stormdog | Entries tagged with orientation

Introspection and realization from a conversation with Miriam yesterday evening:

I figured out some years ago that I've made a lot of the worst decisions in my life because I was trying to make them rationally and ignoring my emotions about them. However, reading Milk Morinaga's "Girlfriends" again led me to a realization about one such decision I made even further back in time than others that I've had that realization about. (Some spoilers about Girlfriends here, which are relevant to my realization.)
Girlfriends is a yuri love story about two high school girls, Mari and Akko. For quite a while, Mari is clearly crushing on Akko but has no idea that she is, despite patently obvious signs. She wants to spend more and more time with her. Going on a group date with other friends, Mari started crying at the thought that Akko might find a boyfriend and have less time for her. Together at Akko's home one evening, Mari was looking at her sleeping friend's face and thinking about how pretty her eyelashes were and, without thinking about it, leaned in and kissed her. (Which she was immediately ashamed of doing because of lack of consent. But she told Akko later, who brushed it off. "Is that all? Friends kiss all the time!") Mari learns that Akko had a boyfriend who she slept with the year before Mari met her, and was basically heartbroken at the thought that Akko might still have feelings for this boy, even while telling herself how her pain didn't make sense because she hadn't even met Akko a year ago and it's not like she and Akko were dating or something. And there's more.

Yet, they'd been close friends for something like a year before Mari finally had connected the dots, as she was rushing up the train station stairs to get to Akko as quickly as she could because the escalator was too slow, and realized that she has romantic feelings for Akko.

I was telling Miriam about this and saying that though from an outside perspective Mari's cluelessness is amazing, it actually kind of makes sense. I can imagine being a teen who has never even considered the possibility that girls could be attracted to other girls trying to figure out what all these weird feelings mean. It connects to experiences of my own. One is my complete failure to realize I was trans despite clues written in metaphorical giant blinking 500-point font letters. Miriam had her own experiences as a teen that show how much most humans want to interpret things in ways that fit their preexisting models: she had sexual dreams about women and logically concluded that she must have been a man in those dreams and that's why she was attracted to women in them. Being something other than straight wasn't a negative thing for her: it just didn't fit her mental model and she never even considered the possibility.

Now I've thought for some time that my own belief that I was completely gender-agnostic in terms of who I was attracted to was because I wanted to validate my own feelings of queerness somehow. Maybe I'd decided that this was my community, somehow, and being a boy who only liked girls didn't fit into that self-concept. I'd talked to Miriam about that before, and repeated my thoughts on it as we talked. Shortly after, while brushing my teeth, I realized that probably wasn't exactly it. "There's more to it!" I exclaimed, in what was likely a completely unintelligible attempt to vocalize through a mouth full of toothpaste.

I came back in the room and said that this was probably, in fact, another example of me making decisions that made fundamental alterations in the course of my life by analyzing them logically and ignoring how I actually felt. I went to my first fan convention by myself, without my parents, in 2002. I met a guy there who, not too long afterward, tried to get me into bed. I was completely unprepared for that, even at the age of 23, as a terribly shy person who hardly knew how to have friends, let alone how to engage with someone sexually, even less someone who I thought was of the same sex. But was I actually interested in men? In the days after, I thought about it and decided, rationally and logically, that it didn't make sense to exclude half the population of the planet from consideration as romantic or sexual partners merely because they were male. I couldn't think of any rational reason not to be bi, so I must be bi.

Friends, I like girls. I like girls a lot. I might just maybe possibly go for a masc person if there was something special about them. But there would really have to be something special about them. (I think my sweetie Erik fit into that category.) And while the shittiness of a lot of cis guys is, in fact, a rational reason to feel that way, it's a lot more than that, and it's stuff that I can't really explain rationally. I just really like girls. Kind of like I know I'm really a girl and it means everything to me to be one, even though I still have no real rational explanation for feeling that way and didn't figure it out for 35 years because it "didn't make sense."

So I think that I thought I was basically 50/50 bi for most of 20 years because *not* being bi didn't make any rational sense. It helped (or, rather, hurt) that I had no real idea how to relate to people that way as a boy so it's not like I was really learning about myself from experience. I didn't have anything making me question my mental model.

Perhaps I won't have pizza today. There was a lunch catered by Roly Poly at the department orientation, so I had a few wraps, potato salad, and some of the dessert bars.

Then after the tours and meetings, I sat down in the department library to read a previous masters' thesis. Said library is where the lunch had been, and in fact, still was. So I ate some more wraps and dessert bars while I read. I will not be having dinner tonight!

Between the research I'll be working on and ideas for my thesis, I think I talked with my advsior for over three hours today. As a result, I have a to-do list I'm starting on, as well as the reading I'm working on for classes. I really hope I get paid as expected at the end of the month so I can buy the rest of my books!

Current Mood: full

It's a shame my phone ran out of power as I was riding around Syracuse with Endomondo tracking my trip. I'd love to see exactly where I was. Still, I'm pleased I got back home without incident. I was biking randomly around downtown, relying on my phone to get me home if I got lost. However, I didn't have the cord with me to connect my portable battery pack to the phone.

