A is for Academia

The following conversations took place on Sunday, as I helped my husband revise his term paper.

Trust, Justice, and the American Way

Me: Take out this comma.

Husband (with sudden vehemence): I like the Oxford comma!

Me (startled): Oh. Okay. Well, are your professors okay with it? If they don’t mind then leave it in.

Husband: Well I’ve never been corrected before.

Me (with gathering courage): Fine. Use the Oxford comma. If you want to be un-American.

UPDATE: Today I am pleased to reassure you all that my husband is patriotic, after all. In researching for this post, I discovered that I was gravely misinformed about the Oxford comma!!! (It's because I'm a communications professional.) It turns out Americans love the Oxford comma. In fact, it's the non-Oxford Brits who disdain the Oxford comma, and journalism/communications professionals everywhere.

Well, the point is the Oxford comma is a big deal, people. Everyone is talking about it. It has a Wikipedia page, a recent NPR article, and even a song.

Isn't she lovely?

Me: I think what you're saying is, the fact that these societies created female icons didn't mean that they started to respect women.

Husband: Yes.

Me: The men still treated the women any way they wanted, but they sort of justified it by making these glorified female images, to give the impression that they respected women.

Husband: Yes.

Me: So the men could say, "See? We love women!... That's why we... make them scrub the floor naked."

Husband: ...more or less.

--

My friend Alysha is a seminary student, and this semester she studied ancient Greek. (Learning ancient Greek is just like learning any other language, with lots of flashcards, only a billion times harder.) Alysha is seriously awesome, but we are pretty sure she is not so awesome that she will grow up to be a missionary to ancient Greeks. Which is why we ended up emailing back and forth about this survey she had to take. (Alysha's comments are blue, mine are red.)

In relation to this class, I made significant progress in:

1) Critical thinking  Before, I sucked at thinking. Now I am awesome!!!

7) Cultivating sensitivities and skills needed for cross-cultural relationships Uhhh.... what? Now I realize I used to be racist against ancient Greeks. 

10) Enriching my creative capacities Really? Since when do they care about this?

11) Reflecting theologically on the implications of this course for my practice of ministry This would make more sense for almost any other class I've taken

12) Integrating the study of scripture, theology, and ethics at a personal level  Verb conjugation is like an out of body experience.

13) Shaping my personal values, standards, or disciplines Yes. I now value biblical Greek less, because it is annoying 

14) Functioning well in interpersonal relationships Im gr8t @ txt ancients

15) Responding to emotional, spiritual, or interpersonal problems I know exactly what you're going through. You know what helped me? This textbook of ancient Greek.

16) Responding to organizational, community, and societal problems Teach ancient Greek in schools!!!!!

How I ruin my whole outlook on life before getting out of bed on Sunday morning

It starts with a dream, as you might have guessed. If you're like my husband, dreams are wonderful opportunities to star in your very own superhero movie, but if you're like me, dreams are like hovering dementors just waiting to suck all the happiness out of you.

I'm at work, only "work" takes place in something like a middle school computer lab, with computers all along the walls and a TV in the corner. My coworkers are two girls from my group of friends in high school (which was a long time ago now, so I'd appreciate it if my dreams would stop bringing it up! But they can't because they're dementor dreams, and dementors and high school go together like ice cream and sprinkles).

My coworkers/friends are apparently done with all their work and just waiting for 5:00 to roll around, so they are watching a movie on the tv, which is right above the computer I am working at. I stop for a minute to watch the movie and joke with them about it, then I go back to work. All of a sudden I realize I haven't checked my second email account all day! I don't even have a second work email in real life, but sure enough it's full of neglected responsibilities.

Not only that, but by some bizarre twist of technology that only happens in dreams, when I open it, it appears on the tv monitor instead of my computer monitor. I'm like, good grief, and I'm straining to read it because it's over my head, and I completely forget that my coworker-friends were watching a movie up there. When I remember, I turn around and they have left, probably in an angry huff. The only one left is some random guy on the other side of the room. "I completely spaced out..." I try to explain. "I don't know why my email is on the tv, but I didn't mean to and I just forgot they were watching something..." He comes over, annoyed, and points to a button I can press to make sure my emails stay on the computer and not the tv.

I wake up. Nice try, Brain. Trying to make me feel insecure about work on a Sunday morning, and trying to make me believe my coworkers probably hate me. Well, I'm on to you and your dementor ways!

