ask, and you shall receive
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I am very happy. Having been sitting with my decision to stay here and go to CIIS for a few days now, I can honestly say that I’m just plain happy about it. And that’s how I know it’s the right thing. I read the blog Zen Habits, which, for those unfamiliar with it, is a lifestyle blog of sorts — for living life simply and productively. I take some of it and leave some of it (barefoot walking? no thank you, plus, I have massive foot problems and need arch support), but one post this past week was particularly apt for me: The Secret to Making Life Decisions. It went up after I made my decision, or else I might think it’d influenced me. Instead, I get the nice feeling of knowing I made my decision all by myself, without any help, plus this sense of validation afterwards:
We’ve been brought up in a very left-brain-directed world, where the traditional decision-making strategy is a very logical process that involves listing each option, listing the pros and cons of each option, and then weighing up your lists in order to make your decision. This can be useful in very stable, predictable environments where we have all the information we need and in some business environments where we’re solving simple problems, but it isn’t the most effective way to make your most important life decisions . . . . In an information-rich world where we have abundant options, when it comes to making important life decisions, we need to be able to synthesize lots of information, see the big picture, spot themes and relationships, intuitively sense what information is most important to us, and invent possibilities that don’t even exist yet. These are all right-brain-directed thinking skills that we can employ through our emotional navigation system.
Most people treat their emotions as though they’re purely incidental and sometimes even a hindrance in life. Emotions are often side-lined as impulsive and troublesome parts of ourselves that have to be controlled and are of little value to us. Actually, our emotions, both negative and positive, are all perfectly safe and healthy and serve us in incredible ways, especially when it comes to making important life decisions. Every emotion you experience is a clear signal to help you differentiate between the expectations and demands being placed on you and what’s truly important to your Essential Self.
As a chronic list-maker, I always tend to stay emotionally uninvolved with my decisions. Emotions are too messy, too disorganized. I like things to be organized! Straightforward! Clear! Who needs more confusion, you know? Let’s just be practical! But I had to follow my heart on this one, because no matter how many lists I made I wasn’t finding the answer. The answer wasn’t in line-by-line comparisons of program statistics or in budget spreadsheets analyzing the costs and benefits of each option. I really had to dig around and go with my gut feelings. And that wasn’t easy either, because, as I kept saying, “I have two guts! And they’re saying different things!” But I had to go with the one that was kicking me harder.
When I came home today, there was a beautiful vase of tulips on my kitchen table and a sweet note from my roommate, saying “Congratulations on your choice EVG! I’m glad we’ll get to keep you!” [My roommate, see, has airport codes for everybody in her life, and they come from a funny mix of our names, initials, random facts/qualities about us, and what sounds good. Apparently "Ee-Vee-Gee" has a nice ring to it? Her lover du jour, for example, is called "IPM": International Playboy of Mystery. Lol.]
Speaking of my roommate, though, I don’t think I’ll be staying here much longer. The lady and I have decided that June 1st will be our day. This afternoon, we went and looked at a place not too far from where we both currently live (we’re not really looking at places yet, but this one just sounded so lovely that we had to go see). It’s gorgeous and affordable. Hardwood floors, giant windows, lots of closet space, perfect location, and a HUGE backyard with a garden and a patio all belonging just to the one flat. Amazing. We’re going to apply and see if a May 15 moving date would be too late for them. We’ll see.
And suddenly, after typing that out, I feel all jittery again, just like that. Like, wait, what? We’re moving in together? Ahhhhhhh, wait, no, what?! Can’t do it! Stop! Scary! What if we hate each other? Where will we go when we need space! What if we lose all our friends! Is this really the right thing to do? Quick! Let’s make some lists! Let’s do a cost-benefit analysis! GET ME A SPREADSHEET, STAT.
*
I guess I’ll just have to go with my heart on this one, too.
I’m sure you’re all waiting with baited breath to hear about my decision regarding graduate school. And I’ve (almost) made the decision. I’ve got one more thing to do before it’s final, and I’m doing it tomorrow. So barring something rather extreme happening tomorrow, my decision is made.
I’m staying here.
