Quarter-life Crisis
Jan. 22nd, 2006 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
olorielSo. Tomorrow is the intermediate exam in Cultural Anthropology.
If I pass that - which is unlikely, and this is not my usual underrating, but a simple fact, as I am severely underprepared and just can't memorize any more - the basic part of studying is over once and for all.
A good time to notice that I have no idea what to do with my studies when, in three or so years, I complete them - or, in general, with my life. (Yes, I know. the most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't. I'm 22. It doesn't help.)
Oh, I do know several things I'd like to do. It's just all not doable.
When I was younger, I wanted to become a teacher. Sometimes I still think I might like that. But then, I am a lousy teacher. I enjoy explaining things - but only if the people I'm talking to understand it at the first attempt. I expect others to follow my thoughts immediately. I expect them to understand and accept and not question. We all know that things don't work like that - not even in a specialized environment like university, where people have background knowledge and are on a certain advanced level, and even less on your average high school. And looking at the most part of today's youth: I don't want to have to face a bunch of those, especially not in an environment that automatically makes us antagonists (after all, students vs. teachers is downright natural). I am certain that there are wonderful, brilliant young people out there, there must be, but they're hidden in a bulk of indifferent, stupid or violent people.
I used to want to become a journalist. But I'm scared of strangers, semi-strangers; especially of having to talk to strangers in positions of power; of having to ask unpleasant questions, of being unable of finding the right questions, of being unable to understand the answers. Sometimes I enjoy that, but I have to choose the people to deal with, and I can't do that in a professional environment, I'd have to take what I get. I'd have to write about topics I don't care about, visit events that bore me. Even then, the writing and researching wouldn't be the problem as long as they can be safely done from a nice seat in the theatre or a dance hall, or in a library or the internet. But things don't work that way, unless you work for BILD where you make up things on the go anyway, but that's not what I'd want to do, because, after all, I somehow believe in ethics and responsibility and truth.
I wanted to learn languages, maybe to translate: But I'm too undisciplined for Japanese, and struggling too much with my studies to get into any new languages now, and too far in my studies to change the subject now without problems. So I trudge on somehow, pretty much aimlessly. It doesn't help my motivation; it doesn't help anything. I'm assuming I'll get to Japan somehow, at some point, and that, being forced to speak the language, I'll learn it then - and that, being entirely on my own, I'll find some sense of direction again. Canada did a world of good for me - the four months managed to get me out of my hiding entirely within myself for a few years - but it has worn off by now. I'm hoping I'll get to Japan, and that it'll do something similar, for the next few years, and that, somehow, someday, things will fall into place. But how likely is that, actually?
Currently, I want to do nothing but create things. I want to write stories and poetry and draw and paint. Problem is, these are hobby things. If you want to do them professionally, you have to be good - or at least know someone who publishes you. I am not good at anything of that, not better than billions of others, worse than millions of others, too lazy and undisciplined to do anything about that - after all, more practice would take more time (which I'd be willing to give), tedious practicing of techniques unnatural to me, drawing objects for practice that I don't care about. But of course I want it to be fun, and it wouldn't be that if I actually took it serious enough to actually strive for improvement. When people criticize my stuff, which, astonishing enough, most are polite enough to refrain from, I know they're right but feel bad about it anyway; and justify my shortcomings, and go on making the same mistakes. Again, I'm hoping things will fall into place: That, if I draw for fun long enough and often enough, I'll eventually end up getting proportions and poses and perspectives right, light and shadow, colours; or words and rhymes: But how likely, again, is that? And how likely is it that anyone will like my stuff enough, ever, that I can actually justify my urge to do nothing but draw and write?
I feel like I would love being a jeweller, but that would mean to start a new training entirely. After finishing my studies? Or now, and breaking off university, which I love, although I don't know what it'll ever be good for right now? And what about my clumsiness where technical work is concerned? I'm all thumbs most of the time. Fine and precise work is not something I can do well; adding another level of difficulty - mechanics, artificial extensions of my hands, the use of tools - probably won't work well. At any rate, that sudden desire can probably mostly be blamed on the darn puppet anyway.
