Je serais Charlie

How could I not write this post? Is there anything else to write about today? So please bear with me, as I throw up yet another stream-of-consciousness, unsolicited, personal opinion on what happened in my country (to my country?) this week. And in doing so I go back to the very reason why I write in the first place. To try (and mostly fail) to make sense of the world, to make sense of my place within it, to make sense of its place within me. Not for you, this time. Just for me.

For the past few weeks I've been playing around with the idea of writing a post on the Peter Pan syndrome, the need for permanent childlike innocence and freedom, all within the comfortable safety of parental boundaries, that has landed me in the arms of yet another academic institution. But I couldn't make the post witty enough, and work got on top of me, and... you know how it goes.

Then a bunch of over-grown, petulant children got slaughtered for trying to be funny and I didn't feel very safe in my childlike innocence anymore.

First, it was about the violent death of people I have known my whole life, people so intimately tied in my mind to my parents' generation, the 1968 kids, who naively held on to the belief that laughter and sex will overcome anything. Along with a glass of wine and a smoke, cause this is France we're talking about. I grew up with these people. They promised me it would all end well.

Then, it was about the clichéd need to reach out and touch someone, in the face of tragedy and fear. When threatened, we crave intimacy. We crave touch. We need to caress, to hit, to scream, to kiss, anything as long as it's not this. Anything to chase away the dread and numbness that follows inexplicable violence.

And when the fear passes, when the terrorists are pronounced dead, it's about looking in the mirror. What does this mean for me? What does this mean about me? Because that's what we've all done, made it about ourselves. Je suis Charlie. But am I?

Beyond the debate surrounding what Charlie Hebdo was actually about before Wednesday (was it funny? was it mean?), I need to think about what Charlie is about now. And to me, it can only be about one thing. Accepting that discourse, democratic debate, diversity require one fundamental thing: people I disagree with. Without them, I stand for nothing.

Like most of my friends, I belong firmly in the "bleeding hearts liberal" camp. As such, there are many, many people I disagree with. People whose point of view I find repulsive. And so I do what many of us do. I don't read their articles, I turn off the TV if they get invited to speak on the news, I "unfriend" them. And I've never thought twice about it. These are hateful views, I argue. Mine are based on love and acceptance and tolerance. Theirs are not. And so this justifies my intolerance.

That is not "being Charlie". Not the Charlie we all proclaim to be today. Over the coming days, weeks, months, people are going to say things that I find hateful and offensive and I'm going to want to shut them out. In fact, it's already started. But the democracy I so deeply believe in, the values that these hateful people will trample on, they mean nothing if I refuse to listen.

So I will listen. And then I will talk back.

And maybe one day, when I grow up, I too will be Charlie.

Repello Muggletum

Academia is a funny place. A place of dark, statistical magics and mysterious grand wizards, whose names are plucked from serious tomes and whispered with reverence in dimly lit libraries.

Basically, academia is like Harry Potter.

On the one side, you have your Muggles. Muggles live in the real world, and have to deal with real world problems, using real world tools and real world technology. The Muggles are like... well, really, they're like most of you.

And then you have your academic magic folk. Unlike the Muggles, academics are not constrained by reality. Real, schmeal, they say. Instead, they have magic wands, which they wave at problems the real world has never had to face, usually because the magical men and women of academia have conjured these problems out of thin air in order to have something to wave their wands at. It's a beautiful thing. Occasionally, the world of Muggles and the world of Academia will collide, but for the most part the system runs smoothly enough and neither world has to be overly troubled by the other.

But there are great divisions in the academic world. Disciplinary, for one. Disciplines are like nation states, divided by history and geography and irrational ideological attachment. For the sake of metaphor, we shall call my discipline Hogwarts. Molded by tradition but barely able to paper over a deep, sinister divide.