Most of you, in the comments on my previous post about graduate school, said “go to LA! you’ll do great!” And you’re right, I would do great; I’d make friends, I’d do well in the program, I’d enjoy the lovely weather, and I’d have an adventure. And I’d graduate with an MPP from UCLA after two years. Exciting! I know.
But I’m not doing it. Instead I’m going to graduate in two years with an MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation from CIIS. And let me be clear: I am not doing this because it is the safer option. I am not doing it because it’s more comfortable to stay here, or because it’s easier not to push myself. In fact, it is probably the less safe option. It would be easier to just go with UCLA because it’s more socially normal. Because, you know, who in her right mind turns down a fellowship from a highly regarded university to pay to attend an unheard-of social justice program?
I do. And I swear to you I am in my right mind.
I am not choosing CIIS just because it allows me to stay in San Francisco, though that is appealing, to be sure. And if it had been the other way around — leave San Francisco to go to CIIS, stay in San Francisco to attend highly regarded university with a fellowship — I probably would have made the opposite decision, no questions asked. I would’ve stayed and attended said Highly Regarded University. No questions asked.
But having to make the decision that was actually in front of me really forced me to ask questions, and I’m glad, because I probably would’ve neglected to ask them otherwise. Because they’re tough questions, and I tend to like to ignore tough questions. I’m very good at evading things that force me to look at what I want, because so often, I don’t really know. But this time I had to. And these are the questions I asked:
What do I want out of my life?
and
How will I get there?
What do I want out of my life? I want happiness. Obviously. I want to be doing work that fulfills and inspires me. I want to be doing work that reminds me, when the alarm clock goes off, that, oh yes, I do actually want to get out of bed. More specifically, I want to be doing work in which I have autonomy, can use creativity, and in which my whole self is embraced as having relevance to the work I do. I want to be doing work that is for the greater social good, and no it is not because I’m a young idealist who wants to change the world, it is because I know that that is the kind of work that makes me care. I want to be doing work in which I am a decision-maker. I want to be doing work that stimulates my mind, challenges me every day, and connects me with others. I want to be doing work that completes my life, rather than work that takes away from my life. That’s the work I’m doing now, and I never want to be there again. I sit at work sometimes and wonder how people can do the work they do and take themselves seriously as human beings. I never want to wonder that again in relation to the work I’m doing. Never.
I also want to be doing work that draws on my strengths. I’m good at connecting with people in a genuine way. I’m good at organizing (understatement of the day), good at logical thinking (have I ever mentioned here that my favorite class as an undergraduate was Symbolic Logic?). I love writing, especially about things that relate to queer identities, gender, social identities, social justice, and my personal experiences with all of these things.
And though I’m not an expert on careers or anything, I look at all of that above and I think that maybe, just maybe, I ought to be a professor. Boring, I know, because that’s what both of my parents did, and don’t you think I could be a bit more creative than that? And also, ouch, because it’s so hard to get a tenure track job these days, and all that. Plus I have all sorts of qualms about the academic industrial complex, as I like to call it, which I won’t go into right now because I’ll potentially have the rest of my life to do just that. But it would be a job that would allow me to pursue my research interests, connect with people, write, be challenged. And get summers off (score!). (Did I forget to mention that as one of the things I want out of life?) But anyway regardless of whether I actually become a professor, that’s the kind of lifestyle I can envision for myself.
And how do I get there? Well, I’d need a Ph.D. And I’m a whole lot more likely to end up in a Ph.D. program from an MA than from an MPP. Not to mention that classes in the MA program are more academic (“Critical History of the Human Sciences,” “Reading and Writing Culture”) than the professionally-oriented classes in the MPP program (“Management Challenges and Tools for the Nonprofit Sector”). And also not to mention that I love the mission of CIIS’s MA program: to facilitate self-reflection on our own cultural presuppositions as a prerequisite for sustained engagement with the realities of difference and culture, and to focus on practices of creative intervention by developing skills in intercultural communication, critical social analysis, emancipatory research, strategic thinking, and alliance building.
