"Hey Franni?"
"Yeah?"
"Isn't this your study-abroad blog?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, aren't you home now?"
"Yeah..."
"So, isn't this this obsolete now?"
"Yeah... I mean, no... I mean..."
This blog was never intended to be interesting to anyone other than my mom and myself. If you enjoyed it, thank you! Positive feedback, while incredibly flattering, has never been my m.o., but it still does wonders for the ego.
Reflecting on the "a broad" blog, I noticed that my favorite posts were more introspective (like this one or this one ), and keeping my internet journal helped gauge my growth during my time in DK.
But I didn't stop growing when I left Denmark. And, as is the case with any good learning experience, I left with more questions than when I began. Last semester was such a blur that I had little time to give pause and look at those questions critically. With only one year left of undergrad (say WHAT????), I came to a frightening, yet not uncommon conclusion:
I have no blessed idea what I want to do with my life.
Now, I'm not panicking (yet?). Rather, I'm using this state of bewilderment to do some hard-core soul-searching. Self-discovery bootcamp, if you will. Henceforth, "My Summer of Self-Improvement and Discovery" begins. This blog will now chronicle my thoughts over the next few weeks in which I will be physically domestic and emotional/intellectually... I dunno. Wherevs.
[Caveat: The next paragraph makes me look like a total a pretentious shit. Read at your own peril.]
I spent several afternoons of senior week grappling with M-JR's new book, Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe. In the first chapter, she discusses a dialogue between Socrates and young Theaetetus in which Socrates purges Theaetetus of his "wind-eggs" of thought by deflating his logic and conceptions of reality. Instead of resenting Socrates for destroying his brilliant ideas, Theaetetus is left with a feeling of thaumazein - Platonic wonder - and is able to philosophize with fresh eyes. Prof. Rubenstein warns that thaumazein is "not merely uncomfortable, but downright dangerous," as it "can lead either to tireless critical inquiry or to unquestioning discipleship." True. But I'm hoping that this summer I sustain an Aristotelian state of thaumazein: "in a sense end[ing] in something which is the opposite of our initial inquiries." I thought my wonder as expressed via blogging was over when I arrived back in Eastern Standard Time, but let's see where we go from here. Hopefully it'll be interesting. If not, please excuse my "wind-eggs." Although they may not be truth, they are necessary for finding... something.
Here we go...
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
In Conclusion
Today I woke up in my dorm room, back in the 860 area code, with all of my circadian rhythms set to EST. Life will soon return to the status quo, and I never finished my blog. Excuse me, my AWARD-WINNING blog! (Thanks for the Fall '08 blog award, staff at DIS! That $200 check will definitely be put to good use.)
I spent much of break grappling with my time away, trying to give a sufficient, yet succinct, response that best encapsulates my life in Denmark and beyond. The best I've been able to do thus far? "It was great! Really worth it."
But as the great Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliot once said, "is it worth it? Let me work it."
Please indulge as I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it.
I came to Denmark with several abstract goals. None of them related specifically to Denmark the place, though. My answer to "why Copenhagen?" will forever be boring and practical: It was the only Wesleyan-approved program in which I could get credit for both of my majors. So "Denmark" was less this amazing place for which I had an instant, everlasting affinity, but more of a vessel for the greater change I wished to accomplish in myself. Copenhagen was my Walden, so to speak; where I took myself out of comfortable, workaday society to discover who I am and how to "live deliberately, live deep and suck the marrow out of life, to put to rout all that is not life and not, when I came to die, discover I had not lived." (Thoreau)
It is easy to explain time quantitatively. "I went to Denmark. I learned about Danish history and culture. I learned some Danish language, and about child psychology, health care and European film. I learned how to travel around Europe. Blah blah blah." That's shallow. That's too simple. The way I see it, you can learn things anywhere. Just yesterday, I learned that vampires have only 25 chromosomes (my friends at college are weird). Who cares?
And then I realized something else. That isn't normal. Studying abroad is not the status quo. Just going over the ocean and doing it is an accomplishment. Of course, I realized this only after my mother told me that every day for a month. Though my experiences seem conventional to me, that is only because they are my own personal reality. I diminish my accomplishments and believe that simply because they are mine, they are less interesting than everyone else's. The outpouring of affection for this blog from friends, family and strangers has been a tremendous ego boost. Thank you, people.
That's another thing: people. A city is a city. Tolstoy began Anna Karenina with the observation that "all happy families are the same, yet all unhappy families are unhappy in a different way." That extends to cities. All beautiful cities are the same on the surface: the boulevards and backstreets, the breathtaking body of water, the adorable shops and impossibly chic cafes, the gothic/baroque/neoclassical architecture (look, Ma! I know about architecture!)... but what makes or breaks a city, in my opinion, is the people. If you are with people you care about or meet people you care about, the city becomes alive. My favorite cities were Talinn, Paris and Moscow, no doubt in part because of the quality of time spent with friends there.
