Interesting

You Are An ISFJ

The Nurturer You have a strong need to belong, and you very loyal. A good listener, you excel at helping others in practical ways. In your spare time, you enjoy engaging your senses through art, cooking, and music. You find it easy to be devoted to one person, who you do special things for. You would make a good interior designer, chef, or child psychologist.

What's Your Personality Type?

I remember taking the myers briggs personality test in high school and again in college, and I always got ENFP . . . either this quickly test is screwy or I've changed a lot since high school. Or maybe the two aren't mutually exclusive. I know that over the course of the last five years or so, I've definitely become more introverted. It's not that I enjoy people less but rather that I need more time to myself, for myself. Also it probably has to do with being seriously let down by people that I was close to--both friends and boyfriends. . . stuff like that happens and you, or more appropriately, I'm prone to withdraw not just from that person, but from people more generally.

I feel something similar happening now amidst all of the major changes that are happening and about to happen in my life. One thing about turmoil and seismc shifts--they tend to separate the wheat from the chaff. Put another way, you learn who your true friends are. They're the ones who are nothing but happy for you and your success . . . They're the ones who are supportive, not out of self-interest, but because they care more about you than they care about themselves. Sadly, I'm reminded as of late that not everyone is that way. it's particularly hard for me to accept because even in the midst of all of my failure last year on the job market, a point that for many academics is akin to a professional rock bottom, it never occurred to me to be anything but happy for my friends who first got interviews, then campus visits, and then jobs, some of which I applied for. It never occurred to me even when one of these friends got an interview request while we were getting coffee, stressing about the job market. Even then, as I wanted to melt into the linoleum floor from disappointment and frustration, I never thought to be anything less than happy for my friend, who I knew had been working as hard as I had. I guess I wasn't aware, consciously at least, that there are people out there who make these kinds of things about them. I mean, who does that? This is, of course, a rhetorical question.

One of the things that I hate above all else is to be disappointed in people. Note the preposition--I'm not saying that I hate to be disappointed BY people. That kind of thing happens--it's just human nature, especially when you have high standards for others, and I'll admit that I do have high standards. I hate to be disappointed IN people--that's a whole other ballgame that has little to do with me or my standards and everything to do with others and their actions, or lack thereof.

The thing that especially sucks about it is that the people I'm referring to, however obliquely, are exactly the ones that should be nothing but happy for me given the fact that they have benefitted enormously from my experiences, both positive and negative. They know, in other words (if only abstractly) how hard this success was to come by for me. I don't expect them to appreciate what a big deal either the job or the fellowship is since they've not had any experience in academia and haven't walked 10 steps, let alone a mile, in my shoes.

But what I have realized in the last week or so is that there are plenty of people in my life who aren't self-involved and self-absorbed, who are suportive instead of destructive, who know just how hard it is to land a job in an English dept (a quick statistic: according to the most recent information released by the MLA, which granted isn't super-recent, less than half--42% to be exact--of Ph.D.s in English ended up with tenure-track jobs. This statistic is even more dire in my subfield). So the fact that I landed a job, and good one at that, is something to be proud of. It's not the sexiest job of my colleagues, but it's a really good job, and it's a great fit for me personally.

So from this moment on, I'm taking a page out of my new College President's book. She's awesome and her enthusiasm is contagious. When I met her, she told me she was looking for people who were as excited about the college mission as she was, and as far as she was concerned, people could either get on the train or they could get out of the way. I think that's my attitude from here on in.

Now is not the time to flinch!

blogger, I miss you

Just was reading over these posts and thinking aout how much time has passed since I spent any time here. It's making me strangely nostalgic.

Add that to the fact that I feel like a lousy friend right now. A good friend got a job offer from a good school but for not such great money, and she's having a hard time with it. Personally, I don't think it's about the money, i think it's about the fact that it's scary as hell to contemplate actually taking a job and moving far away. But she doesn't want to hear even remote hints to that effect. She's making excuses. She talks about how she could move somewhere she wants to live and make more money, but she won't acknowledge that there's big change there too, nor will she acknowledge that clearly, if that's what she really wanted, she probably would have done it already . . . She's making things personal that shouldn't be personal--salary negotiations for example. I'm not suggesting that they don't matter or that they shouldn't matter, but it can't be emotional.

I don't know. I know she thinks that I'm being unsupportive, but I can't just tell her what she wants to hear. What kind of friend is that?

Fuck if I know.

I might find myself in a very similar position in a few weeks . . . I have a second interview with a school thousands of miles away. I have to keep telling myself to wait and see. wait and see. If it is horrible, I can say no. If it's not, then it's not. I can't know this stuff before I get there. But what I don't get is why no one tells you how far beynd terrifying this part of the process is. It's way worse than the pre-conference stage. At that point, it's all abstract and some time in the far off future. but now when it gets to this point, things start to get more and more real. less and less abstract. closer. that, quite frankly, scares the bloody hell out of me.

the only other question, knowing me as I do, is why this should come as any kind of a surprise.

