Pain: Killing a Dream
I just sent an email to the Geography Department at the University of British Columbia. It said, "No thanks. I do not want to move to one of the most beautiful places on earth and study at one of the best geography departments on earth." I am a bit nauseous.
It is not as monolithic as I make it sound. There was a long process of discernment that birthed that painful child in my mind. Part of that discernment was the realization that I should go to the university that will best serve my intellectual project. I didn't (and still don't) believe that UBC was/is that university.
The pain arises from the long process of fetishizing the northwest, Canada, Vancouver, UBC Geography, and the west coast. No, the pain arises from cutting that fetishization dead.
My temporal happiness and aspirations now officially weigh less in my life than my intellectual (and maybe my spiritual) aspirations.
Yikes.
It is not as monolithic as I make it sound. There was a long process of discernment that birthed that painful child in my mind. Part of that discernment was the realization that I should go to the university that will best serve my intellectual project. I didn't (and still don't) believe that UBC was/is that university.
The pain arises from the long process of fetishizing the northwest, Canada, Vancouver, UBC Geography, and the west coast. No, the pain arises from cutting that fetishization dead.
My temporal happiness and aspirations now officially weigh less in my life than my intellectual (and maybe my spiritual) aspirations.
Yikes.
posted by Breathing at 3:04 PM
7 Comments:
oh wow. do i offer sympathy? or support? destroy those fetish items......
does this mean you'll be staying in madison?????
i have found that, since starting PhD school, it has so far been almost impossible for me to balanace equally my intellectual and temporal happinesses and aspirations.
i expect i'll figure it out before i'm done here.....
HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHEHE
April Fools!!
right?
not so much.
I felt a bit the same when I decided not to transfer to UW-Madison. However, I have not had a long desire to be in Madison... so cutting out something that you've thought about for some time must be rather awful. BUT
You've made a good decision. Enjoy.
Thanks for the thoughts. The more I have thought about it, the more I realize that it is really the city I am pained to cast away.
I know it is not the right Geography Department for me.
yes but where will you be instead? tell me!
I can sympathize with you. When I went to Germany for my year abroad I fell in love with the city. And I mean I fell hard. As soon as I had stepped off the plane I knew that I had come home. Which was weird since I had only spent maybe 5 or 6 days of my life in Berlin as a child. And yet everything about that city made me feel like I suddenly belonged, a feeling I don't frequently have.
And yet I knew I had to come back to Madison for my academic career. Not to say that I couldn't have pursued something there, but sometimes you just know that to further the goals of your life requires sacrificing the feeling of temporal belonging, even if just for a little while. You'll get to the northwest one day, just as I'll someday be back in Berlin, maybe for good. But for as often as we're told to follow our heart, sometimes we also need to follow our minds.
Besides, it's nice to know you're just around the corner, even if we hardly see each other.
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