I might like being a bookseller, but that, too, would mean breaking off my studies and starting a new education, or finishing my studies and starting anew then - I know that it can technically work, my godfather did just that - and the former is impossible, because it would disappoint my parents and my grandmother so, and because, again, I do love my studies, I'm just no good at them, and the latter comfortably far away; I could, of course, try internships now, but I cannot even muster the motivation and courage to call at some bookstore and ask if they'd let me do that.
(At any rate, I'd probably read more books than I could ever sell.)
I love travelling, and writing, so perhaps I should write guidebooks: But there are hardly undiscovered places anymore, hardly anything new to be found out; the lonely planet is no longer lonely, insider advice is commonplace before any guidebook could be printed. And travel diaries of the purely subjective sort don't sell well enough if there isn't a really special exciting premise to them.
I don't want to be a housewife. I wouldn't mind the being at home part; I can pass my time, that's not the problem. But I hate housework. The only thing I enjoy doing is cooking, and the only other things I don't mind too much are doing the laundry and buying groceries. But what of the other stuff that has to get done? Being at home all day, I'd have no good excuse for not doing them (I don't even have that now).
I'll finish my studies, eventually, somehow; I know I will, because I always have. I'll go to the exam tomorrow, and fail, and feel horrible about trying again next semester because the examiners will be the same and will remember my failure, and maybe I'll pass next semester. I'll somehow make my way through the main study course, and finish eventually, because that's what I do, I finish what I began - eventually. And meanwhile, I must bear my mother's disappointment, my relatives' questions on why it takes so long, and what on earth I want to do with it, and when I'll go to Japan, and why I'm not doing something that sells, for after all, it's only my fault for being unable to decide, and for being unable to just get things done, and for procrastinating and organizing my life badly if at all.
I'm trudging on; but right now I know that I desperately hope for some accident on my way to university tomorrow, for a broken arm or leg or neck, a frozen puddle, a careless driver, for appendicitis, bronchitis, any sort of illness serious enough to warrant my missing the exam (I bet I'll have a common cold or headache, nothing serious enough, just something to add to the whole misery) but not serious enough to really endanger me, because, after all, I want to go on. I hate the Institute of Cultural Anthropology for putting an oral exam between basic and main studies, I hate the world for turning so fast, I hate myself for procrastinating. I hate everyone and everything right now: The poor unsuspecting inhabitants of Kalymnos, the forest of Bialowieza, cognitive psychology, kinship terminology, diffusionists, structural functionalists, cultural materialists; I hate myths, rites of passage, gender studies, matrilinear descendence, patrilinear descendence, foragers, horticultural societies, agricultural societies, pastoral nomads, peripatetics; I hate memory and culture and religion and the life cycle and stratification and the organization of social life. I hate the entire scope of human life, especially my own.
I want today to be groundhog day, to repeat itself endlessly forever.
I want it to be Tuesday already, with the whole thing over either way.
I want to know what to do.
If I pass that - which is unlikely, and this is not my usual underrating, but a simple fact, as I am severely underprepared and just can't memorize any more - the basic part of studying is over once and for all.
A good time to notice that I have no idea what to do with my studies when, in three or so years, I complete them - or, in general, with my life. (Yes, I know. the most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't. I'm 22. It doesn't help.)
Oh, I do know several things I'd like to do. It's just all not doable.
When I was younger, I wanted to become a teacher. Sometimes I still think I might like that. But then, I am a lousy teacher. I enjoy explaining things - but only if the people I'm talking to understand it at the first attempt. I expect others to follow my thoughts immediately. I expect them to understand and accept and not question. We all know that things don't work like that - not even in a specialized environment like university, where people have background knowledge and are on a certain advanced level, and even less on your average high school. And looking at the most part of today's youth: I don't want to have to face a bunch of those, especially not in an environment that automatically makes us antagonists (after all, students vs. teachers is downright natural). I am certain that there are wonderful, brilliant young people out there, there must be, but they're hidden in a bulk of indifferent, stupid or violent people.
