grrrreat success! [high five]
Thanks to all my well-wishers; your happy thoughts helped a lot, because I passed my driving test!
Your friend Siobhan is now a licensed CA driver! Did you ever think it would happen?
Take a moment to really let that sink in!
I was pretty nervous, but not as insanely nervous as I was the first time around. I probably knew deep down that it wasn't going to be that bad, and that I *really* needed to get it to transport myself to my tutoring gig the next day. (!) But I just told myself that it was just a little something that I had to take care of in San Ysidro. The examiner wasn't terribly mean, just overdramatic, and almost failed me even though I was driving nearly perfectly. Every time I braked she jostled around and acted like I was slamming to a halt each time, and would emit a forced puff of air when I started again. When we returned to the DMV she gave me a litany of things that I did wrong (some of which I KNOW I didn't do) but passed me on a 13 out of 15 possible errors. She condescendingly told me that I probably needed a lot more practice and that I needed to get more accustomed to my car, bla bla. Whatever, bitch: you're just an ugly, disgruntled DMV employee. And I still got my license.
I still really cannot believe that I have a license, because I began to believe that I was, by definition, licenseless. But I just went in there and did it, and laughed at myself for creating this Lifetime movie-like drama around the whole thing. After I failed it the first time, I probably could have just gone back in there the next week and gotten the license, and not turned into a fraidey-cat 23-year-old with no license. But, that's just another one of the quirky things about me that you have all come to love, right? I'm mad at my parents for not just making me do this when I was in high school so that I wouldn't be just learning to drive at 23, because at this age I'm expected to be able to do this without any problem. In any case, I did it, it's over with, and now I can be a real adult.
Today, I had to drive by myself for the first time...K tried but really could not drive with me to my tutoring gig so I had to drive myself, the day after I got my license...Last night we drove the route to the person's house twice so I wouldn't have to worry about figuring out where I was going. Thanks to that, I was totally fine, and didn't even have spasms when entering the freeway like I used to when I first started to drive. I'm such a big girl now!!!
Next on the agenda: getting a big girl bed without guard rails! I'm really excited about this next milestone. It's hard to decorate around a crib.
drive test appointment tomorrow
So...I have to end the saga that has plagued my life for six years...my drive test appointment is tomorrow in San Ysidro, the first of the DMV office where a drive test fatality occurred (in which a DMV employee was killed in a collision). So, um, wish me luck.
:(
sent in my hardest application!
So proud of myself!
I've been dragging my feet for a long time about sending in a job application to the organization I want to work for the most, because my hopes are riding so high, and it had to be absolutely perfect to maximize my chances of getting the job. (Not like I'm SO excited about being a 9-to-5er, but still.) The whole thing was making me so nervous that the act of just editing my cover letter was too aggravating to do. But I was thinking about some of my friends that graduated before me that sent out TONS of resumes, as soon as they heard about jobs that they wanted, and were generally more workhorselike than me, and I realized I needed to just kick myself in the butt and hop to it. I don't know why I run away from things that I really want, because I'm afraid I won't get it. Self-fulfilling prophesies. But anyway, now that I've gotten a few under my belt, I feel a lot better about churning out more applications for other jobs that weren't #1 on my list.
Here comes some long-winded semi-existentialist babble. Scroll down past the small print if you'd like to spare yourself the over-dramatic internal struggle. I recommend this option.
I'm really scared to start this new working phase of my life because I've never really been in that environment...even when I worked at ICSI, it was still tied to Berkeley, and I more or less viewed it as an extension of my linguistics education. I know I'll have a lot to learn about multi-tasking and professionalism and dealing with people generally. I'm also scared that I'll stay in the work force so long that it will be too hard to return to linguistics PhD programs; however, Steve pointed out that if I am more passionate about helping the LGBTIQ community than anything else, then following my passion is probably the best thing to do...following your passion is more admirable than staying in academia to prove something to yourself. I love learning, and I love psycholinguistics, and I really wish I could continue examining those questions, but there are a lot of aspects of academia that I just can't swallow. I realized a long time ago that I have to select a work environment that will fit with my personality and temperament, not fit my temperament to a work environment. I tried that before, and tried to just push myself to accept the hardest workload I could, and I humiliated myself and fell flat on my face.
GAAAHHHHHHHH
someone please just tell me what to do
The thing I keep telling myself now is that if I only have 80-100 years on this earth, what will make the most positive impact on the world? Making a few small contributions (maybe) in our understanding of the perception of sound, or helping save some people from facing crippling discrimination, doing all I can to end gender/orientation discrimination, or discrimination of any other group for that matter? K keeps telling me that I might maybe possibly help the treatment of the deaf through psychoacoustic research somewhere down the line, but I want to directly affect and help someone's life.
Anyway...I am currently working on resumes, etc. in a bar. :D Very nice! Oh the babies! end{borat} It's hot as hell here, and our apartment, though awesome, has no cross-ventilation. We have a crappy wall unit like those window units that tries so hard, but it couldn't compete with 92 degrees. (please kill me) The library at school is closed for Labor Day and K's office isn't air conditioned on the weekends. And I hate his office. We called every cafe in the area to see if they had air conditioning and wifi, and there was no cafe that satisfied both constraints. But finally! K remembered there was a bar somewhere near our apartment that had wifi, so we've been here for five hours working and drinking beer. (Which I found actually helped my working process, because I really needed to take the edge off after mulling over my applications.) Apparently, there's another U2 fan in here, because there's been three songs so far.
We're like 80% moved in to our new apartment. I really like our new place a lot, and it's really exciting to be in a place that I know I'll be in for some time, instead of my constantly-in-flux Berkeley living. I'm excited to optimize how it is set up. (Martha Stewart, much? (I adore that woman (and did you realize that 99% of Martha Stewart Omnimedia's corporate donation money goes to Democrats?)))
Also, a plea: If no one comes down here to play with me for my birthday, it will prove to be The Saddest Birthday I Have Ever Had, possibly even sadder than my sixteenth birthday, which I imagined to be twinkly and pink, replete with a kiss from A Boy, but turned out to be a cake and a sad party hat that I made myself to cheer myself up. Geoffrey's down here, but you can't put all of the party hat responsibilities on his head, despite his head being covered with awesome hair. You have two days! Come here pleeeease, I'll bake you a cake. I might even be able to finagle you a kiss from A Boy (despite my inability to secure one for my sixteenth birthday).
