Not even a quarter of the way through,

but my new mantra may be based on Paul Silvia’s How to Write a Lot.

How appropriate for life in the world of academia, and it not only applies to writing.

Being an almost PhD student

Means finding new ways to listen to Grizzly Bear via different applications (e.g., Spotify, iTunes, last.fm) while doing my darndest to put off the literature review displayed on my brand new, shiny 21.5″ Dell monitor that I claimed to have so desperately needed for my “home office.” By the way, it’s Friday night. At 8:30. Hope to start cleaning my room in half an hour, wait for Theo to come over so we can head to Downtown LA.

Being an almost PhD student means prepping myself for at least four more years of perpetual anxiety.

I need to start updating this again.

Never been a fan of (New Year’s) resolutions, but I suppose I’ll give the following a shot:

- practice Yoga once a week (self-care)
- track my finances & expenses, thus saving for summer rent and finally paying off my credit cards by the end of summer
- tidy my room for at least 15 minutes a day
- cardio/work-out for at least 2x/week (more self-care)
- apply to at least 2 jobs a week (subject to change as the quarter/school year progresses)
- call my parents more often (?!)
- eat breakfast

Academic offerings for the Winter quarter: Grant-writing; Bureaucracy & Public Management (essentially a leadership course – with Gov. Mike Dukakis!); LCSW pre-licensure courses

PS- Give or take a couple of days – 6 more months until graduation.

almost there…

before i have half my master’s degree.

right now i’d like to get through the next two days: papers upon papers, final exams.

this summer i’ll be working at the mayor’s office (without pay – what’s new?), and i secured my second year internship with the city of santa monica’s human services division (you’ve guessed it – without pay)

i have a feeling that the next year will be much, much better…

it would be nice to travel somewhere, though. but i need a job. guh

Nearing the end of Winter Quarter..

Themes that will stick with me:

Attachment theory
Racial microaggressions

I must say, though, the one thing I hate about this program is the level of self-awareness that I’ve gained. This equates to fixing myself before working on anybody else, in addition to the new-found responsibility of educating others on various products of social constructions.

Let’s try this again.

Well, why not?

Grad school

is a kick in my ass. 8-6 schedule everyday, alternating daily between internship and classes. in the midst of it all: pages upon pages of reading, my newly rediscovered dependency on coffee, any hope for sleep is gone, socializing with and getting to know my cohort because i am, after all, going to get very intimate with them over the next two years.

I was reflecting upon what I was thinking earlier, before any of this madness started:
“It will be nice to be busy again.”

I take that back. Is there such as thing as being too busy? Then that’ll just make me a complainer. So I take that back too.

They were not kidding, though, when they say it’s tough and that I won’t have time for anything else. I’LL MAKE TIME!

All complaints from the complainer aside, it’s great. Grad school is great. To be in the academic environment again, to be able to surround myself with new (and diverse) people, to have a routine — it’s refreshing.

first week of internship

location: harbour area halfway house in long beach, ca
days: mondays and wednesdays 10am-6pm, for the whole school year
what: 15 women (most of whom are on parole) who just got out of prison, in the transitory phase to reentry into the community.

ucla is disorganized. everyone else’s placements in our liaison group contacted their students well before orientation last week. apparently my placement didn’t know that we were due to report at 9am this last monday (there are three of us). thankfully, they accepted us anyway. no longer have to split up our time between long beach and watts.

this place is very, very unstructured. us interns are required to be proactive self-starters. i was more than anxious when they told us. because, quite frankly, what the hell am i going to be doing for sixteen hours a week? we don’t provide psychotherapy, but we provide the social services and resources. provide to them transportation to the dmv or to court if need be. help them obtain their social security numbers, birth certificates, find jobs, find a son whom they haven’t seen in over ten years. hang out with them. plan day trips to the museum. lead workshops/presentations. go to 12-step AA meetings to educate ourselves. plan fundraisers because the dept of corrections isn’t giving us jack (you know, whenever they do a head count – they refer to them as “bodies”? not women, persons, humans..but BODIES. they also assume that these women are hostile/volatile – residents are required to check out knives from the front desk in order to COOK).

