night -- her initiative!! -- which was really good, I think, and have "dates" scheduled with both her and G for next week. I realized that, even though I treasure the alone-time, I can get too wrapped up in my own self-critical monologues re: my graduate work, etc., when I spend every moment I'm not in class or at work by myself. It's easy for me to forget that fellow students can actually bolster my mood and energize me (as well as reminding me how unrealistic my expectations for my own work might be :)!) since 90% of the time, they aren't very helpful. But a few well-chosen comrades can make a difference. 


Happily, my own well-chosen comrades (H and G) are going to be in the same history class next semester, and have convinced me to be in it as well . . . so hopefully the collaborative energy will be exponentially enhanced :). G is also taking oral history, which I will be doing as well, so I'm looking forward very much to the spring. I'll probably panic when the time comes, and go through the predictable cycle (see above) anyway, but right now I can idealize things to my hearts content! 


I really hope you and Dad are able to make a trip to Boston in the spring. I'm already haphazardly collecting little things to do . . . eg the Wednesday morning art tour at the MHS, which I was given privately today, and very much enjoyed; and a visit to the Brookline Booksmith, my favorite independent bookstore so far . . . apart of course, from showing you my own spaces, and the museums and lovely parks that abound. Hm, and places to eat! I walked past a pub this afternoon called "The Foggy Goggle" which I think is just begging to be tried! 


I was asking Dad about filling my levothyroxin prescription online; I may at some point soon ask if you could pick up a refill at Model Drug (where my current prescription is), unless it seems easy to get a new prescription from Krayshak's office. Dad says it shouldn't be difficult to send it out here. And I'd reimburse you, of course. 

North Hall, Simmons Residential Campus

Tonight is the first game of the world series, so the neighborhood is going to be bustling! Since I'm on foot, I don't anticipate much trouble, and I live just far enough away that the noise doesn't wake me up (living on the res campus, I think, insulates me from the street just enough).


That's about all the news around here . . . I'm going to sign off and see if I can catch up on a couple of other emails before the end of my shift, 


Love, 
Anna

four years ago today: "I'm gloating to you because I wouldn't gloat to anyone else."

From: Anna
To: Janet, Mark
Date: Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 11:43 PM
Subject: Welcome home!

Hi Mom and Dad,

Well, I'm hoping that you're both so preoccupied with besting each other at cribbage that you won't bother to check email until you get home [from vacation] this weekend.  I'm trusting that Brian and Toby [the cat] didn't murder one another in your absence . . .

Whew, it's hot and humid here!  We are having Indian Summer with a vengeance and the dorms are insufferable.  I still haven't caved and bought a fan, which means I get by with cold showers and sleeping naked on top of the sheets.  It's working in the short term, but if this lasts through the weekend, money may have to be found, regardless of future job prospects, for a small fan. 

I had my first [Department of Conservation and Recreation] internship session today . . . what fun!  B, my supervisor, is a Simmons grad whose specialty is digitization of visual records (photos, art, etc.). Until last year, she worked at Harvard on a number of different projects. Now she's the plans archivist for the DCR's Office of Cultural Resources (or OCR, god do people love their acronyms!).  They have a giant basement with all those cabinets with the big file drawers for maps and plans.  I'm working with a subset of the collection of land plans that the DCR inherited from one of its predecessor departments, the Municipal Parks Commission (you guessed it: MPC).  I am starting with the earliest plans, which date back into the 1890s, and many of which come from the Olmsted firm.  The plans are deteriorating and Judy would like to apply for a grant to have conservation work done on them -- which can cost as much as $500/sheet.  Like buying reproduction wallpaper for the Cappon House.  So my job is to organize the plans and enter data on each plan into an Excel file (which I will design as I go along) that will serve as an index of what they have for people who need to use the information currently, as well as provide information for writing the grant proposal.


MPC plan detail (Sept 2007)

The maps are very cool!  And it's easy to get sucked into wanted to know the whole story about them.  Already, I'm thinking about side-research projects into the history of public parkland, landscape architecture, not to mention the history of the maps themselves and the conventions they follow.  The little directional markers alone are beautiful.  (I will try to stay in everyone's good graces so that, when you guys come out here, Dad, I can take you down for a private tour!  Provided you don't need a homeland security background check :) . . .)

section of the Charles River Reservation plans (Sept 2007)

I helped lead discussion on postmodernism and history today.  I felt it went so-so, though Laura (prof) was encouraging overall.  People struggled with the readings.  But we did manage to have a discussion, so that in itself felt like a success :).  I got my second response paper back (with my second "check-plus," which is the highest of her pass-fail marks) . . . I'm gloating to you because I wouldn't gloat to anyone else: she made it a point to say in class that she's being stingy with the marks because it's her job to teach us something in the class, and we have to start somewhere . . . so that if we found ourselves in possession of one of the few check-plusses she handed out, we have something to feel proud about.  (A +! +! +! +! . . .)  She put it nicer than I just did, but you get the point.  I had to be careful not to laugh.  Seriously, though, she wrote "absolutely elegant -- you express your sophisticated level of thinking beautifully." Aww . . . crush just got a little bigger :). 

I'm gingerly making inroads on the friendship front with several colleagues in that class.  Lola (not to be confused with Laura the prof) was my discussion co-leader and we had a lively meeting Monday night to come up with our questions.  She's a graduate of Smith College, in history, worked as the curator of a small house museum for several years, is now back in school.  Her adviser at Smith was Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz who is like my women's history idol . . . one of the people who I was soooo disappointed doesn't teach at a graduate institution.  I very immodestly squealed (yes, I did: "Ohmigod! You had  Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz as your thesis advisor???!!!") when she mentioned it in passing.  And I'm persisting in making contact with G, although I'm not exactly sure what footing the friendship will take at this point (still trying to figure out: interested in guys? girls? both? neither?).  He's got a cultural studies/gender studies background and is really interested in themes of resistance and social change.  I sent him a rather long email this evening continuing our classroom conversation of this afternoon, and fingers crossed it won't scare him away!

