light at the end

I'm finally feeling like a real person. I went to bed last night (well, really fell asleep on the couch) at 10pm and Kalian didn't wake up til 6.45 - I got over 8 hours of sleep. I don't think I've gotten that much sleep in months, maybe a year. I felt amazingly well and refreshed this morning. It was incredible.

Then, again, I had a pretty lousy previous two days. I was exhausted on Tuesday after staying up most of Monday night working on that paper. I rushed to finish it between Quant and my NB class. Of course, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to number the pages on the paper without putting a number on the cover page - you know, the really important parts about writing a paper.

Then, the late afternoon/evening was perfectly orchestrated. Chris brought the kids the K school go to a partner/spouse/family event, and I met up with them, b'fd Kalian - then Chris was going to take the kids to dinner while I went to go see JillCarroll speak (the Christian Science Monitor reporter who was kidnapped in Iraq). She's a fellow at the ShorensteinCenter (Center for Press and Politics at the K school). I then had the "great" idea of taking the family up to the center to get some of the free pizza. It seems like every day about 3-4 events are happening with free food. Why pay for dinner with money we don't have when these meals all come from our humungous loans.

So when we got up there, this narrow aisle entrance to the seminar room was lined with a dozen pizza boxes and a huge dessert tray. I grabbed a piece for Liam, but immediately a woman with a clipboard asked if we had made reservations. Reservations, I thought. Huh? Isn't that the point of, again, paying all of this tuition to get to go to all of these events? In the back of my mind, I totally understood JillC's wanting to keep it small, but, I was furious. I decided to lead the family in the back of the Center to eat the pizza. On the way back, I ran into NPalmer - the director. After having that talk a month ago about how to portray myself with/without kids and her being clear of preferring not to put the mom thing out there - I felt wierd trapsing my family back there. But I felt even more dumb and angry going back through that narrow hallway with people waiting to get in - for a few reasons....I said to NP what I now regret "I forgot to RSVP - this seems like a fancy club that people are waiting to get into" - Why do I regret it? I somehow felt silly admiting that I had f'ed up and not read the e-mail to see that I had to RSVP - I also felt dumb b/c it looked like I was going to bring my two young kids to the event. Did she think I was silly? Why do I care? And when we walked by the room, it was clear that the 15 people limitation did not count the Shor.Ctr facultyl, staff, Nieman folks, etc. - why are we second class citizens - and, my parting thought was, were those folks in the small room really going to eat all of those pizzas?

Meanwhile, I dropped Chris off at this ritzy country club for a preschool party - yes, you heard that right. We can't afford a babysitter for a preschool party - because, it was adults only, like the upcoming potluck. What's up with that? It's so bizarre that these are adult only events...

Anyway, I spent the evening preparing for my in-class presentation of my paper on the rise of corporate journalism. I had this great idea to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek and start out the class with my presentation by saying that I have a confession - that I just sold some Knight Ridder stock (our readings talked extensively about KR and McClatchy) - and I said I had financial ties to McClatchy. Then, I was going to talk about Chris' experience with both papers - yadayada - and ask a rhetorical question - does this influence what I think about the paper/corporate journalism's influence? How do corporate owners influence what is published? And also ask how do the authors of the readings influence what they say? I thought it was a fun way to do my presentation and start the class discussion.

However, JC just launched into the discussion - giving his own talk/experience with KR (ugh, I thought, he's stealing my punch) and then he asked people to consider on a linear scale of zero as editor tyranny to abject pandering (to readers' interest) what newspapers should publish. I was fuming and preparing - I'm not so great at speaking, so I was plotting to e-mail my shtick to everyone. Then, with just 15 minutes left in the class, he realized his mistake and asked me if I had anything to say. I um'ed and hesitated and then launched into my presentation - as my class mate pointed out, I started to acknowledge and bring together everyone else's comments - but the result was what I begged Kn to tell me how it went afterwards "I could be more direct and succinct" - that was an understatement. It went horrible. Afterwards, JC apologized again, and I wanted to vent - but noone from my class - usually my buds came to my lunch table - I felt like I was in junior high - but more importantly, I thought they were avoiding me. It was terrible.

I spent the next 24 hours being incredibly self-critical and feeling ashamed of what I did. I want so badly to let that kind of stuff float off my back, but I have such a tough time doing that - I had a revelation walking to school this morning in the brisk (ok, read cold) fall morning across the gorgeous harvard yard with vivid leaf colors....hmmm...what was that revelation? Of course, I can't remember it now - but I somehow put my beating myself up with something...was this the light? I just can't see through the light, I guess.

But I did have a good day in quant, study group and NB's class - at least I didn't stop speaking up in NB's class - which I'm really loving, btw - he brings up great issues of freedom/press, etc. We saw the McChesney video, and then I talked to him afterwards - he also gave me some great suggestions aboug grad school - though tried to convince me to go to law school, heh heh - when I asked him about Compaine - he said he beat him out of the job of head of Temple's Comm dept. Interesting...he said he had to stay in Phil for an extra two years before taking a permanent position here - it just struck me - I wonder if he kps his psn cz f lg. But I'm totally loving him - I'm so psyched they haven't gotten rid of one of the few radical profs at the K school.

I went to a yoga class afterwards - I felt pretty good after going to the last one. This one wasn't as great. The teacher is very sweet - he said today he'll turn 65 this year. He has this great classic Boston accent, but he teaches by yelling directions - kindly but still yelling - across the room and of course he tried to get me to "fix" my low back. I finally asked him when he told me to move my feet forward in dd "why" he actually said that he just knows after teaching for 28 years - I wanted to stand up and say something snide - once again I want everyone to know so badly that I have a lot of experience, too. Do I want to be judged by that? I'm just so afraid of not being perfect all of the time. I ended up in tears eventually - but was also just bored - he want so slowly and it was so cold that I ended up getting up and leaving toward the end of the class.

I then went to read the qualitative reserach book - or one of them - for the class I start in a few weeks - I'm loving it - at the K school - then I went to go meet with my quant teacher - I got there early - but didn't want to sit near her office 'cuz I was afraid I'd run into CS since his office is next door - silly - she never came, so I was walking out when she finally came - offered me tea- it was a sweet time - I told her about KJ and about my Willie Wonka/stats idea. I then walked out - had a nice chat with Jnie - and then caught a little bit of the mid-careers from the former Soviet Union - it was very interesting - good to hear some capitalist critique - but plenty of the bread line stories, too. I felt bad b/c I was checking my e-mail in the back - I felt like I had to work - but it actually felt luxurious to go to this talk.

Had a blast tonight with the kids!!! We played grocery store, built a car out of a box and it was so great not to play with legos!