Goodbye February

I wish, I wish I were a fish.

Sometimes you just have a day where you start to think about things, and you start to ask, "why is this skirt I'm making not working?" and "why do I always compare myself to other people?" and "why do I get so pessimistic about my future when I compare myself to other Grinnellians?"

And so on days like this I find myself saying "I wish I wish...."

Right now I wish I were staying at højskole another semester. Or I wish I could move to Sweden. Forever. I also find myself wishing for things that I don't even want, like wishing I had done a summer internship or wishing I were more ambitious, successful or clever. I know that partly responsible for this wishy outburst is the email I got from the Sociology department announcing the upcoming elections for members of the Soc. SEPC, a student-to-faculty liason group that organizes events for the students in the department. Not exactly knowing why, I decided to run for a spot. In my statement I basically wrote that I have been abroad for a while now and that has helped me to get the kind of wider perspective that I often lose at Grinnell when I get overwhelmed by the pressure or stress, and that I know I do sociology because I love it and think its important, which is why I want to serve on the SEPC - to keep an awareness of why we are here, and form a group with the students and staff of the sociology department where concerns and experiences are shared and ideas are supported.

This is what I want. But when I got the everyone's statements to read and then vote from, I realized I am actually the only one who cares about or thinks about or even questions why we are at Grinnell, studying sociology, and not off doing something completely different. And I was less disappointed by the realization that anyone reading all 10 statements would read mine and think I a failure for having no plans for graduate/law school than I was disappointed to realize that I am going back to a place (a society, a country, a school) where I am surrounded by people with a completely different attitude towards life. It's like I can see the gigantic tidal wave of culture shock gathering on the horizon but there is nothing I can do about it except wait for it to crush me...

So I wish I wish I were a fish.

We also were required to post our favorite youtube video as a part of our SEPC statement, so here's mine for your viewing pleasure. Hoppípolla means "hop in puddles" in Icelandic.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAYb8ZyjzD0&feature=channel

In other news, last weekend I made chocolate covered bacon with some of my friends here. Their idea was this: What three things are delicious, no matter what they are with? Answer: Chocolate, bacon, and sour cream. So why not put them all together? The scary thing as that it actually was good. I think the key is to keep your bacon crispy and only eat them with sour cream when they are hot. But the chocolate and bacon combo was delicious. Here are some pictures.