I also have a group of students that I'm doing a hands-on archive project with in Archives class (we take a practice collection and have to "arrange and describe" it, and produce a "finding aid," which is like a detailed catalog entry -- as I explained to one girl, think of it as the cross between a card catalog record and an index or detailed table of contents - -that researchers use to figure out what an archives holdings are and whether they would be useful).  I think it's going to be a fun project -- we're organizing the papers of a woman who was in the army as a dietitian during WWII and an alum of Simmons.

I started preliminary research on my chosen topic for my archives paper, a short paper due in late October about an issue in archival theory/practice.  I chose the interaction between feminist theory/methods and archival practice.  I went to the librarian and she was very nice but suggested I had picked perhaps too narrow a topic, on which there really wasn't anything written yet.  I said, "Well, I guess I've found my niche and it's not even the end of my first month here!"  Unfortunately, I won't be able to, you know, write a body of theory and publish it in peer-reviewed journals in time to write a paper for class in which I referred to my own scholarly research :).  So I am left piecing together stuff in innovative ways (what's new?) . . . N (librarian) was a little bit nudging me to consider re-orienting my topic slightly, but I wasn't giving in.  I mean, it's only a 5-7 page paper for gods' sake, I think I can manage to write a literature review of what's out there in that length of text without exhausting my argument.

For my history paper (roughly the same size), I'm supposed to take a primary document to analyze; I chose something from the Oneida Community which touches on gender and education and communitarian values . . . so there's plenty to sink my teeth into.  I was tempted by a more contemporary memoir on 1980s feminism that I stumbled into on one of the databases, but it felt a little like cheating (too recent) so I let it pass.

[You can read the paper that resulted here at Simmons' Essays and Studies literary journal]

I did, however, sign up for a series of lectures/discussions hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Schlesinger Library called the Boston Series on Women and Gender in History: four times over the semester they get together and discuss a paper (as yet unpublished) with the author and a "commentator" over dinner.  $20 for the whole series!  It would have been obscene to pass it up, especially since the topics are all awesome.  Unfortunately, the first two conflict with my History class, but I'm going to try and squirm out of one class, since the topic is gender in the Vietnam era and I just can't miss it. 

view from Spectacle Island (Sept 2007)

Well, I really ought to get to bed. Early day at work tomorrow . . . and then a packed weekend of reading, so that I can frivol on Sunday -- fingers crossed I have time to visit the Harbor Islands, and then I'm, watching The History Boys over a bottle of wine with Hanna [yes, this was more me-style flirtation] -- and then my [job] interview with the MHS on Monday!  Send lots and lots of good karma waves in my direction.  Natalie [a friend and former MHS research fellow] is in town and she is going to put in a good word as well (she assures me this is kosher). 

Lots of love . . .
Anna

four years ago today: "I'll have to re-think this being-your-friend thing"

Hanna's comment, when I asked her to look this conversation over and approve it for posting, was: "good god, you are a clunky flirt ... just...wow ... it's amazing." The only thing I can offer by way of defending myself is to point out that at that point I hadn't yet consciously realized I was interested in flirting, or even at all capable of it! As before, third party names have been omitted and clarifying editions are in brackets. All other text is original to the conversation.


dorm room beds aren't the best for cuddling
(September 2007)

Online Chat with Hanna Date: 2007/9/12
1:13 PM
me: the internship site [for choosing archives internships] is up and running!
Hanna: oh, thank goodness!
anything you can't live without? ;)
1:14 PM
me: um . . . nothing quite THAT inticing
My top three choices so far are:
Hanna: drumroll
1:15 PM
me: 1) BPL [Boston Public Library], a photo project with the Leslie Jones collection, "part of a pre-digitization phase."
Hanna: awww...the bpl....
me: 2) Mass. Dept of Conservation and Recreation, organizing and indexing plans and maps, including some Olmstead stuff [this was the one I was eventually offered, and accepted]
Hanna: nice,nice.
1:16 PM
me: and 3) the New England Conservatory of Music, a personal collection of one Victoria Glaser, now 94, whose collection they would like to make accessible for research
Hanna: oooh, nice. all good choices!
me: I also looked at the Boston Athenaeum, just because the space is so worthy of drooling over
1:17 PM
[me:] but the whole concept of a subscription library . . .
so hoity-toity
Hanna: yeah, S (who used to work here) went on and on and on about how much she loved the athenaeum and her internship there. she said they had the best pencils ever.
1:18 PM
me: haha
well, that $220/year membership fee has to pay for something!
the thing I wasn't so sure about with their internship (aside from the elitism)
was that they weren't so specific about what projects were available
1:19 PM
[me:] so you're just picking the site, not the project
Hanna: right, right -- warning there, though. when i signed up for my 438 internship the project i got at the site was totally different from the one they advertised.
i don't know what would have happened if i'd raised a stink about it.
me: ah
good heads up
1:20 PM
[me:] so S liked the athenaeum?
(aside from the pencils?)
Hanna: oh, yeah, she loved it.
apparently it's a gorgeous space and i guess some of their collections are to die for.
me: have you ever talked to anyone who's worked at the BPL?
1:21 PM
Hanna: thinking
no, i don't think so.
1:22 PM
[Hanna:] i know one of the girls in my management class this summer was just going to start working there when the class ended, but we didn't stay in touch after the semester was over.
me: oh well
1:23 PM
Hanna: :( sorry.
me: :)
don't worry about it
just thought, you know, if you had any insider info . . .
Hanna: ;) only that they can't hire anyone who doesn't live in bosto.
n
1:24 PM
me: ah . . . well, that's good to know for future reference!
Hanna: yup, pretty much!
did you see the collection at harvard that's olmstead's stuff?
1:25 PM
me: no . . . hmm
I kinda skipped over the Harvard entries, since V made it sound like those were really popular
Hanna: mmm, true. but if you don't ask, you don't get! ;)
1:26 PM
me: yeah, but I have this pathological aversion to taking choices away from other people :)
I always want to take the choice that no one else is interested in, so I don't spoil anyone's plans
1:27 PM
Hanna: well...yes, so, okay philosophically i have to say that is highly altruistic of you.
and therefore i cannot disapprove.
me: :P
Hanna: or even argue really.
me: I'm not saying it's a GOOD thing
Hanna: :)
me: I mean, for me personally
1:28 PM
Hanna: no, i know. and in this case it might be a bit of overkill, really. it is just an internship after all. it isn't like you're doing something really serious like taking the last m&m or something.
me: haha
(looking at the Harvard internships)


