In my continuing search for definitive future plans, I had an excellent conversation with one of my most respected international studies professors over lunch yesterday. He had some great advice and tips for helping me make a decision. The gist of the conversation went like this:

Question 1: Do you want to get a MA(S) or go straight into a Phd program?
He seems to think that, based on the writing and work I’ve done for him, I could start on a MA almost immediately upon getting to grad school and could be done in a year and a half. Doing a MA would be a way of finding out if I wanted to continue to eventually do a Phd. and a way of making me a bit more marketable job wise if I wanted to pursue a kind of applied profession working with perhaps an NGO, an organization like the Red Cross, or any other multi-national organizations (like working with migrant, immigrant populations) where my anthropological training would come in most handy. He recommended the kind of MA called an “area study” whereby you combine different disciplines like geography, economics and anthropology so that you end up with a kind of multi-disciplinary degree. It takes about two years, one of those years you spend learning a language in your country of study. Since I’m interested in India and South Asia, I’d time learning Hindi most likely, and then do some research. Universities that offer this kind of program in South Asian studies that he recommended were the Univ. of Madison at Wisconsin and SOAS at the University of London. London may be financially impossible due to my foreign status, but that’s where he (my prof.) got his degree and I got a promise that he do his best to help if I really wanted to make it out there.

In either case, he recommend I do an MA for sure because he believe I’ve got the talent. Also, he recommended perhaps a language study program affiliated with a Univ. like U. Madison to get over to India find out how I feel about, get some language experience, and then maybe head off to grad school. I have a friend in two of my classes who is doing this exact thing apparently, and I’m going to try and ask her about the whole experience - see what I’m in for financially and otherwise if this is what I want to pursue. my profs area study MA was in anthropology, music, and religious studies at SOAS and I can’t think of a more fitting description of what I’d like to study too. So that’s a lot of specifics to figure out right there.

Now - If i want to do a more generally anthro. MA or Phd program he noted that I should get into the most elite school with the best mentors possible, namely the big guns: Standford, Columbia, UC Berkeley, Harvard, etc. Of course, the epi-center of Anthro. study in the world right now is, you guessed it, the Univ. of Chicago and they also have a great South Asian program. If I could get in there, that’s a basically “you can’t go wrong” school.

Armed with an MA from any one of these institutions would certainly put me in a good spot to go do some applied work (like I mentioned above), or continue to a “cutting-edge” Phd. in my field. However, my prof. noted that I’d be “taking my life in my hands” pursuing an educational career in anthro. as there are jobs available, but the likely hood you’ll get the position you want is pretty slim. So that’s something to consider.

So, how realistic is all this stuff? Well, I’ve missed (or am going to miss very shortly) most of the application deadlines for the big schools for next fall. So I probably won’t be able to jump right into post-grad edu. although I’ve got an outside chance at the University of London (but it’s pretty distant).

so, if i sit out a semester, my best bet would be to look for paid internships at organizations that will get me connected to the schools i want to get into i.e. the National Geographic society, Smithsonian, Chicago field museum, etc. my other option is to try and get into a study abroad/language program affiliated with S. Asia and actually go there. As my prof related, the best way to find out if you want to spend time and money studying India is to go there - so that’s also on the table. My third option is to find a job closer to home for a semester, bide my time, save some money, and then go for it once I’ve got everything lined up. Of course, I could try and do the same thing and take an internship in a city where the schools are, but that would be logistically more difficult. I know I’m up for the challenge though.

All in all, I feel really optimistic about the future - it looks like I’ll be able to continue my education, study some really interesting people and places, maybe figure out an angle to work in my non-school interests, travel, make a contribution to the lit. of my discipline, and who knows what else.

one last option my prof and I talked about was “anthro journalism” which is a kind of writing that is taking off recently. Cultural training in specific groups and languages mixed with a kind of travel writing. this may be an era to explore as well, as its got a creative bent, although I’d need a serious angle and my prof. really had no idea of how to go about finding a job doing it. he did know some successful people who’ve done it and gave me a book to read by one of them, but again, that’s a major outside shot.

all of this is going to be a pretty uphill battle it looks like, but I’m ready to give it a shot. My profs. parting words were that you should pursue what you love to do from the start, because no matter what you do end up doing, if it’s not that, you’ll probably find yourself moving back in the direction of the things you enjoy doing the most. since, i’m young with no major connections to worry about yet, I might as well shoot for some of these distant opportunities since they may only come around once, right?

anyway, that fills you in sort of, and I’ll have more to come later as well.

