# Spring 2009 classes for which I registered at registration time last semester: 5
# Spring 2009 classes in which I am enrolled now: 5
# Spring 2009 classes that I registered for then in which I am currently enrolled: 1
# Spring 2009 classes that I attended during "shopping period": 10

Dear Lord, self. This is not healthy. Still, here is the actual list:

Monday/Wed: Astronomy 9, Advanced Photo
Tuesday/Thurs: History of US Foreign Policy 1900-pres; Migration, Refugees, and Globalized Citizenship; Spanish 122

This is an IR semester, then. I am sad not to be doing actual philosophy, although I am getting credit from the philosophy department for the Migration course. I'm lamenting the fact that I dropped the Nietzsche course, and I WILL take it next year; but this Refugees course ties together IR and Philosophy pretty neatly for me, and I felt silly counting only totally non-IR-esque courses towards my IR major. Plus, Profs. Greenhill and Shevel are a dream team. I will take this, work hard, and be done with IR, except for the whole thesis/seminar thing. Wooooo.

I'm most excited about Photo and History. It's still sad for me to drop Devigne's class, though.

IN OTHER MORE IMPORTANT NEWS, things are good. It's wonderful to have the bunch of friends who weren't at Tufts last semester back in town-- I am spending much more time in people's living rooms than I am in the library.

i figured something out just now.

this semester marked the first part of the second half of college. the past year has been unsettling to me in a lot of ways, and a recurring thought i-- and probably most of my peers-- keep having is omgz what next. i went into college with a strong broad picture of where I wanted to go, and a precociousness that I have since lost. unfortunately, i kept that broad picture, and it's stayed that way, which scares me.

what i couldn't understand is how I-- motivated, hardworking I-- could feel lost like that. didn't i have it? part of it is probably a general human lostness that many of us encounter, but I just worked out where the contradiction lies for me. perhaps this is common too.

when i set a goal for myself, i achieve it (maybe that's the precociousness talking, but I've got empirical evidence now). in the past couple of years, i have set short term goals and achieved them. i have cared about things and wanted to do things and set short term goals involving those things. that's it! i set short term goals. go to kashmir! check. run exposure! check. do epiic! check. exec features! check. make something out of a summer in boston! check.

put like that, it might seem like i have some sort of compulsion to Just Do Things. i don't. I care(/d) about each of those things deeply, that's why I did them. what is scary to me is that i've come to a point where i can't work towards those goals anymore and I'm not sure what comes next. i had, for so long, been afraid of long term commitment. it's complicated with the future!

this all might be painfully obvious. short term v long term. duhhhh. i know that it doesn't have to be short and long, that we run one into the other, that life is just a continuous path of rainbows (or perhaps a tarpit) anyway... but man. i feel better now.

this probably reads as ridiculous. dear lord. maybe it's okay to admit that i don't know what i want. i still feel kind of dirty posting this, though.

the evolution of digital communication means a lot of things. one of these things is that we become comfortable expressing ourselves through type, and proceed to have important conversations with it. not conversations that are intended to be important, but trivial conversations that assume significance because of how unremarkable they are. this never happens on purpose. as a student (and these days, as a human), I am on my computer all the time, and I just tend to keep up some method of communication. sometimes adium, often gchat. and the people to whom i talk about everything (perhaps a more fitting word is nothing, because so much of the 'everything' we talk about really isn't terribly exciting) are there too. and before you know it, you have hundreds of conversations recorded on your hard drive-- conversations that narrate your life and your relationships. the poignant thing is that the Important Conversations don't happen in this medium, but these conversations bear their imprint in a more revealing way than the actual important conversations themselves.

i suppose a paper journal might do these things, or photographs-- but those things are done on purpose. these conversations that i'm thinking about can be as second-nature as a random conversation in the kitchen at the end of the day that you won't remember tomorrow. that's probably how they're meant to be. and all of a sudden, you're looking for a link that someone sent you and a year's worth of nothing chats-- the ones that sustain and knit together a relationship-- is staring at you in helvetica.