the Plans Library at the Dept. of Conservation and Recreation
(October 2007)

 1:29 PM
[me:] they have a lot of cool ones related to horticulture this semester, don't they?
Hanna: yeah -- the glass flowers collection one might be cool. have you seen that museum yet?
me: noooo . . .
must plan to go someday [I still haven't been!]
1:30 PM
Hanna: on a sunday -- if i remember right, mass residents get in free before noon -- or after noon -- or something like that. it's on their website.
me: again, good to know!
now you have confused my choices ;)
1:31 PM
Hanna: whoops!
but i added something to your field trip list so that's got to be a good thing.
me: yeah, I'll have to re-think this being -your-friend thing
:)
(field trip list--always a plus!)
1:32 PM
Hanna: see? there you go. the one balances out the other. ;)
1:33 PM
i'd also like to know how this internship out in northampton counts as being on mass transit.
are they confusing the t with greyhound?
me: good question
1:34 PM
[me:] some of the ones on the list looked a little sketchy, access-wise to me!
I mean, yeah, if you had 3 hours to commute!
Hanna: yeah! my 438 class had internships on offer that were up in southern nh and maine.
1:35 PM
me: okay, those may be great sites, but how many of us have the time and/or resources to go out there?
Hanna: exactly.
1:36 PM
[Hanna:] and they were very cool internships, but i don't know if anyone took them in the end.
me: how sad :(
1:37 PM
Hanna: i know we had a couple of distance commuter students, but i think they wanted to go to repositories in boston because of subject interests.
1:38 PM
me: so what are you thinking of?
1:39 PM
Hanna: there's one at bc that just says 'a chance to do higher level processing and finding aids' and i just really want to get into the bc repository because they're supposed to have a good irish collection... [she did, and they do]
...and then the one at harvard about making a kind of harvard cliff's notes study guide because it might be fun to work at the harvard repository...
me: yep, yep
cliffs notes?
(which one is it?)
Hanna: hang on --
1:40 PM
"...[to] create a guide to biographical and genealogical resources about people associated with Harvard..."
and then the one at tufts in their digital collection because i nearly applied for a job there.
1:41 PM
me: the H one sounds like it could be rather OED [Oxford English Dictionary] in length!
well, all good options, yes?
1:42 PM
Hanna: yeah, i think so. and they're all on mass transit in places i know and open m-to-f since i can only work on the fridays.
me: :)
yeah, that's sort of how I sorted them as well
1:43 PM
Hanna: i hate the time crunch thing. i was working out my scheduling last night and nearly gave myself a panic attack.
me: yeah
if I end up working at NEU, my schedule is going to be pretty colorful this semester!
Hanna: :)
1:44 PM
me: plus, I'm still in the mode of catching up from all the transitions
so I feel like sleeping about 10hrs/night
I know it won't last, but it makes me feel very . . . unproductive
1:45 PM
Hanna: i know how you feel.
it's also because it's turning chilly and dark earlier and so on...
me: yeah :)
that was my problem in Aberdeen
3pm?
getting dark?
time for bed!
in the summer
I never had to go to sleep :)
Hanna: :)
1:46 PM
[Hanna:] i just have an awful time getting up in the morning. it's dark and chilly -- this is what my feather comforter was designed for, people! why am i leaving it?
me: yeah, while I've never been a sleep-in-until-noon sort of person,
1:47 PM
[me:] I never have been able to happily get up before it's light out
Hanna: oh, no.
1:48 PM
[Hanna:] when it's light, i can get up -- but getting up before the sun does not work for me.
me: exactly
which presents problems for those of us
living so far north of the equator
or wherever would mean
we wouldn't ever have to get up
before it was light out :)

Sunrise across the Fens (September 2007)

1:49 PM
[me:] well, speaking of productivity . . .
Hanna: oh, overrated.
me: I think I'm going to sign off and go out for a walk before I face classes this afternoon
Hanna:  hehe -- oh, okay, in that case, not overrated. i hear it's gorgeous out!
1:50 PM
me: it is!
Hanna: oh, bah. well, go on then -- you enjoy that beautiful weather! :P
me: mm
I'll try to send you some karmic sunshine, or whatever
1:51 PM
Hanna: hehe. thanks! and do enjoy the walk -- boston's really lovely in the fall.
me: bye
Hanna: wave

four years ago today: "first class, etc."