The Thanksgiving holiday is over and I can’t say that I’m sad to see it go. While I had a nice time visiting (briefly) with friends and family, I’m ready to end the semester, and getting through Thanksgiving was basically the last bump in the road before finals.

Because of my busy homework schedule, I really did very little relaxing over the break - in fact, the holiday just kind of missed me this year. That’s not such a bad thing I don’t think because I was able to get some things done, but…
It seems that every year I care less and less about “special” days like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Maybe it’s just a symptom of getting older.

I felt sad going home this holiday, even though I had a whole bunch of family and friends waiting to see me. Something just wasn’t right, and I think I know what that something is but I’m in denial about it - sometimes I feel low even when I know that the reason I’m feeling bad is completely irrational.

I have been interviewing with several companies for engineering positions and co-ops over the past couple of weeks. It’s been mostly anxiety and self-doubt, while i weigh all the factors in the upcoming decision.

Southern Companies (power company) did not get back to me. interview was in october.
Monsanto has not gotten back to me yet… though it was a very positive interview and it was recent.
Jacobs Engineering called to schedule an interview mere hours after i submitted my resume online.
CF industries offered me a co-op position today, after my interview on thursday.

Wow.

What about PreSonus? well, i’m going to talk with the CEO/president on monday, nov 27. I am seriously questioning if i will get a competetive offer from them.

Here’s what i have to decide between. CF industries would pay me well, over 3 semesters of Co-op work, but it would delay my graduation for at least a year. however, the experience will be pure gold on my resume. Presonus, however, might pay me a little less, only for the summer, but i’d graduate in fall 07 and possibly have an engineering position when i graduate at the company of my dreams.

But consider above all, i’m getting married. what to do. With CF, I could seriously start saving. With Presonus, i could get out of school earlier. its like a double-edged sword.

Either way, i’m headed straight into EE land. No more crappy Tech Support or Scanning job. This is it. I have massive opportunity right in front of me. Sure beats a liberal arts degree that i may have achieved in exactly 4 years. (no offense to my beloved L.A. collegiate friends).

Anyways, that’s whats on my mind. With either company, i’m still going to be David Comeaux, i’m still going to be playing and writing and recording music, i’m still going to be on this website, i’m still going to be making dramatic life choices, and i’m still going to be fascinated with life and love and people. Long live Team Comeaux!

I’ve been dreaming a lot lately. I’m not sure what to attribute this to other than the fact that I went through about a month of not having any dreams at all. Now suddenly, almost every night I’ve been having vivid memorable dreams that stay with me till morning and then bug me for the rest of the day.

I’ve often read about people using sleep to solve problems. Sounds funny, you say? Well, lots of folks find that thinking about something right before you go to bed and then “sleeping on it” allows their brain to work on the problem at night. Some people even say they wake up in the morning and their problem is solved. I know there’s some recent neuroscience research to back up this kind of thing, but I’m too lazy to look it up just right now.

Anyway, I’ve never had any problems magically solved by sleeping on them, but I do find that I work best in the first 3-4 hours after I wake up. Really, in terms of productivity, the rest of the day is basically down hill from there. I don’t know if this because it is peaceful in the morning and I can work undisturbed, or if my brain just functions better then, but I really seem to get the most accomplished early in the day, the earlier the better. My fav philosophical guitarist D. Bailey claims that he plays best after just waking up from sleeping. So maybe there is something to all this sleep stuff.

But back to the dreams. Sometimes I have dreams about people I haven’t thought about in a while. That’s always a strange phenomenon because I wake up and think about those people and it’s almost like we had a talk in the dream.

Once I had a dream conversation with someone that I hadn’t spoken to in a long time. It was an awful conversation and the person ended up yelling at me and telling me they never wanted to speak to me again. Strangely enough, I had just been thinking about calling that individual just prior to having that dream. But the dream was so intense, and I felt so genuinely disgusted by my dream interaction, that I decided not to call them.