i feel like i should clarify that i do, in fact, talk to people in person as well, and that i don't think these random conversations are nearly as meaningful as what happens in real life. there's really only one individual with whom these nothingtalks come about as naturally to me as blinking, and i suppose the online version of these is just an addition to everything else. all the same, it means something, and is rather striking when you search their name and hundreds of mundane conversations come up.

is this going to be normal? maps of relationships neatly tucked away in 0's and 1's and hard drives (and is it any different from what has existed in letters, diaries, and visual work since the beginning of humanity? i think so-- there's something more accidental about this)? I could delete them all, but I probably won't. technology has moved too fast to know where we're going to be in 20 years, let alone 3... but I'm wondering about the implications of me finding these conversations 20 years from now, preserved in their simplicity.

time to end this thing. now i can direct more of my attention to the conversation we have been having, again over gchat, about cuts of meat and maureen dowd (while i use the rest of my attention to comb through congressional financial disclosure reports).

[family dinner at 37]

dave: i think daniel's been stealing my bananas.
cole: why would you say that?
dave: well, none of you took my bananas, did you?
kyle: no, i have my own bananas.
dave: right. well, i bought five bananas, and now i only have 2 bananas.
me: could the word bananas be used more often in this conversation?
[maris laughs, dave ignores me]
dave: so i asked daniel if he'd eaten any of my bananas.
leo: what'd he say?
dave: he was like, oh, well, i didn't realized those were anyone in particular's bananas.
cole: what?! as if we haven't all had our own supplies of food this whole summer...
leo: what are you supposed to do? write "Dave" on each individual banana? it would seep through!
dave: i know, i know. and i still don't know what happened to the other two bananas.

[meeting the armenians who live on the first floor of our house]

yael: well, i'm a freshman. or, i just finished freshman year.
ruben: you are fishman? you fish?
[awkward pause]
julia: and, uh, i'm a sophomore. at a different university.
ruben: you are softmore? the fish get soft?
me: no, freshman. freshman!
ruben: ah, fresh fish. and you are saltmore?
me: no fish!
ruben: oh. what are you, julia?
julia: yes, uh, i'm salty!
me: what?!
julia: i thought we were talking about fish!

[misc]

kyle: your arm is the size of a sandwich.
jess: what?
kyle: your arm is the same height as a sandwich. someone might eat it.
jess: oh. you know what? i think we've had this conversation before.

carrie: i've realized that i love drinking. i just love it. i really love drinking.
sarah: okay. wanna do a shot with me?
carrie: NO.

so it is june 10th. my summer has worked itself out-- and i use the reflexive there, because i really had very little to do with it. an email popped up in my inbox that offered me the opportunity to get paid to be Jim Henry's investigative research assistant on several different stories: the US as a tax haven, African country X's offshore loot and international policy regarding dirty money, Bolivian secessionists, and why the frogs are dying. courtney walked into a job for me at a travel clinic. my Philosophy advisor and the academic love of my life, Erin Kelly, introduced me to Ti-Grace Atkinson, one of the leaders of the radical feminist movement (crazy shit), and i'm going to spend a morning a week going through her letters and speeches and grocery lists and thinking about some sort of senior thesis. and today i got an email from Gary saying hey Jess looking forward to the workshop and oh did I want to intern for Dispatches?

it feels good to have everything in order now. it's funny, because i worked my ass off to get that DC internship on my own, but just couldn't do it in the end. and now all of this has come together-- no man is an island, I guess. i feel like i ought to chide myself for how much of this has been "connections" (right wifey?), but all of this has come out of very hard work that i have done over the past couple of years (except for the travel clinic, that was just magic) marinated in a large load of luck.

