By tomorrow afternoon I will no longer be a Montrealer. My transcript doesn’t quite say “graduated” yet, or whatever it is transcripts are supposed to say at this point, but all the appropriate boxes under the “Recommendations” heading say “yes” and faculty approval is pending. It’s as good as done. Never mind the fact that I got my grad school acceptances months ago…

The fact that I’m moving didn’t settle in until I took all the art, posters, and calendars off the walls. While half the floor is two or three feet deep in junk, everything at about eye level is boring blank white. That was the trigger. This doesn’t feel like my home anymore.

The rest of the job has just been rearranging the junk on the floor into more manageable piles. It was funny how simply dumping out a full drawer and rearranging everything would suddenly free up half the space. Everything could be laid out nicely in its place, in roughly a single layer along the bottom no less. “Nice”, I thought, “now I’ll actually be able to find stuff in there”. But then it occurred to me that with all that extra space, I could just cram more stuff in. Which is exactly what I did. So now the drawer is just as full but twice as heavy, and solidly packed so you can’t actually move anything aside to get at something underneath.

I also put all my textbooks into the same box.

Now at the same time this doesn’t feel different from any other May. I’ve never spent the summer in Montreal, so packing up my stuff at the end of the winter semester is nothing new. I wonder if moving to grad school will feel any different from coming back to McGill. A new school, sure, but functionally I don’t know if much will change. More of the part I like, at least, and less of the stuff I don’t. That’s really all I can ask. That’s really all I’m aiming for.

I started looking over vocabulary lists for the GRE general test (a graduate school version of the SATs). My prep book breaks down words into certain types with tips on how to study each. Here are the types I’ve found:

1. Words I’ve never head before
2. Words I will use in sentence but can’t actually define
3. Words whose meaning is actually the exact opposite of what I thought it was

While they tell you to watch out for secondary meanings—I knew the verb “flag” means to mark or signal, but it also means to sag or decline—there are a surprising number of words that fall in category 3. These aren’t just cases of a word being used in a different or new way, but actually complete misunderstandings on my part. Apparently “equivocate” doesn’t mean to get the point across by being very precise (cf. “explicit”), but to use ambiguous language to deceive. And “urbane” doesn’t mean run-of-the-mill or low class (cf. “pedestrian”), but sophisticated and refined. I’m going to have to replay entire conversations in my head to make sure I haven’t completely made an idiot of myself.

What really brought this up again, though, was listening to the song “First Day of my Life” by Bright Eyes. It comes across as a really nice and cute love song with a nice and cute video. (I especially love the clips where one person looks at the other without the other seeing. Psychoanalyse that.) So, as I do with all such songs, I played it through a few times and wrote out the lyrics so that I might sing along. As it turns out, it seems not to be a simple profession of love, but an apology.

This is the first day of my life
I swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They were spreading blankets on the beach
Your’s is the first face that I saw
Think I was blind before I met you

The singer describes a times when he and the other were together, happy, and utterly in love. At the sight of the other’s face, “everything changed”, as if they had never seen another person before and had not lived until that moment. But, something has been lost.

I don’t know where I am I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go
And so I thought I’d let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow
But I realise that I need you
And I wondered if I could come home

The two are not together anymore. What happened, we don’t know. All we have to go on is that the singer still loves the other, and wants to be together again. He continues, reminding the other that they felt the same way once.

Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange you said everything changed
You felt as if you just woke up
And you said this is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you

How sincere can this be? Is this really a love that was meant to be?

But now I don’t care I could go anywhere with you
And I’d probably be happy
So if you wanna be with me
With these things there’s no telling
We just have to wait and see

Something more was lost than just being together. Maybe something happened that can’t be forgiven, maybe they’ve just grown apart. The singer clearly wants to believe that that love is still there, but on some level it sounds like he knows something will always be missing.

But I’d rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery
Besides maybe this time it’s different
I mean I really think you liked me

This love is like a steady job, but it’s no lottery. He’s hopeful that they can work on whatever they have, that it might grow into something it’s not. It makes me sad, in a similar sort of way, that what I thought was a great love song is actually flawed and hurt and hopeful and yearning for something more. In a sense this is a secondary meaning that most people will probably miss.

