The Lists that Govern my Life

Three years of grad school has taught me some things. At the risk of losing my street credit as a competent graduate student, I thought I'd share five simple steps to help anyone sound like an academic: 1. While others are pontificating, make the sound "mmhm!" and nod emphatically. 2. Chuckle knowingly when someone makes an esoteric joke, even if you don't know the context. 3. Furrow your eyebrows periodically as if grappling with some hefty thought. 4. Turn names as adjectives as frequently as possible (i.e. Hegelian, Marxist, Kantian...). 5. When at a loss for words, say something like, "I don't think we're considering the spatial temporal dimension of this issue." (credit to Jake Beckert for this one) And that's it. Now you too are qualified to be in a humanities PhD program.

I'd been itching to write something over the past few months about what a wonderful whole life is. That every part of our story comes back to us in a generously holistic way that makes us feel at peace with how everything else in life has gone. I'm glad I didn't write that rubbish. Because instead of finding the whole I thought I'd started to see glimpses of, I was just seeing holes . Shall we start at the beginning? Breakup #1   I was 18 and thirsty for relationship experience. Like something more than the intimate passing of notes in middle school or the overeager smiles and easy giggles in high school. I met a guy who ran and was good at ultimate frisbee (which were basically the only things I cared about at age 18) so I tried to flirt by leaving things at his doorstep and contrary to sound logic, this worked and we started dating on Mole Day. I quickly realized that in my mind, this was "practice" for me and "reality" for him.

Year Two: I thought I’d made a terrible mistake. I thought I’d unwittingly abandoned history (my undergraduate degree) and thrown myself into a discipline I knew nothing about and could never know anything about because what even is German Studies? I grasped at literary straws and struggled to sort through new academic jargon ( see Year 1 of grad school). I was therefore elated to take a history class this past semester, to prove that maybe I had made the wrong choice in field. But taking that class actually made me feel happier in my chosen home of German Studies. Because that's what year 2 has felt like: home. It seemed that history in graduate school is a lot more historiography (at least in this course it was), or talking about what everyone has said about events, rather than exploring historical oddities and quirky personalities and events (not the analysis of events) that changed the world. But literature? The main chunk of German Studies I'm investing myself i

This was hard to write. I wondered if I should write it. And if I should share it. But I did write it. And want to share it because the thing that helps me most in my questions of faith is knowing that I am not alone and that struggling is not inherently a sign of weakness. So if you are in that space, I hope this helps. I wasn’t sure how vulnerable to be, so I tried to pick a middle ground, but this does lie close to my heart. In fall 2014, I considered myself a part-time feminist.  This was because I generally considered feminists as bra-burning, man-hating, revolutionary figures whose cause could occasionally be just but their methods wrong. In fall 2018, I had a two month long breakdown as a full-time feminist, a time period I call in my head:  “the fall of the patriarchy.” Specifically patriarchy in a Latter-Day Saint context. My “feminist awakening,” so to speak, started earlier than autumn that year though. In fact, it had been building slowly over the past ha

"Um...okay." These were words I muttered to my mom in January 2017 when she asked if I'd run a marathon with her. I had just graduated from BYU in December and was looking for ways to create purpose in what I presumed would be a downward spiral of existential angst without the learning structures of school. So I said okay. Post Marathon. Trying to pretend my body wasn't actually jello. I've been running for many years. I ran my first recreational mile with my mom in 2007 and it was awful, but eventually running became a healthy, consistent way to manage stress and be healthy and promote positive self image. I'd been asked many times along my running journey if I'd ever run a marathon and the answer was always, "Well, I've run several half marathons, but no, never a full one. That's a special type of pain and I'm not that crazy." Not yet, I wasn't. Like Tim Urban in regards to his goals of giving a TED talk, running

Sometimes I get sad in the winter. I know that I’m sad because I don’t want to go to bed because it means I have to wake up. This probably sounds odd. Let me explain. I love getting up. It's the best to wake up with a fresh slate of hours. Yes, I’m one of those people who loves mornings. One of those people you’ve probably (definitely) hated at some point in your life because who in her right mind is stoked to wake up at 5:15am in the summer to go for a sunrise run or a long day hike. I’ve convinced myself that the most beautiful time in the world is between 6am and 9am, when the light is of the day is new and untarnished. I go to bed so that I can wake up and take part of some of this newness. So when I don’t want to go bed, it means I don’t want to wake up, and I know that something is wrong.   This happened last January too. Bloomington is right on the border of EST and so the sun doesn’t rise until approximately 7:59am. And when I say the sun rises,