Here are some old musings of mine (tie in nicely with the news of my acceptance):

18.10.2003

On the inability to make choices.

I am a person who spends her entire time in torment over not being able to decide anything. When I finally make a decision, I cling to it like a drowning muskrat clings to a piece of wood. I remember the indescribable joy when I picked psychology as my major in the university. I was not so much excited to study psychology, but simply happy that I had made a definite decision to study something, committed myself to some path.

I was on high throughout my entire second year. It was all planned: spending long nights in the lab, reading obscure articles, writing long verbose papers, finally earning my Ph.D., getting a tenure and then proceeding on to write more long verbose papers which will be published in obscure journals.

The newly-found shining ambition started to grow dull in the beginning of the third year. I took a seminar and a lab course. Both were moderately fun, except for the part where I had to come up with actual research proposals and conduct real experiments. I discovered I did not possess the éntheos for psychological research. It also seemed that absolutely everything had been studied. All the major themes had been explored by somebody else, and in order to propose anything new one had to review a thousand articles to find some little bit that could be examined. I had no problem with the reading and review, but I felt hopeless when I had to come up with something to study in the lab.

I had much easier time when choices were made for me. Simply working as a research assistant in someone’s lab was not a bad job. It was even intellectually entertaining in some way. Moreover, it better suited my personality, -- I could sit in the lab for hours shut off from the world, entering data, looking for materials, summarizing findings.

The structure of the fourth year, on the other hand, did not suit my personality at all. The summer between my third and fourth years was spent in dread over one major responsibility that was about to fall on my shoulders – the Honours Thesis. The name was already too heavy to bear. The steps required were: find a supervisor; write a proposal; develop the experiments; recruit people; submit the results to the department. In between these things, write literature reviews, make presentations, meet with your supervisor weekly to discuss the progress (because, of course, the progress is slow since you procrastinated all summer when you could have done all that work).

Needless to say, by the time the fourth year started, the ambition to get a Ph.D. in research psychology disappeared completely. I hated research. I hated having no imagination for it, having no ideas. All the theses that my classmates and I wrote seemed silly and unimportant. Then I made my next definitive decision: I will get a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. I will graduate and sit in a quiet little office, listening to people complain about their lives. Or maybe I will work in a hospital, actively running around and “helping people”.

I was thoroughly sick of school, so I did not apply to graduate school that year, but, instead, packed my bags and moved to Japan to work. I was cooped up for a year in a little apartment in a little town on the smallest of the four Japanese islands. In the end, I made another decision: no psychology, clinical or otherwise. I will go back to what I have loved most all my life: books. In a very literal sense, by applying to a library science program. I will graduate and become a librarian in some academic library, or maybe an archivist, and will probably die buried under some hefty tome that will slip off the bookshelf and land on my head.

That decision is still with me. I am still clinging to it. We’ll see what the next year will bring.

Sincerely,

The Drowning Muskrat

Loooooong time, no write. My time in Japan is winding down, and on August 5th I return to Toronto.

Almost everything that has happened to me here can be read on my site at elechka.tripod.com

The latest installment from there:

I swear on the Witches' Bible that the following is the true account of events (however retarded it seems). 

The commencement ceremony

Play in one act and one scene

List of characters:

New principal

Vice-principal

Ogata-sensei

Usuki-sensei

New teachers

Other teachers

Miyoshi junior high school students

Act I.

Scene I.

Miyoshi junior high school, new gym. The gym is so huge that we don't occupy even a half of it. Ogata-sensei is at the mike, announcing speakers.

Ogata-sensei: Opening message.

Usuki-sensei, after bowing to every corner and to the national flag that was hung up so high you cannot see it, comes up on stage. 

Usuki-sensei: We begin the ceremony.

Usuki-sensei comes back down from stage.

Ogata-sensei: Greeting from the vice-principal.

The vice-principal comes up on stage, gives a short speech about the start of the new school year, etc, etc, etc.

The vice-principal comes back down.

Ogata-sensei: Introduction of the new teachers.

(We have seven new teachers this year, including the new principal. The new teachers are standing in line on stage.)

The vice-principal comes up on stage and gives a short blurb about each of the new teachers.

The vice-principal comes back down.

Ogata-sensei: Message from the new teachers.

The new principal comes to the middle of the stage, gives a speech about himself, about how happy he is to be transferred to this nice school, and about how all the students should study hard.

The new principal comes down from stage. Other new teachers follow suit.

Ogata-sensei: Message from the school principal.

The new principal comes up on stage (the reader must recall that this guy just talked there 30 seconds ago). Gives speech about the beginning of the new school year, about how nice this school is, and about how all the students should study hard. 

The new principal comes back down.

Ogata-sensei: Closing message.

Usuki-sensei comes up on stage.

Usuki-sensei: The ceremony is now over.

Usuki-sensei comes back down.

Ogata-sensei: Message something or other.

The vice-principal comes up on stage. 

The vice-principal: The first term of the new school now begins.

The vice-principal comes back down.

Ogata-sensei: Other messages. 

The vice-principal comes up on stage and gives some speech about how everybody should take care of themselves and study hard. 

The vice-principal comes back down.

Ogata-sensei: Introduction of all teachers.

All teachers form a line in front of the students and are gintroducedh by the vice-principal.

Ogata-sensei: The school song.

The gym is huge, the kids are few, new teachers donft know the lyrics, the new music teacher is playing too fast (well, at least it was over quickly)c

Ogata-sensei: Everybody, stand up. Bow. You can go back to the classrooms.

Teachers go back to the office and start making maps of a school cleanup. Maps will later be mounted on pieces of sturdy cardboard and posted in every classroom, so that everybody knows where they are supposed to clean.

Otherwise chaos will predominate.