So, yesterday, Smoker Boy from Friday texted me with “What’s your schedule like? I would love to see you today.” I had ignored his text on Sunday, and knew that I couldn’t just ignore this one, because it would be immature, or whatever. It took much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth before I was able to dash off a two sentence email to him. I also immediately set up a filter in gmail so that his emails would skip my inbox and also be marked as read.

I am having coffee with a boy tomorrow, although not one of the two boys I actually REALLY wanted to have coffee with. Although, this guy is very polite, seems nice, and I can eve forgive his use of “lol.”

It’s already 2:30, and I spent most of the day working on ONE letter, because I am meticulous like that. Or slow. Anyway, that application has been submitted. 

Back to this boy I’m seeing tomorrow. I’ve spoken to him half a dozen times. Conversation is ok — we manage it. We haven’t really covered anything groundbreaking, just typical getting-to-know-you stuff. This whole internet dating thing is weird. I know, I’m the last person who should say that, given my brief, but busy phase as a message board floozy. 

I got distracted from writing this by a question about Carl Schmitt on Message Board of Note. So I got to talk about Carl Schmitt! Which is exciting, because I never get to talk about that, and I forget how much I love Carl Schmitt, and it almost makes me want to go back to grad school and get my PhD JUST so I can write a dissertation on Carl Schmitt and american foreign policy.

Number of (un)intentional all-nighters [rough draft included]: 5
Number of times I changed the title of the project:                  6 (see the final title above)
Number of times I considered the project a complete failure: probably about 5-6. I think I only cried over it once though.
Number of drafts I’ve saved because I’m neurotic/paranoid: 58

Being done with my thesis, by the deadline for June graduation, as I wanted to all along: Priceless.

It was worth all the anti-socialness. It was worth the intimidating of the brilliant advisor. It was worth skipping class for meeting with said advisor. It was worth the mess my apartment is, buried in journal articles and books and empty cans of seltzer & energy drink (I actually took a picture of my desk last night, to capture the outrageousness)

This has been an exhilirating process of 11th hour epiphanies. I started this project feeling pretty meh, just trying to find ANYTHING that could relate to Carl Schmitt, because it would make the whole “topic/advisor” thing infinitely easier. I initially wanted to kick my own ass for chosing to write on the war on terror. And then something clicked. And then something else clicked. And its turned into a really awesome project.

The thesis is in. And now I promise never to speak of Carl Schmitt again!

So I have to go to my discussion section in a few minutes – I skipped my other two classes to work on the thesis, but I can’t skip this. I am not panicked about the state of my thesis, which actually worries me more, because anytime I think a paper is decent it winds up being not quite right. I wasted a little bit of time playing the confession game on the libertarian message board, confessing “I think one of the reasons I wound up in grad school is because I was trying to impress a boy.

…and this is one of the responses I got, which made me smile

“I wish my attempts to impress girls got me doctorate degrees, instead of….. well making me look like a fool, and broke. Hell you are doing pretty good. You impressed me.

You should try to impress the boy again and see where that gets you. You might end up being president.”

Which is not to say that my attempts to impress boys have not made me look like a fool. However, I will have earned my Masters Degree in less than nine months, and that is far more productive than getting knocked up. Said boy is long since out of the picture, but I’m thinking I’ll find myself another aloof, emotionally unavailable boy to impress so I have some motivation to get through a PhD program!

What I should be doing is trekking downtown to the Apple Store to finally get my computer repaired. Because I have this ghetto back-up, I’ve been procrastinating on it for three weeks. However, with my thesis due on Friday, I can’t justify the number of hours it would take to get there and back, especially since I think the problem requires an archive/reinstall of OS, and I don’t want to sit around waiting for that. 

So I’m procrastinating with livejournal instead. The only bad thing about not having my computer is I can’t obnoixously play “Pressure” while working this week. 

My apartment is a giant mess. It’s messier than Xina’s room used to be in college. And that’s really, really bad. But I’m still not doing my dishes right now.

This is a post to say that I’m alive and overwhelmed and I can’t talk about anything but my thesis. However, Jon Stewart basically articulated one of the main points I’m using in a section of my paper and that made me happy.
I’m too youtube inept to find and link to the video of this, but he basically cut back and forth between things Bush said before we invaded Iraq and things Bush says now. One of them comes down to “So wait. We invaded a stable Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein. And now we have to stay…to solve the problems…caused by…getting rid of Saddam Hussein.”

Because we shouldn’t have invaded when there was no security threat, especially because we’ve just caused more of security threat (instability in the Middle East = bad. Insurgency attacking American troops = bad) And Schmitt would be like “dude. the purpose of the exception is to RESTORE security, not cause more of a threat.” And then he would go off with his friends and they would sneer about how stupid Bush is. I figure Schmitt did a lot of sneering since he was pretty self-righteous and misanthropic.

