Last weekend we went to David’s cousin’s Pidyon Ha Ben (an unusual Jewish baby-selling ritual…look it up on Wikipedia).  It was held in the baby’s maternal grandmother’s living room, and the baby’s grandfather had made two page print outs explaining the prayers and songs.

The loving grandfather had sought out illustrations for his hastily made pamphlet on the internet.  Interstingly, in looking for an illustration of mother and child, he had lighted upon a picture of Mary and baby Jesus, which he apperantly did not recognize as the Madonna and child.  The baby was bought back from the preists successfully, while everyone sang songs in Hebrew and a picture of the baby Jesus looked on from Mary’s arms.  An unusual move, in Jewish circles.

In not more than 500 words, please describe how your interests and achievements, both academic and extracurricular, demonstrate a capacity for leadership and a commitment to improving the lives of others.

These are practice ideas.  They’re on the weblog because when I write in word its all too stressful.

So.

My younger sister has spent the past four years working at Wellesley College as the National Cancer Society representative, organizing the Walk for Life.  My older sister has worked professionally championing the rights of Native Peoples in Canada, representing tribal interests to the government (she’s Canadian).  It would be easier to write this essay if I’d done either of those things.

In approaching this essay I’m struck with the thought “but I’m always so busy…does nothing I do improve the lives of others?  What HAVE I been working towards, then?”  However in scanning my resume its pretty clear I’ve been working towards three things: I’ve been learning as much about English literature as possible, I’ve been making friends and having fun, and I’ve been doing everything possible to improve the educational opportunities available around me.  While the last is clearly the best suited for this essay, I think in all of these I’ve demonstrated leadership and a committment to improving the lives of others.

Leadership in literature is tricky.  The study of literature is by its nature something intended for the individual.  One sits by oneself, quiet, in the library, surrounded by other people, all reading, to themselves.  However there is a component of discussion, at at Pomona College that component was key.  We had a divided and contentious department, but for all that we had intellectual discussions and learned a lot.  We had a department T-shirt (which Stephanie Latimer and I designed) that quoted Dr. Aaron Kunin’s classic statement “I’m having a perfectly fine aesthetic experience”.  Its true, we were.

In the process we made a lot of friends.  I’d like to think that in the process of making friends I’ve improved the lives of others, just as all my friends have improved my life.  But how have I demonstrated leadership?  I wasn’t “the leader” within my several groups of friends, though I’d feel justified saying I was as much a leader as anybody.  We did stuff.  Sometimes the things we did were my idea.  I think it would be impossible to say who our leader was, but I can say this:  I’m the only one from the group whose on a T-shirt (so maybe the theme of my essay, after all, is T-shirts), which all of my friends own.  I can see that this paragraph hasn’t helped my argument.

Finally, and perhpas where I should have both started and ended this essay, I’ve consistently worked to improve educational opportunities in every institution I’ve been privleged to be part of.  When the education crisis hit Oregon and Crescent Valley High School cut heat and canceled school on Fridays to concerve budget, I became a board member of Saturday Academy and recruited college-level educators to teach extra curricular courses around the state.  When Pomona spent $80,000 a year on alcohol, I started a running club that entered charity races, routing at least some school funds to a good cause  (a lot of school funds go to various good causes, but the alcohol budget always alarmed me).  I joine d our Committee for Campus Live and Activities so I could further infiltrate the system and route money to organizations that I felt would best benefit the student body.  I taught people I trusted to do the same.  I organized a senior community sevice day to benefit our community and I sat on the International Hillel Board of Director’s committee for the Former Soviet Union, designing student programs in western Russia.  At King’s I’ve been on the Graduate Studies Committee, advocating for the interests of MA students on a board entirely geared to considering the problems of PhDs.  I’ve pretty clearly worked to improve the lives of students.

But students are so privleged anyway!  They aren’t nearly so patheic as cancer sufferers or Native Canadians!  But the question this essay asks, to describe how my interests and achievements have demonstrated leadership and dedication to improving the lives of others, I feel I’ve done that.  And I’ve done it accurately, too boot.  And I think it is actually quite impressive, all that I’ve done, though maybe not as good as either of my sisters.

This isn’t my essay.  I wish it was, though.  Anyone got an idea for a real essay on this subject?

This weekend is a bit of a mad rush towards greater peace.

My first applications are due Tuesday.  As always, I’m hopeful about them, but am pretty open to having my hopes dashed.  We’re moving in to the flat this weekend (yay! finally!), and while the living room has still not been painted, I’m pretty hopeful that it will be by about next Wednesday.  Similarly, I’m pretty hopeful that the kitchen will be finished by Saturday (though gosh knows when the tiles will go up).