So in an exercise of sheer archivist-historian self-indulgence, I've decided to offer an occasional series this fall that features emails written by 2007 me about my first few months in Boston (and first semester in graduate school). I'm going to kick the series off with an email I sent out to my family on 5 September 2007, on the first day of the fall semester. It features bookstores, libraries, Hanna, classes, and more! I've added a few clarifying notes, deleted some individual's names, and included links to relevent posts from back then. Other than that, it's a gen-u-ine primary historical source!

From: Anna
To: Brian, Janet, Maggie, Mark, and Joseph
Date: Wed, Sep 5, 2007 at 9:53 PM
Subject: First class, etc.

Hiya all,

Dad wrote earlier and thanked me for keeping y'all "in the loop" about what's going on in my new life here in Boston. Ha! That's a losing battle :). Things are happening so swiftly right now, I'm pretty sure I can't keep up with them myself, let alone keep everyone else up to speed . . .

But here are a few developments in the last 24 hours.

(No, you don't all have to read ALL of it, if that's what you're thinking B & M . . .)

This morning I spent a couple of hours on the phone with Q, the computer magician at Lean Logistics [a company I was working for remotely], setting up the Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection with Lean Logistics. In order to do this, he set up a WebEx conference connection which (get this!) allowed me to give him a remote view of my desktop and control of the mouse on my computer! So I had the very surreal experience of watching my mouse float around doing things while Q talked in my ear, muttering to himself about what he was doing. It was quite cool, actually. And the most important thing is that it worked! So I am now back on board with the whole data entry thing, and fingers crossed it will turn out to be worth the fuss.

On the other job front, I took the Green "D" line downtown to the Prudential Center today and met R [a department manager at Barnes & Noble, where I had transferred from my previous position in Holland, Mich.]. The store is a very strange, warren-like layout, with the children's department situated back of beyond . . . but she assured me she tries to schedule at least two people in the department at a time. The schedule sheets and "dailies" of staff assignments are intimidatingly large! She said they have about 120 people on staff (though of course not all in the store at one time). I will be starting work a week from Friday, with a 7:00am-11:00am "zoning" shift, which means shelving and so on in the early morning. The next two weeks I have no closing shifts, thankfully, so that I can get a feel for the public transit routes without worrying about returning to the dorm at midnight. There seem to be no truly straightforward ways directly from the Prudential Center to the residential campus. There is a [subway] station incorporated into the center which stops fairly near the [Simmons] teaching campus, but several blocks away from the residential campus. The alternative is to walk a few blocks from Prudential and then take the subway line that stops right next to the dorm. I will have to ask around about what's advisable. My impulse would be to refuse to be intimidated, but I also don't want to take foolish risks.

When I was down at the Prudential Center, I took a very pleasurable detour to the Boston Public Library and signed up for my very own library card. It made me positively giddy and possessive feeling . . . like Eva [a child my mother cared for] signing up for her first library card (well, maybe not THAT giddy). You've all seen pictures of the BPL before, but here's a picture of me with my new card standing on the steps in front of the statue of Our Lady of the Libraries (or whichever muse she's supposed to be) on Copley Square.

Boston Public Library, Copley Square (September 2007)

Meanwhile, just to add spice to my work life, my friend Hanna -- a GSLIS student with whom I've been corresponding this past year & just met at the History reception last night -- emailed me this morning to say that the archives at Northeastern University, where she works, will be starting a year-long grant project October 1st, for which they need a part-time (10-13 hours/weekly) assistant. They are digitizing records from Freedom House, a civil rights organization from the 1950s that worked to integrate (and keep integrated) neighborhoods in Boston. She is urging me to apply for the job, and her supervisor said I should put in my resume ASAP -- so I don't have a lot of time to decide. At first I was like, "gawd this is too much!" But the more I think about it, the better it sounds . . . it pays $15/hour and it looks like Barnes & Noble won't be offering me more than around 10 hours a week, which means I lose the permanent part-time status. Without that, there really isn't much incentive to keep the job for the long haul (aside from the employee discount & pleasure of being around, um, books, which doesn't seem to be a problem for me!). So, I'm going to apply for the job, and if I get it probably a) restrict my hours at B&N and b) quit after Christmas. [I didn't get hired by Northeastern at this interview, but went on to work for them first as an intern and then as a part-time archives assistant a few years later.]

My final stop of the day was the Introduction to Archives class. This is the first of the three Archives core classes, so most of the students in the class are starting their AM (archives management) focus. This can happen either after they've already been library science students, or (as in my case) if they come in knowing what they want to focus in, and perhaps even dual-degreeing (can that be a verb?). I don't know if I'm unusual, but I'd say that I'm less committed to archives as a specific type of library science than I am to doing both history and library science . . . if that makes sense? I get the impression that students dual-degree because the history will be useful in their archives career, or they got into archives through their history undergrad. I wouldn't say I thought "archives!" when I imagined becoming a librarian, though there are certainly lots of things to recommend it. I mean, it doesn't take much to get me all enthusiastic about public history, collective memory, material culture, the democratization of access, and so on. But there are moments (like every other one) where I could just as easily become a Public Librarian in some place like . . . oh, Leland? Or drive a bookmobile through the Lake District?

That having been said, I'm sort of on syllabus high right now, which comes before syllabus shock (that sets in after all three courses have had their first days, and I start accumulating project deadlines). Next week, I'll get to choose my top three choices for the 60-hour internship out of over 100 options Simmons lines up for us. Fingers crossed it's something with women's or social justice history, or education . . . it's Boston, I'm sure I can manage something! Or perhaps something off-beat will catch my eye that I never even thought of.

And the professor, V, seems nice (if a little prone to rambling . . . really, how many profs have you met who DON'T have that tendency?) She's enthusiastic, available, and her basic message was: plan ahead, keep me informed, and don't panic.

Well, I should wrap this email up and hunt down my resume for a little polishing (I'm going to put off writing the cover letter until I've had a sobering night's sleep behind me).