kyle is leaving for Bangkok tomorrow, and all of a sudden the fact that i'm about to spend 3 weeks in Southeast Asia is real. i leave on thursday. i don't feel prepared in terms of my story, but i was less prepared last year and still managed to turn out something good. i'm nervous about the fact that i'm not all that nervous-- this is the third time i've been two days away from a research trip full of unknowns, and I'm starting to rely pretty heavily on faith that i'll Just Figure It Out using the skills that i've already got and the ones i'll develop while i'm there. the third time this year! i need to settle for a while.

after the workshop, kyle and I will spend a week together in Bangkok and a beach city called Hua Hin. how about that! i don't think there are too many people who could actually spend a week straight with either of us, but i know that we can if we give each other space in the right moments. i'm looking forward to it. two years on and we're in Bangkok. life is weird and good.

junior year approaching is strange. i won't see some people who I really care about until January! happily, being at Tufts for the summer means i've gotten a chance to spend more time with people who i might not have seen otherwise. for others, there are visits (DC WEEKEND WOO).

and yes. being at Tufts for the summer is so, so wonderful. it couldn't have happened any other way-- one of a million reasons why DC wouldn't have been right. i love what i'm doing, i love my house, i love cooking and eating with the members of 37 upland. July and most of August will be so sweet-- I want them to last much longer than 2 months. i think i'm afraid that i'll mess it up somehow.

anyway. to Bangkok! i'll stay there for a night, then kyle, laura and I will get ourselves to siem reap, where we'll stay until the 24th. then its back to bangkok and the BEACH!!!

today, i watched a woman behind the counter of of a very expensive cupcake store that I had to photograph try to explain what a cupcake was to an interpreter, who tried to do the same thing in some obscure Eastern European language that i couldn't place for the stylish and confused-looking woman she was with. they couldn't nail it down.

also, chris sent an email with the subject line "OH SHIT!", containing a youtube link to chris matthews having neocon Kevin James for lunch to me, Shana, and our AP US History teacher, Ms. Bennett. that fact that we do things like that makes me happy and embarrassed at the same time.

and as i write this, the totally boring 100% american studio manager who sits in front of me is busting out perfect spanish on the phone. ay caramba.

this is from a late night draft that i didn't post:

saying goodbye today was weird... i avoided a lot of goodbyes. i cried again, like last year, in a spontaneous and stupid way. not for any one thing really, because this year needed to be over and i needed to come home. but i cry when things end, and i suppose that's just how i'll keep doing it.

----

i am working in new york right now, because i need moneyz for the rest of the summer. if there's one thing I have learned from this job, it's that working in a penthouse studio in chelsea is not awesome. earning half of the wage i get at seesaw in the basement of a rodent-infested arts complex, though, kind of is.

i have never been so worried about money as i am now. perhaps its because i have a huge plane ticket to pay for and two months of rent and food. food! dear lord. i'm glad i have parents who don't just hand me money whenever I ask for it (but mom! it's for my education!), but damn. talk about growing up.

i was on the subway today, and i looked over a man's shoulder to see that he was reading "how to make big money by investing in foreclosures." next to me, a tired-looking black woman was complaining to her son about being asked, for the 3rd time in a month, to donate to another school fundraiser, and he just looked so sad and scared. and behind me, i swear to God, a white girl with a kate spade bag was reading "a raisin in the sun".

the last six weeks of school were weird and awful and good. i figured some rather monumental things out, and have finally hit my "wait. what AM i going to do after college?" phase. i gave up a $3500 grant to do a high-flying DC internship to... well, I'm not sure what i'm going to do. nice one, self.

first they told us 4,000 were dead. then it was 10,000. now, it's 22,500 with 41,000 still missing. that's 60,000 people who could be dead now, and the sicknesses haven't even taken hold yet. and the junta is reluctant to let western aid workers in, and the US is taking heat for putting diplomatic pressure on the junta, and it's awful, all of it. you can't fix something of this magnitude in a day, or even a decade, but squabbling is killing people.

oh, life. you are really getting down on me right now.

i dropped out of a play last night because i can't do it-- there is too much going on right now. it was what i needed to do..."what i needed to do"?? goodness me. i still feel shitty, though.

i have been nauseous for the past 3 and a half weeks. more so in the last few days. either i have immaculately conceived a child, or someone's force feeding me syrup of ipecac.