Within each discipline, comes the sorting by school. (You might think within each school, comes the sorting by discipline, but you would be wrong). Much like the Sorting Hat, the PhD application process (and later, the job market process) appears at once completely arbitrary, and deeply fated. My school, I posit, is Hufflepuff. Mostly harmless, but diligent and eager to please.

So here I am, a second year at Hufflepuff, trying to make my spells work and my wand behave. Danger and death awaits me, I have been told. Not real world danger and death, though, just magical danger and death. Which somehow doesn't sound quite as bad.

Do I miss my life among the Muggles? Sometimes, I admit. But I find it harder and harder to remember a world without portkeys and trolls and confundus charms.

I am no longer a Muggle. Now, I am a Hufflepuff.

Not quite like riding a bike

I'm not sure I remember how to do this. I'm not even sure how much I want to.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that keeping a blog like this is like being a Kardashian: all shameless self-promotion and precarious stilettos, all the time. But for someone like me, with a blog like this, it's hard. Truthfully, you never know if you betray yourself more by writing it, or by not writing it. Or whether the self on the screen or the self behind it is the one that matters.

But here I am. Res. Me. One of us, anyway.

So it's been a year. I suppose that warrants a bit of a fly-by recap.

November - December '13: Things start getting dark. Weather-wise, but also, you know, otherwise. I'm not sure I even remember much of the end of 2013. I'm fairly certain it involved statistics. Oh yes. It's all coming back to me now.

January - February '14: And look at that! I moved to a different country! Although to be frank, I'm too shell-shocked to tell the difference. The library's pretty much the same. And there's still a lot of statistics. It just comes with a side of sticky rice and a permanent outdoor sauna.

March - April '14: Things are starting to pick up. I've left Asia behind and realized that I was the one who chose to toss caution aside like a flea-market handbag and embark on a five-year degree. Me. And I'm pretty bright so I must have had a darn good reason. I just wish I'd written it down somewhere.

May - June '14: Oh-my-goodness-look-there's-sunshine-outside! And so what if I'm the maid of honor and no one will dance with me at my best friend's wedding? I'm going to be a doctor! Of philosophy! One day. And when that day comes, the exact same number of people will not want to dance with me. Cause doctor of philosophy just doesn't scream sex-appeal, does it?

July - August '14: And I'm in a different country again! I think three in eight months is a record, even for me. Maybe not so helpful in convincing people that I've resolved my commitment issues, but at least this time it's fun. There are blue skies and friends and cocktails and long runs by the river and everything just seems that little bit brighter. And this research thing? I may be totally nailing it.

September - October '14: Or not. Nailing it, that is. The statistics (damn those statistics) keep pretending to throw up stars just to snatch them back again. (That sentence will make sense to anyone doing research involving statistics. Translating for the rest of you: "Stars good. Please don't take my stars away.") And soon it will be time for another move, away from the place with the friends and the cocktails and the blue skies. A small nugget of fear settles into the pit of my stomach.

And that's where we're at. It isn't very far. There's been a lot of moves but little forward motion. Mostly there's been a lot of statistics. And libraries. And fear.

But I'm a big girl for such a little person. And I'm gonna catch me some damn stars.

An atypical week in the life of a PhD

Monday: The start of our one-week "break." In Grad School, "break" has no common roots with other concepts you may have heard of, such as "spring break" or "spa break" or "Kit Kat break" or even "Diet Coke break" (congrats to those 30-somethings who caught the 1990s ad reference). No, in Grad School, "break" means "instead of dragging yourself to class at 8:30 you get to spend the week taking exams and writing papers." Wait, what?

I have filled the last three days with comparative statics, joint distribution of functions of random variables and inverse matrices (what crazy mathematician came up with the absurd concept of the inverse matrix? and where did he find whatever it was he was smoking?) I therefore decide to start my one-week "break" by focusing on some research instead. There are no equations in my research. Just people. I spend an hour talking to the happiest, most positive man in the world. I gain much-needed perspective. The week is starting out very nicely.

