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Ambivalence & me, a match made to last
I'm a little numb or stunned or something these days. It's slowly hitting home that I might have to spend most of fall semester 09 and half of spring semester 2010 in Sweden in order to get the academic title I want. My old professor whom I talked to about this in May was too optimistic and wrong, he thought according to the old system, but all main European universities have reformatted themselves recently, according to what they call "The Bologna system" and so, there are lots of us stuck between the two systems and we have to bite the bullet.
I don't like it, it's way more than I bargained for. Two months in Sweden was okay, but this is not. I'll miss the Geek and my family and my life in the US, it really feels like putting my life on hold for 7-8 months, and on top of that I might actually experience problems with regards to where I could live during these months. I have some good friends with whom I can live during fall, but I'm not sure what to do mid January through March next year. We'll see what happens, I'll go to an academic counselor and talk about my options and what can be done to shorten the time in Sweden, if anything.
My best option is still to do all this in Sweden, but had I lived in Sweden I wouldn't do it, since my degree is far beyond good enough to get work there. Here in the states it's gonna help to get an internationally recognized title however, and it's gonna help a lot - even though my degree is already better the the MA's from the library colleges here.
I might miss a lot of things about Sweden, but that doesn't mean that I want to spend months and months in limbo there, without actually living there. And it's gonna cost money, all this really is like putting life on a hold, and in a time where I feel I don't have any time for such pauses.
Summer has been spent with a couple of different jobs and by working on an ecological farm which my family is shareholder in. Weird to work with vegetable patches again, since I swore off ever having a garden again when I was a late teen. (I grew up with a big garden and many fruit trees and berry bushes, belonging to a rickety old house and it all took so much maintenance, it sort of colored my childhood in certain ways.)
Anyways, the ecological veggies have been tasty, although I discovered that the only and first food allergy I've ever had, is to turnips!
I'm trying to drag myself up by my bootstraps a bit and not be so disappointed and morose about how my current situation has turned out, but it's going slow and I fear more setbacks when in Sweden. I'll be taking some work with me there, and I think I can be in the US most of December and I'll visit in mid October (for the Geek's mom's birthday), but bittersweet exile it is.
For the record let it be said that I've deleted several parts of this entry, in which I dwell on the things I've given up on in life, but they are part of the glum stuff that my head is made of currently, and this academic exile kind of represent the last nail in that coffin. I'm not sure it's true that it is, but it feels like it.
The Geek and I are okay, we'll plow through this, we've handled harder things together, but something in me is a bit weary of life plans never coming together in spite of efforts.
On top of all this, I've been reading articles and links about the Pittsburgh women murderer and gym shooter George Sodini (thanks for good linkage![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
creactivity), and how he was affected by the Pick Up Artist (PUA) culture. It brings me back to the beginning of last year, when I was debating a lot with masculinists and anti feminists on Swedish debate forums like Passagen. One of the most skilled and outspoken debaters there was a guy calling himself RealMX who claimed that The Game was the most important book in modern times (no irony!), and he held long argumentative rants about why it was so..and yet it became abundantly clear that the guys who were interested in pick up artist games had a few things in common (including this guy). They sensed women as much much different from men, to the point where it almost (and definitively in some cases) created a female contra humanity view on gender polarity. And also, the guys ruled by PUA games were claimed to be "nice guys" wanting to shred their "nicety" which, according to PUA myth was the reason for not getting women. Basically this article about the nice guy syndrome sums up what I thought and think pretty neatly. It still sucks to be right, and to have been right from the very beginning about these tendencies, because the world and the internet is full of masculinist guys in this very moment spewing their anger against anyone daring to criticize the PUA culture and what comes out of it.
I don't like it, it's way more than I bargained for. Two months in Sweden was okay, but this is not. I'll miss the Geek and my family and my life in the US, it really feels like putting my life on hold for 7-8 months, and on top of that I might actually experience problems with regards to where I could live during these months. I have some good friends with whom I can live during fall, but I'm not sure what to do mid January through March next year. We'll see what happens, I'll go to an academic counselor and talk about my options and what can be done to shorten the time in Sweden, if anything.
My best option is still to do all this in Sweden, but had I lived in Sweden I wouldn't do it, since my degree is far beyond good enough to get work there. Here in the states it's gonna help to get an internationally recognized title however, and it's gonna help a lot - even though my degree is already better the the MA's from the library colleges here.
I might miss a lot of things about Sweden, but that doesn't mean that I want to spend months and months in limbo there, without actually living there. And it's gonna cost money, all this really is like putting life on a hold, and in a time where I feel I don't have any time for such pauses.
Summer has been spent with a couple of different jobs and by working on an ecological farm which my family is shareholder in. Weird to work with vegetable patches again, since I swore off ever having a garden again when I was a late teen. (I grew up with a big garden and many fruit trees and berry bushes, belonging to a rickety old house and it all took so much maintenance, it sort of colored my childhood in certain ways.)
Anyways, the ecological veggies have been tasty, although I discovered that the only and first food allergy I've ever had, is to turnips!
I'm trying to drag myself up by my bootstraps a bit and not be so disappointed and morose about how my current situation has turned out, but it's going slow and I fear more setbacks when in Sweden. I'll be taking some work with me there, and I think I can be in the US most of December and I'll visit in mid October (for the Geek's mom's birthday), but bittersweet exile it is.
For the record let it be said that I've deleted several parts of this entry, in which I dwell on the things I've given up on in life, but they are part of the glum stuff that my head is made of currently, and this academic exile kind of represent the last nail in that coffin. I'm not sure it's true that it is, but it feels like it.
The Geek and I are okay, we'll plow through this, we've handled harder things together, but something in me is a bit weary of life plans never coming together in spite of efforts.
On top of all this, I've been reading articles and links about the Pittsburgh women murderer and gym shooter George Sodini (thanks for good linkage
creactivity), and how he was affected by the Pick Up Artist (PUA) culture. It brings me back to the beginning of last year, when I was debating a lot with masculinists and anti feminists on Swedish debate forums like Passagen. One of the most skilled and outspoken debaters there was a guy calling himself RealMX who claimed that The Game was the most important book in modern times (no irony!), and he held long argumentative rants about why it was so..and yet it became abundantly clear that the guys who were interested in pick up artist games had a few things in common (including this guy). They sensed women as much much different from men, to the point where it almost (and definitively in some cases) created a female contra humanity view on gender polarity. And also, the guys ruled by PUA games were claimed to be "nice guys" wanting to shred their "nicety" which, according to PUA myth was the reason for not getting women. Basically this article about the nice guy syndrome sums up what I thought and think pretty neatly. It still sucks to be right, and to have been right from the very beginning about these tendencies, because the world and the internet is full of masculinist guys in this very moment spewing their anger against anyone daring to criticize the PUA culture and what comes out of it.
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As you can see, this subject is an easy way to get me started too...
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Ughhhhhhh.
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