A storm stirring in the mind : –
Just one of those days in the midst of Nerdocracy. Piles and piles of books and readings to go through, and this endless draft on MS Word that I constantly keep adding to and dread the day I have to sit and compile all of it into a coherent, compact, 3,000 word-long essay. A hot cup of mocha used to bribe me sometimes but I don’t see that happening, as caffeine doesn’t seem to get along with my system any more. On top of that, my mind picks the worst time to leave my phone behind in some distant part of the city, unretrievable.
Sigh.
One of those days, when fluorescent highlighters seem mundane.
Here comes A Timely Dose of Me.
Little did we know what we were heading for during our welcome party at the GI open space at LSE. Those fairy lights and glasses of wine seemed to catch all our attention until the term gathered momentum, only to take us past Michaelmas term in the blink of an eye and here was Lent, more severe and more “summative” (pun intended) than ever. As the winter subsided, and the days grew longer and more beautiful, park benches and holiday destinations beckoned us over. But who are we kidding? This is grad school at LSE, and Foucault and Butler wait for none 😛
For all those of us who thought the Lent term was severe, welcome to the Easter break, with nothing Easter or nothing break-ish about it (let’s admit it). 😛 But let’s take a minute to reflect back on ourselves. We were probably the sloggers in school, the misfits, the “round pegs in square boxes”, the ones who wore soda pop glasses and longed for intellectual stimulation while being completely silly at other times. The feminists who have encountered one another in one of the coolest cities of the world. The crazy ones. The curious ones. The ones who believe a dissertation or an essay might change the world (bless you, Gayle Rubin). The repeated delete buttons before a space bar and a paragraph break. The idiosyncratics. The bubble-wrap poppers and often- compulsive shoppers. The dreamers. The insane with bouts of normalcy. The list goes on if you like.
When the submissions get too overwhelming, take a minute to think. It often happens that we discover the most interesting sides of ourselves while being thrown out of our comfort zones. And while you might be comfortably snuggling in your bed right now, the comfort zone I am talking about is the one in the head. Not knowing how many times that light bulb might spark today, and what we might encounter and discover before hitting this pillow again. Despite the endless pages and highlighter strikes across them, the tiny (fractioned) bit of us that grows every time our eyes move across that line. This repeats I don’t know how many times in a day. And one fine day, the writing begins. And it goes on. Delete, delete, delete. Caps lock on. Caps lock off. Space bar. Enter. Enter. Repeat. Sigh. Repeat. Stand up. Do a little jig (yes, PSY will do). Sit down. A few snap chats. Instagramming toes with smiley faces. Okay. Back to the keyboard.
And like that, it’ll all be done. As silly as it sounds, imagine if we had to write essays on typewriters and use whitening correctors every time there was a mistake or re type the entire page. Sounds worse than horrible, right? Millions of people did that before us. And guess what? Nobody died (unless they jumped out of the window otherwise) but on the keyboard? Not really. So embrace that little piece of techno heaven, and start writing. It’ll be over before you know it, and then.. (sorry)
*clears throat*
AND THEN
we shall eat cupcakes, watch movies, attend musicals, cycle around London, get “higher than the Empire state”, make travel plans and try to execute them and colour ourselves crazy. We shall regain our sanity before losing it on our dissertations, but that, is far, far away (or I would like you to believe), with a story/ a blog/ or many blogs of its own.
*nerdy fist bump* and silence time out (because we disturbed a cranky guy in the quiet zone a bit too much and he is about to complain about us).