Whenever I go abroad, I listen to songs that remind me, geographically, of home. They're not songs that I ever listen to when I'm at home, but songs that make me think of where I've come from. It's nice to be comforted that way, but it also means that "A Case of You" and "America" make me nostalgic for India.

I can't sleep. I'm getting shittier and shittier at making decisions, maybe because it's easier to be busy and confused and to put off choosing because that way you don't have to accept that there are so many things that you will never know, see, or do.

I have my class list pretty much nailed down, at last, but it does mean, I think, that I'll have to drop Directing II. This is a choice I regret having to make because I so love it. I think I have a bit more natural talent as a director than I do as an actor, and I truly ejoy both. But I'm acting this semester, and I can't do both and write a research paper and plan a syposium and everything else. I can't seem to get entirely away from the theater... even last semester, when I swore it off for EPIIC, I wangled my way into Directing I. Its funny, because I don't really think of myself as a theater Person, despite the fact that I do so much of it. But I can't not do it, really. Just like so many other things.

I want to sleep but my whole body is in knots. I can't write in Spanish right now, which is a real shame because now would be the perfect time to work on my common app-esque Spanish essay. Maybe I just need to be awake right now and think. We never close our blind, and the sky is a funny color. It might be snowing. Life is beautiful.

The other night, I had a very serious conversation, and I wanted to write it all down. I was so honest, and it was so important and painful and alive, and all I could do was think about how good it would look on a page. I do that a lot. Instead of living a moment in my life, I find myself watching it, analytically narrating it. I think about what it would look like on stage, or on paper, or what its significance would be if it were part of a story more significant than mine. Doing this places a layer between my mind and reality, which isn't something I want but happens anyway.

We talked about a funny exercise in Directing last week. It's meant to help actors get a better sense of a scene. Once they know it relatively well, they do the scene, and narrate it from the inside with everything they aren't doing. I am not pouring you a glass of water. I am not leaving your house, even though you just asked me to. I am not telling you I care about you. I am not singing. I am not sleeping.

It's interesting. What are we not doing right now? Opportunity cost. Push, pull.

I never worry about what I'm not doing right now. Rather, it's what I won't be doing later. Truth. I still find joy in what I'm doing at the time, though.

My confirmation sponsor and I had to write a prayer once, and the bit that got repeated throughout was "Find joy. Alleluia." It was nice. I do have some sort of faith, more than most of the people my age with whom I discuss this sort of thing. James once asked everyone at a meal if they believed in God, and no one did, but I wasn't there. I wish I had been; I would have liked to talk about it.

poorer. fucking travel expenses!

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
time in boston, certainly, and time with family. I wish i'd had more time to do nothing with good people.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
fretting.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
christmas was lovely!

21. Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
my parents, suzanne, kasey, and emma

22. Did you fall in love in 2007?
no.

23. How many one-night stands?
368. yeah.

24. What was your favourite TV program?
24 and greys anatomy (it's GOOD okay?!)

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
sure.

26. What was the best book you read?
this was not a good year for books. probably shalimar the clown.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
i just love the great lake swimmers, really i do.

28. What did you want and get?
excitement and challenge.

29. What did you want and not get?
order.

30. What was your favourite film of this year?
the history boys.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
i turned 19 and hung out with my family that day.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
a more relaxed summer.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?
a long tanktop makes everything better!

34. What kept you sane?
my weekly greys episode and getting 6 hours of sleep every night. the miller girls and doing nothing in the 440s.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
matt bai!? just kidding.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
POVERTY lolz. and I followed pakistan very closely.

