Traveling

Where do I even start? I’m on the plane between Phoenix and San Francisco. As usual, on a day of travel like today, I’ve had so many thoughts that I want to share. Some come to my head in nice phrases that I could easily put on paper, and others hover frustratingly out of reach of words.

I suppose to start, a plan hatched itself this morning in the car ride from Meadville around 4:30 this morning – a plan to perhaps go to Yosemite sometime soon and hike Half Dome. I did that hike with my family when I was about 11 years old and I would really, really like to go back. As is true with most things in my childhood, I sort of feel like I haven’t really been there – I need to se it again with these eyes. I suppose they’re not new eyes, but they feel like it. Older, I guess. I had a discussion once with a friend when we discussed the process of aging and maturing. And we decided that one ages with steps and plateaus- all of a sudden, you feel much older. You wake up one morning, or blink in the middle of the day, and realize that you are older than you were a few months ago, or maybe even weeks. It doesn’t have to be a huge change, but it’s noticeable. And these don’t happen at regular intervals – but they do happen. And then you live in your new stage for a while until you stop noticing all the time that that mode of being is new. It becomes normal, and then later, it all happens again. I am assured by some elders of mine that aging later in life happens the same way – it’s probably not true that you don’t need reading glasses one day and do the next, but that’s how it feels, apparently.

A glass of water with no ice, a coffee with two creams and no sugar. My standard sustenance on a plane. Well, that and about six bottles of water. Aisle seats are my friends… I really have flown quite a lot in my life so far.

That was one of the things I wanted to tell you about. This week, there was a lot of packing going on – not just for me, but also for my dad, since he is about to move to California. So, about two days ago, I went through my room at his house from top to bottom and among numerous embarrassing things like buttons with silly (excuse me, COOL – or so I thought) phrases on them and poetry I wrote when I was 15, I also found at least twenty different to do lists. I didn’t know I was still so similar to my school-age self. Anyways, one of them was entitled “The Don’t Freak Out List” – and it detailed everything, absolutely everything, I needed to know for my first trip to Germany, right after I got back from Thailand. When I say everything, I mean: “Check in, hand in bag, go through security, find gate (read the signs, self! Ask for help if you need it!)…” and so on and so forth. I could probably find my gate in the Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Frankfurt airports blindfolded by now. I remember that first flight, too. Funnily enough, things went wrong – missed my plane in Amsterdam because of a late departure, my suitcase didn’t show up for a week – and when I got on to the plane and heard people around me speaking German, I felt like such a badass. It was such an adventure.

Check out this transition. When I was on that plane, I had a book with me – a book of Sudoku puzzles that I bought in Thailand. I carry that book with me every time that I fly. (Side note: I am so blissfully content to listen to my music and do Sudoku on plans. It doesn’t entertain me like that when I’m not flying, but when I am, I’d rather do that than sleep, eat, watch a movie, or talk to anyone, period. It’s just perfect for some reason. But sometimes, I like to write blog entries while flying. J )

Today, I got out that book to work on a Sudoku on the first flight and a piece of notebook paper fell out of it – this is a very common appearance with any of my possessions. Anything that I have once owned probably has a pen, pencil, or piece of paper in it. This piece of paper had the thick, slightly faded pencil writing of mine that indicated to me it was from before my year in Germany (when I began writing with pens, and very fine-tipped ones at that). I stared at the paper reading things like “Research: who do you go to, how do you begin? Teaching: it’s good to have experience.” Such non sequitur comments suggested that these were my notes from something that I was listening to. I turned it over, and it was from a panel discussion at Carleton, during my summer research program. I was listening to former participants in the program talk about their experiences at graduate school and I remember a battle fighting in my chest.

Academia is so seductive. (This sentence is an extremely edited version of quite the pontification on my relationship to academia. Oy vey. Sometimes, it is necessary and preferable that one edits oneself!)

The point is, I went to Carleton right before a very key year in my life. It was right before my year living in Mainz – I can almost not talk about it as a “year in my life” since it was so very recent. Let me do away with the rambling. I listened to those PhD’s talk and felt split down the middle between social, emotional, and save-the-world desires, and the desire to work and work and think and think, and wind up just like them in a few years.  And that second path really faded away during that year. I wasn’t sure until this very semester that I even could do it. I didn’t believe in me.

Well, I have no answer for myself yet. I haven’t “done it” yet, if you will. But I’m on that path. This last semester helped me realize how much I really do want it! And I’m taking steps to do so. And this growing-up thing is happening so fast. I feel that now when I talk to people I don’t know, there’s a fifty percent chance they will see me as a ‘youth’, if you will, and fifty percent as an adult. “I got my degree in math,” I told the man next to me on my first flight (he initiated a conversation about my summer plans) and it just hit me again.

Well, if you made it through that, congratulations. Get yourself a piece of chocolate. I have a feeling this summer is going to be pretty awesome.