A popular woman’s magazine voted my home town “the most depressing city in America for women” a few years ago. This is an interesting distinction, not entirely unlike coming in last in the Boston Marathon. Obtaining both titles aren’t really flattering, but they are extreme. How often can someone or some place say they were proven to be, quantitatively speaking, the worst? Not too often, friends.
In any case, this is where I am currently visiting. The most depressing city in the country for women. And I can see the point of whoever voted for this. It is raining and the world is cast in this permanent gray twilight. As I walk with Peter to the library, more and more stores are closed, more buildings abandoned. And every time I see my friends from high school, at least one of them always says, “You know Adrienne, we always thought you’d be the last to get married.”
Yes. Well, thanks. I guess it’s good I moved.
In any case, since I am far away from Boston, the people who educate me must contact me via email. Email I can only check once in a while, since I am forced to live without the speedy connectivity I have come to take for granted living in residence halls. And since I have far less connectivity, I am not quite able to respond to my adviser as quickly as I should. As quickly as I should like to communicate my horror at his requests, that is.
Take for instance, this most recent exchange:
“Adrienne, we are having a graduate student colloquia and I would like you to submit your dissertation prospectus. Other graduate students can hear about your process of creating it, and you can get valuable feedback.”
*silence, as visions of circling vultures flash before my eyes*
“Adrienne, think about it, I think it will be helpful.*
“silence, as I think about how my ‘dissertation prospectus writing process’ consists of fifteen minutes of concentrated reading or writing, followed by four hours of reading Wil Wheaton’s web page, followed by an hour weeping about chosen academic life, follow by twelve hours of sleep.”
“Seriously, Adrienne, it will be helpful”
“silence--or is it silence? That depends--if a person’s head explodes and there is no one around to hear it, does it really make a sound?*
So, since I cannot effectively communicate the fact that my feeble academic efforts are the product of both the most depressing city in America for women and a person who finished last in the Boston Marathon, I have consented to give a little lecture on my process and progress.
Which makes me think I really should have centered the paper around Wil Wheaton. I would then at least have had the research on him to back up my findings.