I used to want to become a journalist. But I'm scared of strangers, semi-strangers; especially of having to talk to strangers in positions of power; of having to ask unpleasant questions, of being unable of finding the right questions, of being unable to understand the answers. Sometimes I enjoy that, but I have to choose the people to deal with, and I can't do that in a professional environment, I'd have to take what I get. I'd have to write about topics I don't care about, visit events that bore me. Even then, the writing and researching wouldn't be the problem as long as they can be safely done from a nice seat in the theatre or a dance hall, or in a library or the internet. But things don't work that way, unless you work for BILD where you make up things on the go anyway, but that's not what I'd want to do, because, after all, I somehow believe in ethics and responsibility and truth.
I wanted to learn languages, maybe to translate: But I'm too undisciplined for Japanese, and struggling too much with my studies to get into any new languages now, and too far in my studies to change the subject now without problems. So I trudge on somehow, pretty much aimlessly. It doesn't help my motivation; it doesn't help anything. I'm assuming I'll get to Japan somehow, at some point, and that, being forced to speak the language, I'll learn it then - and that, being entirely on my own, I'll find some sense of direction again. Canada did a world of good for me - the four months managed to get me out of my hiding entirely within myself for a few years - but it has worn off by now. I'm hoping I'll get to Japan, and that it'll do something similar, for the next few years, and that, somehow, someday, things will fall into place. But how likely is that, actually?
Currently, I want to do nothing but create things. I want to write stories and poetry and draw and paint. Problem is, these are hobby things. If you want to do them professionally, you have to be good - or at least know someone who publishes you. I am not good at anything of that, not better than billions of others, worse than millions of others, too lazy and undisciplined to do anything about that - after all, more practice would take more time (which I'd be willing to give), tedious practicing of techniques unnatural to me, drawing objects for practice that I don't care about. But of course I want it to be fun, and it wouldn't be that if I actually took it serious enough to actually strive for improvement. When people criticize my stuff, which, astonishing enough, most are polite enough to refrain from, I know they're right but feel bad about it anyway; and justify my shortcomings, and go on making the same mistakes. Again, I'm hoping things will fall into place: That, if I draw for fun long enough and often enough, I'll eventually end up getting proportions and poses and perspectives right, light and shadow, colours; or words and rhymes: But how likely, again, is that? And how likely is it that anyone will like my stuff enough, ever, that I can actually justify my urge to do nothing but draw and write?
I feel like I would love being a jeweller, but that would mean to start a new training entirely. After finishing my studies? Or now, and breaking off university, which I love, although I don't know what it'll ever be good for right now? And what about my clumsiness where technical work is concerned? I'm all thumbs most of the time. Fine and precise work is not something I can do well; adding another level of difficulty - mechanics, artificial extensions of my hands, the use of tools - probably won't work well. At any rate, that sudden desire can probably mostly be blamed on the darn puppet anyway.
I might like being a bookseller, but that, too, would mean breaking off my studies and starting a new education, or finishing my studies and starting anew then - I know that it can technically work, my godfather did just that - and the former is impossible, because it would disappoint my parents and my grandmother so, and because, again, I do love my studies, I'm just no good at them, and the latter comfortably far away; I could, of course, try internships now, but I cannot even muster the motivation and courage to call at some bookstore and ask if they'd let me do that.
(At any rate, I'd probably read more books than I could ever sell.)
I love travelling, and writing, so perhaps I should write guidebooks: But there are hardly undiscovered places anymore, hardly anything new to be found out; the lonely planet is no longer lonely, insider advice is commonplace before any guidebook could be printed. And travel diaries of the purely subjective sort don't sell well enough if there isn't a really special exciting premise to them.
