Welcome Back

"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...