The only thing left was a breathtaking view

One time, in Naperville, I was in the passenger seat of my dad's car, babbling away as usual while the two of us made our weekly mecca to our favorite Mexican restaurant. At the time, I was 17 and still deeply immersed in the coma-inducing process of choosing and applying to colleges. More often than not, during these car rides my prattling had something to do with 1) college, 2) financing my education, or 3) how annoying it was that I was always being forced to talk about college or financing my education. No doubt prompted by one of my teachers or a counselor, during this particular escapade I was attempting to list out the top five things I was looking for in a school--my All Time, Desert Island, Top Five List of what mattered to me most.

I can't remember what #1 was, or, for that matter, #2. Pretty much the only thing that made that car ride memorable at all was the fact that #3 was, "the school has to be pretty." I demanded that my surroundings be aesthetically pleasing. Only two other things seemed immediately more important. If I recall, my dad, over the course of a diplomatically-worded dialogue, politely suggested that my priorities might be skewed.

And of course, he's mostly right, but to this day I stand by my list, since it acknowledged a realistic truth about myself. When I feel like there's beauty around me, I am happier, livelier, and more productive. I probably recycle more. Most people share this sentiment with me, at least at a basic level. Isn't your day slightly improved, for no logical reason, when you're wearing your favorite shirt? Don't you feel great after you get a really good haircut? I like to call it Calvin's Lucky Rocket Ship Underpants Syndrome.

But I wouldn't be surprised if my sensitivity to the CLRSUS were a little freakish. I'm not going to belabor the point, but for myself I've discovered two things to be true: that I frequently (almost constantly) find myself looking around and evaluating the aestheticism of my surroundings, and that when the results are positive, things generally seem to go a little better for me.

When my 17-year-old self was college-searching, it seemed reasonable to take this peculiarity into consideration. If my ability to locate a particularly charming lounge chair was potentially going to be the difference between my ability to write an A versus an A- paper, ridiculous or not, it's a factor. What has always tended to concern me more is how to subsequently figure out if or how this weird little quirk doesn't automatically make me really, really shallow.

I was blessed with a birth and a death, I guess I just want some say in between

Dear Shower in My Apartment,

I just wanted to give you a heads up that simply toggling between arctic cold water and flesh-peeling hot water does not, actually, amount to the same as sending me reasonably-tempered warm water. I know that your current method seems logical, and considering that you have neither skin nor sensory organs (sucks to be you, by the way), I suppose there's no way for you to have known that the law of averages doesn't apply to you. And I wouldn't be surprised if spouting out dynamic extremes like you do is more fun than just serving up a stable middle ground, so I'm sympathetic to your error. But, for real, cut it out. You have the knowledge now; behave appropriately.

Soapily yours,
Linda

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There are a handful of subjects I tend to avoid writing about in here, and one of them is feminism (slash gender, gender issues, and b'grrl stuff in general). It isn't because I don't think they're worthy or interesting topics of conversation, but I do think the debates are well-known and equally well-worn. I have little to add.

Plus, even I, Jane Fondite that I am, get tired of listening to people talk about how women are socially conditioned to seemingly naturally want to fit into the pearls-and-apron Cleaver model of placid and passive domesticity. Blah blah princess toys for girls and trucks for boys blah blah boys can misbehave and girls can't blah blah men find women who make more than them unattractive blah blah. Sure, this is a serious, worrying, and very real phenomenon, but it's one that I've not only learned about but lived since I was a wee, Barbie-playing, dress-wearing, cootie-avoiding button. It's sort of a "duh" thing at this point.

But, occasionally, randomly, a gender disparity will catch my attention. Usually, it's something painfully everyday ("quotidian," if you want to be douchey about it), one of those normal life "givens" that gets surreptitiously warped by the lens of gender.

My most go-to example for this is, in the spirit of being as quotidian as possible, the experience of walking down the street. Anytime I walk around alone, the thought, "Is someone going to attack me?" is floating around somewhere in my brain. This worry explodes into a veritable cognitive plague in after-dark hours, when, with every step, I mentally monitor how easy-to-attack I look at that particular moment, run through what I'd do in the event of an attack, and maintain vigilant awareness of any potential threats around me. I go out of my way to take more well-lit, populated, or clear paths.

I'm led to believe that, in general, most ladies quickly empathize with this sentiment, while most gentlemen fail to relate.

It took years for it to occur to me that the average male doesn't share these horror-movie moments during their afterhours walks. A dude might casually carry a pocket knife or something, but he's probably relatively confident that he'd be able to hold his own in a fight, even if he's muscularly challenged, and he's not terribly concerned about rape. The fact that my life, in general, is to a greater degree than theirs permeated with fear pisses me off, in a way that thinking about my affinity for baking or inclination to wear make-up fails to do.

Now you know you know it now

It's finally begun to dawn on me over the last, oh, week or so, that I'll be graduating college in the improbably immediate future. Graduating college. Graduating college. Graduating college.

For many people, the mere feat of earning a bachelor's degree is cause for wild celebration. I know at least a handful of students who will be the first person in their families to attain a post-secondary education, and for them, graduation day will be an event of pride and dream-realization that, like a good birthday cake, a wealth of people outside the individual recipient can heartily enjoy. As for myself (as I commented when my sister graduated), members of the Martin family have been receiving pieces of paper denoting bragworthy intellectualism for generations. While I consider attaining my degree no small feat, I come from a background of privilege and achievement such that, frankly, I saw it coming. I'm not particularly surprised to have a diploma coming my way.

Surprise, though, isn't entirely a bad characterization for what I'm feeling in general. Think of the surprise you felt in the moments immediately after you received your first kiss when, mentally comparing your experience to the romanticized notions embedded in your mind by years of Hollywood and daytime TV, you thought to yourself, "Oh. So that's what it's like." My current sensation isn't dissimilar. So, I find myself thinking, that was college. Neat.

And just as whoever locked lips with you the first time probably didn't do so after a car chase and wasn't Brad Pitt, my college experience hardly resembled Animal House or most other popularized college representations (Gilmore Girls, actually, wasn't terribly far off the mark, minus the bourgeois lifestyle and the mommy complex). It's not that I'm disappointed. At all. I'm almost apoplectically delighted by how the last four years have passed and I'm pretty sure an actual Animal House experience would have driven me to military enlistment. It simply feels strange to have such a landmark life stage--a time in life that, in the past, I imagined and worried over and wondered about--be over and done with.

It's a little sad, but only in the extremely abstract and vaguely illogical sense that I feel as though my possibilities have been narrowed. Four years ago I had no idea what awaited me in college--who I'd meet, how well I'd do, what sorts of unanticipated coming-of-age life experiences would attack me. Clearly, these questions have been answered. This inevitable movement from multiple possibilities to single occurrence, if I think about it too much, starts to feel like a loss.

On the other hand, besides the fact that I'm not overly prone to mope-face, I essentially have a semester's length of college experience, minus the actual burden of receiving an education, awaiting me come January, so I'm going to go ahead and take this opportunity to officially drop the recherche du temps perdu for a little more carpe diem.

(Incidentally, the most important thing I learned in college is that the random and unnecessary insertion of Latin or French phrases is the key to making sure everyone knows how epically smart you are.)