Tomorrow I get my first History Methods class -- hooray! -- in the afternoon. I think that's the one that has everyone shaking in their boots ("so much reading!" is what I keep hearing . . . um, and this is a problem to us library students HOW??). That and this job application are the last big things on my list this week. Other than that, I'm going to try and finish my online technology tutorial, open my bank account, and pick up my ZipCar card and paperwork at the main office downtown. And Saturday, Hanna is taking me out to all the best used bookstores, or to a museum, and her favorite coffee shop . . . or something frivolous, geeky and fun. I finally ordered my "Feminism is for Everyone!" library call number shirt (HQ1190.H67) and am hoping I have it in time to wear on our outing.


I did wear this shirt on our Saturday outing;
To this day, Hanna remains particularly fond of it.

 Love to you all,
Anna

in which I'm unexpectedly proud...

... to receive this in today's post:

My work simply would not have been possible without the generosity of everyone who shared their oral histories and personal papers with me. Thank you, everyone! My work simply would not have been possible without the generosity of everyone who shared their oral histories and personal papers with me. Thank you, everyone! And I promise I will get over my bashfulness and post a link to the PDF of my thesis tomorrow over at the OE Oral History project blog.

UPDATE: Here is the post: how to live: the oregon extension as experiment in living, 1964--1980 [thesis]. A link to the PDF in DropBox can be found after the jump.

the tattooed lady: or, more than you ever wanted to know about my first tattoo

Maggie (age 4), Anna (age 11), Brian (age 7)
Holland, Michigan, Summer 1992

I promise this is about my new tattoo (!). So bear with me here.

In 1943 prolific journalist and novelist Arthur Ransome wrote to a young friend, Pamela Whitlock in an attempt to encourage her in her own endeavors as a writer -- even as she was pulled into work for the war effort. "The training for your own private job is going on all the time," he counseled her (Signaling from Mars, 301).

Stick to it, filling your notebooks. Nothing is odder than the way in which a big slice of life, vivid at the time, fades utterly away when you escape from it into something different. It’s like coming back from a year abroad. But notes, no matter how scrappy, are like stones dropped into a pool of still water. They stir up the whole picture and bring to life all sort of other things, including things you don’t happen to have written down at the time (Signaling from Mars, 307).



Coniston Water, Cumbria (30 March 2004)

Ransome knew of what he spoke, having started his own writing career as a young university drop-out, scraping by on the salary of an office boy while trying his hand at memoir and other miscellaneous bits of writing. His Bohemia in London (1907) is something of a classic in the genre of starving artist memoirs, recounting days spent shivering in unheated flats and surviving on apples for weeks at a time so that he had enough money to buy books.  From London -- and his first, deeply unhappy, marriage -- Ransome escaped to St. Petersburg where he witnessed first-hand the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, sending back dispatches to both newspapers and family members (his mother received regular reports on his digestive health, including harrowing tales of surgery in wartime medical facilities; his small daughter received letters adorned with illustrations of papa in great fur coats) and editing a collection of Russian folktales in translation.

Eventually, he abandoned Russia -- taking with him one of Trotsky's secretaries, Evgenia Shvelpina, whom he had to smuggle out of the country through the Mediterranean. The two later married and eventually retired to Ransome's beloved Lake District in Cumbria where between 1931 and 1947 Ransome authored a series of adventure stories with child protagonists (Ransome himself always protested that he had not set out to write children's stories, but rather wrote the stories that he himself most enjoyed). Set primarily in the Lake District -- though later volumes take the cast of characters into Scotland, south to the Broads, and into the realm of half-fantasy -- each book follows the adventures of several families of children who spend their school holidays sailing, camping, and spinning out all sorts of adventure stories that weave seamlessly between fiction and reality. As Ransome observed after completing Swallows and Amazons, the introductory tale,

I was enjoying the writing of this book more than I have ever enjoyed writing any other book in my life. And I think I can put my finger on the thing in it which gave me so much pleasure. It was just this, the way in which the children in it have no firm dividing line between make-believe and reality, but slip in and out of one and the other again and again (quoted in In Search of Swallows and Amazons, Roger Wardale, 32).



Above Coniston Water on my 23rd Birthday
(30 March 2004)



While Ransome's novels have become enduring classics in Britain and, oddly enough, have a devoted following in Japan, they are known only rarely here in the United States. When my family stumbled upon them in the early 1990s, they were unknown treasures. Treasures which we readily devoured, my parents reading them to us every night before bed. Treasures that turned into extended fantasy play of our own. Lacking an island or annual holidays in the Lake District, we turned our own urban landscape into a wilderness, camping in the backyard and repurposing the (profoundly unseaworthy) hull of an abandoned rowboat in which to play captain, first mate, and "ship's girl" for hours on end. 



Suffice to say, the series, its author, and its landscape (both fictional and actual) continue to signify, for me, profound ties to my childhood and my family of origin, as well as my particular affection for the landscape (both literary and actual) of Britain.

Ransome illustrated all of his own stories with whimsical pen and ink drawings ... which is where this post finally makes its way back around to tattoos. Because when I began thinking about what sort of tattoo I was looking to acquire in celebration of my completion of library school, I knew I wanted something that was able to weave together in a particular image the part of myself that is at the fore when I am living that part of myself that sought out librarianship as a vocation. And that is the part of myself that is grounded in my childhood steeped in literature -- the part of myself that does not distinguish between reading and living, between gaining knowledge and doing. As well as the part of myself that seeks both the comfort of the familiar and domestic ... and the sharp edge of political analysis and social critique. And knowing what I know about Ransome as a person, while also relating to the novels he created very much as an ingenuous child, Swallows and Amazons offers just such a mix of the political and personal.



