My Favorite Things About Moving to Maryland So Far

Cows. Cows everywhere. Cows in fields, cows in barns. Cows sharing fields with sheep. Lots and lots of cows.

The rain. It rained this morning, it rained this afternoon. It was supposed to hail, but it did not.

Eateries that claim “Pizzeria and Tex Mex” as their concurrent food genres. That sounds interesting (and highly suspicious).

It is so, so green. I can only think of Rey, in the latet Star Wars movie, when she says, “I didn’t know there was this much green in the whole galaxy!”

 

Also, my housemates are pretty awesome and chill, and I live on the end of a long (paved), narrow road framed by trees drooping with vines. Did I mention how green it is??

The weather really isn’t so bad. It was great today (though with high humidity), and my room has a window AC unit, so I’m set at night.

Now… if we could only banish the stinkbugs, carpenter ants, earwigs, and spiders from the house, I’d be set.

Did I mention that I live in a house that was originally built in the 1840’s? Yeah, pretty cool. Except it has only one (unoriginal) bathroom, and the light switches are in random places. But it is a bona-fide old house, complete with creepy basement and attic and a servants’ stairway and a both-ways swinging door to the dining room. It’s so cool, and weird.

Tomorrow I start my actual job (eep!), and actually get to figure out what exactly I will be doing! Flexibility and fluidity have been really important, and thankfully I’ve accrued the ability to be so, but not having set plans or objectives really stresses me out.

Here are a couple other pictures. I hope all my peeps at home are doing well… I miss you guys already! ❤

The sunset tonight

Bunnies have much squarer noses here!

A New Year, a New Mind

This wasn’t the first post for 2016 that I was intending to put up; the other one is still in my drafts folder.

I just arrived home after a New Year’s spent visiting with family; on the way home, I finished Francis Chan’s book, Crazy Love.

Coming home, seeing our shriveled Christmas tree, realizing that I must go back to work and wait a whole year before Christmastime again… well, call me a kid but it made me really sad. I had such an amazing Christmas this year; if I were being honest, I’d say it was the best. And the thought of leaving that behind made me a little misty-eyed. I only get to see my whole family (siblings, niece, nephew, uncles, aunts,  cousins, grandma) together once a year (if I’m lucky), and I loved our time together. It is a huge delight to spend time with them and I feel so blessed and privileged to call them Family.

Me being sad about leaving my family time behind… actually makes me super happy. Because not everyone has family that they love to be around, or loves them. Not everybody has family, period. And that makes me very sad. Which is probably why I started bawling as  I thought of my own family.

It is so strange being so happy that something makes you so sad, but that was the state I found myself in.

It’s been a crazy past couple of days– okay, month– okay, semester– Alright. Year. [let’s be honest: I carry the crazy with me all throughout life.] But the last four months I can say have been some of the best and worst months of my life. They’ve been the best because the situations I’ve found myself in and my (lack of) health and various relationships have pushed me to pursue God and become closer to him more than ever before in my life, and the worst because a lot of those situations that brought said closeness with God have been downright hellish.

I’ve had to come to terms with some very unhealthy mental habits of mine, which have brought sickness and anxiety attacks and all sorts of issues to my life. I’ve had to be brutally honest with my family and my friends in ways I’ve never been before… brutally honest about how weak I really am and how much a struggle appearing normal is for me sometimes.

But tonight, I am happy. No, I am joyful. I am joyful like I have rarely experienced in large quantities before this past August. I am joyful because I can feel both my joy and sadness with an alacrity and sharpness that would have been dull and shriveled, even a year ago. There is a cloud that has been over my soul for years, one that has greyed even the most vibrant of colors in my life. This cloud has only begun to shift in the past year, and if the last few months are any indication, the stormy deluge it brings at its passing is fierce but it will only serve to wash away the grime that has encased my soul.

I am so, so grateful that God has finally gotten into my head the beauty of vulnerability. For so long I saw it as a sign of weakness; and it is.

It is in our weaknesses that Christ is strongest, and it is our weaknesses that he uses as an avenue for his glory. His ways are not our ways; his thoughts are not our thoughts.

I’ve experienced unfettered joy in the last two weeks like I haven’t… ever. I’ve been so happy, and enjoying time with my family and relaxation when considering all circumstances I shouldn’t be. I’m amazed at this gift of joy, and love, and family, that seems newly washed and beautiful and satisfying like never before. And my heart aches for those whose Christmas season has been the exact opposite of that.