That was probably really weird of me to decide not to do something based on a dream, which after all, was something created inside my own head. But I didn’t take it as a kind of sign or omen or anything like that. It’s just that my dream conversation killed my desire to give that person a call.

People seem to either make too much, or not enough of dreams these days. I don’t know where I stand on the issue.

what a difference a week makes. two weeks ago i was so overwhelmed by my apathy for life in general that i could barely raise a smile about having some free time to play guitar. now, a week later, i’ve had so much interest in everything, that i’ve completely been ignoring all my school work. i guess sometimes my mind just decides to take a week off - i just wish i could get a heads up about when those weeks were going to occur so i could plan accordingly.

speaking of school work, it is that time of the semester known as “crunch time”. once again, even though i swore i wouldn’t do it to myself this time around, i have more assignments than g-d to finish just before or after the thanksgiving break. so lame.

but since i’m a senior and all, i know what to expect. i’ve been through this all before.
with all the wisdom i’ve accrued through the years at college, i’ve noticed my crunch time study/writing habits changing and finally stabilizing here at the end of my collegiate career. the most important benefit of this stabilization is that instead of worrying about how much time i have left to complete a project, i now focus on how much time any given project will take me, based on how long similar projects have taken in the past. (not that anyone is going to care) but i’ve learned that i work in basically the following way:

i can usually compose a paper at about a page an hour. however, upper level courses tend to be more demanding so i’ve found that i spend a bit more time writing.
1 - a ten page term paper will take me 14 hours to piece together. tack on another 6-10 hours or so for initial research, pre-writing and ruminating.
2 - 4/5 page essays (a common format in the social sciences) that are basically syncretic in nature (i.e. are summarizing/analyzing 10-12 source texts) take me about 6 hours.
3 - book reviews/papers analyzing only one source that are less than ten pages take roughly 8 hours.
4 - if a test is worth less than a fourth of my grade (25%), i will spend roughly 3 hours studying/reviewing for it. if it’s more than a fourth, you can bump that number up to six hours.
5 - quizzes usually get an hour study time max.
6 - presentations longer than 15 minutes take about the same time as a 4/5 page paper (about 6 hours). normally, i practice a presentation (b/c if i don’t i get all kinds of nervous talking in front of people) for about 3 hours. after 3 hours, i can say exactly what i want to say and deliver it like a pro.

i bet that if every college student sat down, they would find that they have a similar time table for working on different aspects of their classes. i would also wager that, if they were disappointed, with their performance in a certain area, they could improve that area by spending more time on it (and maybe adjusting the others accordingly). they might not see a direct improvement, but it can’t hurt to spend some extra minutes on a subject that’s giving you trouble.

so what does all that mean for the next week? two term papers - one already mostly researched so about 16 hours for that project. one not researched at all so we call that one an even twenty. one small paper that’ll be another six hours. one small presentation under ten minutes so about 4 hours total there. one exam (tomorrow!!) so 3 hours tonight and tomorrow morning.
so total school time out of class will equal 16+20+6+4+3 = 49 hours for the week. add my class load of 12 hours a week to that (counting the monday and tuesday after the break) and that is a 61 hour work week *before* i try to go to work for at least a few hours this week to make a little bit of money.

that’s a really gross schedule, but if i follow through on it, i’ll get paid in straight A’s (hopefully). oh how rewarding.

but at least i know what to expect. i just wish i didn’t have to do it all through the holiday.

such is life i guess, but i might be absent from the web for most of next week.

Don’t you hate it when something good happens to you or someone you know and then others come along to try and ruin it? I know I don’t like it. Yet, here at the ripe old age of twenty-two, I find quite a few people in my age demographic, and some older folks too, are just jumping at the chance to ruin everybody’s fun.

The reason I’m thinking of this is kind of as a reaction to what Dave posted earlier about how some folks our age seem to resent their peers relationships and their life decisions. As Dave mentioned, there’s some negativity floating around about getting “married”, directed especially against people who are making this decision in their early twenties. Well, as Dave’s good friend and as an individual who knows a few young married people (and many old married people), I have to have a say about why I think all these people who are being so negative about other people’s life decisions are wrong. Not only are they wrong, they are disturbing my quality of life and the quality of life of my friends. So, I’m (somewhat pretentiously) drawing a line in the (metaphorical) sand, right here.

