endings

{Maybe, if you're with a group of friends who'll never be together again, all your lights will shine at the same time and you'll know, and then you can hold each other and whisper, "This was so good. Oh my God, this was so good."}

I read this today.

I've been so preoccupied with uncertainty surrounding job prospects and my increasing cynicism of academia that I completely forgot that my graduate school career will (hopefully) be ending in several months. This is it!

I love being a grad student, and I have never once regretted spending the past 5 years in a warm, supportive, collaborative, and intellectually stimulating environment. I still can't believe that I get paid to think, write, and design my own experiments!

What's most important to me though, is the friends I've made while I was here, and the experiences I got to have: commiserating with fellow grad students about failed experiments over wine, dance parties and murder mysteries, travelling to warm places each winter for conferences, road trips, mentoring students, finding my passion for teaching, meeting my partner, training in the martial arts. I am so thankful that I decided to invest this part of my life here.

What I'm not prepared for though, is change. Again. I had the same feelings of anxiety when I started university and then grad school, and I have to do it again - move on to something new. All my grad school friends are moving away to new jobs, and I don't want to get left behind. But part of me is scared as hell, and sad that this part of my life is ending. It feels bittersweet because I am ready to leave, but I want to hold on to these experiences for as long as I can.

I will have to appreciate my last few months here in spite of all the nail-biting and complaining and tearing out of hair that will undoubtedly happen during dissertation writing and defense-preparation.

This was so good.

45 degree turns

He sings about acceptance as his sister paints loud strokes and light on a screen. Two lights burn  brightly on each wire hanging from the ceiling, then three or four at a time, each one bopping ever so slightly, making little dancing shadows on the floor. The tablecloth on the bench sparkles from the light, they tell me stories of everything she's painted before and the time before that. People are smiling and drunk in these stories, and she fills in all the spaces in the web, they're the in-betweens between notes and half breaths and side step shuffle shuffle,  life lines in red, not green, squiggles and dips and peaks and p200 event related potentials when does perception begin and end and start again and she blows a steady stream of smoke through her lips to finish the effect. She shows people in the crowd the hidden lines underneath the black light in the painting, but they need translators to understand what she's saying. A couple dances on and on. And at the end you can reach your hand through the canvas and turn the knob around and around but instead of clicking sounds you hear clothes shuffling and cigarettes embers lightly bouncing on the ground and bare feet clutching the concrete, shivering from the wind chill. They loved each other in each of these stories, and that's all that matters.

waiting

My grandfather has taken to sleeping with his lamp on and his bedroom door ajar.

He sat down with me a few weeks ago and we watched old home videos of my sister's 10th birthday party and of my uncle's wedding. We were all so young then. My sister and I wore ridiculous pink fluffy dresses and pranced about the restaurant as our uncle teased us. My grandfather had more hair back then. My aunt was visibly pregnant with my cousin.  And you can see my grandmother in snippets--laughing in the background, walking around greeting people, fixing her hair.

I think my grandfather does it because he thinks he'll be able to see her again. That maybe she'll walk in one night to go to sleep after watching television. Who am I to judge him though, maybe he's right. Maybe she's watching over all of us, in her own way.

soulbreak

I read this today. I miss her a lot.

2013

This year has been about overcoming personal barriers, finding my passions, and finally, accepting uncertainty.

Early this year I lost my grandmother. Nearly everyday I think about her and everything that I could have done for her before she died. Guilt and regret are not pleasant things to live with, but I am trying my best to cope and change the way I live so that somehow I can make up for the things that I didn't do when she was alive. People ask me if my grandfather or my family have "gotten over it" or are "okay", but I don't think people ever really are. I think you live the rest of your life thinking about that person and everything they're missing, and nothing will ever change that. You just have to come to accept it. My family members are not the most open or expressive of people. But what happened with my grandmother brought us closer together.  All of us make more of an effort to spend time with each other now, even when old habits slip. I saw vulnerability, emotion, and resilience in people that I didn't expect to see.

This year I got into conflict with some of my friends who don't have the same values as I do. Many of those fights became quite heated, and it was only until I stepped back that I realized that these were my friends who cared about and respected me and it didn't matter what they did or didn't believe.

I also got my black belt in karate this year. Three years ago if you had told me that I would be competing in tournaments, that I would out-score a person more than double my weight during a sparring match, and that I would be teaching university students karate and women self-defense I wouldn't have believed you. Training in karate has been the best decision I've made so far in my life because it pushed me to do things that I didn't believe that I could do, such as being more comfortable with taking on leadership roles, teaching, and public speaking.

Teaching women self-defense has also inspired me to be a mentor and role model for young women—seeing the women in the course enjoy the course, share their motivation for taking the course, and provide their own insight into the issues of rape and sexual assault was a rewarding experience. As a feminist who has a lifelong passion for issues dealing with gender equality, I am thankful that I can use my martial arts training to reach out to young women.

Karate has also made me realize what my passions are: teaching, and using my skills to educate and reach out to people. This year I taught Psych101, the same introductory psychology course I took during my first year of undergraduate studies. It was extremely stressful and time-consuming to teach a course to 250 students, but I enjoyed every moment of it. It was rewarding to impress students with what psychology has to offer, and to have students tell you that they loved coming to your lectures.

And what do I have to say about the upcoming year?

• I have to learn to accept uncertainty. No matter where my degree takes me (academia, applied research, teaching, etc), I want to take on this uncertainty as a challenge. 
• I am determined to have the martial arts be a central part of my life. I want to continue to train in karate and other martial arts (jujutsu, kung-fu, okinawan kobudo), and to teach other people the art. 
• I want to enjoy the present moment, and ignore the coulda-woulda-shouldas, and the nagging voice in my head that cares more about schedules and organization.
• I plan to run another half marathon, or attempt the full marathon. 
• I want to be kinder to the environment. I have stopped cooking meat at home as a first step!
• I want to love the people around me more fiercely than I ever have before. I want to be less judgemental. I want to take care of them. I want to appreciate their backgrounds and perspectives more. 

And that's it! To another year of doing things that I love and doing things that I'm afraid of doing, remembering to put things into perspective, and appreciating all that I have.