I was lost briefly, but I explored systematically until I found a street name I recognized and soon found I was not far from the old train station that serves as the local office of Time Warner. I can get home easily from there. During my trip, I saw the MoST (Museum of Science and Technology), the Landmark Theatre, the shot clock monument (the basketball shot clock was invented in Syracuse) and other downtown sights. I headed home, but diverted down Lodi to bike around the periphery of Rose Hill Cemetery. I headed homeward down Lodi just as a drizzle started. Looking out the window, I see that drizzle has settled in to stay for a while.

The last day of orientation was good. I was embarassed by the video of my presentation from yesterday. I was the only person who was consulting notes while presenting. It's because I've never really taught before; my public speaking experience has been restricted to presenting papers or a poster. I need to trust myself to know what I'm going to say and not keep referring to notes. I think over the course of the next year, I'm going to talk to other TAs in geography about doing some mutual coaching and see if they're interested. I want to get better at this. That said, I really do like the idea of teaching; it's exciting! I just don't feel very confident about doing it yet.

I got to talk with a few other members of the geography cohort today, both during the day and at the reception in the later afternoon when all the sessions were done. One of them has very similar interests to mine in terms of social justice and the city. I also seem to have scored points with a few with my "This Machine Kills Sprawl" bike placards. "You know you're an urbanist when you have that on your bike," said one of them. I'm really looking forward to getting to know all the geography people better during department orientation next week.

For now, though, I get a break. And with no more meals provided by SU for the next few days, I think I'm going to make one of my errands tomorrow a trip to the grocery store. I'm going to plan out a visit to school to pick up my ID card, to Melo Velo (a local bike shop and cafe where the bike advocacy group meets) to get a trouser clip, to the nearest thrift store for fun, and to Wegman's, a nice-ish grocery store where I expect I can find the cereal and yogurt that I want. I'm looking forward to continuing to learn the lay of the land.

Current Mood: okay

Orientation has generally been pretty good. Each day has had two time slots with three concurrent events, allowing new GAs to pick two. I've gone to presentations on teaching. Today, for instance, were talks on creating a classroom persona and managing a class. I learned about the Future Professoriate Program, which offers a small stipent in return for working with your department and the the program staff to attain greater experience with teaching and constructing a portfolio. It seems to be more oriented toward doctoral students than masters' folks, but if I do a Ph.D here I'm definitely interested. There was a presentation for everyone on Universal Design for Learning, which included a little bit about disability theory; that was new and interesting to me.

SU has provided food for us. Light breakfasts, and tickets for lunch at a number of nearby food merchants, most of whom are located along a strip of nearby Marshal street that targets SU students. Yesterday I had pad thai, and today it was a gyro with some falafel. Tomorrow, I may try the Indian place. Yesterday evening there was a barbecue for everyone around dinner time at the top of the hill on the south campus. It was at a building called the Inn Complete, which is a sort of pub for grad students, faculty, and staff. Since the food was free, there was a lot of meat (protein!) and I'm still on a tight budget, I unashamedly stuffed myself.

I've had some good conversations with fellow incoming GAs and others. After the last session today, I spent a while talking about face-blindness and my experience with it with the resident grad student who is leading the group I'm a part of. I'm happy to spread awareness! There's a grad student from Wilmette I've gotten to know a little bit. She's involved in grad student union organizing and warned me about some health insurance changes SU might be making in regard to classification of grads. I expressed interest in learning more, so she added me in to the email loop this evening.

I've made a bunch of notes in the sessions, including some stuff to follow up on. Some suggestions were things I'd picked up on in undergrad classes when I began, later on in my time at Parkside, to think a little actively about how professors were managing their classes. I expect it takes some experience in the trenches to easily synthesize self-management, classroom management, and course content all at the same time. As I said to one of the other students, I also feel a little nervous about TAing in a field that is not actually what my degree is in. There's a lot of overlap between cultural geography and anthropology, but if I was going to TA even an intro class in geography, physical or cultural, I'd want some time with textbooks and some talks with the professor first. Especially if I had any class-leading duties.

I did my five minute presentation today. I brought a nicer shirt to wear and did a quick change in the restroom prior to the session, which was probably not necessary. As is typical, I only glanced at my notes and largely winged it. Especially when I got the one-minute warning. I didn't quite say everything I wanted to, but it was close. Not that the content really matters I suppose. Other students presented on some interesting things; prescriptive grammar and it's place in society, plate tectonics, a height and velocity problem in physics, and the Korean alphabet. It was interesting seeing snippets of other people's areas.

Tonight I'm feeling tired after reading another long piece on political policy making, I may take a break and play some Hearthstone.

Current Mood: content

I've made it to the phase of iterating through my presentation multiple times and adjusting my speaking notes to fit my five minute block for tomorrow.

I'm going to talk about my research on Pike Creek in Kenosha as a lens to understand how cities, often seen as a sort of bastion of order amidst the chaos of the natural world, are in fact subject to greater and more frequent change than the natural environment is. It's a lot to squeeze into five minutes! I have seven slides, but they're mostly just images that I hope will provide a visual reinforcement to the broad picture I'm painting with my speech.

This is a "microteaching" presentation for incoming TAs. It's going to be recorded, and then collaboratively critiqued by a small group. Should be interesting!

(So many thanks to my advisor and other professors at Parkside for whom I had to give presentations. I'd never given presentations before going back to school. Even at work. The ones I did at Parkside were *such* good experience for me. I was terrified four years ago. Now I'm actually excited about getting up and talking about things I know something about.)