Tuesday: Exam day. This is when I get to pretend to be a PhD-level economist and mathematician and fail. Fortunately, the exam gods seem to have been kind and I come out of there feeling mildly confident. The trick, I've found, is to squeeze in as many upside-down As as possible.

The remainder of the day is spent in philosophical discussion around zebras, misfits and human connection. The sun is shining. Being a grad student is fun.

Wednesday: Completely unexpected email lands in the inbox, inviting me to read one of my short stories at a literary magazine event. Am bowled over. Curse the fact that all of my friends live in time zones in which they are asleep at this hour, and debate whether it's acceptable to wake people up with news other than impending disaster. Digress into internal musings about why bad news is more important than good news, and why being happy doesn't count as news. Trust me, when you're Res, being happy is news. Decide nevertheless to let friends sleep. You're welcome.

Said serendipitous tidings make it physically impossible for me to start work on the paper I'm supposed to write by the end of the week. Dive into procrastination instead. Sunshine disappears. Whatever. I'm a rock star. I have no need of sunshine.

Thursday: Oh dear. Mired in procrastination like a fly in molasses now. Only one little paper left to write but it might as well be War and Peace. I am prepared to do anything else, like chatting with my banker, wandering the aisles of the supermarket, and contributing to the depletion of the world's forest like any proper academic by printing out reams of psychology articles. Then I decide my time would be better spent re-watching The West Wing. For the fourth time. No, it doesn't get old (although the fashion does).

Friday: Having accomplished next to nothing this week, it's time for a much-needed "break break." What? I did get through three research interviews, not to mention reorganizing my class notes in binders. A break is totally justified. So off I jet to remind myself that in life there is not only coursework and exams but also art, shopping and some pretty fabulous bottles of wine.

Saturday: I don't know if it's the wine, the approaching onslaught of winter or some deep, personal failing, but I will never write this paper. This paper has become my Hades, my Everest, by giant whale with an extra side of blubber. But isn't this what I gave up my career and signed up to academia for? To write thoughtful yet provocative papers on topics I'm pretty sure I found interesting five minutes ago? Trust me, my nugget of an idea was ground-breaking genius until I had to actually commit thought to paper and make it coherent in ten pages of double-spaced size twelve font, bibliography not included. Damn.

Sunday: Do you know what it feels like to actually wrestle a blubbery cetacean to the death? Well now so do I. I'm not going to lie to you folks, it wasn't pretty, but the paper is written. Hopefully I've learned something from the process because next "break" I'll have four of these to do. Sigh. Two months down. Four years and eight months to go. Until I actually get to do this for a living.

And that's a wrap.

(Ummm... There were cookies? I didn't get any cookies. Did the others get cookies? Why didn't I get any cookies? Moooooommmmy!!!!)

Renaissance

Do you sometimes think back about what you wanted to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a writer. I also wanted to be a singer in a rock band. And a police detective. Shakespearean actress, judge, CEO of a multinational company, teacher, museum curator, military strategist and President of whatever country would have me were also on the list.

I have wanted to be all those things. Note, I'm not saying I have wanted to be any one of those things at any one time. No. I wanted to be all of those things. All of the time. And then some.

When my parents told me I could grow up to be anything, I misunderstood and thought they meant I could grow up to be everything. Like Leonardo.

Can't you picture it? Res Da Vinci - Renaissance Woman.

Sure, you could say this is but another sign of my inability to commit, a symptom of my Dabbler-itis. Heck, that's what I usually think when I decide to take an (uncharacteristicly?) negative view of things. But what's wrong with one little person wanting to embrace all that is remarkable and good about human knowledge and creation? (well maybe not all of it, I'm not so deluded to think I could actually ever learn how to cook). The Renaissance was a remarkable time, credited with dragging our sorry humanity's ass out of the Game-of-Thrones style Middle Ages and into Enlightenment, all thanks to great men (sadly, yes, just men) who knew how to paint, do math and provide excellent political counsel, all before lunch.