That is something that will get me out of bed in the morning. And it’s scary to go this route, for sure — as one of the professors told me in one of our several long conversations about what this degree would enable me to do, it is taking a risk. But the risk is not the program itself. The program itself is highly reputable in the world of academic social justice and human rights. The risk, she said, is in forcing myself to confront privilege. That is not something I can take lightly. But it is something that, deep down, I know is right for me.
Tomorrow, I will sit in on a seminar at the institute. And if it feels right to me, I’m all in.
My mind has been all over the place this past week, which has made it hard to write. I open Notepad and stare at the blinking cursor and feel overwhelmed. There have been more tears in the past seven days than in the previous seven weeks combined and a lot of the tears aren’t traceable. I’m just touchy right now.
***
The program in San Francisco that I’m considering, in addition to the Public Policy program at UCLA, is a Master’s program in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation at CIIS. The two programs are like sun and moon, land and sea, light and dark. They’re so different. And each one of them speaks to a different part of me and it feels like having to choose sides of my own soul. And, yes, UCLA is offering me money, but also I can pay for graduate school. I have the money, and while yes I could use that money to buy a house or pay for my non-existent children’s college education in the future, as my mother so practically pointed out, I don’t want this to be a decision about money. I want it to be a decision about me.
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Today has been a lazy day, after losing an hour. Stumbled out of bed at 10:30, ate a simple breakfast, and drank black tea while Lady Love* worked on her music editing. My roommate is out of town, and this is a little preview of what living together might be like. Our own space, our own pace. I like it, and the weather today–air is light, sky is blue, and this is the time of year when San Francisco flora is most colorful–matches my sense of still. I sat by the window and watched a father and child (four years old?) playing soccer in the park across the street. Nearly half an hour I watched them. The father was clearly teaching the child some strategies for making a goal (“aim to kick the ball above or to the left or right of the goalie or between his feet,” said his gestures) and the child would kick from 8 feet away and the ball would amble towards the goal, through the father’s feet, and the father would open his arms out wide and the child would run into them, throw his arms around his father’s neck in simple ecstasy. The ball itself was half the size of the child, and occasionally the sheer strength required to kick it would knock the child down, but he always scrambled right back up again. As so many other things this week, being witness to this scene made me cry. “What are you doing, pookie?” “Just people-watching.” “You’re such a funny little thing.”
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I have some friends coming round this evening for chocolate and wine and a movie. Not sure yet what we’ll watch, but I’ve got High Noon and Joan of Arc on loan from a local movie store and Sunset Boulevard from Netflix, so it looks like it’ll be an oldie (“but goodie,” as they say). They’re coming in half an hour, so I need to go whip together a batch of brownies. (Click on that link and make this recipe. I promise you, you won’t regret it.)
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Neighbors’ cats are in a stare-off right now. It’s a toss-up which one will win, but the winner will inevitably be my other house guest this evening. Some things, you see, are entirely predictable.
*Genna, a commenter, used “Lady Love” to refer to my lady love on my previous post. And I like that. So for now, that’s what she’ll be called.
It all comes at once, and it throws me off.
I stopped at home yesterday afternoon for 10 minutes before my grad school interview, just to fill up my water bottle and change my shoes. But I got distracted, because I had two conspicuous pieces of mail waiting for me, one big and fat, one small and thin.
I got rejected by Berkeley. I got into UCLA.
And UCLA offered me money. A lot of money. FREE money.
And then with all of this swirling around in my head — disappointment about Berkeley, relief at getting accepted somewhere, realization that YAY! I CAN LEAVE MY JOB, that all of everything I’ve been thinking about hypothetically is now something that can really happen, and then of course feeling flattered that UCLA wants me so much that they will *pay me* to go there, which is unusual for a master’s program — all of this swirling around in my head, I still had to go to my interview at the remaining grad program here in San Francisco. So off I went, had the interview, and then at the end of the interview the faculty I interviewed with informed me that they were extending me an offer of admission as well.
So. Two offers, one rejection. All in the same day. And my whole world feels thrown off. I get to leave my job and now it feels real — May 14th will be my last day. That’s in two months. Two months left of this and then I move on, my life goes forward and it’s strange, because although for now my life is still exactly the same as it was on Friday, and I’ll have to continue going through the motions for the next few months, it all feels so different.
