MeghanIsMe

Miriam and I submitted our application for her to sponsor me for residency in April. Last week, we finally got what's called AOR or acknowledgement of receipt, the first step in the process. I need a medical exam for the next step, and I just had a short, rather racist interaction with the medical office. The receptionist said things like "Yours is the easiest name I've had to spell all day", and "you speak English really well!" When I said I was from the US, she said something like "Thank god." I can't actually remember exactly what she said because when people say things that make me uncomfortable, I sometimes have fuzzy memories of the details around the event. They'll call back today or tomorrow to set up my appointment, so that whole thing is progressing.

One thing I loved about living in the Netherlands is that it is next to impossible to legally own a gun. World Population Review data for 2021 indicates gun ownership per 100 people in the USA is 120.5. In the Netherlands, it is 2.6. Per person, there are over 46 times more privately owned guns in the USA. That knowledge made me feel safer, and I would love for the US to to adopt policies that make gun ownership similarly difficult.

Thinking about vast paradigm shifts like this bring to mind a thought about capitalism from Ursula LeGuin. “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings."

But I don't know how to get there from here. In the US, gun control measures disproportionately affect groups that are already disenfranchised and which are in greater danger of violence from socially dominant groups who are less likely to be affected by such measures. A big part of of this is that power structures in the US are fundamentally racist and biased against other minority groups as well, so implementation of any policy will be colored by that racism and bias. Attempting to restrict gun ownership is going to harm this minority groups disproportionately.

It seems insurmountable. But so does capitalism, as did the divine right of kings. This change is not impossible. But I don't know how to contribute to it, and it's certainly not going to change soon. The current state of the US is another reason that I, as a queer trans person, feel safer in Canada than in the US. (There are many other reasons like attitudes about Covid, but that's another matter.)

Even in Canada, whose territory covers vast swaths of wilderness full of dangerous wildlife, there are only 34.7 privately owned guns per 100 people. The US is a giant statistical outlier on this, and I can't believe that this is simply the way it has to be.

I also believe that people must work within the system that they occupy. Whether that's the divine right of your liege, or the inescapable necessity of buying things, or the need to defend one's self in a dangerous environment. The environment *doesn't* have to be dangerous in this way. But for a lot of people right now, it is.

I miss people in the USA a lot, but there are many reasons I'm glad not to be there.

I was about to go for a walk for the first time since arriving in Canada. We're in a place very close to the Bruce Trail and a number of waterfalls are actually in moderate walking distance from the house! I want to take advantage of that before I move to the euclidean plane that is Regina.

And just as I was starting to get ready, a downpour started. Well, maybe it will stop before dark and the waterfalls will be extra nifty with the extra water.

It's been a long while since I've caught folks up on life here.

The greatest center of activity right now is preparing to move to Regina, Saskatchewan in Canada. My partner is starting a new post-doc at the university there and I'm coming along. I can hardly wait to get out of here and go somewhere new.

I'm taking charge of planning and logistics. We don't have many large possessions coming with us: the board games and our desktop computers are the largest items. I'm packing clothes and games into double-walled boxes, ready to send comfortably in advance of our flight via an unaccompanied baggage service like we used on our move here.

I'm not quite sure where it will be sent yet. We've discussed either flying to Toronto to see Danae's parents, or to Chicago to see mine, before driving to Regina. We're also considering flying in to Calgary directly. The final decision will be based on what health-related travel restrictions and requirements are in place when we make final plans. Currently, I'm planning to make those decisions around the first of July, though I also need to see when trends suggest the cheapest time to buy plane tickets is because that will influence the timetable of decisioning.

We will be in Saskatchewan for at least a year, and possibly several. While we're there, I plan to apply for permanent residency in Canada. If Danae finds a tenure track job in the country or we otherwise end up being there long term, I plan to apply for citizenship as well, but that's a few years out at the earliest due to residency requirements. Having citizenship in a country other than the US will give me significant peace of mind.

With that in mind, I'm considering learning French via DuoLingo. I've taken classes in Spanish, Japanese, just a touch of German in high school, and before coming to the Netherlands, Dutch. For me, Japanese pronunciation is the most straight forward, followed closely by German and/or Spanish. Dutch is a little bit weirder, but maybe that's partly because I want it to sound more like German. Though the handful of words I know in German aren't even enough for simple sentences, a native speaker complimented me on my accent when I read a title for her to translate. French, though, is a whole different world. I have a vastly harder time with pronunciation than any other language I've tried. But it will be my first time learning a language that someone I live with already has some fluency in, and I think that will help a lot!

Here in the Netherlands, the weather has been gorgeous, finally, I'm still having a really hard time getting myself outside. I bought an affordable exercise bike and am trying to get daily exercise either out on the balcony or in the living room as I watch videos about civil engineering or games like Minecraft on Youtube. The bike supposedly tracks my speed and distance covered. It's numbers bear little relation to the actual speed and distance I would track on a real bike with the same level of effort (they are rather...generous?), but whatever.

