Needs, wants, complaints--and I'm not talking about a baby.

I have a research paper due soon, so naturally I want to do something drastic and time-consuming like rearrange the furniture in the house or adopt a non-potty-trained animal. And actually my present desperation is more intense than usual. It's the norm that Aron and I rearrange furniture in the days leading up to a major assignment's due date. But I want to change things up in a bigger way. I don't want to put the sofa against this wall of the living room rather than that wall of the living room. I want to put the sofa in the bedroom, the bed in the living room, the fridge in the bathroom. I want to challenge and, through challenging, dismantle the essentialism of home furniture arrangement.

I had an awkward academic advising experience yesterday, one that occasionally approached a level of discomfort characteristic of a police interrogation (as represented in a bad comedy). My advisor called me a "non-traditional student," which shocked me, because I was under the impression that that designation was reserved for students who are parents and old, and while I'm certainly the first I don't like to think that I'm the second, though of course it's true, as I've often said before, I'm old for an undergraduate. I'm old for an undergrad because I treat school like a hobby rather than a job. From a practical perspective, which I'm capable of entertaining only a few moments at a time, it's a problem that school is a hobby for me. Practicality demands that school is a bridge leading to a job. Youthful idealism, the kind that not even my old age of 24 has shaken, allows school to just be a bridge. A bridge is a connective path that turns non-traversable space into traversable space. But a bridge is also nice just to be on, for the height, light-headedness and views it affords. What I'm trying to say is that it's awkward to interact with an advisor advising under the impression that I'm interested in graduating, which is always, of course, the impression that an academic advisor operates under.

I have a little paranoia. Sometimes I feel like people are being really mean to me, when they're probably just being average and maybe even slightly nice. For instance, earlier today I had a difficult time getting Graham into his Johnny Jump Up, the bouncy swing/chair that hangs from a door frame, because Graham kept grabbing onto the device's straps and wildly kicking his legs. Having a tough time, I said to Aron, "Can you put Graham in here? This is making me crazy." But instead of putting Graham in his seat, Aron pulled the straps aside so that I could place Graham in his seat myself, which felt, to me and in the moment, like a mean thing to do. It felt paternalistic, like his action suggested that he was going to teach me to fish rather than fish for me. 

All this fish and bridge imagery reminds me of a poem I wrote Tuesday. On Tuesday I washed our sheets, and as I made the bed after the sheets were clean I thought about when I was young and had to have help making my bed, and my helper and I would communicate to each other with our hands the length of sheet hanging over our respective side of the bed, and then we'd continue tugging the sheet back and forth until we achieved equal sheet lengths. I thought about that, and then I thought, as I often do, because I fear them and love them, about sharks. And this is the poem I produced immediately after making the bed by myself:

The capital of equality is along the equator

a part of it in the sea where no boats even go

It is the metropolis of moods that move like waves

We all, all of us, go there everyday

It's a spot the movements of water take you to

If you're one of those scuba tourists

the tour boat leaves behind

you might wind up along the equator

and among things eaten just because

Otherwise you'll return to shore with a sunburn

if there's justice, and no sunburn if there's not

So anyway, like I said, sometimes I think people are being mean. I thought my advisor was being mean. I know I have some core classes left to take, like a PE and a non-lab science, but I don't need to be told to take them. If an advisor thinks that I need to be told to take these classes, then that must mean that she thinks I'm distinctly incompetent. That must mean that she thinks I've been in college forever not because I enjoy taking classes that don't get me any closer to graduating but rather because I haven't figured out what classes to take in order to graduate. I know what I need, but instead I just do what I want. I'm not saying I deserve to be recognized favorably for what essentially amounts to academic hedonism, but I don't want to be regarded harshly as an idiot who's accidentally been taking the wrong classes for six years. I'm the idiot who's been taking the wrong classes on purpose, okay? Or maybe what happened during advisement yesterday was that I got reprimanded in some new, weird way. Or maybe I simply got advised and all the negative feelings I'm experiencing are manifestations of the guilt and shame I feel deep down over the fact that I am a perpetual undergrad. I probably really need to graduate. Probably. Really.

But before I do I'm going to have to write my research paper. I haven't even decided on a topic yet. The problem is that I can't think. It's actually worse than not being able to think:  it's being boring. I am bored and boring. I have nine books to select a topic from for my research paper, and certainly nine books contain many, many, many more than nine possible topics, but nothing excites me.

There's A Visit from the Goon Squad, which the Los Angeles Times calls "the smartest book you can get your hands on"—a daunting review, one that debases the reader before the thing read, which of course makes sense. It all feels like that. Every book feels like that. Every book is already a book, a published book, a book that made it, and a smart book. It feels like a mean trick that anyone would expect me to be able to write a paper about a book. I think assignments are out to get me? I really feel at times that my life would be enhanced by the introduction of some sort of prescription mood stabilizer.

I really would adopt a kitten or a puppy in order to have a good, or at least a living, reason to not be able to focus on my paper, but Aron and I are broke until the summer semester starts, and an adoption fee can pay for a week's worth of groceries. Since I can't adopt an animal, I'm doing something else that feels drastic. I'm staying off Facebook. That's the plan. I get that it's stupid to regard this as a drastic action. The fact that staying off will be at all difficult is something that makes me feel disappointed in myself. But I'm fixing that.

I had to submit an application to become a women's studies major. Oh yeah, I switched majors. This is the fourth time I've switched since beginning college a century ago. (It went:  sociology, English, philosophy, women's studies.) One of the questions on the application was this:  What do you plan to do after you graduate? I left it blank, because I refuse to share my fantasies with others. "Following the publication of my first novel, I'm going to go on a European book tour with my husband and son, staying only in seaside villages that have four or more vegetarian restaurants." What am I going to do after I graduate? What am I going to do? How am I supposed to know?

Aron said last night that the thinks that there's no way that I can be only a mother my whole life, which initially felt like an insult. What Aron meant, he went on to explain, is that he thinks I have interests and abilities besides parenting that are worth pursuing. And that's really nice of him. And I really hope he's right.