School, school and more school

[layla]

It really is astonishing to me how school EATS YOUR LIFE. Or, perhaps more accurately, makes it impossible to focus on anything that isn't school, because I'm the sort of person who doesn't really like having tasks hanging over her head -- I either want to get it done right now, or I end up engaging in a lot of avoidance behavior trying not to think about the fact that I have to do it. And school is all about a constant series of tasks that you work on in your own time. I'm realizing why the only period in my life when I wasn't actively working on creative projects was my first three years of college. It's just hard to concentrate on them. I am developing a sudden, intense respect for people who can manage to go to school and, say, update webcomics or write novels at the same time. Compared to being in the working world, I don't think I'd say that college is hard. It's a different kind of of hard, though -- it's lower-pressure in some ways (you can roll out of bed, scrabble into a sweatshirt and slouch off to class; you can miss a class if you want to and it won't hurt you financially; you can do most of your work at home) but there's also no real ceiling to how much effort you can put into it. And while it's easy to tell myself beforehand that it doesn't matter if I make a C here or there -- all I have to do is pass my classes; it's not like anyone is checking up on me -- when it comes right down to putting it into practice, it's not as easy as all that.

This weekend I need to write a 5-page paper on the Tlingit, study for an exam in History of Photography and spend a lot of quality time decorating my bandsaw box for Sculpture. I'm thinking woodburning + watercolor should look nice; I did some tests on a piece of scrap lumber and it's really a lovely effect.

I'm still massively intimidated by that sculpture class, even though working with the bandsaw is turning out to be fun. The only thing dumber than spending the entire semester stressing about doing poorly in the class, though, is ... well, take your pick:

- stressing about it all semester and then doing fine after all.
- stressing about it all semester and then doing badly anyway.
- stressing about it all semester, working my ass off and *still* getting a poor grade.

The only thing that makes sense is to relax about it and then deal with whatever grade I get. But it's difficult to convince myself that.

Comments

[livrelibre]

Yeah, I remember when I went back it took awhile to figure out how much effort to put into things (and I don't know that I ever learned not to stress out about stuff but it always turned out alright in the end). You can put endless amounts of time into a project or paper but at a certain point, having a deadline meant I just had to do something and turn it in no matter what. And if you're learning what you want, then good enough.

[layla]

*nods* Yeah, I think that's exactly the problem I'm having. It's possible to put in arbitrary amounts of effort, but figuring out the "good enough" point is difficult. It doesn't help that I was always an overachiever sort of student, and it's easy to slip back into those habits.

[nonniemous]

*waves* Heya!

In its way, school *is* harder because you never, ever get away from that to-do list hanging over your head. EVER.

I'm very, very curious about your paper on the Tlingit! I'm working my way from Central Eurasia to the PacNW and Alaska--do you consider yourselves part of the PacNW, or are you your own region? Stupid question, I know, but enquiring minds want to know.

[layla]

Hi! *waves back* I kept meaning to drop a note saying "Hey, I friended you with my personal journal" in case you were wondering who this mysterious person was who'd friended you out of the blue, but, uh, never did. Obviously you figured it out. *g*

I find your posts and links on Central Asian history completely fascinating! I'm really enjoying this class on Alaska Native culture and history, also; I need to post more about it, because it contains a lot of stuff that I really *should* have known growing up in this area but never learned (like the proper names for all the different groups that we have -- the difference between Inuit and Inupiat, for example, which I'd always kind of wondered about).

Your question ... it sort of depends on context, whether you're talking about politically, socially, or anthropologically. We (Alaskans) think of the Alaska Panhandle (Juneau, Sitka, etc) as belonging to the Pacific Northwest, but not the rest of the state. We don't identify that way. It does kinda depend on who you ask, though; here in the interior I don't think *anyone* thinks of us as Pacific Northwest, but down south in the Anchorage area where I grew up, which is warmer and wetter, there's less of a feeling of being totally separate from it. We get grouped with the Pacific Northwest politically in a lot of situations -- circuit courts and any categorization that breaks up the US into broad divisions -- but it tends to be an uneasy fit.

In an anthropological context, the Native Americans of the panhandle -- Tlingit, Haida, etc -- are grouped as part of the Pacific Northwest complex of cultures, but the people of the rest of the state (Athabaskans, Aleuts and so forth) are not. But that, you probably already knew.

[nonniemous]

I remembered who you were! I've just been busy and having a hard time getting aorund to actually keeping up here and on LJ.

I'm thinking maybe I should take a class on Native American history here, too. The only class I took was all precontact, and I don't think the PacNW class I'm taking next quarter is going to focus on Native American history at all. I did know that about the way the Native American tribes are grouped here, but I had no idea about the general Alaskan population. I can see why the panhandle would get lumped in with us. And actually, there's a divide here, too. The I-5 corridor, or anything west of the Cascades tends to be far more liberal, while the eastern half of our states are still very Western/Rural/Conservative. Actually, Eastern Washington, northern Idaho, and some of Western Montana and Eastern Oregon are considered "The Inland Empire." It's interesting, how the regional variations stack up.

One of the dolls I bought is supposedly Haida, which is why I bought her. They're going to be doing a series of clothes and traditional costumes for her but I am not holding my breath; the designer is notorious for missing her promised delivery dates by large margins. But I did a little bit of research when I was in Vancouver, and if the Spousal Unit and I are able to get up there next spring, I'm hoping to go out to the Haida Gwaii and get some information to make my own costumes. We'll see.