Amazon sails (photo by Hanna)

Work done by Ellen @ Chameleon Tattoo (Cambridge, Mass.)



It was my mother who suggested I look to AR's illustrations -- and she who finally located the illustration that became the basis for my finished tattoo. The sailboat is the Amazon, the boat belonging to Nancy and Peggy Blackett of Beckfoot Farm.

We are introduced to the Amazon sisters in the first novel of the series, Swallows and Amazons, and they remain central throughout. One of the strengths of Ransome's series -- which is indubitably visited by the British imperialist fairy on occasion, not to mention the overtly racist fairy -- is his range of both male and female characters. He goes much further than his contemporary, C.S. Lewis (for example) in portraying girls who openly eschew gendered expectations -- and who are celebrated for their agency. Nancy Blackett (who has changed her name from "Ruth" to a name she feels more aptly reflects her position as pirate captain of the Amazon) abhors wearing dresses is often de facto leader of the expeditionary forces. Neither does Ransome punish boys whose idea of a good time is less conquering and more conservation: The plot of Great Northern celebrates the ethic of preserving a rare species of bird in the wild, rather than harvesting its eggs for scientific study and prowess.

I close this post with the text of a telegram that, in Swallows and Amazons begins the whole adventure. The Walker children, on holiday in the Lake District with their mother, have been anxiously awaiting word from their father (serving in the Navy) who is to weigh in on the proposition that they be allowed to camp sans adult chaperon on an island in the middle of the (unnamed) lake.  In the opening pages of the book, young Roger is racing from the house across the headland to his siblings to deliver the final word:

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN.

On the one hand you can (and I often do) read this in a fairly harsh, survival-of-the-fittist, fashion (see? I said the British-imperialist fairy came to visit!). Yet on balance I prefer to imagine that the absent Walker parent is expressing trust in his children's judgement and abilities -- something I often find is uniquely in the power of a very small set of English literary parents (see E. Nesbit's fictional parents for another example). These adults are always present -- yet rarely intrusive. They engage with their children when called upon to do so, taking their children's concerns seriously and often deferring to them as the experts of the moment.

It is this act of trust in their own children's abilities to act independent of them in the world, and not only to survive but in fact thrive while doing so, that makes the wonderful adventures of the following thirteen novels possible.

Which (coming full circle) is precisely the same trust my parents placed in us as children -- and made possible, for me, so many things that have led up to this moment.

So for all of those reasons let me say: I am very pleased with my first tattoo. And am already well on my way to envisioning a second!

... 28 days later

As this post goes live, I will be executing my final presentation for my final class in fulfillment of the requirements for the Master's in Library Science degree offered by Simmons Graduate School of Information and Library Science (GSLIS). It's been an ... interesting ride.


by dalekhugger

You can check out all the stuff I've written about Simmons over the years on this blog by checking out all the posts tagged simmons (imaginative, I know). Don't think I have a lot more to say at the moment.

Over the next few weeks, look for updates concerning my history thesis, my new job, and (most important!) my celebratory tattoo, chosen as a way to commemorate my entrance into the community of professional librarians (whom I hear are all about tattoos these days; I look on it as a professional investment).

Meanwhile, Hanna and I plan to meet up with fellow class member Gabrielle tomorrow night at M. J. O'Connor's for some delicious boxty wedges, fish & chips, and a couple of drinks to toast what, I hope, will be the end-for-a-long-while of my tenure as a formal student.*

*I realise my thesis revision technically counts as part of my academic requirements, but frankly it's on a whole different plane from coursework. The busywork is over and that's what matter.

28 days from now ...

...it'll be Ms. Future Feminist Librarian-Activist thank you very much!

This post was going to go up yesterday, but a combination of illness, homework, and holiday scheduling conspired against that. So ... one day late, here's what I have to say.

A month from now (Friday, December 10th) I'll be finishing up my final class in the Simmons College GSLIS program, seven semesters (and one summer class) after I began the program in Fall 2007. In January, if all goes well, I'll have an officially-conferred Master's in Library Science. My Master's in History won't be complete until May, and yet ... this still feels like at least a partial milestone.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts about this transition, being the sort of person who always has more thoughts. Mostly, right now I have these preliminary observations.

• Graduate school did not fundamentally alter my love-hate relationship with institutions of higher learning and formal education in general. If anything, it amplified those feelings, and the tension between them, to an uncomfortable degree.
• At the same time, graduate school has fairly fundamentally altered my relationship to academic work. In undergrad, I tried as much as possible to take classes for the love of learning, and throw myself with good faith into the content of every course.  In graduate school, I was much more selective about where I directed my energies. The jury is still out on whether one or the other of these is a preferred approach.
• Librarians, as a group of professionals, are unquestionably awesome 
• I am less than convinced that library school is the best way to approach training professional librarians.

But for now, I'm looking forward to what comes next, including my first tattoo (details to follow), winter vacation, my thesis revision (yes, I'm daunted, but also excited to pick it up again), and a wee bit more time with my girlfriend.

And now it's back to work.

work+school+life: launching year four

^{The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge (Boston, MA), by garreyf.
Made available at Flickr.com.}

It's the week after Labor Day and thus that time of year again ... to look back and look forward and wonder when that third year (that seemed so speedy-fast and incredibly filled with eventfulness at the same time) slid by and to wonder what the year ahead is going to bring.

