°2003.12.19.fr | The Semester
"You are never too old to be what you might have been." -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)
If I had to choose, I would say that I've enjoyed my work experiences more than educational experiences. What then, led me back to school? A search for the difficult balance of reflective practice. Education fuels the mental fire, provides the environment for reflection, and opens new opportunities for work. Some like the academy for its own sake, and it certainly has its unique benefits that I do love, but I want both. I've tried to achieve this by being pragmatic in my studies, and staying affiliated with universities in my work. Case in point, my experiences at W3C/MIT were great: working with colleagues to build communities around useful things, and see them deployed and used by others is very rewarding. But after time, I'll have learned as much as I can on the subject matter of a project, and any proficiencies I've achieved for managerial or editorial tasks simply becomes boring. After a couple of years working on P3P, I had the much needed opportunity to go recharge at the Berkman Center at Harvard. I then came back, and took on XML Signature and Encryption. Once they were done, I had no more interest in XML security. I wanted to return to user-orientated aspects of the Web: how it is used as a tool of expression and community building. While I loved working at the W3C, at that time I couldn't find a project I was eager to work on. And I knew it was time again to contextualize, reflect, and write about what I learned in the past three years.
And in an odd way, I didn't want to stay somewhere just because it was a good environment; I didn't want to make decisions on momentum and from a fear of change. I figured I'm still young, I can still afford some risks.
So while getting a PhD has never been a goal of mine, I do like learning and teaching. I looked into various programs for a couple of years — I wouldn't bother going back to school if it didn't look like the right fit — and finally decided that NYU was a good choice. One never knows what one will get upon arrival, but the indicators of what I could discern from afar looked as good as any.
And true enough, things weren't quite what I expected. My program is in a bit of an identity crisis with the passing of Postman: the transition for incoming PhD students was bumpy, the program is being reformulated as we go, and the focus is shifting away from "media ecology" towards "critical studies." I had tried to find a program that was pragmatic and light on the Marxist theory, but got a full face of it instead. That unwieldy discipline of massive social movements is alien to me. It does not speak to what I'm interested in: emergent/organic structures and relatively small communities building their own media.
While I found the semester to be difficult, the faculty I've interacted with have been knowledgeable and supportive, I am fond of some of the work I did this semester, and next semester should be more relevant! Unfortunately, next semester will probably also be more work, which also means more typing; my RSI has not fared well. The symptoms have gotten a little worse in the past few years — perhaps corresponding to my renewed interest in GNU/Linux and programming, perhaps not. Even so, whereas before I might work long hours in front of the computer, or work on a project on the weekend, I didn't have to: I didn't type at night, and the weekends were available for recuperation. I'm using a keyboard tray, ergonomic keyboard, and timer that tells me when to take pauses, breaks, and should quit for the day. And while I'm well organized and pace myself, graduate school means typing into the night and the weekend. While I tried to keep Sunday as a computer-free day, it's apparently not enough.
I have a room for improvement in my own self discipline of getting off the computer when I don't need to be on it, but once I'm on, it's hard to draw the line between an assignment, an interesting bit of news, an investment in learning something that will make me more productive, current work, and future research. The first step will be taking a two week computer break over the holidays. Hopefully that will help.
°2003.12.15.mo | Token Youth
Check out this fantastic chalk piece, put up in the Smith St. exit of the Carrol F stop. (Also, up on the Wooster Collective page, a favorite site of mine.)
So far this winter, we've had two snow storms, quite beautiful. The snow always makes me think of Henry David Thoreau sitting out in his little shack by Walden pond, enjoying the solitude and quiet sounds of a New England winter. Thoreau once wrote, "All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end." Indeed.
Giving my discontentment with this semester, including greater RSI symptoms from all the typing, and the related career/identity crisis of this big change, I'm very much looking forward to the winter break as a chance to reset and recuperate. I've already read Tales of a Female Nomad and I'm now reading Dharma Punk so I find myself reflecting on the character of the alternative simple life and the pull of travel lust.
°2003.12.09.tu | To Live Life Well
Gaston Bachelard, a French philosopher of science among other things, once wrote something that I think would serve the blogging community well, "To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer." This is one of the sentiments I use to calm my anxiety when I fear I'm falling behind in the obsessive documentation of my life.
°2003.12.03.we | Fame
In an essay on Open Codex I ask if we now have a new form of fame and celebrity. Maybe I'm even catching a little of it: that photo of me with sticky up bleached hair continues to appear in odd places. Last month, it appeared as a photo on some teenie blog, it was supposedly that of her boyfriend for which she had created a whole narrative. I asked about it in a comment on her site, but she has since deleted all such references. Also, a sharp Web user noted that the same photo appears next to the headline "Got a Blog" on a spoof George Bush election site. I suppose that photo is a canonical representation of a blogger!?
In any case, all of this silliness deepens my appreciation for Adam Green's song about Jessica Simpson.
jessica simpson
where has your love gone
it's not in your music
no, you need a vacation
to wake up the cavemen
and take them to mexicojessica, jessica simpson
you've got it all wrong
your fraudulent smile
the way that you think that the day you die . . .
[Update 041001: a new imposter.]
°2003.12.03.we | First Snow!
While the sky is now a clear blue, five minutes ago it looked like a blizzard. Flakes landed and fluttered, caught in a spider web.
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