ghosts are good company

i know i do. and i probably will talk about some things here that you won’t understand, or at least won’t understand why i care about them or why they’re important to me. but if i’m talking about them here (generally!) i do, or they are. so ask. i like to hope that i can provide articulate answers and explanations.
it’s been a time recently of a lot of Thinking. i’ve spent a large part of my life trying to figure out what i want to do When I Grow Up, and all that jazz. i was thinking about law for a while, i was thinking about museum studies, but after investigating them and taking classes around them, i found them all to be too… something. they were all too constrictive, in precise and difficult-to-articulate ways.

also for most of my life, i’ve been doing activist work. a lot of this has been done through nonprofit organizations, and i’ve thought time and time again about doing something in that arena - but also time and time again, i’ve burnt out like crazy. i need a career where i will not go through cycles of crazy.

and i don’t know if that exists yet, but i know that i need to build it. since moving to san francisco, i’ve met some folks who have been very supportive of me and helped me with ideas. one, who took it for granted that i was going to grad school, suggested a couple of graduate programs to me - the history of consciousness program at uc santa cruz and the modern thought and literature program at stanford both sound fantastic for me, especially the latter. i don’t know if i’m ready though, both because i’m so young still [twenty-one is so young for anything, for everything, but especially for commiting to a ph.d program! also, i should have mentioned in the baby chatter in my last entry - these are plans we’re working on for five to ten to more years down the road], but also because i really need to get my mental health sorted out before i can move into anything that big. i’ve melted down so many times throughout college, which is what’s supposed to happen, somewhat, but… maybe not this much.

well, that was cheerful and optimistic.

there’s a small problem in the schedule of my world where i’d really like to graduate “on time” in the spring of 2007. i could do this if i took few credits during the summer, but what i’d really like to do to finish up my college work is this program, which would be a semester studying gender and sexuality in the netherlands. i think that something like this would be an important experience to cap off my four years of queer and gender studies, because so much of what i’ve done so far is from such a (generally liberal) united states perspective.

another reason taking summer classes might be tricky is that i’m looking at two different summer programs down here in the bay area, both of which are based around anti-oppression work. they seem remarkably similar, with some subtle differences. the first, which i learned about from a guest speaker in my “diversity: transphobia” course (which i will mention in its own entry, because it deserves it), is SOUL - the school of unity & liberation:

SOUL Summer School is an eight-week-long intensive introduction to community organizing and social change, designed for young activists (ages 18-25) who have been involved with social justice organizing for at least one year. SOUL is dedicated to helping young women, young people of color, young working class people and queer youth step up to lead the movement, and SOUL Summer School provides a structured time when [youth] can work full-time to develop [their] grassroots organizing skills and [their] political analysis.

the second, which i found while trying to find the soul program, is diversityworks’ the works program:

The Works begins with an intensive five-week, anti-oppression, social justice training program in which 15-18 youth will come together in the San Francisco Bay Area for educational workshops, service learning and community events. Through these activities, participants gain a deeper understanding of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ableism, ageism, and other forms of oppression. Youth will also develop their own skills as leaders and gain tools for bringing about positive change in their communities. The training program is followed by a month of group-led community action.

i feel like i should take advantage of these opportunities while i’m still considered part of the “youth” community. maybe it seems like this should be obvious - summer program and then netherlands program - but graduating “on time” is for some reason so important to me. i think a lot of it is that i’m currently at my eleventh school in my lifetime, and that’s a lot. it’d be nice to graduate with a degree that says i spent four years learning somewhere (even if it’s pretty much only been two).

anyhow. i’ve been working on this post for two hours. i have class in the morning. this is why my grades are bad.

xo