I don't want to be a housewife. I wouldn't mind the being at home part; I can pass my time, that's not the problem. But I hate housework. The only thing I enjoy doing is cooking, and the only other things I don't mind too much are doing the laundry and buying groceries. But what of the other stuff that has to get done? Being at home all day, I'd have no good excuse for not doing them (I don't even have that now).
I'll finish my studies, eventually, somehow; I know I will, because I always have. I'll go to the exam tomorrow, and fail, and feel horrible about trying again next semester because the examiners will be the same and will remember my failure, and maybe I'll pass next semester. I'll somehow make my way through the main study course, and finish eventually, because that's what I do, I finish what I began - eventually. And meanwhile, I must bear my mother's disappointment, my relatives' questions on why it takes so long, and what on earth I want to do with it, and when I'll go to Japan, and why I'm not doing something that sells, for after all, it's only my fault for being unable to decide, and for being unable to just get things done, and for procrastinating and organizing my life badly if at all.
I'm trudging on; but right now I know that I desperately hope for some accident on my way to university tomorrow, for a broken arm or leg or neck, a frozen puddle, a careless driver, for appendicitis, bronchitis, any sort of illness serious enough to warrant my missing the exam (I bet I'll have a common cold or headache, nothing serious enough, just something to add to the whole misery) but not serious enough to really endanger me, because, after all, I want to go on. I hate the Institute of Cultural Anthropology for putting an oral exam between basic and main studies, I hate the world for turning so fast, I hate myself for procrastinating. I hate everyone and everything right now: The poor unsuspecting inhabitants of Kalymnos, the forest of Bialowieza, cognitive psychology, kinship terminology, diffusionists, structural functionalists, cultural materialists; I hate myths, rites of passage, gender studies, matrilinear descendence, patrilinear descendence, foragers, horticultural societies, agricultural societies, pastoral nomads, peripatetics; I hate memory and culture and religion and the life cycle and stratification and the organization of social life. I hate the entire scope of human life, especially my own.
I want today to be groundhog day, to repeat itself endlessly forever.
I want it to be Tuesday already, with the whole thing over either way.
I want to know what to do.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: *uff*
Date: 2006-01-23 01:55 pm (UTC)Ja, irgendwie scheinen momentan viele so eine Sinnkrise zu haben. Ob das eine Epidemie ist? Auf jeden Fall ist es tröstlich, nicht allein zu sein - auch wenn ich meinen Mitmenschen ja eigentlich nicht wünschen sollte, mit mir in der Krise zu stecken... ;)
Man braucht Voraussetzungen, um Buchhändler zu werden? Also jetzt außer einem gewissen Interesse an der Materie und so? Um Himmels Willen. Da siehst du mal, wie schlecht ich über sowas informiert bin...
Wobei es da ja vielleicht sogar von Vorteil ist, nicht soo viel zu lesen. Die meisten Kunden nervt das doch vermutlich eher, wenn ich die zutexte von wegen "Sie lesen Michael Moorcock? Na ich weiß ja nich, also ich finde da Tad Williams ja besser. Naja, über Tolkien geht sowieso nichts. Und haben Sie's schonmal mit Neil Gaiman versucht? Aber dann doch bitte lieber im englischen Original. Wie, Sie können kein Englisch? BARBAREN!" ... naja, besser nicht...
Jedenfalls danke. *knuffel*
no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 07:26 pm (UTC)*mit getragenen 26 Jahren räusper*
Ich habe gerade mal Ende letzten Jahres wirklich entschieden, was ich versuchen will.
Bis dahin solltest du dich so sehr anstrengen, beim Lernen etc., dass du dich damit wohl fühlst. Dass du zufrieden mit dir selbst bist.
Ich drücke dir die Daumen für morgen.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 01:57 pm (UTC)Aber das Daumendrücken hat geholfen!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 07:35 pm (UTC)I think you have summed up the "conditio studiousus" very nicely, in broad sweeping statements. And in very good English, too.