Even though I am filled with trepidation for returning to work and the myriad uncertainties of the future, I also am so happy, and excited to see God work in ways I’ve never before seen in my life in 2016.

I pray he:

Clarifies my vision for how I can best serve him and bring glory to his name.

Keeps my mind in the present and my heart near his, so I can walk in his Grace daily and share it daily.

Shows me more of his beauty, both through his creation and his heart.

Gives me more of his courage, to do and say and be who he is and who he wants me to be.

Shows me how to love more fully, live more deeply, and walk more closely with him.

Shows me how to fail more gracefully, say no more often (and more tactfully), and how to manage my resources (both time, health, and money) more in alignment with his laws.

 

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A Grad School Here, a Grad School There….

I am in the process of doing research on graduate schools that I’d like to go to. (Internally, I am concurrently screaming in terror and squealing with glee).

I have also realized that doing this makes me unconsciously use too many large words unnecessarily; I guess you’d say I have sesquipedalian tendencies. Please take note: the below blog is coming from someone who has nary a graduate degree to her name, nay, nary a graduate school application under her name, so… Please, read this from someone who has no experience in the matter, but needs to discuss the matter anyhow.

For a long time, I was very set against higher education; not because I hated the idea of learning and research (I loved that idea), but rather that I hated the thought of surrounding myself with pompous people who were too full of themselves. Thankfully, my thesis advisor (no, dangit spell-check! I prefer my ‘o’ in advisor, not ‘e’)  in my undergrad was awesomely awesome, down to earth, brilliant, and entirely personable, so I realized that it is possible to be human and be involved in higher education and academia. Phew!

Anyhow, doing research on grad schools is a momentous and daunting task. If one reads any books about applying to grad schools, one gets the idea that it’s necessary to do such an enormous amount of research on each and every potential Department’s faculty and their research, comprehensively reading and skimming all relevant articles and related papers, that it would hardly seem necessary to go ahead and get a degree; you’ve already done the equivalent amount of reading and research.

That, of course, is mostly hyperbole. Mostly.

But really, it’s not a good idea to pick a graduate school on the same qualifications as your undergrad school: cost, location, and Scene-quotient. It’s a good idea to have people in mind within a body of faculty who could potentially be advisors (dangit spell-check, stop that, I know you think it’s wrong, but I don’t care about AP style guidelines right now!) to your dissertation. Because really, if you can’t find someone you’d want to work with for 4+ years, then you’re probably not looking in the right place.

But sometimes… Sometimes, you don’t know exactly what you’d want to research, in the first place! And that is the problem. I am definitely set on Linguistics, the half of my undergrad for which I did a thesis, but beyond that… Well. Let’s just say I want an interdisciplinary program.

My background is primarily theoretical syntax, with a good punch of computational modeling. I enjoyed that. I really would like to do something aligned with the practical or computational application of theoretical areas of linguistics, but the idea of stringently adhering to a syntax-focused program makes me cringe. I love syntax, don’t get me wrong. But the mainstream representations of syntax, while being very computationally motivated, I believe are woefully inadequate to represent real-life linguistic phenomena. My undergrad, if anything, taught me that.

I am however, interested in incorporating multi-interfaced approaches to syntax. That interests me greatly. And that, along with my desire to actually make money after school, whether it be in the business sector or academia, makes me want to focus greatly on computational linguistics, because I think that is where  the largest amount of flexibility and applicability is found.

And ha! Here I am, talking like I get to choose my grad school, as opposed to them choosing me. I am trusting that God will lead me to the right people, and right program… But still. It is nerve-wracking to consider that a year from now I might begin to receive a long list of resounding (and curt) “No’s” from the schools I want to go to. But hey. Here’s to hoping, and praying, and researching, and doing what you love to do.

What is Linguistics?

Or, more accurately, what is linguistics not?

Enjoy this picture of stunning unusual rain-bow-sunset event. Because this has something to do with the study of language.

[Warning: this is one of my more free-thought-association blogs, so if you are looking for a well-crafted blog post, look at some of my other ones. Well, okay.. maybe you ought to look for another blog entirely. But look at the pretty picture!]