In my refrigerator:
1. carrots
2. beer
3. milk
4. water
5. pita

In my closet:
1. too many shoes
2. clothes
3. suitcases
4. bicycle wheels
5. sleeping bag

In my purse:
The purse is empty, so I'll go with the messenger bag
1. datebook
2. cellphone
3. pens
4. books
5. papers for tomorrow's class


In my car:
1. water bottle
2. gym towel
3. last week's newspaper
4. music stand
5. rollerblades

On my desk:
1. laptop
2. printer
3. tivo remote
4. tape measure
5. headphones

It could be worse . . .

Rather than being sequestered in the library working on my chapter, I could be one half of the couple I see outside through the window wearing ill-fitted and matching black leather pants.

Besides, I am in one of the most beautiful libraries on the planet, and there's free coffee and free parking, so I really have no cause for complaint.

Turns out that the construction project that is taking over the outside of my apt. building is having an unforeseeable positive side-effect in that the banging and powertools right outside my window at 8.30AM get me out of bed and to the library much earlier and more often than I'd have ever thought possible. Productivity, I've missed you!

Meme

From Ramblings:


10 Favorites
1. Season: Summer
2. Color: Violet
3. Time: 7:30pm
4. Food: pizza, sushi
5. Drink
Non-alcoholic: Fresca.
Alcoholic: Guinness
6. Ice Cream: vanilla caramel fudge swirl
7. Place: philadelphia, dublin
8. Sport: this second, ncaa men's basketball (Still love you UCLA!), also college football, the Steelers, and the GAA
9. Actor: Hugh Grant
10. Actress: Jennifer Garner

9 Currents
1. Feeling: Thirsty
2. Drink: Water
3. Time: 12:33 AM
4. Show on TV: The Tomorrow People
5. Mobile: Cingular
6. Windows open: 3.
7. Underwear: nothing too exciting
8. Clothes: jeans, and the biggest sweater I own
9. Thought: when is it going to stop raining?!

8 Firsts
1. Nickname: Esmeralda--don't know why my mom called me that
2. Kiss: Matt F. in 9th grade
3. Crush: Peter in 2nd grade.
4. Best Friend: Liesie--next dor neighbor when I was in kindergarten
5. Vehicle: Used 1984 Audi 4000
6. Job: neighborhood babysitter, then swim instructor
7. Date: Marc is 9th grade--we went ice-skating.
8. Pet: Clancy, an Irish Terrier

7 Lasts
1. Drink: Water
2. Kiss: The Super Bowl.
3. Meal: Pizza for dinner.
4. Web site: this one
5. Movie: Munich
6. Phone call: A friend about watching yesterday's basketall game
7. TV Show: The Tomorrow People on DVD

6 Have You Evers
1. Broken the law: I drive kinda fast sometimes
2. Been drunk: Yes
3. Kissed someone you didn't know: No--have always know them at least a little bit
4. Been close to gunfire: No
5. Skinny dipped: No
6. Broken someone's heart: Yes but didn't know it at the time, only found out about it later.

5 Things
1. You can hear right now: the rain, the tv, the keyboard
2. On your bed: Comforter, sheets, pillows
3. You ate today: pizza, apple, carrots, leftover pasta for lunch.
4. You can't live without: computer, something to read, music, the cats.
5. You do when you're bored: watch mindless television, read, run, text message, surf the web.

4 Places You've Been Today
1. Bed
2. Shower
3. mailbox
4. kitchen (okay, so I didn't leave my apartment all day)

3 Things On Your Desk Right Now
1. laptop
2. cellphone
3. blank cds.

2 Choices
1. Chocolate or Vanilla: chocolate
2. Hot or Cold: probably the opposite of what I am at the moment

1 Place You Want to Visit.
belgium

Kiss Me

I'm Irish(-American)!
yes, indeed . . .

but I'm spending my St. Paddy's catching up on March Madness and drinking my guinness from a bottle. It's an upgrade from last year's "I drink my guinness in a can," I think, but I'm being slightly ani-social, though not intentionally. None of my friends seem to want to go out, or at least no one called me back . . .

so feeling slighty l.ike a loser, but the alternative, watching March Madness on Tivo with my bottled draught isn't actually unappealing. . . besides, I have a rehearsal tomorrow AM anyway.

And the holiday made me happy to actually work on Yeats today . . .
so it's actually not a bad day at all . . .

From People

Regarding the recent "snub" of President Bush by Jessica Simpson:

Of President Bush, Joe Simpson added, "We are huge fans of him and of his family, his girls. Jessica loves the heck out of him."

Eew.
wrong on so. many. levels.

Is it strange that finding both a buffalo nickel and a kansas quarter (also featuring the noble buffalo) would just plain make my day? I have been saving the buffalo quarter in the change pocket of my wallet for a few weeks now just because it makes me happy. Now, as I'm scrounging for vending machine change, I find the buffalo nickel! It's like kismet!

Sometimes it doesn't take that much to make my day.
I think that's a good thing.