i was very ambivalent about this placement on monday. i feel a bit more at ease now that i’ve finished a full day today. most of the women i’ve met were very eager to get their lives back on track. they seemed happy to have me there. (“i am here to help you out in any way that i can.”) one woman already told me today that she thought i was going to be a good social worker. she could tell by my personality. sometimes it’s these little comments that make your day. it’s what gets you through to 6 o’clock.

i honestly thought that i’d get placed elsewhere – in geriatrics, DCFS, – anywhere but with this population, since i’d done my undergraduate research on women and prisons. (ucla aims to place 1st year students somewhere they DON’T want to be.) i can already tell that this is going to be rewarding. at harbour house, i am privileged to work on both the macro- (community and programming) and micro- (one-on-one relationships) levels of social welfare. knowing what goes on in the inside so we can work towards fixing it.

and then i forced myself to socialize at happy hour in santa monica afterwards. i’m glad i went. see? christina can make friends!

signing off,
christina (now an msw intern)

I need a hobby.

I need a hobby. I used to think so because I was so gosh-darn bored with my life: Since being out of school, working 16 hours a week brought me close to no fulfillment. What the hell did I do with my time? I need to feel useful. This is part of the reason why I’m antsy to start school in the fall. Well, I got my raise and more hours at work. Putting in a 32-hour workweek, I realized again that I need a hobby. An activity to help keep my head up. Something to look forward to on a regular basis. Anything.

Yoga? I stopped going after two or three classes. Hmm. I used to write. Maybe I should pick up a new Moleskine and pretend to be pensive (I probably filled in ten pages in the last one, and I can’t locate it at the moment). I used to care about music, right? Putting three years of my life into KUCI must have meant something. It mattered to me which artist came out with which album during which Tuesday. At the moment, I’ve been harboring a list of albums to acquire since probably the end of last year. What? Metric came out with a new album years ago? I’ve decided that I’m too lazy to keep up.

It was suggested that I take a course at the local community college. Great idea, but it’s too bad that the enrollment window closed ages ago for the summer sessions. What about cinematography? I took a class on Danish cinema before, and I loved it. What scares me now is that I’m unable to take classes (read: time constraints!) that interest me. I’m stuck with social welfare forever. After the two years of school, I’ll (hopefully) be working too hard to care about anything else. Well, let’s hope not.

A friend and I tried to take up knitting once. We Google’d “how to cast-on” and I gave up ten minutes into it. I couldn’t even start to knit. It was too bunchy for me. And then someone else suggested that I pick up some art supplies and start an art project. I was in several art classes in high school and playing with charcoal and pastels yielded some neat results. Forget it, nothing’s ever going to come of it.

And I’m afraid of picking up Theo’s DSLR for fear that I won’t be able to figure out the different terminology and controls. How the hell was I photo editor of my high school paper, then? I think my problem here is that I don’t have the passion…?

Oh man, I need a hobby. Why can’t I build toothpick houses or start biking? I lose interest too quickly, too. Sadly, I can’t remember the last time I finished a book that I truly enjoyed. I’ve been telling myself to pick up a paint-by-number since years ago. I think it’s time to take myself up on that offer. A hobby for 5-year olds, you may think. Have you seen them? They can get pretty intricate!

Back into the grind

A student of mine from last summer emailed me, asking for any pointers on facilitating a discussion group. I was flattered that he remembered me, much less having asked me for advice. The short exchange took me back to a year ago, when I was prepping to apply for grad school. I was so needlessly stressed. Scrambling at the last minute for letters of recommendation, rearranging the commas and prepositions on my personal statements, forking over hundreds of dollars in application fees, and taking the much-dreaded GRE. All for this coming fall. Let’s hope that it was all worth it. My biggest fear is that social welfare is not what I really wanted to pursue, after all. And then I’d have to do it all over again. I guess I’ll find out in a couple of months. The past year of idleness made me realize more than ever that I NEED to pursue this. I can do more than work a dead-end job that will land me no satisfaction but more and more resentment by the end of each day.

The thought of research and study excites me.

Speaking of which, I have enrolled in my fall quarter classes: Human Development, Community Theory, Social Welfare Policy, Theory of Social Welfare with Individuals, Groups, Families. In addition to being in school twice a day from 8-5, I have an internship every other day from 8-5. Busy. I don’t find out where I get placed until mid-September.

Now I’m stressing over having to move, getting acclimated to a new environment, and being away from Theo for more than days at a time. I got over my hurdles last year, and suffice it to say, I’ll get over these in time.