My Present Plan

I'll continue to maintain Digest. I'll not restrict access to it. Ultra-personal content, however, needs a new home. A privacy-controlled one. If you are interested in an invitation to that home, such as it is, please contact me.

No, That Did Post Did Not Count

So much has been going on this semester . . . but it's thoroughly un-bloggable. So, what to do? Wait until writing publicly about my life becomes possible without anonymity? Set my blog to "private?" Start another blog, one with tighter privacy controls? I'm honestly unsure. (That should probably go without saying. If I was sure, I would have just opted definitively for one of the above already.)

Suffice to say, my personal journal has been pretty damned full lately.

Alanis Morissette Runs a Marathon for Eating Disorder Awareness

Read about it here.

An Uncertainty Principle

One way of articulating the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is this: the position and the momentum of a given electron at a given point in time cannot be known; the more precisely one of those values is known, the less precisely the other is known.

The wildness of this statement of particle physics comes in large part because there is, according to the prevailing interpretation of the principle, no objective fact that is both of these precise values at a single point in time. There is but a probability cloud, so to speak. Useful, yes, but certain, no. The problem in our not-knowing is not an epistemic problem; it's an ontic one. There simply is no fact to know. It's not that we are unable to know it because of the failings of our perceptual faculties, the imprecision of our instruments, etc. Measure and measure and measure more, but there's nothing there to calculate with genuine precision. Not an epistemic problem. Rather, an ontic one.

I guess I've learned, so much as I've learned anything, that it's a waste of my own precious energy to try to figure out someone who hasn't figured out him- or herself. Trying to calculate what someone wants when he or she him- or herself does not know. Measure and measure and measure more, but there's nothing but a cloud of probabilities. The problem is not an epistemic one. It's an ontic one.

And what can I possibly do about that? How much less futile is it to fight that than it would be to shake my little fist in the air while railing against those damned electrons?

WTF?! I started menstruating today for the first time in years. No medical inducement. No rain dances.

So, apparently I'm a "real girl" again, all grown-up and a woman . . . at age 30. Even after the notorious OB/GYN appointment earlier in the summer. Evidently, not only does hope spring eternal, but so does the endometrial lining from a written-off, desiccated husk of a womb.

Honestly, I could tell that I was ovulating recently (I know my repro system pretty well, even though we've been well out-of-touch for a few years), so I knew that the red tide was bound to come in soon. And, honestly, I strongly suspect that this turn in my hormonal fortunes is directly related to the weight that I gained over the summer and have been able to--for a change--maintain so far this semester.

After dropping to a terrible low at the end of the last school year, and reflecting on my tendency to cyclically drop-then-gain-to-meet-a-short-term-treatment-goal-then-drop-again, I resolved to take better care of myself with the long term in mind. I knew that summer was an excellent opportunity to do that. I don't want to trigger anyone with numbers, but I gained close to twenty pounds over the break from school. More remarkably, though, I've maintained that weight gain for longer than I usually do, even when I've gained more modest amounts. I can only be humble about my future, but I'm feeling pretty damned pleased right now.

Yes, there have been moments these past few months when I've felt uncomfortably conscious about my increased size. A lot of clothes don't fit right, which is not only a forceful reminder of my lifestyle changes, but also a practical problem. And I can see the pointy edges disappearing from head to toe, and I like pointy edges. No, behaviors haven't always been above reproach. But I confess too that I kind of like having my, ahem, cups spilling over and my thighs and upper arms rounder. At the risk of sounding self-aggrandizing, I know that I look sexier. Less like a model, sure, but truly sexier and prettier. And though this period hurts like a bitch, I'm glad to have it too.

So, why is it all a bit different lately? Recently, I've been so especially engaged in my life, so preoccupied with meaning beyond my body, that weight has seemed like an afterthought (even if it's still a thought). I've felt so capable and purposeful in more important areas of my life, that I've found it so much less tempting to demonstrate my capability and purpose in manipulating my body size. The artificial sense of control that comes from restricting food and losing weight has just seemed a lot less . . . necessary. Frankly, it often feels lately like I just don't have time for it. I've got better shit to do. I may not do all that shit perfectly, but at least it's better shit. Or something.

In any case, I'll ask you, if you are so inclined, to lift a glass of your favorite red wine some time soon to hope, health, better things, and my reproductive system.

Lesson Learned This Past Week:

There will always be someone willing to do the seemingly impossible, to step up to unreasonable challenges, to meet unrealistically high expectations. The only question is whether that person will be you.

Thy Name Is H

If one theme could be fairly said to have dominated the past few weeks of my life, it would be summed up in a word, a name. It is the name of my former Criminal Law professor (and the name of my dog, whose namesake is that prof).

