It snowed today. Not insubstantially. Great big, wet flakes fell from the sky for most of the day, covering campus with a strange opacity I’ve never experienced before. Fall colors have been late this year. The virginia creeper and sumac have turned red and about half the maples have turned shades of yellow, orange, and red, but the rest of the trees are still green. Usually snowflakes alight on bare, black branches, accenting their darkness and creating a world of contrast. Today, the snow gathered on red, orange, yellow and green leaves, oddly transforming our world into a blend of winter and fall. Honestly, all I can say is that it was weird. Distracting. Awesome.
(Of course I want my warm, purely autumn days back before I’m ready to commit to winter but today was cool to see.)
A group of Tanzanian Maasai Warriors ran the 2008 London Marathon to raise money for clean water for their village. They got the idea from a Greenforce worker who was living with them. Pretty cool! Here are some links about the event.
Well it is the start of a new school year. Several friends are off on new adventures all over the globe, the Tanzania group is well into their stay, my little sister is settled in to her first year of college out west, and my amazing baby brother just spent the day helping me move in to my new dorm single.
So here I am. We cut the carpet to be flush to all the walls and cupboards and radiators (a luxury saved for the probable last year of its use), we figured out furniture placement and electrical geography so as to maximize the space as much as possible, and I am left to go through all the… err… crap I’ve somehow accumulated (despite my best efforts these last 3 years) and to find everything a ‘place’ for the year. I’ve been to staff dinner (I’m on Residence Life Staff this year) and initial meetings. And, best of all, I’ve already gotten to play sand volleyball on our beautiful dorm lawn. I quite like my staff and I think we will have a good year together. As for the rest of my friends, I’m feeling the absence of many and have yet to see the faces of those who have arrived/will be arriving next week. It feels strange to not be off on another adventure this year. I haven’t stayed on campus all year ever but that’s the plan at the moment… but of course that was the plan sophomore year and then Itasca happened to me so I guess we’ll see.
For now, I am the one at home whose happy duty is to send mail to those in faraway places and to those not so far away. I’ll be here to witness our campus’ beautiful fall display and to soak up academic knowledge to my heart’s content. I’m taking an odd smattering of classes this year: Greek and Roman Mythology, Religious Dialogs, Environmental Ethics, and GIS and Remote Sensing. No doubt they will give me plenty of ideas to expound upon. I’m looking forward to it.
The ACM trip has left for Tanzania once again (I can’t tell you how much I miss it and wish I were there) and there is another student blogging this time. Her name is Kathleen and she goes to Grinnell. Check it out and get some great updates on this year’s trip!
April was quite the month. Earlier I wrote about how short 6 weeks at school would be, but boy did April throw that one off! While January, February, and March flew by, April crawled.
That’s the funny thing about time. The most continuous and linear concept is variable and fickle. Even busy-ness sometimes fails to speed it up for nothing can compete with the sluggishness of time when one is living in anticipation or impatience. It drags its feet like a child who doesn’t want to go to the dentist… or something like that.
Bottom line: Tons happened in April, the slowest month of the semester. Adventures were had, advice was given and received, tears were shed, laughter was enjoyed, sports were played, music danced to, tests taken. People were seen, acceptances received, work done, planning completed… well almost. (I have one tiny step left in the saga that is the acceptance of my CIS major.)
But for the sake of not being so vague, I offer you a story:
Once upon a time in April, I was working on an ethnographic research project on social class at St. Olaf. My two project partners and I scheduled focus groups and coerced our friends into coming – a task that proved much more difficult than first expected. People were hesitant to talk but once they got going, they didn’t stop! We were left with pages and pages of comments, opinions, and observations of the dynamics of social class on this campus and millions of thoughts spinning in our minds. As I went about my daily life – and continued to collect formal interviews – I found myself discussing the issue constantly. It came up in conversations with friends because it was what I was doing and soon I found that everyone had hours’ worth of things to say! I had conversation after spontaneous conversation on the subject because people’s minds and tongues were finally free. This is a subject that many people analyze daily without even realizing it. It can cause tensions and stress. It is discussed without being discussed – talked around. It is the elephant in the room.
