mission | archive | zine | word | weblog | links | contact

May 13, 2001, 6:45 p.m.

Post-It note forcefully and sleepily dictated to Mark --who had only come into the room to give a kiss-- from beneath blankets in the loft to serve as a reminder:

"Nationalism as both ideology and affect."

1:28 p.m.

I'm reading Pat O'shea's The Hounds of the Morrigan instead of reviewing Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History," which summarizes my preparation strategy for the last two or three days: let it go.

It's too late to panic, isn't it? I've got sixteen pages of notes and a nice big box of neon highlighters (just purchased this morning) to go through my three position papers and lists. I'm going to prepare the way I prepare for conferences, which involves a few read-overs and a full night of relaxation.

Not that it ever works, necessarily. I'll probably have to drink several cups of Nighty Night/Mellow Magic tea and maybe swallow a few allergy pills to get to sleep at all tonight. I'll be going over my answers to questioned as yet unasked in my head, staring at the ceiling (a full two feet above me, in the loft bed) and kneading the covers between my fingers.

I put off these exams for a full year because I didn't feel ready. (I'm a perfectionist.) I feel ready for this. (Thanks to the many hours spent in the graduate services library with J.) I don't feel ready to go onto the market, which C tells me I am, but I'm not thinking about that frightening possibility quite yet. (A real job? What's that?)

Spare me a few "good lucks" tomorrow morning between 9 a.m.-12 p.m. Pacific Standard Time!

May 9, 2001, 5:21 p.m.

I'm worried that I'll blank out during my qualifying exams. I won't remember what Benjamin wrote about the memory that flashes up in a moment of danger, or what Young said about how monuments and memorials may "coarsen" historical recollection.

I'm going to forget what I said about how memory also serves as an often covert mode of power, instrumental in the sense that it might challenge or consolidate political discourse, or how the rallying cry to "Remember Pearl Harbor!" operates at the conjunction of myth-making, unstable sentiments and the regulation of the national will.

I won't remember what I wrote about the limits of drag as a subversive strategy or my argument that the line between NGO and corporation is too often blurred in actual fair trade practices.

Returning my call from the SF bus terminal, J reassures me, "You'll do fine, you just have to keep cool and know that you can explain this stuff inside and out."

"But E asked me something about my paper, and I couldn't even remember what I'd written!"

"Well, I didn't remember my papers either," J says through the static, "but I went through them and highlighted the good parts."