silly people all over
Just sent an email off to somewhere in the Russia Far East, where I hope I will spending a portion of my summer working (in that unpaid but educational way) with an organization called Ternei-Tiger-Taiga. This would probably not actually involve seeing any tigers… In fact, the real question is what exactly would it involve? Because I really don’t know. I’ve been negotiating through double intermediaries until this email — emailing with a man who attended my school 30 years ago and now works in Moscow, who has a friend in Vladivostok who works with someone who works for TTT. And really the latest development was that the man in Moscow had apparently led his friend in Vladivostok to believe I was studying biology, but when I explained in definite terms that I’m not, the next reply suggested that maybe I would be better off working at a summer camp which teaches children English. I replied that summer camp doesn’t sound nearly as exciting as tigers, but I’d take what I’d get. The reply to that was that well, TTT is still a possibility, but the summer camp is an hour by train from Vladivostok whereas TTT is a day or more’s drive on poor roads. IE it’s very remote, wouldn’t you like to be somewhere safe with a lot of little kids and civilization around you?

Well, the answer to that is no. The most “civilized” place I’ve ever lived is here in semi-suburban Connecticut where I’m going to school. The biggest place — Joensuu, Finland, a compact city of 50,000 surrounded by the well groomed Finnish forests.

On the other hand, because of the uncertainty of what I would do with TTT, I wonder if I am really trying to convince myself I would rather go with them, just to be stubborn…

What this all leads up to is that the email I sent just now ended up being entirely in Russian, and mainly being me trying to justify myself and prove to them that I am someone they would want to have around. Because I’m afraid they won’t want me, and I’ll end up at the summer camp surrounded by snotty nosed brats and they’ll fight with each other and not listen to me, and it’ll be horrible.

And as I started writing this the lady from the Office of International Studies called and said the committee has tabled my petition. What does that mean? Well, apparently I seem generally convincing but my independent study proposal seems hurriedly written (surprise! it was.) and they don’t see anything in my transcript to support my interest in studying folklore and shamanistic tradition.

Then my friend Emily, who is also going to go abroad with SIT, only she’ll be going to Ecuador, called to say that her major is offering all its cool classes in the fall, and she’s afraid she won’t be able to go abroad until the spring semester.

So I have until the end of next week to come up with a well thought out, transcripturally supported, independent study proposal. I was writing to the people in the Far East that I am interested in sociology and the environment, and how people think/relate to nature. That’s true, but too bad I haven’t taken sociology or any environmental science classes. The introductory sociology class is hell to get into, and all the environmental science classes are geology oriented. I should have taken anthro with Emily last year.

Will the committee believe me if I explain that I have a shelf full of books of folklore and fairy tales from around the world at home and that if there was a folklore class here I would have taken it? Well, there was Russian Popular Culture, wherein I did reports on (European) Russian folklore and my final paper on the history of Russian involvement in Alaska and Western America, and the remaining influence of Russian colonization in the culture and language of coastal Alaska Natives? I should give them a copy of that paper. Maybe the professor still has the maps I drew to go with it….

That work is really the closest to what I want to do, at this point. Why didn’t I take soc? Because when I first got here I took Japanese and I was going to be this great three way translator for the oil companies. But not because I really felt any special affinity for the oil companies… Because I like languages, I like words, and it seemed like a good way to make money so I could travel. But Japanese was horrible — the professor was crazy — and I’ve since realized that there are opportunities to use language without involving the exploitation of non-renewable resources. Like working with people trying to preserve nature, rather than sell it.

Anyway, I took sociology in high school, and it didn’t seem to relate a lot to what I was interested in. But maybe that was because the teacher was a twit.

Actually, looking at the course listings, it’s definitely anthropology that I should have been taking. That’s why sociology does’t interest me. But, even if I haven’t taken any anthro, I will convince them to let me go anyway. The SIT program contains 60 hours of an Ethnic and Cultural Studies Seminar, and 30 hours of a Field Studies Seminar… I should have printed out the curriculum page and attached it to my petition originally, but oh well. I have a week, I will put together a better supported case, with lots of evidence of how I can do this, and do it well, and learn lots, and I won’t just be fucking around, and then they will see the light, I will turn in all my papers, and then I won’t have to deal with Ms. I’m British and my voice sounds completely fake over the phone, and also I make students cry from time to time evil lady at the Office of International Studies.

So there.