But when the people are gone, the only breathing thing in that beautiful city is yourself. This brings me to the crux of the value of my time abroad: learning to be me. Living on my own. without a safety net, without the necessary words to relate to people, without a history (or future) was liberating and scary, to be sure. Yet it was more than that. I was given a prime opportunity for a grand reinvention of what it means to be me. And I didn't take it. For me, living abroad was taking the time I needed to sort through myself and all of my hopes, wants, needs, complexities, flaws, contradictions. I discovered myself; not as a botanist discovers an exotic flower, but as an archaeologist finds a broken vase: shard by shard. What did I find? I choose not to put it into words. But I can tell you this: I am at peace with it. Nothing earth-shattering that directed me toward a specific purpose, but I almost hope that never happens.
In conclusion,
What do I say? I'm better at rambling than concluding, as I'm sure you can tell. I want to say something about wanting to live my life with the spirit of a traveler, an appreciation for the comforts of home and a constantly questioning and critical eye on myself and the world around me. Said "world around me" has simultaneously become bigger and smaller, I plan to keep it shrinking and growing.
Thank you for reading.
I spent much of break grappling with my time away, trying to give a sufficient, yet succinct, response that best encapsulates my life in Denmark and beyond. The best I've been able to do thus far? "It was great! Really worth it."
But as the great Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliot once said, "is it worth it? Let me work it."
Please indulge as I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it.
I came to Denmark with several abstract goals. None of them related specifically to Denmark the place, though. My answer to "why Copenhagen?" will forever be boring and practical: It was the only Wesleyan-approved program in which I could get credit for both of my majors. So "Denmark" was less this amazing place for which I had an instant, everlasting affinity, but more of a vessel for the greater change I wished to accomplish in myself. Copenhagen was my Walden, so to speak; where I took myself out of comfortable, workaday society to discover who I am and how to "live deliberately, live deep and suck the marrow out of life, to put to rout all that is not life and not, when I came to die, discover I had not lived." (Thoreau)
It is easy to explain time quantitatively. "I went to Denmark. I learned about Danish history and culture. I learned some Danish language, and about child psychology, health care and European film. I learned how to travel around Europe. Blah blah blah." That's shallow. That's too simple. The way I see it, you can learn things anywhere. Just yesterday, I learned that vampires have only 25 chromosomes (my friends at college are weird). Who cares?
And then I realized something else. That isn't normal. Studying abroad is not the status quo. Just going over the ocean and doing it is an accomplishment. Of course, I realized this only after my mother told me that every day for a month. Though my experiences seem conventional to me, that is only because they are my own personal reality. I diminish my accomplishments and believe that simply because they are mine, they are less interesting than everyone else's. The outpouring of affection for this blog from friends, family and strangers has been a tremendous ego boost. Thank you, people.
That's another thing: people. A city is a city. Tolstoy began Anna Karenina with the observation that "all happy families are the same, yet all unhappy families are unhappy in a different way." That extends to cities. All beautiful cities are the same on the surface: the boulevards and backstreets, the breathtaking body of water, the adorable shops and impossibly chic cafes, the gothic/baroque/neoclassical architecture (look, Ma! I know about architecture!)... but what makes or breaks a city, in my opinion, is the people. If you are with people you care about or meet people you care about, the city becomes alive. My favorite cities were Talinn, Paris and Moscow, no doubt in part because of the quality of time spent with friends there.
But when the people are gone, the only breathing thing in that beautiful city is yourself. This brings me to the crux of the value of my time abroad: learning to be me. Living on my own. without a safety net, without the necessary words to relate to people, without a history (or future) was liberating and scary, to be sure. Yet it was more than that. I was given a prime opportunity for a grand reinvention of what it means to be me. And I didn't take it. For me, living abroad was taking the time I needed to sort through myself and all of my hopes, wants, needs, complexities, flaws, contradictions. I discovered myself; not as a botanist discovers an exotic flower, but as an archaeologist finds a broken vase: shard by shard. What did I find? I choose not to put it into words. But I can tell you this: I am at peace with it. Nothing earth-shattering that directed me toward a specific purpose, but I almost hope that never happens.
In conclusion,
What do I say? I'm better at rambling than concluding, as I'm sure you can tell. I want to say something about wanting to live my life with the spirit of a traveler, an appreciation for the comforts of home and a constantly questioning and critical eye on myself and the world around me. Said "world around me" has simultaneously become bigger and smaller, I plan to keep it shrinking and growing.
Thank you for reading.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