Why is there a taboo surrounding the discussion of social class? Why can’t we push past it and simply have a discussion? Why do things have to be formal in order to allow for that? I started asking these questions and got an overwhelming answer: “guilt and shame.” People avoid the discussion of class for fear that they will be from different levels and one will be made to feel guilty and one will be shamed. People are afraid that they won’t say the “right thing” or that they will offend someone else. And yet, there is also resentment over unwillingness to discuss the issue. People wish for a freedom of discussion so that uncomfortable moments can be avoided and proper respect given. Bourdieu, a French sociologist, says that social structures that seem to be permanent are only perceived that way because of the great number of actors in the system who treat it and believe in it as such. All it takes to topple a social norm is for the actors in the system to reject that norm – to change their actions. So why don’t we? Well… you try mobilizing that many people to talk about a subject so apparently sensitive for so long. In the words of one of my interviewees, “it’s just not done in polite company.”
I can’t decide what I think about 6 weeks – whether it’s short or long. In the context of study abroad or any sort of vacation, 6 weeks can take forever. Each of the first 6 weeks in Tanzania felt like a lifetime. But here, there are 6 weeks left of the school year and I feel like it will be gone in the blink of an eye! And yet, so much can happen in 6 weeks and so much will happen. There are connections to be made and goodbyes to be said. There is research to be done and papers to write. I have to cement summer plans, register for classes, and train for next year’s RA position. I have to plan my major and my life. 6 weeks: 6 Mondays. 6 Fridays. In the end, not a lot of time. Junior year is slipping through my fingers…
There are posts in the works but this whole adjusting-back-to-normal-school thing is a tougher exercise in time management than I thought! Boy do I wish I were back at camp outside Tarangire right now. I think I’d savor getting dressed in a 104 degree F tent…
BUT I’m not. I’m here in the library at St. Olaf. I should be doing my Stats homework as I wait for my next class to roll around – Ethnographic Research Methods (cause I didn’t learn enough lessons from my attempt in the field?!) but instead I’m zoning out. I just took a Global Climate Change midterm. Not so sure about that… heh.
Anyway, to keep you busy while I get some more interesting posts prepared, check this out: A Mirror of Nature: Nordic Landscape Painting 1840-1910 . It’s a traveling exhibit that came to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts over a year ago now. I went to it and, even though it’s not typically my favorite style, I quite liked it! A favorite: Akseli Gallen-Kallela.
I am home! And it is snowing outside. It’s beautiful. Welcome to the Christmas season!
I’m pretty overwhelmed right now, as I try to get back into life here. I visited St. Olaf on Sunday night and nearly drowned in the amount of information I had to process immediately. I was fully aware that time passes at home while you’re gone and I thought I was prepared, but I guess you can’t prepare for it. So now I’m sitting here playing and replaying all the details in my head, trying to get a grip on how my home reality has changed without me since July so I can move on and become a part of it once again. Truth is, I just want it to be January so I can get back to school and start my social clean-up. Ha.
But I am also, as usual, very excited for Christmas. It was hard to believe that winter and December were happening while I was in Tanzania. The occasional Christmas carol would float out of a storefront, but most of Tanzanian life went on as usual without the huge consumerist, snow-obsessed buzz that the United States is used to. Even though I don’t personally like to spend oodles of money on Christmas gifts, I enjoy the cheer and traditions that come with the season and really missed walking through decked out malls and hearing Christmas music 24/7 on the radio. So I’m glad to be home.
At jacob’s well on Sunday, though, they played this video before the service and I quite liked it so I’m linking to it. There’s more discussion of it on this blog post if you’re interested but here’s the video. The video’s home site is www.adventconspiracy.org. Enjoy!