Hard to believe this is the third anniversary, already, of my move to Boston. (See my post from the end of year one and from year two here). With the hectic nature of the last two weeks (punctuated by several severe migraine-grade headaches), I can't say that I've had a lot of time to reflect meaningfully on the question of whether I feel more authentically "Bostonian" now than I did at this point last year, when I was still very much on the fence. But here I still am, and here Hanna and I are likely to stay for at least the medium term (job opportunities willing!). I admit, in my heart of hearts, to longing for the Pacific Northwest now and again, since it has always felt like something of my second home -- and both of us have close friends and family ties there. But the possibility of such a cross-country move is in the distant world of future possibilities, alongside Hanna's equally important lifelong desire to live, for at least a time, in England. For now, our life is here.

And a jam-packed-full life it is at the minute!

Hanna, who graduated with her MA (History) and MS (Library Science) last December, is working as a processing archivist at the Countway Medical Library at Harvard and as an archives assistant at Northeastern (a position I now share with her). She's working on studying for her GRE, with plans to pursue her PhD in Irish History, and in her spare time can be found blogging both at ...fly over me, evil angel... and her recently-created companion tumblr feed, evil angel. I suggest to any of you reading this that you check out both if what you're looking for are all the most entertaining links on current events in Britain/Ireland, in the world of books, libraries and archives, and genre fiction/film. As she regularly points out, Hanna's RSS feeds are way more diverse than mine, and I always end up learning the most random and interesting things!

I'm in my final semester of work for my Library Science degree, and taking two classes: one on archives management and the other on the curation of digital materials. While both classes promise to be useful for my future work as a librarian, I'm definitely ready to be finished with formal schooling. Being a student makes me claustrophobic, prone to migraines, and depressed; it also tends to sap the pleasure out of the pursuit of learning, which I adore, and on the whole seems to be an unhealthy sort of thing for me to engage in. A bad match, personality-wise, I've discovered. Ironically even more so when the learning is intended to be of professional use rather than something I do because I find it intrinsically valuable (as with my history research).

To celebrate the completion of my degree, I am making plans to get my first tattoo. While I have yet to settle on a design, we discovered a kick-ass artist at Chameleon when Hanna got own inaugural tattoo (a Dr. Who question mark) over the summer, a joint birthday present from me and our friend Diana. I have two or three conceptual ideas in the pipeline right now, although I think for numero uno it might be one of the boats from Swallows and Amazons. My friend Ashley counsels that tattoos should be symbolic enough to be re-interpreted over time, wise words that make me hesitate to use something so pictoral. But I'm sitting with the image for the next few months to see how it feels, and then we'll go from there! (If it all goes well, I'll have to start thinking about what to get when I turn in the final draft of my thesis!)

Speaking of my thesis, the draft is away in the hands of my readers and will likely not be completed until next spring, although final deadlines are still in high-level negotiations. There are some arguments for finishing it this fall, but for quality-of-life reasons, and for quality-of-thesis reasons the handwriting is on my own personal wall that this isn't going to happen. I don't want to be miserable and over-extended for four months, which in turn will make my girlfriend feel miserable and over-extended as she tries to mop up my tears, soothe my migraines, and manage all of the things I simply won't have time for. So we're shooting for May, 2011 presently. Which is actually the term I originally projected I'd graduate (I'm making progress: it took my seven years for the B.A., so four years for the double Masters' degrees ain't shabby!)

Meanwhile, I'm working at my beloved Massachusetts Historical Society (from whence I am writing this) and also at Northeastern, as previously mentioned, where I tag-team a position as archives assistant with Hanna. My latest project is 20.65 cubic feet of records from Northeastern University's cooperative education program, dating from the mid-1970s to the present. Lots of folders of interdepartmental memos and committee meeting minutes, not to mention all the internal dramas to which any organization is prone. I should also (fingers crossed!) finally be wrapping up, this October, the Marjorie Bouve scrapbook digitization project. We still don't have a firm idea for how to display the images and information for users, but as soon as we have anything up and running I'll be sure to link it here.

That's all going to keep me more than busy enough, although I'm definitely looking forward to an October visit from my parents, over the Columbus Day weekend, and to some new blogging projects (i.e. the continuation of reading the (lesbian) classics with Danika the Lesbrarian; my copy of Beth Goobie's Hello Groin arrived in the post just this morning!). Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to staying in touch with y'all via the usual modes, posting here when I can, and tumblr when I can't.

And maybe, some time later in the fall or early next spring, you'll see that we've finally taken the plunge and adopted a cat like we keep talking about doing. If we do, you'll be some of the first people to know ('cause who can resist cute cat photos; I know I can't!)

Best wishes for a lovely early autumn to you all, wherever you may be, and you'll be hearing from me soon enough.

Peace,
Anna

feeling guilty for wanting a balanced life

I've recently been making some decisions about how and when to complete my graduate education. Decisions which have left me feeling one part proud of myself for saying "nope, this isn't working" and making the necessary changes and one part small and ashamed of being slow and for, well, wanting a balanced life. It is always humiliating (or at least I find it so) to find one's self buying in, even a little bit, to the cultural pressures and voices in one's head that pass judgment on the personal life decisions. Decisions that I know, in my gut, are right for me but nevertheless run counter to the mainstream expectations of how we ought to live our lives.

And yet, despite knowing I'm right, I do feel that pressure, and I do hear those voices. As I was trying to make a decision about whether or not to revise my planned thesis-writing deadlines to give myself more time for writing I was acutely aware of those dynamics. And the dynamics of justifying whatever decision I made both to myself and to others (my advisers, my family and colleagues, etc.). So I have a few observations that I'd like to share with you.

As I sit here spelling them out, they all seem rather obvious -- but I think in part because of their very ubiquity they become invisible to us. So for that reason I'm going to the trouble of articulating them anyway.