First of all, who says people in the twenty-first century can’t get married at whatever age they want to (assuming that they are abiding by the laws in the place that they live)? Many of my peers are swallowing hook-line-and-sinker, the well-known statistics of an “older age of marriage” and then extrapolating those statistics into a kind of life philosophy. A can’t agree with this tactic and here’s why:

Delaying marriage to later in life is a phenomenon among Western societies and industrially advanced nations. As a social phenomenon it is closely linked to the continued dominance of late free-market capitalism. Although it’s well-known, I’ll just re-hash the argument briefly here:
- Capitalism demands that each individual contribute to the production of goods and services in a society.
- Concurrently, each individual is also expected to consume the goods and services produced by others.
- An individual’s “worth” in this system is closely linked to their ability to both produce and consume effectively. It follows that a career which allows one to produce and consume effectively becomes the major focal point around which an individual structures his/her life.
- Creating or advancing to a job which allows the individual to produce and consume at a rate that is profitable to their self-interests is time consuming and labor intensive.
- Thus, other traditional social practices (Marriage, Religion, Kinship duties) are delayed or excluded until one is able to advance to a profitable or “worth”while career.

Now, there’s more to both late capitalism and this delayed marriage social phenomenon than what you just read. However, that is, in a nutshell, the traditional “functionalist” explanation for why people of the past two generations or so are marrying later. It’s the explanation I hear most frequently on the news and read about on the web. It’s also the kind of logic that some of my peers would like to extrapolate into a kind of life philosophy. However, it’s also a position that very easy to “problematize”.
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our intramural coed soccer team made it to the playoffs, but lost tonight in our game. I was accepting and humble after defeat, but now i’m kind of glad, because i do not think i did very well this year. we had a good team, but i felt quite inadequate in the face of our opponents. Perhaps the teams we played were better this fall than they were last spring. Perhaps i lost my natural touch. i just feel i should have done better. Oh well. sports are fun anyways.

As far as other personal acheivements go, i am diligently trying to do three things: 1) finish my classes with acceptable grades, 2) score a job for the summer, 3) record and mix my latest song.

I’m glad Jon will not disappear from the blogosphere, because i am consistently impressed with and thankful for his personal reflections. There is something compelling about a man and his thoughts. As julie has noticed as of late, he has been quite active on the site, and very insightful. When his own personal blog/site evolves, things will never be the same around here.

The word marriage is still a little intimidating, as it should be to a 21 year old, but i have no qualms about love and committment. As i have more and more job interviews, my concerns about financial future are gently eased away, and i know we can make it. The tough decisions are only half as tough because i share them equally with my partner. I know lots of people my age who are not nearly ready, or even thinking about, marriage. And some of them feel resentment. Facebook groups entitled, “Why the heck is everyone getting married?” accompanied by some short discourse on the appropriate age for marriage in this modern era (according to the group, sometime in the early 30’s.) I suppose i fall into the romantic category, which means i am always completely in love, and eager to be starting my own family. I will attribute some of this desire to my positive experiences of family life, headed by my own loving parents. oh gawsh. i’m so sappy.

“The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”
- Henry Thoreau, Walden

I had some good conversations this weekend. Although a football weekend is definitely not a time that I would expect to hear just the right words to keep me moving through the semester, sometimes I guess you get lucky and the right conversation finds you.

Sometimes, in the most unexpected places, those fine qualities Thoreau mentions shine right through. I’m glad I got to experience that this weekend.

Some important things have happened to me this week. If you ran into me on campus (or if you’re lucky enough to live with me), you might doubt this assertion since I’ve been an almost completely non-responsive, lethargic slug since Monday. To steal from my sister’s imagination: I’ve been acting a bit like the Zoloft egg before its seritonin levels get fixed. Am I depressed? Let’s have a look at the facts:

Are you over-sleeping or sleeping more than usual? A: yes.
Do you feel anxious or worried about situations over which you have no control? A: yes.
Do you lack interest in activities you normally enjoy? A: somewhat.
Do you feel isolated and alone? A: well, no. But in an existential sense, probably yes.

So this was a depressive week for me all in all. Don’t worry, though. By the time I’m done writing this I can bet that I’m going to feel much better.