Did anyone ever tell Leonardo he should just commit? Like maybe just focus on learning anatomy and leave the painting of mysterious smirking women to someone else? Not that I'm putting myself in the same category, obviously - but maybe there's the rub. If you're the most talented human being of all time, it's fine to mess about a bit. But if you're merely average, then its all David Ricardo and specialization for you (trust an Englishman to ruin it for everybody).

Seriously, though. When did we decide it was a sign of immaturity and flightiness to want to do more than one thing? To want to be more than one thing? When did the Renaissance man go out of fashion? And what can I do to bring him back and turn him into a woman?

Etymology

The one thing I have learned so far in Grad School (other than integration and Hessian matrices - which, to be honest, I haven't quite mastered yet) is humility. Humility, from the Latin humilitatem. Meaning "the property pertaining to pond scum." You know what other word comes from humilitatem? Humiliation.

I scoured phdcomics.com for a suitable illustration of this principle but nothing quite captured the true pond-scumminess of the experience: hours of blood, sweat, tears and prayers suitable for multiple denominations, and all you can come up with is: "I don't know. Alpha squared?"

I won't lie to you, despite all my lecturing about how being a "mature" GradStudent provides a safeguard against meaningless stress, (cause baby, I've seen it all before) well... I had a bit of a fullblown meltdown the other day. A "2-year old in the supermarket" kind of meltdown. But alphas and betas and gammas and whatnots be damned, today I am David effing Guetta. As in, walking down the street towards the n-th mathematical modeling class, hands in the air flashing Nixonian victory symbols, and proclaiming to the world that "I am titaaaaaa-neeeeeee-ummmmmm." That's right. Res has become indestructible. Res has achieved nirvana. Res is immune to bullets, fire, disease and whichever Greek letter you see fit to throw at her.

Naturally, the locals see me with my hands waving and my top-of-the-lungs singing and probably think I'm the latest addition to this town's cast of crazies. And who can blame them. I'm the person who actually chose to go back to school. Again. Heck, even I think I'm crazy.

Crazy, yes. But no longer pond scum.

Older, dummer, hungrier

I’ve been thinking about “age” recently. Age, they tell us, is a relative concept. Well, they’re wrong. As far as I can tell, age is only relative until you hit 35 and join a PhD program full of 20-somethings. Then you go from being relatively old to just plain old. Your fellow students call you “mamma bear,” find it miraculous that you can identify any music pre-1998 and exclaim at the fact that you’re a whole 12 years older than them, wondering if that’s weird for you. Yes, dear, that is weird for me, now be a darling and grab me my knitting while I go find my slippers.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph and other irrelevant biblical characters. What am I doing here?

Mostly, what I’m doing is dutifully copying down incomprehensible mathematical formulas that look something like this:

This is part of the definition for Pareto preference, the easiest thing we’ve done so far. A week ago I didn’t even know how to spell Pareto. Now… Well, now I know how to spell Pareto. The rest, I’m still figuring out. Why my life will be better when I do remains a mystery.

I have learned a few useful tidbits, however. For example, I can tell you that to increase your chances of selecting the best candidate for a job under the totally absurd condition that, after each interview, you can either hire them or reject them forever, you should screen and reject 37% of the candidates and hire whoever is best after that. In this case your chances of actually finding the best candidate are 37%. Yeah, not really useful, actually. I don't think that would have helped me much with my hiring problems at CoolCo Sub.

Sigh.

There is a point to my being here, I know there is. Not to feel as decrepit as Mathusalem or to practice writing squiggly lines and upside-down As, but to do some in-depth research about things that interest me and then (one hopes) to impart my knowledge to adulating crowds.

But that comes later. When? Dunno. Later. After the Pareto stuff and constrained optimization problems and probability solutions to other bizarre hiring practices.

Which is why one just has to put a big smile on one's face and think of cookies.