Itsenäisyyspäivä, 2. osa

Niin paljon turhaa tein minäkin muita miellyttääkseni ja paljon paskaa typeryyttäni.
Kunnes itseäni kuuntelin ja uuden tien valitsin. Olen varma, oli hyvä niin.
[I did so much in vain to please others and so much crap out of my own stupidity,
until I listened to myself and chose a new road. I am certain that it was a good thing.]
I should perhaps get my blood pressure checked. I'm told that high blood pressure feels like your body is about to explode.

You must correct me if you recall any evidence to the contrary: I do not remember a time when a single subject from my formal education captured my full attention and my curiosity -- to understand it for its own sake rather than for condemning it -- until now. With linguistics there is for me not a desire for procrastination or a sense of drudgery, of doing just what serves the lesser of evils. There is wonder: a need to know.

Flipping through my introductory textbook I feel disappointed in the broad generality of the text. I crave the details. "This is not a feature of English." But tell me what it is, nonetheless!

Meeting my ling teachers was like finally meeting someone who speaks my language, even though I don't know all the words. They know what I mean, and they teach me the words. And as I learn their secret symbols and signs, the more the realm of language makes a safe place for me to express my intuitions about reading and speaking and writing.

By this part of term, any class would have worn out its welcome. Tests come, essays go, and readings come to feel tedious and hard to do. But here are classes I'm still excited about. It's not the friends I've made in them, nor that I'm happy to help those friends when they need it, but how every question answered brings to mind new ones that I care enough to find answers to.

Those who experience sublime awe at the complexity of chemical reactions go on to become chemists. Those who experience sublime awe at the complexity of language become linguists.

Until now I never knew that studying something that I love could be so much fun. All others were false loves.

I've noticed that you don't have to be a intelligent as Einstein to be a good schoolteacher, but you need a friendly demeanour and personality. Likewise, you don't need to be as socially virtuostic as Oprah to be an academic, but you do need to be intelligent. Either way, you have to be patient and dedicated, and work hard.

In the ivory tower, there's more room for self-expression -- visually -- without losing all "professionalism," I think. It's okay to be nutty, because it's your work, your ideas, that matter most.

Schoolteaching is one of the least respected of the so-called "professions." I feel that there was a sense of giving up on me when I was suggested to go in that direction. Not really being a warmly social person, the choice seemed to devalue my intellectual and analytical skills. There's a reason why, before professionalization, schoolteaching was done by unmarried women and didn't require much formal training.

Maybe my envy of my sister hasn't been completely a sin; watching her 24/7 dedication to chemistry has been instructive. For if I am at least nearly as dedicated to linguistics -- without consciously trying to do so -- as she is to chemistry, then it's wasteful and miserable to not devote myself to it. It can't make sense to prove my worth to my family on their terms, when I really should be doing it on my own terms.



My depression is coming back, too. Since just before Reading Week (19.-27.2) I've begun to be all sensitive and weepy again. And since I came back to uni after the break, the pressing feeling like a stone against my chest has returned and hasn't gone away. Of course I shall have my medications adjusted, and my blood pressure looked at.

I don't have the old feeling of general, paralyzing dread, although my mother's negativity and passive-aggressiveness has really been hurtful, both recently and longer ago. Thinly-veiled criticism, attacks on my (lack of) work ethic and character compared to herself or my sister, and the constant criticism of other people in order to be moralistic (especially regarding the topic of pride) are demoralizing instead because they assume that I can't think for myself.