And, of course, the big question: do I follow the money, move to LA? I don’t know a soul in LA, and to me, the city seems huge and unforgiving. It’s a sprawling car city, very unlike San Francisco, all crammed onto a thumb jutting into the sea. It’s a city of actors and producers and entertainment and swimming pools and palm trees. I would live by myself, probably, and I’d have to get a car and wouldn’t have any friends (but of course I would make friends, I know that, but do I have to start over? again?) and I’d be going to school, sure, but what about everything else? Starting from scratch, in a place I don’t even really want to call home. And mi’lady wouldn’t be there. She’d stay here, in San Francisco. And right after we’ve been talking about living together, to do exactly the opposite, move away, live entirely separately seems so devastating.
San Francisco a city of books and hardwood floors and queers and streetcars and fog and hills and creative activism. San Francisco is my city. It’s my self-made home. And today was gorgeously sunny and warm so that it didn’t even make me half-lust after balmy SoCal. Was the universe trying to tell me to stay? “See? San Francisco can shape up and be perfect, give her a chance, don’t leave!”
I have a few weeks to make this decision, luckily. But it’s not one I’m really looking forward to having to make. I know there’s no wrong choice here, I can’t mess up. But I do so badly want to do what’s right.
I’m applying for graduate school!
I finally decided to just. do. it. My problem has been that I couldn’t decide what I wanted to get a degree in. So many options! So much to consider! How on earth do I know what will make me happy! How the fuck do people make up their minds about something as huge as their entire career! OMG!!!!! Law? Philosophy Ph.D.? Gender studies? Education? Business? Student affairs in higher ed? Public administration?!?!*(#&%*#= And I was like, I need professional experience! I need more jobs! I need twenty years to even decide what I want my next twenty years to BE!
And then I realized it doesn’t really matter. Just as I’m sure there are a dozen things I could’ve studied in college that would’ve made me happy and that I would’ve been deeply interested in enough to write a 100-page honors thesis, and it just so happened that philosophy (mostly coincidentally) was the one I chose, JUST LIKE THAT, I’m sure that there are a dozen different professional/graduate degrees I could get that would each give me several dozen more options for career paths. And even then, they say people these days change careers an average of, what, seven times? Yeah. So no matter what I do, I’m not stuck.
Where I do feel a bit stuck right now is my current job, and I just sort of realized that the best way out of that is to take a step towards my actual future career(s). So I’ve decided to apply to several different graduate programs, with the intention of starting in the fall of 2010. The degree of choice is Public Policy, where Cal has an excellent program that I’m not sure I’ll be able to get into. Not sure where else I’ll apply, because honestly I really want to stay in the Bay Area, and Stanford doesn’t have anything like it. Beyond that, USF, SF State, San Jose State, and Cal State Hayward all have MPA programs, which aren’t quite the same. USC in Los Angeles has an excellent MPP program as well, but… that’s in Los Angeles.
What to do! Well, I think I’m going to apply to just Berkeley and USC, and then SF State as a kind of last resort. Applications will be due at the end of the year, so suddenly I’m all OMG, the GRE! Financial aid! Saving money! Lots to do.
Mi’lady was nonplussed when I told her about my decision. She’s worried I’ll leave the area, and both of us have been in unsuccessful long-distance relationships and aren’t really eager to be in another one. I think her worry is a little hasty, considering there’s over a year until I’d be starting school, and the two of us haven’t even been together for a full year yet. We’ve been together 8 months! So lots can change in the meantime. Not like I’m planning on breaking up, or anything, obviously, but it could be that in a year, she’ll be wanting to leave SF anyway. Or that in a year we’ll feel totally fine about doing distance. Or that in a year her band will be touring anyway so it won’t really matter where I am. Or or or.
But I can’t let her qualms about long-distance prevent me from going to grad school. Maybe I should apply to other programs outside of California too? NYU has a good program. And Harvard. And Brown. And lots of East Coast schools. Which all have the benefit of being closer to my family and closer to the majority of my friends. But… I’m not sure I want to leave California. I just don’t know. I don’t know!!!!
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