I’m in my last semester of my undergraduate career. With but three required classes left to take and probably about a dozen to choose from, plus the freedom of an elective under the Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory option instead of a regular letter grade, setting my schedule has become an exercise more in aesthetics than anything else. I noticed, coincidentally, that the philosophy department’s class in aesthetics is not offered this year. Turns out I don’t need it. I’m having no problem seeing things as I want.

I’m conscious that I’m going to be applying to grad school in the next few weeks. I’ve already taken an extra year here and I don’t want the admissions committees thinking that I’m just screwing around with the extra time. “The Art of Listening” was thus the first cut from the list of possible electives. And frankly, I’m more interested in taking a harder but more interesting course than a bird course like that anyway. Still, interesting courses that would have been fine in my first or second years in Anthropology, Sociology, and Religion, among others, stick out a fair bit after so much solid physics, math, and philosophy.

I sat in on a philosophy class that certainly looks like a perfect elective—it fits well with my minor and compliments the study of physics very well. Plus the description talked about all those sorts of questions that come up while sitting around waiting for code to compile or atoms to decay but never get properly answered. Unfortunately, twenty minutes in I was wishing for it to be over. I had this intense feeling that it must be July, and I realised it must have been because the only other time I’ve wanted to leave a classroom so badly has been because it was a warm, bright, sunny afternoon outside. So despite how nicely it would fit in on my trasncript, this particular class had to be cut.

The second philosophy class was one chosen because it seemed the least terrible of the required options given. The History and Philosophy of Ancient Science. I guess that sounds like it compliments physics as well. Little did I know how perfect it would be—this year the class focuses on Ancient Greek Mechanics, which, though completely different from its modern cousins, would have sounded great coming in the semesters after Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics. Even better, the professor was one of these rare characters who speaks like she’s telling a story, not merely regurgitating information. She would run her hands through her hair, making it point in all directions, and sounded almost giddy at the prospect that someone might build little mechanical toys for their final project. I could have been Marshall with a man-crush on Gael. This class could stay.

Right or not (probably not), I’ve also realised that I’m beginning to consider how nicely the required textbook for a class will fit on my bookshelf. This is largely an after affect of clearing the thing out, trying to keep only one text in each main area. I found myself reluctant to give up my Schaum’s Outlines not because I ever used them but because they make a nice matching set. In my particle physics class, I’m tempted to skip the required text (a graphic blue paperback monster) in favour of the one by Griffiths, first because it is by Griffiths and also because it’s nicely bound. If only it wasn’t twenty years old. Dare I buy the new edition coming out in a few months, just for the aesthetics of it sitting on me shelf? Though clearly I’d have to buy a real copy of the EM text as well to match. Meanwhile, I’m highly motivated to stick with Optics not because I want to take the class (I do) but because the textbook is of the same series as my Relativity text from last year. I was even secretly considering buying the particles book in the same series because they’re just so damn sexy. Through in the cosmology text, for no class in particular, as well while I’m at it. Or maybe I should just get a grip and worry more about doing the readings instead of what the readings look like.

I should say, I also bought myself a big furry toque with big floppy ear flaps. I was feeling really quite fantastic on this day of courses, textbooks, and winter headgear. The only downside to the day was that when I arrived home Ponyboy was no longer asleep on my couch to experience what an awesome boyfriend I was, having left to go meet a friend visiting from out of town. Oh well. Twice as much food for me.

The following was distilled down from a facebook conversation I had with my sister while sitting in the Burnside computer labs typing up my take home final tonight.

Me: We have libraries that are 24 hours at this time of year. McGillers are a bunch of studious nerds.

Sister: 24 hour libraries?! That’s ridiculous. Nobody should be at a library past like 10pm, that’s what I think. Are McGill students actually called McGillers or did you just make that up? What’s your mascot anyway?

Me: Well, McGillers is a common term. We’re technically “red birds” now. Though, it used to be “red men” for the men’s athletic teams and “martlets” for the women. Our mascot is really a martlet.

