academ-mania

i’ve been part of the world of higher education for, let’s just say, many years now, as a student, faculty member, and administrator.  now, i have never claimed any level of sanity but i think that higher education is a place were sanity is ironically low.  you might have thought that higher education would incrementally lead to higher levels of sanity, normalcy, sensibility and self-awareness in addition to higher intelligence and a wealth of (often useless) information about a very specific subject that a select (and oh so) few people care about.  my experience and reason says otherwise.

i’ve just returned from a fun experience, a weekend conference in indianapolis with colleagues in higher education, fellow graduate students and faculty from many schools, both domestic and international.  i got to catch up with some friends and meet some really great new people that i hope will be friends for a long time to come.  conferences of this type are always so amusing to me because sometimes i think that either i am getting more normal and sane or that others are more normal and sane than i am.  but then i am reminded that neither are true.  the very fact that i am in a phd program that has taken students an average of 13 years to finish and that i knew going in that it would be an uphill battle are two indications that i have….let’s call it issues. and when i spend time with other graduate students i realize that they are not nearly as normal as i think they are when i sitting at my house spending 10 straight hours trying to read 3 lines of akkadian.

but it is comforting to my sanity-challenged, over-worked, over-tired brain that neither sanity or normalcy are all they’re cracked up to be.  but you should probably consider the source before you put too much stock in that.

is it the leaves, the apples or maybe the squirrels?

today is the first day of fall.  it has been well documented in my posts that i am from california so fall was not even on my radar when i was growing up.  my first experience with fall was when i was about 10 years old.  my family spent the month of october in chicago visiting my extended family.  i vividly remember the huge piles of leaves in the front yard that we would pounce on and roll around in.  i had never seen so many leaves in my life.  i could be completely buried in leaves, along with my little brother, and i had the time of my life playing in them.  my aunt and uncle patiently raked them up in piles day after day for us little california kids to play in.

and then there was the apple juice and apple butter that we purchased from the local amish communities.  i don’t think i had ever heard of apple butter before but i sure loved it. apple butter on toast, peanut butter and apple butter sandwiches, apple butter on biscuits, you name it and i put apple butter on it.  it was like a whole new world opened up to my 10 year old diet (incidentally I still really like apple butter but am a little more discriminating about what i put it on).  i was only 10 though, i don’t remember the leaves changing colors on the trees, just them being on the ground.  i did however, become a lifelong chicago bears fan during this trip.  i was so moved by seeing soldiers field and the being in the city (just more proof that i am a city girl at heart), that i fell in love with the bears that fall too.

but until many years later when i moved to the boston area that was it, my only experience with fall.  yet something strange happened when i moved.  it was mid-august so fall was quickly approaching and before i knew it, i loved fall.  it was my favorite season.  every year, i can’t wait for it to come.  and all around you hear people saying how much they love fall – so it’s not just me.  does my 10 year old experience tap into something that about fall that really captures people?  fall does come right at the end of summer, which i personally find disgusting – but again we have established that my views on heat, summer and sun are not shared by all.

is it the collage of fall colors coating the leaves?  a brisk morning walk or weekend getaway to take in the variegated mountain views? maybe it is a saturday morning of picking plump apples to make your favorite apple pie, apple juice or another cinnamony apple creation.  and then there are the pumpkins at the road side farm stands.  every size and shape you can possibly imagine.  you can carve them, paint them, poke things in them, and if you are really adventurous you can take them to the famous keene, new hampshire pumpkin festival.  but perhaps it is the squirrels.  in fall they come out in droves. i think squirrels must multiply like rabbits in the winter because come fall they are everywhere – dead and alive.  it’s really kind of disgusting and personally i hate them.  i have nightmares of them crawling up my leg or something.  and yet everyone seems to think they are so cute with their big bushy tails.  i have a black squirrel that lives outside of my house.  it’s the only black squirrel i have ever seen, apparently a walnut squirrel, but whatever, still a squirrel.