It’s a beautiful day. Don’t let it get away.

Besides my distrust/discomfort with perfectly weathered days such as this one, I’m afraid I also have to ignore Bono’s plantative suggestion because I am spending the whole day inside with my fascist boyfriend. It’s not as enjoyable as it sounds. I DO have on a very pretty colored tank top — it’s all about the little things. Plus, I need to look really cute to make up for the fact that I’m Jewish — my fascist boyfriend lets that go because I have a German last name, and lets face it, how many other chicks are going to defend him. Oh wow — way too close to my MO for comfort, anyway, back to the real purpose of this entry: procrastination!

So I got my thesis draft back from my advisor. (Which means my preceptor is in trouble. Only one other person besides me turned in a draft, and he got it earlier than my advisor did. I’m impatient, clearly) In his email he described the draft as “well on its way to being an MA thesis,” but then when I met with him he seemed to imply some major problems with it. (We didn’t talk in detail because I want to go other his comments and prep for a meeting with him on Monday) so I don’t know. And I’m afraid to read his comments, I’m such a wuss. 

I really need a Carl Schmitt icon. He was actually quite attractive when he was young, for an academic.

So I need to revise my section on the exception, makes some clarifications about how we understand sovereignty in the United States, in terms of our constitution. And I need to be more explicit about the distinctions between the war in Iraq and the overall war on terror. I’m pretty sure that this is doable, but I’m still nervous. It’s due two weeks from today. I am actively seeking people to read it; I plan to have the major corrections done by Sunday and hopefully will send it around. I wish I were in CIR instead of MAPSS; they’re put into small groups at the beginning of the year and read each others drafts for major papers and stuff. So if anyone wants to read “Between Order and Exception: A Schmittian Perspective on the War on Terror” I will bake you cookies, or something. I reveal that Bush is an idiot and his moral rhetoric about trerorists is dangerous. I accuse prominent legal scholars of misapprorpiating Schmitt and missing what’s really important in discussing Schmitt/the war on terror. 

And when this is done, I get to read 1000s of pages for my two IR classes so I can kick ass on the finals.

Well I slept later than I meant to, because I took Tylenol PM to get to sleep, then didn’t go to bed until one, and then I kept waking up from really short, realistic dreams. The kind of boring, realistic dream that tricks your mind into not knowing its asleep until you wake up. I am still kind of groggy and am gulping down some coffee before I go over to campus for work and getting mass amounts of readings done. (Well, that’s the plan. My level of productivity has dropped to zero since turning in my draft.)

So I’ve started looking for jobs, just tentatively since I can’t do much until I’m back in the New York area. You know that song from Avenue Q, “What can you do with a BA in English?” Well what can you do, with an MA in Social Science? Although I’m told a social science degree is infinitely more valuable than an English degree, which seems silly. My undergrad degree is in Government, not Political Science, and there IS actually a difference, but in most of the fields in my program, unless you’re doing heavy quantitative stuff, everything seems more like a humanity than social science, with the exception of maybe Psychology. 

Oh, and when did I forget how to write? it used to be I could write a paper by pulling quotes and stream of consciousness explain them, etc, and then go back and edit and make the writing fairly solid. I don’t think its a matter of Skidmore grade inflation — when i read stuff I wrote three years ago it still sounds better than what I’m producing now. I had both Brent and the younger-wiser-sibling look over parts of my thesis because I was just staring at, knowing it wasn’t good writing, but not knowing exactly what was wrong or exactly how to fix it. Brent’s diplomatic comment on the thesis as a whole was “Well. It certainly has potential.” I don’t know, I guess a year and a half out of school is enough to destroy your writing skills? Blah. I cleaned up the draft of the thesis the best I could and I’m trying really hard not to think about it until I get the comment back. Although I should probably be working on the “Schmitt was a total Hobbesian” section that I plan on adding. That and, making the younger-wiser-sibiling read the WHOLE thing and paying him in the form of cheap scotch. I am the best sister ever. 

I was thinking today about The Tempest. I don’t know why. I hated it when we had to read it freshman year of high school, because I hated my freshman English and the way he taught it. Loved it when we read it for Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom and now for some reason I’m in the mood to read it. Or if nothing else, find my notes and see what I thought of it three years ago. 

And on that completely unrelated note, I’m going to head over to campus

So after discussing the logistics of yet another move (blech) it’s official. I’ll be back in New York/Jersey at the end of June. No, I do not have a job or an apartment. However, last time I decided to move to New York I didn’t have either of those things, and it worked out pretty well. 