37. Who did you miss?
oh, you know. my family and weston friends when I'm at school, and Tufts when I'm at home.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
the entire Kashmir crew (minus Tim just because I already knew you-- but you are still the best anyway), gary, mort, muzamil, wasim (!), Lauren, and Leo.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007:
the new releases in blockbuster are ordered alphabetically.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: i will not!

things are good. i like this break and wish it could be longer, and that I could spend more time here before going away. we went to new york last night and saw the kara walker exhibit at the whitney, at at chat-n-chew, went to the four-storey barnes and noble in union square, had fancy dessert, got stoned and watched the west wing. oh life is silly! i've been spending a lot of time with family and friends, and it's lovely.

ahem. to the new year!


where were you when 2007 began?
in chris casey's bathroom. champagne in one hand, and kasey's hair in the other as she threw up and jen and I counted down. what a seriously golden moment that was-- we wouldn't have done it any other way.

who were you with?
everyone!

where will you be when 2007 ends?
at Emma's house.

who will you be with when 2007 ends?
the wonderous weston kiddos.

did you fall in love in 2007?
no

did you make any new friends in 2007?
yes! and I strengthened a lot of new friendships.

what was your favorite month of 2007?
thats hard. january and september.

did you travel outside of the US in 2007?
yes

how many different states did you travel to in 2006?
massachusetts, new york, the great CT, rhode island. that might be it.

what was your favorite movie that you saw in 2007?
juno and sweeney todd, i think-- right at the end, of course.

what was your favorite song from 2007?
your rocky spine, great lake swimmers.

how many concerts did you see in 2007?
hardly any. decemberists, girl talk, ted leo, NOT morrissey. i must do better.

did you drink a lot of alcohol in 2007?
oh, enough

did you do a lot of drugs in 2007?
i met marijuana and hash (thanks, gary!) this year, but I think I can count the times i've used them on two hands.

how many people did you sleep with in 2007?
zero

did you do anything you are ashamed of this year?
certainly.

what was your proudest moment of 2007?
realizing i could do things, and do them well.

what was your most embarrassing moment of 2007?
oh, there are plenty.

what are your plans for 2008?
to be more accountable, to take more downtime, to let katie teach me basic climbing skillz, to seek help better. more tangibly, to go to peru, to take the new things i've learned this semester even further, to figure out a better goddamn system for organizing my photos, to get a house (a HOUSE!), to get a summer job/internship that's in line with something i might want to do... etc.

Ughhhh. On the last stretch of this dastardly paper that, for some reason, is driving everyone in EPIIC to an even nuttier state than normal. Maybe its the shitty prompt.

It snowed last night. At 3 am, I abandoned my paper for a bit and me and Kyle and Leo went outside to play. It turns out that all one can do during a snowball fight is giggle, which is a perfect remedy to midnight paper doldrums. We weren't alone, and we had a brief war with some of the men of the 110's. We came inside to warm up and drink tea, and they talked while I worked. I felt really lucky.

This Thanksgiving has been nice. I'm writing this on my first full day of being 19, or, I suppose, of my 20th year. I may not have worked that out quite right.

Thanksgiving itself involved a really fun British family joining us for the traditional fare. Ridiculously entertaining!

Had a small banking crisis today. Turns out that a large deposit I made at the beginning of the year went into savings, not checking. Means that my bank's been charging me $10 every time it moves money from savings to checking in the name of 'overdraft protection'. Bastards!

Today, also, I got an email about my department at the Daily for next semester. Matt-- wonderful, amazing, flawless Matt-- is moving up to Editor-in-Chief, which he absolutely deserves. Another girl in the section is going to take his place as exec editor. I have half-assed my job in the section this semester because of EPIIC, and knew that I would have turned down that job if it were offered to me anyway, but it's making me a bit sad. More than anything, I think it's cause my life is too nutty right now for me to even focus on the paper-- which I love, really-- in a way that would put me in the running to do something more for it. Is that what I eventually want? I don't know. The department shuffle has got me thinking about these things, though...whether or not I want to commit myself to the Daily, and to all of this writing madness in general.

