Pluses and Minuses

A while back, I concluded that I made a bad decision on the grad school front - I couldn't have known that ahead of time, and it seems conceivable that it could have turned out differently - but on some level, I always felt like I was cheating the system a little bit with a one-year degree, and that there had to be a catch. However, that's the choice I made, and I have no way of knowing if my feeling that it set me back - personally, professionally, academically, intellectually (financially seems fairly certain) - though I suspect it may have. So I'm trying to think about lessons learned and other benefits. Because the teachable moment is only worth having if you learn something, right?

So here's my list:

-I made a few friends who I feel very lucky to know. I could not have made it through without an understanding that wise, thoughtful, nice, interesting, funny people were not in it with me.

-Two of those friends convinced me to go to Madeira - which was a place I never would have gone on my own, and the kind of good company and memorable fruit (8 kinds of passionfruit - yes please) that make the institution of vacation something I want to defend

-There's this hot ginger drink at Borough Market that I want right now. I can't have it, and that makes me sad. The ginger tea I'm drinking in a likely failed attempt to make my congestion go away has nothing on it. It's really the best response to the 40 degrees and a sustained light rain that I've ever encountered. Really. Warm and soothing and kind of sweet, but with the kind of bite that makes you feel like it's fixing something.

-I kind of know what it's like to date a banker. Or more aptly - I definitely know what it's like to be me and kind of date a banker. This is an experience that I am pretty sure stems entirely from the fact that I lived near the City. While it seems likely that my alternative experience of staying the US could have been a happier one on the grownup relationship front, this much is useful to know, and should I ever find myself in said grownup relationship, I will never have to wonder what my life could have been like had I let a wiseass with expensive shoes complain about his job to me.

-I appreciate the electric kettle. I still consider it a bit of a luxury - since I read somewhere that they waste energy, but oh, how it has improved my quality of life. And increased my consumption of hot beverages.

-I did learn a little - vocabulary words like"reproductive labor," "the informal economy," the significance of the 1994 Cairo ICPD, and many things about Judith Butler and the global economy. And I know some of the troubles with neoliberalism - and why it isn't going away.

-Many of the things I learned - or at least kind of learned - are things that add to my perspective on life now, in the economic crisis - both the experience of semi-employment and reading about what is really going on and why it's such a mess and who it will really affect. And I know a little about neoliberalism and its spotty track record when it comes to both economic and social development, and why structural adjustment policies are bad news (and bad news we wouldn't be getting anyway since the US kind of controls the IMF and they're finally out of favor anyway). Could I know more? No doubt. But I know a little.

-I saw both Butler and Antonin Scalia speak in the same room (at different times) in the space of a couple of months. If only they had been a double bill, maybe the year would have been worth it. Well maybe not. And I don't know why Scalia is as sarcastic and nasty as he is (well, thanks to all of the theory, I kind of do - white male privilege residing in a position of power while staring at the abyss that you imagine awaits any loss of that privilege - and I guess imagining that anyone can have full agency and subjectivity without that privilege is a terrifying thought), but I do know that he comes off that way in person. I've seen it. It almost made me want to be a lawyer. Butler moved so fast that I wished I'd recorded her so I could think more later.

-I appreciate the vast superiority of American tin foil to any in Europe. David Sedaris talked about this when I saw him in the fall, and I just now remembered it when I was standing in my kitchen - so true.

-Geneva wouldn't have happened without London. The job part wasn't so much of a plus, but the living in Switzerland part was.

-I will be more careful the next time I make a decision like this one.