I got out of that ugly T-hole. I actually turned the beast in 3 whole
days early. My Oral Defense is this Thursday at 8 a.m., but that's an
entirely different ballgame.
I party'd. There are certainly photos, likely they will soon be on the
Facebook, but I certainly took none. I considered it blatantly
irresponsible to take such an innocent device into such a Pit of
Debauchery.
It was a seriously awesome weekend. In, like, the biblical sense. Let
me put it like this: I hit a game-winning RBI double in the pooring
rain, got a sunburn, lost my wallet, saw about a thousand people I
wanted to see, saw exactly two people I didn't want to see, gave the
president of my college a champagne-soaked bearhug, spent a very
restful five minutes sober, saw fireworks, hugged everything,
conquered myself, saw Jason Webley, saw a Michael Jackson coverband
that was better than the real thing (and, coincidentally, whiter!),
and climbed onto the back of a giant gull flying above the front lawn.
With no hallucinagens!
I also realized that for the last 8 months or so I've been kind of a
dick to some of the people who matter most to me. I became so
self-centered that I would catch myself thinking about my thesis
rather than paying attention to conversations. Oh sure, my thesis
enabled me to be such an asshole, but I can't blame it. It is a
product of its author, like everything else. I made it my emotional
punching-bag, my crutch, my excuse. I withdrew.
I finally became so solitary that I broke up with my girlfriend. My
ideas, my thoughts were everything, and she kept getting in the way,
occupying my mind. And the nascent issues with our relationship,
rather than being a pleasant challenge to solve, became a threat to my
success. In short, I turned into a villain from a James Bond film.
I told her a long time ago that I had chosen this path through the
swamp, this set of coping mechanisms, and that I needed to see it
through to the end. I chose this. I apologized to her for it. It
wasn't fair to her.
All of this has been a test. A test of myself. A test of my character.
I wanted to know whether I could be an academic. So I established the
patterns that led me to the most successful thesis that I could. I
inscribed a new field of study in the social sciences. I synthesized a
method of rationally tracing intellectual history. And I wrote the
first thorough academic review of one of the most important political
theorists of the next hundred years. I get the sense that I could
probably be pretty good at this stuff. I've also decided that it is
simply not worth it.
Giving everything of myself to my thesis has produced two effeects, we
see: a good thesis and a shitty life. I realized this weekend that I
had been wrong, and, worse, that my experiment had gone completely out
of control. I stopped living a life, and started living a thesis.
I would rather have a life worth living and contribute to society in
other ways. I'm still going to write. In fact, I intend to write a
manuscript on my own political philosophy to be rewritten after law
school. But I will never again give up the people I love.
The girl? What else could I do? I apologized, and asked her to take me
back. She's understandably uncertain.
days early. My Oral Defense is this Thursday at 8 a.m., but that's an
entirely different ballgame.
I party'd. There are certainly photos, likely they will soon be on the
Facebook, but I certainly took none. I considered it blatantly
irresponsible to take such an innocent device into such a Pit of
Debauchery.
It was a seriously awesome weekend. In, like, the biblical sense. Let
me put it like this: I hit a game-winning RBI double in the pooring
rain, got a sunburn, lost my wallet, saw about a thousand people I
wanted to see, saw exactly two people I didn't want to see, gave the
president of my college a champagne-soaked bearhug, spent a very
restful five minutes sober, saw fireworks, hugged everything,
conquered myself, saw Jason Webley, saw a Michael Jackson coverband
that was better than the real thing (and, coincidentally, whiter!),
and climbed onto the back of a giant gull flying above the front lawn.
With no hallucinagens!
I also realized that for the last 8 months or so I've been kind of a
dick to some of the people who matter most to me. I became so
self-centered that I would catch myself thinking about my thesis
rather than paying attention to conversations. Oh sure, my thesis
enabled me to be such an asshole, but I can't blame it. It is a
product of its author, like everything else. I made it my emotional
punching-bag, my crutch, my excuse. I withdrew.
I finally became so solitary that I broke up with my girlfriend. My
ideas, my thoughts were everything, and she kept getting in the way,
occupying my mind. And the nascent issues with our relationship,
rather than being a pleasant challenge to solve, became a threat to my
success. In short, I turned into a villain from a James Bond film.
I told her a long time ago that I had chosen this path through the
swamp, this set of coping mechanisms, and that I needed to see it
through to the end. I chose this. I apologized to her for it. It
wasn't fair to her.
All of this has been a test. A test of myself. A test of my character.
I wanted to know whether I could be an academic. So I established the
patterns that led me to the most successful thesis that I could. I
inscribed a new field of study in the social sciences. I synthesized a
method of rationally tracing intellectual history. And I wrote the
first thorough academic review of one of the most important political
theorists of the next hundred years. I get the sense that I could
probably be pretty good at this stuff. I've also decided that it is
simply not worth it.
Giving everything of myself to my thesis has produced two effeects, we
see: a good thesis and a shitty life. I realized this weekend that I
had been wrong, and, worse, that my experiment had gone completely out
of control. I stopped living a life, and started living a thesis.
I would rather have a life worth living and contribute to society in
other ways. I'm still going to write. In fact, I intend to write a
manuscript on my own political philosophy to be rewritten after law
school. But I will never again give up the people I love.
The girl? What else could I do? I apologized, and asked her to take me
back. She's understandably uncertain.