Sister: I’ve never even heard of a martlet. It doesn’t sound very threatening. Is it at least some sort of vulture or other big scary bird? Because it sounds like a song bird to me.

Me: Martlets are definitely closer to songbirds than vultures… they’re from some kind of greek myth, which is why nobody has heard of them. They’re birds with no legs, so they can only fly higher and higher (like… higher education… or something inspiringly metaphorical like that… though I don’t see why the little guys can’t just stop flapping their wings, fall to the ground a bit, then start flapping again.)

Sister: What kind of bird doesn’t have legs? This is all very interesting. I think if such a bird actually existed, it would do exactly what you said it would. It wouldn’t be able to just keep flying forever, it would die of exhaustion.

Me: Let’s see. We have 24 hour libraries that people actually use for 24 hours during exam period, and our school mascot, if it actually existed, would die of exhaustion before just sitting down for a bit. Coincidence? I think not.

Theoretically I’m in the midst of writing my philosophy take home exam. In actuality I’m looking to procrastinate. At least I’m in the computer lab. And I’ve even printed off about a dozen astrophysics articles for that other paper I’m writing. I may not have read them yet, but it just looking them up in the first place counts as research. After a few nice diagrams, a respectable list of references, and fiddling with the margins a bit, I’ll have at least 15 pages in no time, right? At least that’s what the professor told us.

In the interests of making sure this post is actually about something somebody might want to read, I give you this tidbit: If you buy twelve cookies at Subway restaurants, it counts as groceries and you don’t have to pay taxes.

Also, I’ve developed a mild obsession with Mario games, so if anybody wants to buy me a Wii or a DS, that’d be awesome. But then again, maybe it’s just this strong desire to procrastinate that’s movitating me with that one.

Ok, ok, back to the grindstone…

Three o’clock. Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. An off moment in the afternoon. Today it is intolerable.

– from Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre

How true it is. This afternoon at three o’clock I was definitely not doing anything I wanted to do—that was about the time I hit the 30 minute mark in the Hour of Power, which from that point forward became the worst erg piece I’ve ever pulled. Though that’s not quite the same feeling of Nausea that Sartre was talking about.

I think my Existentialism professor would be, not disappointed, but slightly uncomfortable, with how I’ve taken to the class. No, I haven’t latched on to everything said by Sartre, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, Fanon, or Camus, but a lot of what existentialism talks about is very seductive. I’ve written that already. The evidence is that, when having conversations that start to draw on philosophy, I start to draw on arguments made by those philosophers. It happened the other day standing in line at Tim Hortons, when the topic turned to racism, and I found myself referencing Fanon. When discussing sexual identity, I tend to think of bad faith. I’ve even used the term “bad faith” in a conversation by accident, and ended up accomplishing nothing but confusing the other person. Oh dear.

Though I must admit, it’s been happening with my other philosophy class as well. Logic and mathematics. Alarm bells still go on whenever someone says “concept”, and I’m getting very particular about defining what exactly the assumptions going into a problem are.

We’re now four days into the exam period. My first and only exam isn’t until the 19th, though in the meantime I have one take home exam (which is much like a 10 page paper) and an astrophysics paper to write. One of these days I’ll start working on them. With proper time management, there’s no reason for me to be in any stress at all this month. Yet, I still always find myself at three o’clock, too late to still be sitting around in pajamas. Too early for the evening workout. Too little time in between to do any work. Hopefully monday, when 7 AM workouts become part of the schedule again, I’ll be able to handle that particular form of nausea a little better.

The situation is this: I am writing a paper, at the last minute of course, for my class on existentialism. At the same time, I have been rowing almost every day for seven weeks or so in preparation for a regatta this weekend. As I write the paper, I am conscious of the fact that it’s far past my bedtime, and if I have any hope of being able to get up and go to crew practice at 5 am tomorrow, I need to wrap things up and go to bed. With about half the paper left to write, I’m starting to get desperate for material, so I turn back to the text and start reading:

The empirical image which may best symbolize Heidegger’s intuition is not that of a conflict but rather a crew… It is the mute existence in common of one member of the crew with his fellows, that existence which the rhythm of the oars or the regular movements of the coxswain will render sensible to the rowers and which will be made manifest to them by the common goal to be attained, the boat or yacht to be overtaken, and the entire world (spectators, performance, etc.) which is profiled on the horizon.