I look at the clock, which says seven-something. I think, Great. Now if I go back to sleep, I'll have even weirder dre-

But I am asleep again already. Seriously, I don't know how it happened.

My friends are back, only we're sort of kids now, and we're hanging out in my current apartment with the middle-school-aged boys from my favorite web comic, Bad Machinery. We start kicking a ball around. No big deal, right? Except that I have never been able to kick a ball in my life. Before I know it it's girls against boys and they've figured out my weakness and the boys are just kicking it straight at me as hard they can every time. I try for a while, until I finally say, "Really, I don't think this is how soccer goes," and I turn around to talk to my friends only they have abandoned me, which only makes sense considering how awful I was playing. But I'm really mad at the boys now.

"Really, Linton? My friends quit and you didn't even tell me? You kept on playing, three against one?"

Linton laughs (he is kind of the mean one, in the comic). "Haha, yeah we're hardcore!"

Well I turn on the eyes of fire and back them all into a corner and start yelling. "You're mean and you're cruel and you'll deserve what you get." Whatever that means.

Only then I see that I have made Sonny cry. He is kind of the sweet one, in the comic. And I feel awful.

Then I'm in my room, putting away jewelry that I had left on the dresser. It's big and gaudy and hideous, but in my dream it's beautiful and belonged to my grandmother. Suddenly she appears behind me as I'm holding a brooch. "Have you worn it?" she asks. I can't bear to tell her that there are not many opportunities for girls to wear brooches anymore, so I just say yes.

And I wake up crying, guilty over a crying boy and an unworn heirloom, neither of which exist. Damn you, dementor brain!! How do you do it?

Then the dementor brain quickly sets about reassuring me that there is plenty to actually cry about, and that's why these dreams were dredged up in the first place. Like, my grandmother never would have cared that my emails opened on the tv, but I never would have told her anyway. And I remember that those girlfriends of mine from high school were the real bullies, and that's probably why I dreamed about kids being mean. I remember the girl they teased all the time, and how I thought it was just a bunch of silly quarreling, and I never did anything about it because I didn't realize how mean it really was until long after we had all graduated. Which basically makes me the dumb one from Mean Girls, and I don't know how you are supposed to live with yourself if you are her.

My husband roles over and puts his arm around me in his sleep, which makes me feel a little better. Until my back starts to hurt from being in kind of an odd position and I start to feel trapped. I wiggle my way out of his unconscious embrace, and he sticks his knee out, pushing me to the edge of the bed. I lie there for a few more minutes until he clocks me in the temple and I realize this is not going to get better.

As I'm making my tea I wonder how this always happens to me. And I decide to blog about it, so people will know what I mean when I say that I can dread getting out of bed anytime. Even a sunny Sunday morning.

Well, chocolate is supposed to help you recover from a dementor attack, but if it's dementor dreams troubling you, an adorable dog goes a long way in repairing the damage. Dogs live in the real world. They don't wake up desperate to make up for all the mistakes of their past, desperate to be the most wonderful, most successful, most likable dog in the world. They wake up wanting to pee and eat and play with their toys.

So I put some clothes on and took the dog out, where it really is beautiful and toasty, which I love (how anybody hates a hot summer in the South, I don't know. Well, if they are trekking all over a campus with a load of books, then I get it. Or if they work in construction or agriculture. But if I think about this too long I'll start feeling bad for wishing for hot, sunny days without considering all the people who might suffer). I poured out some dog food, which made her eyes wide with excitement, and then we played with her ratty, slobbery toys, which to her delight, look almost like real dead animals by now!

So I'm feeling better, if not a little jealous of the dog, for waking up just wanting to pee and eat and play. For now I'll just fix some breakfast and tinker with my blog until my husband gets up. Then I'll help him revise his term paper and we'll visit my parents and it will turn out to be a pretty decent day like it usually does.

Well, the blog is called introverted intuitive, and that basically means my brain trumps the real world every time. It's not always a dementor brain. Sometimes it's a Gaga scholar or a feminist essayist or a social commentator, like a snarky Jane Austen. Sometimes it's even funny, it hopes. And it really wants you to like it. But you'll almost never encounter it in the real world. You can only find it here, at Introverted Intuitive! The exclusivity is supposed to make you want it even more... is it working?