another time, another place
Hello! I suppose the last time I checked in, I was still in the final throes of the thesis vomit, and now I find myself:- graduated from Berkeley
- living out of a suitcase
- taking summer classes at Stanfurd (?) boo...
- move out of my Berkeley apartment (tears stream from my face as I write that)
- go back to my parents' and help them with their even more monstrous move (still in progress)
- go down to SD to help K move (the most hellish experience of my life for which I am still giving him a lot of shit)
- move K and myself up to Stanfurd (boo)
- and after the Institute we'll move back to SD into our friend's house because we don't have an apartment yet
- and then move into our own apartment.
- Santa Clara, 1984-1993
- Phoenix, 1993-1996
- Oakdale, 1996-2002
- Berkeley, 2002-2007 :(
- dormitory
- the Piedmont apartment, when it was happy
- the other room in the Piedmont apartment, when it was not happy
- the Haste shithole
- my lovely Elmwood house
At least I have a somewhat more permanent residence at Stanfurd. Stephanie has kindly put me and K up for the month in her adorable townhouse of beauty that I cannot describe. It has such lovely countertops, and a dishwasher...oh how I long for dishwashers. I am glad to be with friends, but I feel quite uncomfortable at Stanfurd...I know a lot of my unease is due to the Berkeley-Stanfurd rivalry, which is silly, but probably explains my initial distaste. But I feel really uncomfortable at this immense private school. It's unnecessarily large, overly manicured, and makes me put up my guard to avoid dealing with pretentiousness. I feel like I'm in a foreign land with an impossible currency system and that I don't even know which language I am to speak. Or like I'm in the Haas Pavilion, which is kind of like a foreign land, because it looks like it is separate from the rest of campus in every respect. I miss how Berkeley was easier to get around, and most of the stuff you needed was centrally located. I feel like this campus is purposefully misleading. Maybe I just feel this way any time I'm in the South Bay, because you're in the Bay Area, but you're kind of not, because you can't take BART and it's hotter than everywhere else. In any case, it's good to be back in the Bay regardless, and we're hoping to make at least one venture into the city to say goodbye to our favorite restaurants, but I still feel really weird and disoriented.
I have noticed a few curiosities about Stanfurd that I thought I might note:
- There are a larger number of very thin white girls than at Berkeley. At Berkeley I could tell myself to relax because all the really thin girls were Asian, and that I had no chance of competing with them. Damn Asians and their fabulous bone structure. (I'll let you win now, but when we're all 65 and y'all start getting osteoporosis, my big bones and I are going to be doing jumping jacks all over the place, and you'll wish you were me.) But now, they're white, and I think, Shit! I have the possibility of looking like them, because I'm white too! But I don't! Are these women just fabulous foreign students at the Institute, or are they just rich anorexics that actually go to Stanfurd? Who are they? Where did they come from? I must find out...
- The buildings have the worst identification system ever devised. Some buildings just have names, some just have numbers, and some have names and numbers, and you just have to know that Building 100,987,445 is also called, I don't know, Monotreme. !!! Then the numbered buildings have numbered rooms, so a room is identified like so: 205-110 (building number-room number). Usually the first digit of the room number tells you which floor the room is on, unless you're in this one building, and then something else happens, and then the crow cries thrice, and you have to bring a newt, a screwdriver, and some ketchup, and then MAYBE they'll tell you where the goddamn room is.
- There are these mysterious mansions on campus, whose purpose is yet unknown to me. Some of them appear to be frat houses, some of them appear to be just nice campus office buildings, but the rest of them I am not sure. They better not be professors' homes.
- If you want to eat in the dining commons but do not have a meal plan, you have to pay $16 (for dinner). !!!
I think I'm kind of creepy, but that's okay.
For my next post: am I as annoying as this one person that annoys the hell out of me? I thought about it, and realized that I do a lot of the things that annoy me about this person, and others like this person. Are the things that I do somehow different than their things, or should I really evaluate how I present myself? A potential identity crisis! Stay tuned for this and more stream-of-consciousness nonsense.
posted by siobhan @ 2:49 PM
5 Comments:
Ah! A post! Finally.
Responses to many things:
1. Moving does equal SUCKS. Don't you see that I still haven't unpacked boxes yet? I, who have my place already, is still living out of a suitcase. :-( I can only imagine how bad it is for you.
2. A dishwasher! I'll let you use it for actual dish washing at some point. ;-P
3. Yes, the only part(s) I like about the Furd is the trees and the ling department being on the first floor.
4. Another stupid oddity about the Furd: the Hoover tower serves no fucking purpose! It doesn't have a clock--nor bells. Why build a freakin' tower *just* to build a freakin' tower?!? Ugh....money-drippers.
5. Yes! Hella skinny girls around here! Like, wtf-ingf!
6. Mysterious mansions: some of them may very well be professors' homes. Many profs actually live on campus, you should take a drive around Mayfield Ave on campus sometime... e.g., Eve Clark lives on campus. It's crazy the difference of living status between Furd profs and Berkeley professors.
7. I hope I'm not the annoyance that you speak of.....
Alright! way too long comment. See you ;-P
You are insane ... but in a loveable and good way. True story, my grandmother actually grew up in one of those mansions on campus ... her dad was CFO of Stanford for a long time and the street Roth Way is named for him. This doesn't mean I have any loyalties to this place though ... because I don't. Although I do want to point out that Hoover Tower does have bells (48 of them, that's a full octave LESS than we had at Cal, thank you very much) and I'm supposed to be playing them at some point but the bellmaster here still hasn't gotten in touch with me ... maybe because Stanford sux.
Hoover Tower is also not as tall as the Campanile, further reason why Stanford can suck it
Hey! Glad to hear the dust is settling for a bit. I've had a similar situation this summer, finding an apt. for the fall/storing my stuff/moving for the summer/hearing about my parents moving and taking solace in the fact that I'm on the other side of the country and thus free of shlepping duties in that regard. Mwahahahaha.
Sorry 'Furd seems imposing and difficult to navigate (if it makes Dwinelle seem easy, it must be something awful!). Wish I could be there for the Institute. A few languagey folks are coming here to give talks next week, so that's something. Will you be in the Bay Area through late August?
Steph: Nonononono, you are not the annoyance of whom I speak. I just hate snotty grad students and obnoxious prospies. K keeps trying to make me be nice, but it is hard.
L: You are really old bay area, aren't you...how much longer had your family been there before that? And shouldn't you have gotten a discount on your tuition for being related to Roth Avenue?
Nathan: Good to hear from you! Hope your summer is going well! Alas, I must leave for SD at the end of July, so we probably won't cross paths this time. But I'll be up to visit lots, especially because my family is actually moving back to the bay. So you're not rid of me yet. You are lucky to be avoiding the schlep.
Post a Comment
<< Home