"I Wrote This Sea Shanty Gone Awry..."

[psalm_onethirtyone]

Spiritual renewal comes in the fact that my mhari is the best mhari in the whole world (that's right, it's better than yours, damn right, it's better than yours) and sent me the best box in the whole world.

Also I sold ten of my pieces at the art gallery, which = money, and I was accepted into the India winter break Conflict Resolution study abroad programme, which is a three-week programme monitored by two professors I really like, which makes me feel a lot safer about it.

And I kind of hate my Comm professor but I realised I'm not the only one who feels that way, and I realised that my Sosh professor is really exemplified by this metaquote, which makes me feel a lot better; I really like understanding people's motivations, both from an analytic point of view and because it helps me brain that the issue is not me personally (since I am extremely prone to interalise and personalise everything). My Sosh professor is really really quick to call things racism, but she is also a black woman living in a predominantly white central Pennsylvania neighbourhood, so there's probably been a whole lot of accidental tramping on a broken foot. That said, it was frustrating that she repeatedly accused Southerners of hating Jews and being anti-Semitic (imo, it's more that Jewish folks tend to live in big Northern cities, which are exactly the kind of environment Southern folks tend to distrust, although I grant you that there is probably a religious undercurrent as well for a number of folks), as well as the fact that she pretty much said that her white PhD'd neighbour was scared of her for being a black woman despite the fact that the only interaction she described was them saying hi to each other in the morning on their respective walks, and that this fear was only alleviated when she told the woman that she was also a PhD when they met in the grocery store and woman was all "HI! :D We're neighbours and I've totally never said hi, I'm Dr. So-and-so". From her description there was absolutely no evidence of racism (or any reason why the woman would think she was the maid for some theoretical people who lived in her house, or be scared of her because sometimes she drank a bottle of beer on her front porch), but obviously there may have been stuff she left out because it seemed obvious to her. ANYWAY. My point is, there were a lot of assumptions made in to-day's class, but I feel like I kind of get the context for those assumptions, at least to a degree (Sosh professor is from the Bronx until a few years ago, which probably doesn't help with not being suspicious of white people--o hey, I made an assumption of my own), so that helped me be less frustrated.

And I talk a lot about sociological things, ohai. Just wait until my ramble on the subject of Why Is My Cross Okay But That Dude's Shirt With A Bible Verse Makes You Mad?, coming shortly to a self-indulgent livejournal post near you.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good for now, although I really need to edit Maria's logic paper.

Comments

[the-chloroplast.livejournal.com]

Latebeast is late to the party but thought it would comment anyway. ^^

Hooray for boxes and monies and India! Is that this winter or next winter?

And yeah, assumptions being made. People will make assumptions. It's kind of what we do, we make assumptions and then wait for them to be disproven or proven -- we can't help it. That's just how we are; it's how we survive (if I see a lion, I'm going to assume it's going to eat me, I'm not going to fart about waiting to see if maybe it just wants a hug). We might try not to make assumptions, or we might recognize that we're doing it and acknowledge that our assumptions might be mistaken, but the point is that we're making them. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. The making of assumptions isn't bad; what we choose to do with them has the potential for Badness. I dunno.

Congratulations, you made a fish think! :)

[rainbowjehan.livejournal.com]

This winter!

We had a long sit-down discussion about Things She Does In Class That Make Me Uncomfortable and a bit of Both Of Us Have Weird Perceptions And Background and so on, which helped a lot. Sometimes I forget how useful it is for me to talk to people.