Spring Break
You can listen to me read this one like a podcast! Literally, you've got Asha! At least, a little more than usual.
Quick note: I spent 23 minutes reading this blog so you could listen to me like a podcast if you wanted! I did it in one go so you can hear me choking on my spit and stumbling over my words a few times, so don’t expect it to be Audible quality, but skip ahead to :49 if you want to get straight into it. :)
Friday
The only thing standing between me and Spring Break after my architecture class was the second-to-last Stata lab for my Quantitative methods/Statistics course. Last semester I was bored in my classes; this semester, 8th grade arithmetic and a statistical software is kicking my ass. I’ve spent hours every week crying over math assignments that were designed to take 30-45 minutes. I leave class feeling like I’m finally getting somewhere— I’m finally going to be able to get through my homework without biting my fingernails down to nubs— and then every time I open the assignment it feels like I’m staring up at Everest from the very bottom. Even when I feel particularly determined or feel pretty okay with my work, something always stumps me or comes back so impossibly wrong, I don’t even know how I could have seen where I went wrong. All to say, it’s a humbling experience.
My friends in my cohort have been carrying me by the armpits through this. One of them likes to remind me that probably many of our most respected qualitative-methods-focused academics got through their quant sequences by cheating off their friends. This isn’t even discouraged in my class— we’re encouraged to do the work together and to use the internet— even ChatGPT. It took me until more than halfway through the semester to realize I’ve been unintentionally holding myself to some sick principle of academic integrity that isn’t even real in this case.
This second-to-last lab, though, I completed with the resolve of a SoundCloud rapper who swears his teacher told him he wouldn’t do anything with his life. And Armin double-checked my work before I sent it off. His feedback, “You were close with most of it” had me seeing light descend from the heavens and hearing church bells ringing, so off it went, and I was free!
Then Canvas gave me a notification that my last lab had been graded (the one I sobbed in the library over as Armin basically typed in the code I needed for me because I couldn’t figure it out) and it was a whopping 57%.
You win some, you lose some. They say grades in the PhD don’t matter, and that’s mostly true. But I very well might have to retake this class and man, it sucks to lose.
Saturday and Sunday #1
I’d been praying for a break since February and with my first days off, I didn’t know what to do with myself. There were so many things I’ve been wanting to do! So many hobbies I’ve been neglecting!
I settled on trying to build my “Sam’s Study” mini-room build that I’d gotten at Christmas.
I asked for one of these sets at Christmas because usually my family gets together and does a holiday puzzle. I don’t really enjoy puzzles, but my whole family enjoys crafts and making things with our hands, so I thought this would feel something like building a Sims house in real life.
There’s something really satisfying about the physicality of building a miniature set, but it’s definitely not for the impatient. I got tired after about an hour and a half, and the little shelves have been sitting on my life-sized bookshelf ever since. I’ll get back to building the rest of the study eventually, but for now the other hobbies are calling.
I decided to get out of the house and head to a bookstore in search for a sketchbook. I knew I’d end up buying books too, but I figured a little spring break splurge wouldn’t be bad for anybody!
My bookshop adventure left me with a ridiculously expensive Moleskin (that’s okay though) and two books: one about a queer coming of age story centered around questions and examinations of community (this is what the back of the book says— it’s titled, The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela.) and a book of essays that sprouted from an authors experiment in blogging (Phillip Lopate’s A Year and a Day.)
I was just going to get one, but I already liked the first few pages of The Town of Babylon that I’d read sitting cross-legged in front of the fiction shelf, and I love modern-day blogging as an offshoot of the creative essay, so of course I had to get Lopate’s book.
At home, I got into bed for a late afternoon nap and felt the urge to read, but my new books were across the bed and out of reach. Lucky for me, I don’t have a bedside table and I make a nest in my bed of books and journals and other ridiculous things, (Do I really need a hair clip and two highlighters and a face mask and a set of new socks in my bed? Absolutely not, but I’m just a girl and eventually these things will find their way back to their homes.) so I had some books within reach.
I settled on reading Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou, a novel about a girl finishing her PhD dissertation and going on a wild goose chase trying to figure out who left a snarky note on a paper she’d accidentally left in the archive she frequents. It’s entertaining. I’m only 70 pages deep. I think I picked up the book thinking it would feel good to read a story set in the same kind of life setting I’m in, but all the talk about grad school and the dissertation actually kind of stresses me out. And it’s just fiction!
Monday Morning
I spent most of the day oscillating between rage and something like peace. In the morning, I got up to go to a CycleBar class. 45 minutes of spin in a dark room with hit or miss music and a motivational monologue right after the arms section1 that could’ve easily been said in the teen’s ministry of a mega church has been my exercise of choice since I tore my ligament 6 weeks ago. Before my injury I would’ve run the 3 miles to CycleBar because it takes almost exactly the same amount of time as catching the metro (train) and goes through the rich neighborhoods so I get ideas for Sim houses, but I’ve been stuck with taking the metro.
Just a few days before, I’d been thinking about how I hadn’t had any unpleasant experiences (namely, sexual harassment) recently. I felt almost unsettled by the fact that nothing had happened in a while because it has become so normal in my day-to-day life here.