That said, I've somehow landed a high editing job at Required Reading. Next semester will be journalism-tastic, either way.

Yesterday, I pretty definitively ended things with John. That makes me single for the first time in the better part of two years (two years?!?!!?!?). I'm really quite into that.

So between a banking crisis, a publication-based identity crisis, and a breakup, this break has been nice. Really, it has though. I LOVE coming home, and OHMYGOD MY DOG. Amazing. He's small and shiny and black and so so so innocent. He's just lovely. Spent a lot of time with the fam, too, which I failed to do last Thanksgiving break. I also got to see every friend that I wanted to, in varying degrees of big cheesy gatheringness and one-on-one bonding time. I'm grateful for how close I've stayed to my homefriends, and for the fact that, when we're together, it feels like no time has passed--except, of course, for all the funny and increasingly grown-up stories we have to tell each other.

Back to Tuftsland tomorrow!

in Diesel. Two men are sitting next to me discussing Pakistan in Hinglish. I keep picking up words like 'Benazir Bhutto', 'Taliban', 'Karachi', and, for some reason, 'such a shame'. I really wish I could understand everything they're saying... Pakistan is imploding right now, and I rarely hear anyone talk about it. 3rd image IR tells me it's dangerous, 2nd image tells me it's really fucking dangerous, and 1st image tells me that it's awkward.

In other news, I'm having a ridiculously productive day but I have spent far too much money here.

And Jason Anderson/Mt Eerie was last night.... ohhh my lord. So much love-filled singalong and awkward Phil-ness. I love it when perfect shows literally fall into my basement.

AND

today in EPIIC, we met the best physics student in the people's republic of china. we also met a 6'6" stud of global awareness and mad bank. who just so happened to study the radicalization of islam in germany. which i did in kashmir AKA WE HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON

Girltalk is coming to Tufts. My name in the fake Daily today is "Bai Sexual". Tomorrow, I am interviewing Adele. We have to write a 10-page paper on Why People Are Poor. I've had about 12 hours of sleep in the past three days. The entire female contingent of Ec 36 is in love with the guy who manages Tufts Micro-Investing. Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeeeen!

dear britney,

1- you do not belong on the home page of nytimes.
2- you do not belong on the home page of nytimes with hair, because, somehow, we all know that you shaved your head.
3- there is no 3, really.

dear lord. ahh. i just don't know.

oh, this is so not a good idea.

i'm in the miller common room right now, and it is full of drunk freshman. none of them are drinking water, which is not a terribly good choice for general health. they're also snuggling with eachother, which is not a terribly good choice for emotional health because they're hallmates. floorcest just isn't very clever-- especially floorcest within the first week of being at school, when you're just really insecure and looking for anyone to love you. but when finding such security comes at the risk of making trips to the bathroom and to the front door potentially incredibly awkward because you might run into that "special" someone... well, it's just not a good idea.

perhaps i should tell them this. but i can't, because that would be weird, so i'm writing it here because i can't sleep.

i'm SO happy to be back at tufts. i just love the people here, and life here. i love learning here. i'm pumped to go to the city, and even to go wherever I need to to get an external hard drive tomorrow.

it's amazing in miller. my wifey is on this floor, and court's upstairs. laura ogburn, a wonder she is, is IN MY ROOM. tasha's downstairs. katie and amy are close. alex cheser is close, and dana is right next to her! meggie and maddie downstairs... and on top of that, i'm going to make floor friends! at least i hope i will-- and so far I have, so hooray for that! plus the boys are next door in wren. it's just lovely.

i feel so comfortable here right now. i love this place.

seriously, kids. FLOORCEST=BAD. shouldn't the RA tell them this at the first big freshman floor meeting?

aw. now they're talking about getting breakfast tomorrow, cause they're on unlimited mealplans and they can do that.

now our RA is sitting down with these drunk freshman. rock.

the beginning of sophomore year is so much better than that of freshman year.