A few years ago, right before I started at the University of Arizona, I attended a linguistics symposium by the name of Multilingual, 2.0 ? (Yeah, I was confused by the name too. They had some sort of elaborate explanation relating to the transcendent nature of change and and whether the changes occurring in the world’s simultaneously shrinking and expanding linguistic realms were really changes at all… or something like that).

At said symposium, there was a speaker/guest who gave a talk on a paper he’d written on constructed languages, specifically in one sci-fi book (series) where the alien race had an interesting linguistic capacity: they had two mouths or speech organs, and utilized them simultaneously in the production of speech. Which, made for an interesting dilemma for the humans who came into contact with them.

That talk on conlangs and that alien race has been stuck in my memory for a long time. I have long-lost the brochure for the symposium, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of the speaker nor the book. I have been a life-long fan of Tolkien (let’s be honest, fan is too tame a word) and his constructed languages, so this wasn’t the first time I’d fallen in love with fake languages. Tolkien is the primary reason why I decided to study linguistics in the first place– he was always an eminent philologist in my mind, despite the face that he isn’t well known for it nowadays.

I just now have taken the trouble to hunt down that book after three years– searching for graduate research topics was the primary motivation. Anyway, I found out that the book I was searching for is Embassytown, by China Miéville. I have now procured it from the library, and I am super excited to read it.

Linguistics is a strange field. When people ask me, “what is linguistics?” I’m always at a loss as how to define it. Linguistics is the study of language, but we’re not quite sure what “language” actually means, or entails, or where the definition of “language” begins, or ends. People define it differently, and vary the definition even at different times. Perhaps one of the most alluring attributes of linguistics is it is as varied and undulating in its studies and applications as your attention and desire to probe language for its eccentricities and secrets.

Language, to me, is right up there with the mysteries of ontology, soteriology, and the infinite grace of God. We can define these things, we can discover concrete identifiers that prove specific data about its existence and necessity, but there always remains outliers and indefinable features, something wild and greater and more mysterious than we can imagine, no matter how many studies or papers or thought experiments we engage in. That’s why I like language and linguistics. It is a glimpse into the mystery, and incredible complexity of being, and the One who created existence as we know it.

I Was a Failure In College: The Dark Side of Academic Success

Here’s my story of  learning about the things  they don’t tell you in a college brochure or in any acceptance letter.

The New York Times has a front page article today about the suicide rate and propensity of suicide in high-ranking schools [Campus Suicide and the Pressure of Perfection]. It tells of a high-achieving freshman at UPenn who sinks into a depression and nearly commits suicide when she realizes that as a straight-A student, sorority member, intern teaching elementary school-aged kids, and a participant in additional extra-curricular activities, she is simply not doing enough. She has no time to think, rest, develop as an individual or possibly consider that all these higher achievers around her are feeling as equally insufficient and overwhelmed as she is.

I remember when I got my first B in a class at the University of Arizona. I was distraught and it bothered me for months. I resolved to never let it happen again. I assumed at the time that this failure was a lack in motivation, studying, and dedication to the task at hand; but looking back, I doubt it.

I thought I was a generally good student, and definitely a high-achiever. I was enrolled in the Honors College. I was taking Arabic, and I was good at it. I was a double major in Creative Writing and Linguistics. I was slated to graduate early, despite the double major.

I thought I was in good shape until I started meeting students who were not only taking a 17-20 credit course load (I was taking 17), but were also working part-time, had one or two internships and independent studies, were taking trips to local attractions on the weekends, and were already applying for positions to launch their career into the stratosphere post-graduation. I met double-doubles: people who had two majors and two minors. I met triple-majors, who would graduate with a B.S. and a B.A. I met people taking two, and three language classes per semester. I met students who were already so buddy-buddy with their professors by the time the semester started that it felt like I was fighting a lost cause to introduce myself to them.

I was barely managing my straight A’s and a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant on the weekends. I was a transfer student who was shy, and the idea of asking a professor for independent study opportunities was enough to give me a panic attack. I felt under-read in literature when talking with my English buddies, and I felt under-exposed to cross-linguistic typologies and languages that my linguistic friends would discuss with gusto after class or over dinner.

The impression that everyone around me was doing twice as many things as I and with double the finesse and efficiency exponentially increased my feelings of inadequacy and failure; which in turn incapacitated me with fear and anxiety that kept me from pursuing opportunities that would help me more than graduating with a 3.94 GPA would.