I'm taking Evidence with him this semester, an experience I find nearly every bit as challenging, frustrating, nerve-wracking, and exhilarating as I did Crim last year. I am fascinated by the material and in love with his (even if obtuse, opaque) method of teaching it.

I am TAing for his Crim Law class, an experience far more involved than one might expect if one did not know Prof. H. He expects me to attend all of the Crim classes, do all the Crim reading again, grade papers (two sets in a week this past week), present him with diagnostic metrics reports on those graded papers, hold office hours, teach weekly tutorial class sessions, operate, via a couple of educational software programs, all of the in- and out-of-class computer-assisted learning, assemble & distribute supplementary reading lists . . . pretty much everything just shy of picking up his dry-cleaning. Which, hell, I would do, since that would make it more likely that I'd get some of my own taken care of while I was at it.

He is now Dean H. This past week, he was officially named the new dean of our law school. Now if I disappoint him, I am not just disappointing a revered professor, I am disappointing the head dean.

Others--faculty and students alike--continually associate me with him. This seems true, whether that association is positive or negative. I don't know that I've gone more than a couple of hours on campus in the past few weeks without his name coming up. He--his persona or his reality--is a constant presence.

The 1Ls in Crim are frantic and discombobulated, of course, and are starving for any morsel of insight into how to survive the class.

Two of my old profs, each of whom had requested that I serve as their assistant, but to whom I politely said that my first loyalties were with H, ran into me in the hall at the same time. They teased me about how I "ditched" them for H, elbowing each other and joking about how they weren't erudite enough to compete with him for my affections.

Another prof offers me a research job for the Spring, but concedes that he knows that I will only do it if H doesn't have a project for me.

A new--and quickly beloved--professor, while describing his pedagogical method to me says, "I know my style is very different from Dean H's, but I hope that you will find it just as stimulating. Some of my colleagues have told me about your relationship with him."

Evidence classmates approach me for advice (as though I've taken the damned class before!). Classmates in Evidence who I don't even know approach me because other students recommended that they talk to me because I "understand how H's mind works."

And on it goes. He's everywhere, all the time.

Yet, H himself is as cool and impassive with me as ever. No matter how doggedly I work to meet his ever-growing expectations, he is stingy with praise. Hell, I wouldn't even know that he thinks well of me at all if it weren't for the facts that (a) he did offer me this Crim job, and (b) I hear from other faculty that he thinks I'm special, that he's "claimed me." I generally feel as though I am disappointing him.

I answer a question in Evidence that no one else is getting and afterwards he says to the class, "Yes, T is right, but does anyone know what the heck she is saying?" (Wait. Does that mean that I should be pleased that I got what he was asking, or does that mean that I can't articulate my ideas properly, that I string together indecipherable babble like the law school equivalent of a town drunk?)

I go to his office to talk about some intellectual worries, and he repeats his old refrain from last year: "Surprise, surprise. T is concerned about something she read. How about you tell me when you read a chapter and you don't find anything that concerns you or sets you off on an intellectual tangent? Now that would be news." (Wait. Does that mean that he identifies me with thinking critically, or does that mean that he's annoyed with my constant pestering?)

I do some extra research on an Evidence topic that intersects with some old decision theory and cognitive science stuff from my philosophy days. I bring it to him, asking whether he knows of any current legal scholarship in this particular area. He asks me probing questions, tells me that most law scholars don't have the necessary background to do the work with the necessary technical and theoretical precision, and tells me that "it's [my] job to create that scholarship." (Wait. Does this mean that I have significant potential as a legal scholar, or does this mean that I have a "job" to do that I should feel guilty about not having already done? Why do I walk out of his office actually feeling like I've somehow been blatantly remiss in my duties? Aren't I just a first-semester 2L who's encountering this area of law for the first time, who's struggling just to get the basic reading done in her classes?)

Even when I begin to feel like I'm on top of everything for both of his classes, when I start to think that I can actually begin to work on the other thirteen credit hours on my schedule, that I can begin to work on my law review assignments . . . he gives me more work to do. As blithely as if he'd never requested anything before.

And, of course, I love him dearly. As much as he sometimes irritates or angers me, as much as he robs me of precious sleep and peace of mind, I am deeply devoted to him. Of course, I want even more to please him simply because he is so emotionally reserved. I want even more to be the sort of person he respects because I know how high his standards are.

And, yes, I sheepishly confess: given how much of my energy I've given him over the past year (and still!), given how much admiration I have for him, I want other people to think that I am "his." I want others to think that I understand his peculiar way of thinking. I want others to think that I live up in the intellectual ether with him. I want others to think that he thinks that I am gifted. That I am his protege. I do not often enough feel that those things are true, but I want those things to be true.