The first observation is that it is really damn hard in our culture to feel comfortable making the argument that I am part of a family and that it is important for me to nurture the relationships that make up that family even while pursuing academic work and wage-work that I also care about. When justifying my thesis extension to my advisers, I emphasized my work schedule and the importance of having enough time for deliberation and revision while writing. I was up-front about the importance to me of having regular leisure time with Hanna during the week, but I was careful to name that desire as one of a number of factors, rather than foregrounding it as one of my primary concerns (which, in fact, it is). And part of me felt ashamed for naming it as a primary concern, even as I persisted in doing so.

A related reason that feels like an admission of failure is naming domestic responsibilities and the amount of time they take: quotidian tasks such as the morning and evening commute, physical exercise, dish-washing, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning one's kitchen and bathroom, attempting to impose some order on a very tiny apartment space in which two grown women, a cacophony of plants and myriad books are attempting to co-exist. As feminists have pointed out repeatedly for the past two hundred years (at least), domestic concerns are not taken care of by magic (sha-zing!), but rather through work, work that takes both time and energy on the part those whose duty it is to complete these tasks -- whether those persons are paid domestic servants, unpaid spouses, or (in the case of those with neither the economic resources to outsource or a "separate spheres" arrangement with their partner) someone who comes home from work to a second shift.

Yet, as feminists have also pointed out, our society is still organized on the underlying assumption that these tasks will be completed on an invisible level, but people whose labor doesn't officially count -- or possibly in some gap in the space/time continuum. So it feels shameful to acknowledge openly that these tasks do take time, my time and Hanna's time, and that these domestic responsibilities do not count as leisure activities. Rather, they too are un-fun duties that detract from rest and relaxation during the week.

Both of these facets of life -- time to enjoy relationships and time for domestic tasks -- fall under the broader umbrella of self-care, which is really the third life activity that is so very difficult to talk about, much less claim time for, in our culture (more about that in a forthcoming post next week). Despite all of the hue and cry that we are a narcissistic, self-obsessed culture very little in the structure of our society encourages care for, and love of, the self -- something that is foundational to being effective in any other aspect of life. Yet it is something that is supposed to happen around the edges of our other obligations -- shoved to the early mornings, late evenings, weekends, holidays. Rather than occupying its central place in the fabric of our daily lives.

My advisers were, I would like to be clear, not pressuring me to finish within the original time-frame, and were even supportive of my desire to have a life outside of school. But nonetheless, it was a difficult thing for me to ask for. One of them expressed confidence that I could finish writing in the time originally planned, and suggested that deadlines are important in curbing perfectionist tendencies. Which made the voices in my head start to wonder: was I really just panicking about writing a less-than-"perfect" thesis? Was requesting an extension just delaying the inevitable needlessly? But then I realized that these questions and doubts I was having focused the question back on the thesis itself, once again eliding the life I lead around the thesis project, and how that "extra-curricular" world has a place of equal importance in my life.

To be honest, when push comes to shove, it has a more important place in my life. By which I mean that caring for personal relationships and spending quality time with the people in my life will virtually always academic endeavors, unequivocally.

And that's what I have the hardest time admitting to myself and the world: that people will always, always come before ideas in terms of my priorities. Why is admitting this so difficult?

In part, at least, it's because I do, truly, feel passionate about ideas. As anyone who has lived in close proximity with me since I became verbal can attest: I am constantly thinking, processing, analyzing the world around me. It's something I find endlessly enjoyable, satisfying, meaningful. My thesis, in this particular instance, is a self-chosen research project on a topic that's been close to my heart for the past fifteen years; it has re-connected me to people for whom I care deeply, and whose own work in the world I admire. I will see this project through to the end, and I will be proud of having contributed my bit to the history of this particular time and place. I am good at what I do, and I believe in making use of my skills as a writer and thinker.

But as much as I love the world of ideas, I do not thrive in the world of academia, and I don't think I quite understand -- at least intuitively -- what it takes to be the type of person for whom scholarship is their passion, their lifeblood. And often I feel incredibly guilty about acknowledging this, since I live and work in a world surrounded by such scholars.

It makes me feel, in some obscure hard-to-put-my-finger-on sense, like I'm letting them down. That I'm failing to live up to their hopeful expectations that I become a driven, passionate scholar like them.

Finally, I also think that, as a woman and a feminist, I find it particularly fraught to speak about those instances in which I choose to prioritize personal relationships over what amounts to my professional identity. Part of me struggles with the realization that, in doing so, I am conforming to cultural expectations of what women "naturally" prefer: we're "naturally" more intuitive and relational, blah blah blah ("rubbish!" as Hanna would say). Another part of me is pissed that I feel ashamed of making those choices because I realize that, on some level, my feeling of shame means I have bought into the (profoundly anti-feminist) cultural idea that those "feminine" realms of being are somehow a lesser choice. And yet a third part of me is haunted by the women academics who have worked so hard to assert their right to be a part of the life of the mind, and I feel saddened by my acknowledgment that I have (more often than not) failed to feel at home in the space they were so triumphant, not so very long ago, to gain entrance to.

In the end, though, I don't think this is an issue of gender (though it has aspects specific to cultural expectations of women and men) so much as it is an issue of "work" and how we understand what counts as work and what the place of work should be in our society and in our individual lives and self-identities. If anything, I suspect men still have a more difficult time in our culture claiming time for non-work activities, particularly activities that involve relational intimacy and home-making.

Most of all, I think this is an issue of re-claiming the right to make space for things that are not-work in our lives, and make the (radical?) assertion that often these things are more important to us than those things which count as work.

This has been a long, rambling blog post for which I have no tidy concluding remarks. So I thought I would end with some open-ended questions. I hope some of you will take the time to respond to in comments! What things do you find yourself struggling to justify making time for, and why? What do you do when your personal priorities are at odds with society's priorities?

^{image credit: awkward by sketch | erase @ Flickr.com.}