Anyway, despite how I felt this week some important events managed to squeak through my general malaise:

1. On Tuesday and Thursday I had to go watch two movies about the partition of India at the International Student Cultural Center (don’t quote me on that title). It was kind of a mini-film festival, and it was cool to go to screenings of films from places like Pakistan and Kashmir and India and sit with a bunch of people who are (at least, somewhat) interested in these places around the world too. The films themselves were hit and miss (one good, one okay, one pretty bad) and the groups were small, but the experience was fun. Too bad the subject matter was so depressing. I wonder how many young adults are familiar with the Partition? If you aren’t, you should be. Especially, since there’s been much talk of enacting a similar plan in Iraq…

2. Also at this film event, I got to talk to one of the professors I really admire and who is hopefully going to be a major help in getting me to find/get in a grad school somewhere. I was nervous, as I always am around authority figures and people I like but don’t know well, but he was quite friendly until he made a joke about the t-shirt I was wearing. You see, many of my shirts are hand-me-downs or gifts from friends and family, some of which I have been wearing for years. I like this arrangement because it means I don’t have to spend money buying or shopping for shirts. I’ll admit that one of my great character flaws is that I hate clothes shopping. I always disliked it actually, even as a young child.
Anyway, the problem with this arrangement is that I end up with t-shirts that say all kinds of things on them that really have nothing to do with me. For example, I have shirts that have beer logos on them that I never drink, concert shirts of events I’ve never been to, and (worst of all) shirts with place names on them that I’ve never visited.
Now, this doesn’t bother me at all. I’m not a person who thinks peoples’ clothes say something about them. I just don’t think that way; I never have thought that way. I just assume that everyone is just like me, they wear the clothes that they own because that’s what they own. My brain just doesn’t go much further than that - I never question why someone would wear something because I just assume that that is what they had to wear that day. I notice when someone is dressed nice, but I don’t think of it as some kind of personal statement.
Needless to say, the concept of fashion eludes my primitive dressing thought process. I don’t even understand what that word means really. Most days, I try and dress as functionally as possible. It’s not uncommon for me to have to move heavy things around at work (I do work with large samples of dirt after all), so jeans and a t-shirt with tennis shoes is just my practical solution. I wear a ball cap to keep the sun out of my eyes and my rather unruly hair down.

Anyway, back to the joke - So my professor had noticed over the course of the semester some of the t-shirts I had been wearing. And he ask, “Oh have you ever been to such and such?” referring to the name of the shirt I was wearing. And I’d respond, “No, it’s just a shirt” with a shrug.
The weird thing is that he would kind of use this question as a conversation starter. But my response was always kind of a conversation killer. So there’d be this awkward silence between us until I could think of something else to say (which I’m not very good at) or until he’d change the subject.

Thursday night this exchange happened again, except this time I was wearing my LSU track and field shirt. He asked, “Are you a runner on the team?” And I, unprepared for this question, dumbly responded, “No, it’s just a shirt.”
Now a better conversationalist would have thought of all kinds of responses to this question. After all, I do like to run and I did get the shirt from a friend who walked on to the LSU team. But my scripted response was the best I could do.
There was the awkward silence again, and I could tell he wanted to continue the conversation. So I came out with this gem, “I seem to have been confusing you all semester with t-shirts” and I proceeded to remind him of the other instances we had had this exact same conversation.
He kind of laughed and said, “Well you are quite a poser then aren’t you!”

I think he meant this as a kind of joke but I didn’t think it was very funny. So I just mumbled, “Yeah I guess I am” and changed the subject. Sometimes, I think I need to take Small Talk 101, because I tend to be terrible at it. It’s no surprise that most of my friends are professionals at it, I guess.

3. I thought about my last post, and decided I’m not giving up on this blog or blogging anytime soon. I could explain why, but its kind of unnecessary. I think what I meant to say in that last post was that I want to have my own website started by May or June of next year.

4. The elections, the elections, the elections. Even though I didn’t vote (yes, I’m a horrible citizen who doesn’t deserve to have an opinion, blah, blah, blah) I was pleased with the outcome. I was even more pleased to see old Rumy resign. Good-bye and good riddance Donald.
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