I swear, when I read this paragraph from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, I actually thought I was hallucinating.

At the beginning of this semester, my Existentialism professor said to us that she has had people come up to her at the end of the class and say that it has changed their life. Said the professor to us, “Honestly, that worries me a little bit.”

So, it’s not supposed to be a self-help seminar, but at times it definitely feels like one. Going into it I was expecting the discussion to be about whether or not things actually exist, and instead we’ve been talking about how we interact with the world and other people. Though the syllabus disappointed me at first, I’ve actually been enjoying the class a fair bit.

Sure, there are things about the philosophy that I would change. Sartre goes on and on about how our consciousness is not identical to itself, which I think is baloney. Nonetheless, as long as you are able to gloss over all this talk about being something in the mode of not being it, he actually makes some good points about it. Existentialism is about how we constitute the meaning in the world. If we are sad, it is not because the world itself is bleak, but because we interpret it as bleak. The world is still out there—we can’t create a chair in front of us by deciding that there is one there—but how we see it is at some level completely in our control.

Sartre’s way of talking is pretty depressing, always talking about things like anguish, bad faith, and shame, but I definitely see how taking up this kind of outlook can result in a positive and optimistic outlook. That is, if you can maintain it without falling back into bad faith. Oh those unstable equilibrium points.

Somebody told me today that I write in too many paragraphs. I had just sent him an email telling him he uses too few.

Meanwhile on Facebook I’ve changed my religious view to “Optimistic Nihilist” in some attempt at revitalising my profile. I was going to put a reference to existential in there too, but I thought I should wait until the class ends lest there be any nasty surprises. Nihilism also has this depressing quality about it, but I think it’s a great excuse to climb trees and look for squirrels.

A nihilist outlook doesn’t change the fact that I’ve still got a philosophy paper and an astrophysics assignment to finish in the next hour or so. I want to make a phone call, but can’t justify such active procrastination. (Writing this is better since at least I’m at my computer with equations at my elbows.) Instead I’m hoping there will be an incoming call and I can let procrastination find me…

Oh my.

Rowing has taken over my life.

Practices at 6 in the morning six days a week leave little time for procrastinating. I try to get homework done in the mornings after practice as much as possible over my second breakfast of the day, and then by the time I get home from school in the late afternoon and wind down, it’s almost bedtime.

I learned a few months ago that rowing is all about bruises and open wounds. Aches and pains would be on the list too, but there’s a lot of satisfaction that comes from it. Today on the water, despite the dull pain in my hand as another blister formed and the exhaustion that began to set in somewhere around the eighth kilometre, I began to appreciate the boat gliding over the water. Then I remembered that I was supposed to be stroking and got my ass back in gear, but you get the point. Those occasional strokes where we get it together enough that all the oars clunk together, splash in unison as they drop into the water, and then glide silently over the water, are magic.

Life outside of that goes on. People to see, things to do. Every once in a while I touch a text file with a name reminding me of something to write about here, but rarely get around to actually writing anything in it. Whether I will even remember what those sometimes cryptic filenames mean when I try to write is a complete mystery. Something about existentialism perhaps?

Still, tomorrow brings my first real regatta. A race of several kilometres known for the spectacular crashes novice boats make in its narrow passageways and sharp turns. Should be fun. If I’m still in one piece when I get back there might be another post out of it, but no guarantees.

Seven months and countless man hours later, 21 pages of tables, figures, equations, and 4.5 credits are now in the hands of the professors. It’s rather anticlimatic.

So now it’s time to turn to other things. A general relativity assignment awaits me, as does some philosophy homework. Chores left undone have nothing to hide behind now. There are dishes to be done, things to tidy, floors to clean. There are errands that need to be done. BMO and Videotron have both waited long enough for my input.

Time to turn away from quasars twelve billion years in the past and put my attention back on Earth, back to the present, back to the life around me once more.

I’ll leave that for the morning. I want to spend one more night in space.