today was an interesting day.

first of all, i had a forty-five minute therapy session this morning… no, i’m not seeing a psychiatrist, but i have very very funny friends, and forty-five minutes of utter hilarity is every bit as good as any other kind of relaxation that exists, as far as i’m concerned. 🙂 what happened was i was hungry during french class so dana and i decided to go for breakfast, as we often do. today, as luck would have it, our other summer-french amis (well, the ones in our class anyway: mary, frances and shane) were also free, so we headed to the bear’s lair. mary is an absolute riot. she expounded at length her theory about men and commitment. ‘i could write a book on this,’ she said, and we encouraged her to do so. apparently i am funny too, so she’s going to write the theoretical stuff and i will inject the humor. 🙂 her theories are funny enough on their own, but i guess my comparison of men and migratory sea turtles was rather apt. 🙂 one of these days — as soon as i get a refrigerator of my own that works — i am going to invite this particular group of people to dinner at my apartment. we get along famously, and they liked the foccacia i made last night (i brought some for them to try), so i figure they can eat my cooking. 🙂
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no papers have been signed, but i think i am now officially a part of a URAP project! 😀 (by the way, if anyone is interested in applying to one, there are several very interesting ones for which the deadlines have been extended, and you can still apply — but quickly! the new deadline is this friday, 14 september. just go to the above link. the work required for the application is minimal, and the rewards can be so great.) this is the project upon which i will be working. it’s called the emma goldman papers — they have a very informative website here — and it’s been going on for longer than i’ve been alive, amazingly enough. at the moment their consuming work is a four-volume set of books containing and explaining hundreds of documents relating to emma goldman’s life; what i will be doing, i gather, is biographical research on the many obscure people who influenced, were influenced by, or otherwise encountered emma goldman during her lifetime. as a sort of crash course on goldman, i have been reading her autobiography, entitled living my life, which is absolutely fascinating. she was an anarchist, first and foremost, with many interesting and inflammatory ideas. upon reading her story i am struck first by how eloquent she is in a language which was not her first or even her second or third, second by what an extraordinary person she must have been, and third by what seems to me confirmation of my notion that many great people were partially, if not totally, psychotic. i highly recommend living my life to anyone, because it reads like fiction (unbelievable events, easy to read) and is very engrossing as well as being educational.

anyway, i’ll be spending three hours a week (i can decide later to devote more time to the project if i want to) in the emma goldman papers’ office, which happens, amazingly, to be down the street from my apartment!, doing obscure research on obscure characters and getting to know the various other people who work on the project. they’re all very nice and very quirky people. the director, candace falk, reminded me immediately of clélia, and i liked her right away. the associate editor is named barry and he’s got an english accent and is very nice and helpful… as well as quite outrageous at times! he writes hilariously, judging from this.

during my three hours today i was overwhelmed and confused by everything. although everyone was totally nice, i wasn’t sure exactly what i was supposed to be doing — i had sort of been given a hasty explanation of my duties and sort of seated in front of a computer with a small packet of instructions — and felt shy about asking for help. so when i left the office at 3.30 with half an hour before english class, i was feeling a little demoralized, and there’s really only one solution for that kind of feeling when there’s no one around to talk to…

frozen yogurt! i gambled on a flavor that could have been weird but was quite yummy: chocolate-covered banana. then, as an additional treat, i bought myself a honey wheat roll (i adore these things) at sufficient grounds (the bread in the top sandwich in the picture is the honey wheat, though the picture really doesn’t do it justice). as frozen yogurt always does, my chocolate-banana mini made me feel better. i remembered after eating it that when i started my last urap project with professor nelson last semester, i had the same feeling of inadequacy and insecurity, but now i’m friends with both prof nelson and the other people i worked with (ying, for example) and i’m so glad i did it. so that bodes well for emma goldman.

and now… seeing as i have tons and tons of work for tomorrow… i’d better get started! on my dishes, that is. sigh. there’s so much non-academic stuff to get done, i don’t know how i’ll ever get to the reading… and boy am i starting to crave some of that honey wheat. doh.

[note, 4/10/14: Imported from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]