I wish I’d done things differently. I wish I’d plucked up the courage to do more independent studies (I did do one year of thesis-focused independent studies), to engage with my fellow students more. I wish I’d done more than just percolate my fears and inadequacies into an ever-strengthening brew of self-disgust and hatred that recursively confirmed that I was, indeed, a failure, and that I would always be one.

I wish someone had told me that straight As don’t get you jobs after school- practical experiences and connections with professors and faculty did. I wish I’d pursued relationships with people who were more knowledgeable and smarter than me, who I deemed off limits because I wasn’t “cool” or “advanced” enough.

When you base your identity in excelling in academia and your best efforts are not enough, your identity takes a major blow. You find yourself crying in the library bathroom, or having a difficult time deciding where to go for lunch because you don’t want to risk running into someone you know who will see “I am a failure” written on your forehead just like you do. You will find time to marathon-watch a season of a TV show but not to work on your next project, because the mere thought of failing one more time leaves you paralyzed.

I started to come out of my shell in my final year of college. I went to Jordan to study Arabic, even though it didn’t contribute to my major or minor. I busted my butt on my thesis (though I still consider it a shadow of what it could’ve been). I took a job as a specialized learning tutor. I deepened friendships with professors. But it still didn’t seem like enough, and as I look to applying for grad school, it definitely doesn’t seem like enough.

When you base your image and identity academic excellence and that image is destroyed by failure, you begin searching for another source of identity. You start to realize how much your own identity is fused with the idea that you cannot fail. You start to realize how destructive and absurd an identity is based on a vacillating estimation of success.

You start fighting back against the feelings of anxiety and inadequacy, armed with the knowledge that you were created by a perfect God, who delights in you even when you can’t stand yourself. You start to realize that life is far more fulfilling when lived caring for others regardless of what they can offer you in academic circles. You realize that treating others as the unique, complex and imperfect individuals they are rather than treating them as competition or as a mere obstacle to your next goal makes life worth living again. You realize that you are starting to grow up.

 

 

The 31st-Century Archaeologist, diggin’ up your bones, diggin’ up your house

Consider this scenario:

It is the year 3015. You just graduated from Princeton University, a school that hasn’t turned out very many notable figures in the last 200 years, but still holds prestige as one of the oldest universities in the world, so you feel pretty proud of that. You graduated with a “Masterful” degree in Archaeology with a specialization in the Early Technological Age; that is, the 20^th-23^rd centuries.

You find this era in history one of the most exciting, because so many landmarks were achieved: the first development of relativity and quantum theories, the first extra-atmospheric travel (you took a field trip to Jupiter for your senior class in high school), some leaps in civil rights—some of them forward, and some backwards. The 21^st century saw the rise of the concept and valuing of “diversity—“ but it’s easy to see looking back that only certain voices were allowed to define what types of diversity were acceptable. The 22^nd century saw a surge of Christianity in the eastern hemisphere, as well as a tidal wave of philanthropic work that saw the whole world connected through the infantile versions of the Intercube—it was called the internet back then. *sigh* It makes you nostalgic just to think of it.

Sometimes you open access to the archaic web, just for kicks, and start scrolling through 1000-year-old websites, data, song-bits, videos. They are a bit boring compared to the immersive videos you play today—ones that you load into the media room and can walk through, interact with. But these grainy, tiny videos have their charm as well.

Okay. Back to the 21^st century.

What do you think a 31^st-century archaeologist would study? A large part of me hopes that somehow things like Twilight and Micki Ninaj… Er… Nicki Minaj, are lost forever, wiped away from the interwebs and never to be recovered in the future.

One can dream, can’t one?

I was wondering yesterday, listening to a song that borrowed a phrase and a score of melody from another song, whether historians would pick up on song influences throughout our contemporary history. I wonder if future historians will write journal articles like “The significance of Amazing Grace and Its Cultural Percolation,” or, “How Early 21^st Century Dance Forms Motivated Production of the Artificial Sacrum and Posterior Vertebrae in Later Years.”

One can hope that they won’t pick up on certain things—things like YOLO, the cringe-worthy 21 Jump-Street movie series; or the fact that the 276 girls kidnapped by the Boko Haram have dropped off the internet, national coverage, and off anyone’s agenda—without them being returned to their homes. It is so sad that their reclamation, their return, their social campaign that stretched worldwide was no less of a fad than planking or Harlem Shake.

What do you want to be remembered for?