Given that by Tuesday my application will be done, and that by Wednesday-ish the flat will be in order, life might be getting more organized in fairly short order.  The high holidays are finishing this weekend, so scheduling will be straighter.  My poor broken foot is mending, so I’m intending to start running again next week.  I hope to get a new calender for 2010 before the 20th, so I can even start sorting out new calender requiring issues.  So yes, everything is getting towards sorted (ah! We still have to send a few thank you notes!).

I’m sorry the weblog remains moderately disshevled.  The project of revamping it continues to be delayed.  However, I hope to commence as soon as applications are done, at which point it will be steamlined and, I think, very amaturely appealing.

In the British Library I sit across from an African King.  He wears a suit and a sport jacke and a hat like a giant upside down cone on his head (upside down meaning that the wide end is up).  I sit in seat 127 and we’ve never spoken.

We’ve never spoken, that is, until today.  He’s leaving early (5:00!) because he says he’s going for two weeks to Paris.  Thumbs up, I expressed.  Then he leaned across the desk and said “The man who was sitting next to you yesterday…watch him”.  I motioned “confusion?”.  He said “the man, you were sitting where you are now [which, actually, I wasn't yesterday, though I usually do], and he was next to you…watch him”.  I said “okay”.

When I come back to London I’m always really jet lagged.  Now, almost a week later, I’m still waking up in the middle of the night and staying awake for hours.

The effect of jet lag is no good for a weary traveler.  You basically skip a nights sleep and then can’t sleep thereafter. 

Because of the PhD applications and because we spend all our spare time getting the apartment set up its been difficult to get enough sleep.  But this is the good news, too, because in about a week (two on the outside) the applications will be in, the apartment will be sorted, and we can sleep in on the weekends in a big bed (i.e. not a single bed) without much stress in the world.  I’ll go home in December and I’ll recover further there, too.

Right now work seems mighty hard.  I can’t wait to go back to school, because it’s difficult to be exhuasted and doing something that doesn’t seem to interesting.  Anyway, so in November we start a well deserved long vacation.

When I originally did college applications my family had decided that they didn’t want me to apply to schools on the East Coast, because they were too far away, and that they didn’t want me to apply to Ivy League schools, because they were too snobby.

Yet I have to say, my perpetual education, western and liberal-arts based though it was, has left me quite the snob.  It is different than Ivy League snobbery, I suppose, but I must say, I have increasing respect for people whose time is spent in study.  Its passing snobbery:  I often envy people who are in business and law and medicine and who are working towards a profession, because they’re working towards making money and because they get to wear suits (I have phenominal respect for suits) and because they all seem so city-y and fancy.  And I logically most affirm people whose professions are lucrative enough that they live well but are still quite happy (here I would most specifically point to Amanda for being a librarian, which I have deep respect for).  However, I have to say, I’m still judging people by their academics.  In the library, I know the people who are here everyday, I know the people who know that I only get in at 3:00 (afterwork).

Its a difficult return to London, this time, presumably because I’m still jet lagged and sleepy.

Its hard because at home is a sense of total peace.  Nothing is disruptive.  This is both because I live in nature and because we’ve spent the last months eating mostly plum pies baked from the fruit in the back yard, but also because at home one needn’t worry about the future.  Its a funny bubble of the present.  Everything seems fine, and while you know you need a job it doesn’t matter immediately, because everything is provided for.  You know you need to get into PhD programmes so you can spend your life reading, but it also doesn’t seem so urgent, because the people who will judge you are 5 thousand miles away and you can spend your life reading on the back deck anyway, which is sunny, anyway.

Its hard to come back to London.  The city is cold and utilitarian and all the problems that are at home theoretical are here immediate.  Nothings calm here.  Everything’s exhuasting.  But its important and healthy to remember that this is both because its a city and foreign, but also because its adult and because you do have to make the future happen, and can’t just live in peace reading on the back poarch.  Its important and healthy to remember this, so you don’t resent being brought away from home.  You’d have to go, anyway.

Since the moment I left home I’ve missed my parents very deeply.  Its made me cry everytime I even think of them, and when I speak to them its difficult not to take a sullen tone, because I want to say I’d like to go back to them.  However, the best solution is to work as hard as possible, to make it as likely as possible that I’ll be a desired candidate for some little professorship when I’m done and so that I can return to Oregon or California or somewhere in the west.  But likely I’ll get some sleep and none of this will be so hard in a few days.  London’s fun, too.  It’s a city.

Me: I thought you weren’t driving the Civic on road trips?

My Father: I think of this car as more like a living organism.  My general attitude has been when something is wrong hopefully it will heal itself.  So far it has.

Once we took the Civic to the Sister's Rodeo. It was by far the smallest car in the shadow of the mountains.

I know I keep promising this, but a massive weblog revitilization project is in the works.  You’ll know when it happens.  My goal is to integrate this (dying weblog) with my previous (dead weblog), in an edited, moderately spell checked version.  It will…rock?

Catch you on the flip side.

Done. PDF’d. Sent to the printers. Hopefully turned in this afternoon (knock on wood)!