Humour aside, Shakespeare said "Time and the hour runs through the roughest day". That sentence has helped me through countless exams and miserable hours and days when I felt exactly the same.
What it comes down to is really only one thing. Live your life as only you can. It does not matter what you do really, as long as it's *your* life. And you are already living this, graced with wonderful talents and a unique perspective.
*hugs, take care, good luck*
*will keep fingers & crossed, thumbs squeezed; the cats send purrs and assurances of curled tails*
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 01:58 pm (UTC)*clings*
Thanks for the good thoughts, though - they helped.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 02:12 pm (UTC)But... they remain problems. Problems that keep us awake at night. Problems that make us miserable.
I'm sure you will find a way that's right for you. And if it's a long, narrow, winding path with wrong turns and dead ends in between, so what? That's life. :-)
*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 02:19 pm (UTC)*clings some more*
no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 07:49 pm (UTC)Take a big hug from me, do something for yourself now and I'll be thinking of you tomorrow. I'm sure it won't be half as bad as you expect.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 07:51 pm (UTC)I studied to be a teacher, because my parents insisted. I found out that I love teaching, actually and I'm really good at it, too. But like you I want to teach people who are ready to learn.
I focused on teaching adults - and on computer based training.
I tried to get a job in this particular line of work and failed.
I bowed to necessity and took what I could get. It isn't bad, it isn't particularely satisfying either.
But I have money and time (weekends mostly) to pursue my hobbies. And even though my job has not very much to do with my studies I NEVER EVER regretted studying - not even for a second.
It opened my eyes for so many things, it broadened my mind, it sharpened my thinking.
NEVER think that something you love to do is something you have to regret. NEVER let anyone tell you that what you do is useless. My time at university was pure joy and if you feel like that as well - enjoy it, learn, discuss, read, write and be yourself.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 08:16 pm (UTC)28. And I know exactly how you feel. I was able to restart my studies after a year of absence due to dropping out the first time round. And had to start again at nil.
And still don't know what to do. But I'm here. I hear you. And I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.
*Hugs*
Murray out.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 02:09 pm (UTC)Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 09:03 pm (UTC)But I've also made the experience that the world suddenly seems to be a far better place as soon as the exam is over, one has had a decent night's sleep and can think about things more clearly.
Good luck for tomorrow! And hopefully, you'll cheer up a bit afterwards. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 09:53 pm (UTC)Almost 26 (well, in *gulp* a bit more than a month =( ) and same here.
Good luck for the exam, though.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-22 11:04 pm (UTC)I really know what you mean, like all the others who commented. I can't guarantee you, it will get better in some years. But I also say... just go on doing what you enjoy. Yeah, one day you will have to earn your own money, but it isn't particularly neccessary to have learnt the job you'll work in, later. I once heard 80% of all people don't work in the job they learnt or studied. So better learn/study something you like.
*HUGS*
i wish you the best!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 02:11 pm (UTC)*hugs back*
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 08:45 am (UTC)Und vor allem, lass Dir nicht von Deinen Eltern oder sonstwem ein schlechtes Gewissen einreden. Und wenn es noch 15 Jahre dauert. Du bist fertig, wenn Du der Meinung bist fertig zu sein. Denn es ist DEIN Leben und Du lebst es für DICH. Nicht für Eltern, nicht für Tanten, nicht für Onkel, nicht für irgendwen... Du bist wohl der kreativste Mensch den ich kenne und ich bin der festen Überzeugung dass Du Deinen Weg finden wirst.
Kopf hoch Kleene. :)
*knuddel*
-Y-
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 02:12 pm (UTC)*sfz* Ja, aber mein Leben wird nicht angenehmer, wenn andere versuchen, mir ein schlechtes Gewissen einzureden...
Dankesehr, jedenfalls.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-23 10:10 pm (UTC)I'm sure that you'll find the right path for you. And congrats for passing the exam!
*planaria hugssss*