It’s a weight off my shoulders to know; that’s one less decision to make. It’s the obvious thing to do really — Chicago has never felt quite right.

Getting that rough draft in really confirmed it for me — I’m almost done with what I came here to do, and now I’m ready to go home. 
And as I learned in the final weeks of my final semester at Skidmore and as I saw again in my last few weeks in the city, a lot can happen in a short period of time, especially when you’re living towards an end. 

Now to catch up my IR reading, write one awesome final draft, and get my ass back for the Second-Great-Job-and-Apartment-Search. Actually, properly speaking its the second great job hunt and the third great apartment hunt. And while I’m sure I’ll be cranky in the process (ug, job hunting. In July.) its going to be worth it.

At least for a couple of days.

I realize, I’ve basically been anticipating this day since I found out the date the rough draft was due some time back in September. April 13th has been like, a touchstone. Oh touchstone’s the wrong word, but don’t look at me: I’ve gotten about 7 hours of sleep in the past 72 hours, I’m a little out of sorts.

“So if your thesis is due tomorrow, what do you do for the rest of the quarter?” my brother asked me last night.
“Well this is just the rough draft, we get comments on it and then we turn in the final on May 4th.”
He asked the question that anyone not associated with my program has been asking “…so then why are you obsessing if its just a rough draft.”

So here you are, in the ninth
Two men out and three men on
Nowhere to look, but inside
Where we all respond to PRESSURE
-Billy <3

I have fifteen minutes before my next class, and it isn’t as if I’d get anything done in those 15 minutes, so…
I also skipped my last two classes to work on my thesis. Oops. They’re big classes though, so it doesn’t matter.

So after a meeting on Monday and a meeting on Tuesday I basically walked down the hall back to my office, got online and screeched “I JUST FIGURED OUT WHAT’S MISSING IN MY THESIS!!!!” Unfortunately, I found this out a mere 72 hours before the deadline, so my heart has been pumping and my brain racing since then. I didn’t sleep last night — I didn’t mean to pull an all nighter; I tried to fall asleep on two seperate occasions, but my brain was just raising, clarifying my ideas in my head, trying to organize things, and so I finally gave up. I’ve been up 30 hours and counting — it took me a little bit of staring at the clock to calculate that. I am carrying around approximately 20 books and 50 journal articles related to Carl Schmitt. After class I need to put in another hour’s work on the thesis, go home and nap wake up around midnight and then no sleep till its done. I wanted to be a total overachiever and turn it in early (It’s due 11:59 PM on Friday) but it’ll probably get in Friday morning instead of the Wednesday-Thursday-at-the-latest I was aiming for. Because of my epiphany I think I’m going to have to sacrifice good writing throughout for a couple strong sections and hopefully a well-chained argument. I’ve never been so nervous about turning a paper in .

I’d like to say that I’ll be celebrating this weekend since my paper will be in, but really I’ll just be catching up on all the reading I didn’t do while I was in “omg, re-write 3/4 of my thesis in 72 hours!” mode.

Help.

In a mild fit of paranoid, I went back and locked a whole bunch of entries, particularly anything related to my school, program or thesis. I’m debating just using the mass edit thing and locking the whole thing, but I like having my non-LJ friends-list as part of my audience. I may do the “leave an entry public for a week” thing. But, I figured even with having the search engine block, there aren’t too many girls at this school, in this program, studying what I’m studying. And I don’t want people to find me from searches of my fascist boyfriend, because then they’re most likely fellow academics, and this journal reveals way too much of my silly, drama-queen, emo side.

I am braindead from working on my thesis. I am at the point where I need someone else to look at it, because its just a big jumble right now. When I wrote it, I divided my argument into sections and then went merrily through, imputing pulled quotes, little stream-of-consciousness rants, etc. So all the evidence for my argument is in there SOMEWHERE I’m just so close to the topic I’m no longer capable of figuring out which parts make sense, what needs to be moved to other paragraphs, and what sentences just need to be rewritten. This is why I keep dreaming about writing paragraphs and walk around editing in my head. The argument is there, and I know what my evidence is in my head, I just can’t find it in my paper anymore, so its no where near where it needs to be to be a good rough draft.

Bleh. And I’m also paranoid I’m not using enough sources. I really wish I could read German.

Okay. Time to go read something that isn’t Schmitt and fall asleep

bush is all like ‘the terrorists hate us because of our freedom and so we must defeat them at all costs’ and carl schmitt would be like ‘dude, if you want to go to war, that’s fine, but at least admit the real reasons’ other thinkers look at this and they’re like ‘oh that’s just bush, being the sovereign and declaring the exception’ but they totally forget that the exception isn’t supposed to be like, forever. schmitt would be like, totally annoyed with bush’s conduct