There's No Place Like Home

We've finished our first book (House Made of Dawn by Momaday) for Life and Lit of the Southwest. Our discussion of this book has encompassed what my proffesor calls the Native American Plot. Friday, he stated something to the effec that no Native American can wrtie about Native America without a critque of Anglo America in the background. My notes question whether the two cultures are really as exteremly oppisite as that statement suggests. Now I must question myself. If he meant it literally, my question has valdiity. However, if it's more of a matter of perception then my question should change. Perhaps, he meant that the authors see the cultures as opposites and thus cannot keep out a critique of the other world. This meaning I have no problems with. I wonder what brought me to the point where a broad, yet vauge statement of a people's perceptions easier to believe than any statement of fact- hen really both are unproven suppositions.

Taken as such, the idea of opposing cultures is an interesting one. Dr. C gave examples such as the Anglo's disreagard for the land and its resources. In keeping with Momaday, who critcizes the lack of any sort of community in a city such as L.A., Dr C asked how a culture could turn pregnant immigrants away from hospitals because they don't have health insurance. Of course, I've never really thought about these things outside of the political arena, so I'm trying to grasp my mind around the idea that there is another way. How would these things funtion in the Native American world?

Hello new ideas about... oh, sex?

Recently I finished our first reading outside the textbook for the woman's studies class is the introduction from a book written by (I really don't want to get out of my warm bed to find the article so *Insert Name Here*). The class is entitled Language and Gender. The first point Dr. P made our first day of class, this is not a class about how women and men talk to each other- and I breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted was another person (or an entire semester) how relationships are "supposed" to work. Of course, I have high respect for scholars in the field who study interpersonal communication, but it's really not for me. Instead, this class is about how we communicate the ideas of gender/sex as a society. Wait... that sounds like, it just might be rhetorical! So, the point is, I'm really excited about this class. I consider myself a feminist, but I obviously do not agree with some ideas out there under the banner of feminism. Getting a clearer idea of the theories out there and from a communication perspective, should be extremely beneficial.

So, back to the reading. The first few pages talk about this argument during the Enlightenment that concluded that the female orgasm is not necessary for conception. To today's post-enlightenment, scientifically advance world, that seems to be self-evident. So much so that I'm having problems with the idea that this was a discovery. Must revisit this when I'm not so tired, because surely I'm just missing something. But wouldn't they have figured this out long before this?

Perhaps the end comes too soon?

In three months, I'll be parading around with a degree in hand- one of the few in my family to reach this level of education, yet just as deeply in debt. I'll be able to conjugate any Italian verb, describe the five pillars of Islam, and articulate the origin/consequences of the western myth. Those are just the skills I'm perfecting this semester. Add these to my ability to kick out a paper- it seems almost an instant A, probably due more to the standard of writing here than any latent or learned skill on my part. Yet without a particular letter, from any one of the many graduate schools I've applied to, my future becomes precarious. All my illusions of security shall vanish. My presumed skills might be rendered useless, at the very least they'll have to be melded to fit a new occupation. Trying to wrap my mind around the grad school applications was quite a task. Sometimes, I felt paralyzed. Fear held me captive, or so I thought. That idea was later discarded because it was too dramatic. Still, I knew somewhere in my mind that no matter how hard I worked on those applications, it would never be enough to satisfy my inner perfectionist (who speaks in a voice eerily like my mum's at times...). I treated that as an excuse to expend less energy and less thought. Now, I'm deathly afraid it's going to bite me in the ass. If I had issues piecing together pieces of paper and writing prose- tasks I usually find easy- how can I ever hope to renovate my mind and my work ethic?

Discussions such as these, open-ended and hopeless, seem to fill my hours. As much as I want to write about the wonderful and interesting classes I'm taking this semester, my self-doubt claws its way to the forefront of my mind. I can't ignore it. So, I've acknowledged it. In a space neither boldly public or serenely private, I admit that I'm so tripped up with worry that I can't seem to find that optimist that started college three years ago or the confident, albeit new, scholar that launched an ambitious academic plan. However, maybe with this acknowledgment, I'm discovering I still have a smidgen of gumption left.

And that shall be last pathetic self-centered prose I shall write for this semester. Now, it has been outlawed and I shall move on to happier topics, like how Lone Ranger would have been a murderer and how western religions have intolerance built into their belief. Not new topics, but new to me and I'm eager to explore more in later posts.