Changes

I think I've changed my mind. I don't want to be a lawyer. I want to be a librarian. Maybe an archivist or something.

Isn't that perfect? I think I'm going to do it.

This Is What Law School Is Really About

So I came back from my first juvenile hall class today. It went okay, I think. Instead of 1 two hour class, we had 2 one hour classes (like all prison, you never know the rules until you arrive). My small groups are very different – the first was more quiet and less excited – maybe because they were the first group, but also maybe they were less friendly with each other in general. I got through my whole lesson – an ice-breaker, a discussion on their rights in juvenile hall (with a 2-page handout), and then a skit they're supposed to read out loud. The second group was so talkative & wouldn't let me finish the lesson with all their questions! It was pretty cute (also a little frustrating). It was also very sad – one of the boys in my second class has two daughters already – and talked about how kids sneak drugs into their cells from visitors (although maybe he was joking?). Another kid asked me if he runs away from his group home when he gets out, if the judge will let him leave this state and go to another. They had so many questions, they were so eager to get my opinion, and ask me questions and find out more about me! For many of them it was their first group contact (or perhaps first person contact?) all day.

There were so many questions I should have asked them and didn't! I should have asked more about their families (especially that one guy's children), about what they want to do when they leave. One of the kids said he couldn't read, but I also don't know if he was kidding – my second group liked to joke a lot. Also – our lesson was on rights, and if the staff violate their rights we tell the kids they should file a grievance. And all the boys said the same thing – filing grievances just gets them into more trouble with the staff. It's so frustrating? What should they do if the staff harrass them or don't let them make phone calls or whatever? I don't know. Talk to their lawyer? Some of the boys can't call their families b/c they can only use a collect phone and not every family can accept the calls. Also, some of the staff yell at them, curse at them – I saw one staff member bitch out this one girl for what seemed to be no reason at all, and made her cry. I don't know what advice to give – it's so frustrating. The program should give us better answers for the kids – the classes are a good excuse to be there, but it seems that the kids really just want answers. I guess I don't really know what they want or what they know after one class, though.

There was so much I should have said, though – I should have talked about how rights are important to have, but they also have to be enforced, and it sucks when that can't happen, and possible ways they can change that in a larger scale. (I don't know. Voting? Going to school? They hear this all the time, it has to be applicable to them personally...) I don't think I was very helpful, but I think that they liked me, and I have 6 more weeks with them.

Also, I had my first meeting today with a group of students who are organizing a project with San Quentin – a workshop series where the students do some workshops and inmates do others. That should get going in the next week. We're going to have an internal orientation about California prisons, and I might do a background about federal prisons, too. But that's still up in the air.

Mom's Birty day

Its my Mom's birthday today and I am back home. Everyone is in the living room and I am hiding out in the guest bedroom so I dont have to talk to my parents friends about my job and my lack of romantic interests.

I signed up for my second race today. 15k on November 30th. Yeah!

shitty week

I think I've finally come to the point in my life where I need to get out of school for a while. I've been coughing up my lungs for the past three days, lying on my ass, and watching tv. I'm behind in everything and just can't find the motivation to do anything. And the more I hold of on everything, the bigger the black cloud over my head gets. Sometimes I wish that I was stupid so that I'd have to have had to learn how to work, instead of just resting on my laurels and letting my natural smarts do everything at the last minute. I'm so bad at working with pressure, especially now that I'm working and going to school and trying to write two papers. I just don't know where to start. I'm numb but I'm scared, I'm busy but I'm lazy. I'm being pulled into two directions.

And So It Begins:

So here is the miserable truth that those of us who are given to depression are forced to face when David Foster Wallace commits suicide: It didn’t and doesn’t turn out well. There is no happy ending to the story of sorrow if you are born with a predilection for despair. The world is, after all, a coarse and brutal and cruel place. It’s only a matter of how long you can live with it.

Woody Allen

So I have been thinking a lot about how I am handling this situation. Thinking more in terms of observing and collecting information about myself than in terms of analyzing or explaining what I am doing. And I think I am starting to understand more of who I am as a result of this big move, big start. Or maybe what I already understood is starting to come together more.

I don't know if you'll like this explanation because it's all about stereotyping.

Often (usually?), the way that I view the people and the situations around me is in terms of generalizations. This person is that way, this situation has these factors, requires this response.

Inna is the extrovert flirt who can make anyone her friend. Rika is the introvert intellectual who will get five advanced degrees in biochem and poli sci. Evan is political. Maya is of the hippie/philosopher genre. Of course, these are all my best friends and I realize - intimately - how shallow and un-encompassing these definitions are. Nonetheless, they are the categories I have created and I reflexively revert to them, even with my closest circle of people. You can see how inadequate a system this is, but it's how I think and often informs how I relate to people, even as I'm aware of its insufficiencies.

I have never satisfactorily come to a definition for myself. I suppose I have often been "survivor," but over the past few years that definition has fallen by the wayside. I haven't survived anything in a long time. And finding a replacement term hasn't happened. I can be outgoing and vivacious, but I can equally be boring and awkward. I can be super intellectual, but other times I can be incredibly ignorant, even about things that I should know.

It is not that I think that I am more complicated than those around me - as I said, I know how simplistic my designations are for the people I love. It's rather that I don't really understand who I am, what core personality is the base upon which everything else grows. In some ways I'm living more as a reaction to what's going on around me (or who's around me), in other ways I am a big, sturdy, difficult wall of personality that butts its head against everything. And that sturdy wall seems mostly to consist of my inconsistencies.

And this is where a lot of my recent anxiety has stemmed from. I don't know what "type" I am, who I am, and so I don't know how I react to a new city, how to present myself to people. I am unconfident in my decisions (what to say in class, eg). And so I have been observing myself, noticing when I am awkward and when I am more suave.

After a month of this data-collecting, I think I am Woody Allen. No, really - neurotic to the core, completely awkward because I'm completely self-involved, and yet somehow able to charm a certain class of people.

I am not satisfied that this is the be-all end-all of who I am. Maybe it's a cop-out for letting myself be weird and not behave more socially-appropriately. I think maybe that's true, too. But also I think that there is the neurotic in me, that it does come closer to the confused and conflicting image I have and present.

legalize books

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