so what is it about fall? my october is booked up already with fall activities.  my facebook friends are all excited about fall.  everyone loves it and it seems there are a lot of potential reason to love it.  i just keep wondering, is it all about the leaves?

holiday and hope

nori al-khattab

while a major population of the non-western world is in the middle of the most important holiday season of the year, the west seems entirely oblivious.  i’ve never been in the muslim world during ramadan (insha’allah, the time will come), i think it would be both amazing and scary to be part of it.  most westerners don’t even know what ramadan is all about, except the sawm, and while that is the most public and recognized part of it, it is not the reason for the holiday.  you could ask a muslim and they would be happy to tell you.  you might even make a friend in the process.

but since it is the whole point of this blog i guess you will learn something, even if skewed from my western point of view.  i think ramadan is an amazing holiday that is filled with hope and excitement – that’s why i would love to actually live in the muslim world during this time of year.  the month (by the way the name of the month is actually ramadan in the islamic calendar) commemorates the time when muslims believe that the qur’an was revealed to mohammad by the angel gabriel (jibril).  on one particular night, laylat al-qadr, many muslims believe that god may speak to them and respond to them in particularly powerful ways.  this year the date will be saturday, september 27.  this is indeed something to look forward to with hope and excitement.

ramadan is also about salaah, asking god to purify your heart, to forgive your from your sins.  sawm, as it is in all faiths that practice it, is only an outward sign of an inward spiritual hunger for god.  ramadan isn’t or i guess shouldn’t be all about food.  i think any muslim will tell you that – again good opportunity for a conversation and making a friend.  and the salaah is very important.  muslims go the mosque even more during ramadan than the rest of the year for the recitation of the entire qur’an so prayer throughout the muslim world seems like it must be at year-long high right now.  hope for god to speak and answer your prayer, especially the dua, is very high.

i wonder if this hope for god to respond and answer can be carried on when ramadan is over.  it seems to me that god is still there when ramadan is over.  who he is has not changed just because the holiday has ended.  maybe he wants to respond and answer the dua all year around.  that seems like something really worth putting my hope in.

life begins again

when you live in a place like boston/cambridge, life revolves around the academic year whether you like it or not.  the year begins in september, not january, when the million or so students flood the city and ends in may when they leave.  the madness of my job begins in august as we prepare for the students’ return to campus and ends in mid-may after they leave.  that’s just how life is.  but i realized this last weekend that there is a microcosm of my life that truly dictates the beginning and end of the year.  it is football season.

i can feel it.  i can feel the anticipation and excitement.  i can hardly wait for week one.  it’s worse than waiting for christmas as a five year old.  the weeks of pre-season only feel like torture because they don’t build excitement.  they just stick some crappy players on the field and no one is seriously invested in how well they play because half of them won’t make the team.  the most excitement i could find was the orton-grossman battle and, seriously, that was not very exciting because whoever won i could not imagine the team was going to ultimately win – how sad is that?  so i hardly catch a pre-season game because pre-season performance means absolutely nothing – unless you break your ankle or something.

but sunday was week one.  my new year has begun and what a year it was.  within minutes brady is out for the season with the mysterious, yet-to-be-named knee injury.  three more qb’s, smith, young and warner, also get hurt on week one.  newly minted jet, favre, seems to be on his 9th life with a last second victory over the vikings.  and one the day’s big surprises was that defending superbowl champs, indy, were squashed by my beloved bears even if qb victor, orton, only put in an acceptable performance – but were we expecting more from him?  elder payton played a quite sluggish game even if he did throw for 257 yards (over orton’s 150) and his surgery was on the knee not a shoulder or arm.  and it was rookie running back, forte, who turned in the surprise performance of the game with 123 yards and a td.  he seems to have real potential, particularly in light of the passing challenges for the team.

and to top things off, my fantasy football team won too.  week two feels like it will never get here!