I am finally getting my first vaccination injection early this afternoon! In just an hour or so, in fact. I just got showered and am going to hop on my bike at 12:30 to go to my appointment. Then I'm going to come home and sleep since I've been up all night. My schedule is pretty inconsistent.

I realize I often, arguably, bury the lede in long social media updates. In this case, I think that's because talking about it publicly is a big, scary step. But I'm transitioning to using she/her pronouns for myself. There's a lot to say about that in another post, but talking with the therapist I have been seeing for the last month and with Danae has helped me realize that's the direction I'd like to move in.

I haven't made any announcements, or talked to anybody specifically about it: Danae has simply started referring to me that way when I come up. She compared it to a soft launch of a new piece of software: It's not *officially* available, but it's kind of out there if you want to try it and know where to look. It's a way to test it and see how it feels, I guess. So far, it makes me really happy. I have a lot of cognitive dissonance surrounding it, related to my underlying belief of gender as a social construct that should really not exist at all. That's still there, but my therapist has encouraged me to let the rational things coexist equally with experiential, emotional things. And on those latter levels, it feels really good. I really doubt I will ever fully reconcile those things with each other in my lifetime, but that is ok. "I am large, I contain multitudes."

It's time to get dressed and check on my bike tires. 'Till next time!

Stones at the base of Horseshoe Falls.



I keep typoing Horseshoe Falls as "Horseshow Falls."

Danae came with me to Devil's Punchbowl today! She was kind enough to make a few images of me sitting near the rim, in the channel where the waterfall originates in wetter weather.

Danae and I just got back from Canada Computers with a wireless adapter for my desktop, so I am settled in with an internet connection again in Hamilton, Ontario. I'll try to catch up with people who contacted me, and write about our adventures. While I'm not being social with her parents, riding a bike, or playing Factorio. Sorry I've been out of touch!

I'm feeling a lot of self-doubt about the application process. Maybe it's the impostor syndrome that I hear is universal among grad students settling in early.

I have comments on a first draft from both my mother and my partner Danae. Danae is a current grad student and was going through this process herself a couple years ago so her contributions are particularly valuable, but I appreciate the comments from my mother too.

I just finished another draft with some comments to send back to Danae. My letter starts with "I became an idealist in my early thirties." As well as commenting on the high use of past tense in a paragraph that should be dynamic and full of action, she pointed out that the term idealist may be off-putting to some readers. That makes sense, but I also feel like it's important for me to be clear that I am motivated by issues of politics and social justice. I think that a program that looks on that negatively would be a poor fit for me. (This is why I'm as excited about Syracuse as I am.) But she and my mother both had some constructive criticism about that section, so I'm going to think about how to rewrite it and give it a shot tomorrow.

My first app is due in two days. That's scary.

I'm getting a bunch of emails from various programs asking me to consider applying. Amont others, a general one from the University of Chicago advertising its wide range of humanities grad programs, and a specific one from UC-Berkeley telling me about their school of information. I'd like to think that my process of selection got to me most of the programs that are the best fits for me. But since I was time-limited, and since I feel like I didn't have a lot of the right questions to ask until quite late in the process, I'm not sure if that's true. Seeing all these emails is making me worry that maybe I missed the place I really ought to be at.

I remind myself that the programs I chose are all ones that I have a high potential of being happy at, and if I am accepted to one or more, that's a really good thing. And if I'm not accepted to any of them, I'll have a year to sort things out and maybe try again.

I was originally going to also apply to a couple of library/information science programs as a fall back, but I haven't done that yet. I blame stress and schedule. I'm going to look into application deadlines for some while I'm in Canada, and possibly apply to one or two of those too. Hell, maybe I'll apply to Berkely; that would be pretty cool!

(Yes, I'm going to be in Canada for a week. Danae and I are leaving to see her parents in Toronto on Sunday this week. I'll be driving back by myself on the 24th because I very much want to be with my family for Christmas, while she stays later and gets a plane home.)

I have one more final coming up tomorrow, then I'm all done with the semester. I honestly haven't given my finals very much thought because I've been too focused on grad school apps and things. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure I did fairly well on all of them anyway. I feel very good about all my classes, with the exception, of course, of the one that I failed to turn my paper in for.

The professor in question feels terrible about the situation. She's also young and newish. She talked to my advisor about what to do. It sounds like there's some chance that it might work out and she'll let me submit late. My advisor talked to me about it and said I might have an out, and that the professor will email me. That was a few days ago though, and I haven't received that email, so I don't really know what's going to happen.

Either way, I think I'll be ok. If I have to retake the class, it's actually not a big deal. I really do feel bad for having put the professor in a stressful position, where she feels like she either has to be unfair to me by forcing me to retake a class that she told my advisor that she knows I wouldn't get anything out of, or being unfair to her other students by accepting a paper in violation of her clearly expressed rules. As I told my advisor, I certainly don't have a grudge against her, and I'm not taking it personally.