Just two weeks after moving to St. Louis in August, a man saw me walking home and honked and yelled after me from his car. I tried to ignore him and walked quickly to my apartment which was only a few blocks away. He followed me in his car, yelling out, “Hey! Hey! Let me talk to you! Let me talk to you!” Eventually I shook my head no, hoping he’d get the hint and go away. He didn’t. He kept shouting after me. As I approached my building, he stopped his car in the middle of the one-way street my apartment is off of and began getting out of his car. I ran inside and up the stairs to my apartment and didn’t look back to see how far he’d come into the building.
CycleBar is only a few metro stops and a short straight walk away. Usually I wear sweatpants and a jacket over my workout clothes to keep warm, but it was in the high 70s so I wore my bike shorts and a big sweatshirt. I only carry a water bottle and my keys, so it’s probably obvious I’m headed to one of the many boutique fitness spots nearby. In looking back, I remember a brief thought crossing my mind about if electing to wear shorts on this particularly warm day would cause me problems. I’d ignored it or decided it wasn’t urgent enough to change my outfit, but somehow, somewhere not even deep within me, I knew.
At 11:45 on a Monday, immediately upon exiting the train, something makes me pause the music in my AirPods and pay attention to my surroundings. A number of people get off the metro at the same time as me, many heading in the same direction. A guy behind me is shouting something I couldn’t make out, but something makes me feel like it’s directed at me. I‘ve learned to keep my AirPods in when I’m around strangers on public transportation so I can ignore them if needed. I never know what kind of interaction I’m going to have with a stranger— if they’re going to politely ask me for directions or if I can tell them what time the next train is expected or if they’re going to push for my personal information, yell at me incoherently, or literally pull out their private parts in front of me, or some combination of those three (all of which have happened separately and in tandem to me while using St. Louis public transportation.)
I hate the way I always have to be alert. I’m so acutely aware of my biases and it frustrates me that more often than not the stereotypes that feel unfair and steeped in bias are confirmed by my personal experiences. I could feel the man walking behind me and I couldn’t immediately make out what he was saying, but then it became obvious as he matched my pace and tried to get my attention.
When I looked at him and gave him my best “Don’t fuck with me” face, he followed after me, asking where I was going, what workout I was planning to do, if he could come with me, why I wouldn’t just look at him, can’t I just talk to him? And when I continued to look ahead and ignore him, he called after a guy leaning on the exit ramp of the metro stop saying, “Man, can you believe she won’t talk to me? Man, make her talk to me.”
When I told people about this instance, which put the rest of my day off-kilter, often people asked why I didn’t threaten him with pepper spray, why I didn’t bark at him, why I didn’t stop into a shop and tell them he was making me uncomfortable, why didn’t I yell at him, why didn’t I run if I felt physically unsafe, why didn’t I [x], couldn’t I have [y], next time I should [z].
But in the four or so minutes that this man was following me, I was aware that I was making micro-decisions that could go so many wrong ways. I didn’t have my pepper spray with me— I’d forgotten to put it back on my keychain when shuffling the things on my keyring the other day. But even if I’d had it, what if I’d threatened him and that escalated the situation? What if my engagement with him (polite, aggressive, whatever) made him react even more aggressively?
My choice to ignore and get to my spin class as fast as possible was partly because I was late and had 3 minutes to get there before I was charged 20 bucks, and there was no way I was letting a man sexually harass me and make me lose two nights worth of Chipotle burritos. But it was also because I wanted to choose the path of least resistance and least unpredictability.
I’d already watched the guy call on another man in an act to validate himself— what if that man had joined in on the harassment? What if they’d gotten physical with me?
There are a hundred what-if’s. Eventually the man gave up and turned around and I basically levitated the rest of the 3 or 4 minute walk to CycleBar. I spent the entire class thinking about those what-if’s. And thinking about the people walking around me who must’ve witnessed my discomfort and avoidance of this dude, but who averted their eyes and continued walking wherever they were off to. What would I have done if the roles were reversed? People on a packed metro witnessed a man pull his penis out and shout incoherently at me while I didn’t have anywhere to move or sit and no one said a thing, even after the man was removed from the train. I wondered then as I wondered now, what would be done if the situation escalated? And all of this before noon on a Monday.
Monday Afternoon
I had shit to do after being sexually harassed, so I rinsed my face post-spin-class, put on the nastiest Megan Thee Stallion songs I had in my Spotify and attempted my first run post-injury. I ran an easy mile listening to Captain Hook telling myself I was simply too sexy for the streets, and not just one bad interaction away from becoming a statistic. My foot felt totally fine, so I took that as a win (my knees though?? phew… six weeks off will do something to ya.)
There was still so much day and a bunch of things I wanted to do outside, so I let myself stay stinky and packed a hobby picnic for myself in a tote bag.
I walked to Art Hill in Forest Park and sat under the clearest blue sky I’ve seen in a while. A handful of other people had the same idea, stretched out on picnic blankets, reclining into the hill, reading, writing, listening to something in AirPods. A few kids ran around trying to keep their kites in the air, sometimes catching people up in their strings. Nobody seemed too upset by this.
I spent an hour practicing sketching with the 30 odd markers and pens I’d packed. I asked friends on my hobby instagram (a silly throwaway account I started to just post things related to hobbies & one that definitely isn’t helping my phone/social media addiction) to give me things to try to draw as someone who never really learned how. This is my most recent attempt at doing things just for joy and trying to release any urge for perfectionism. I’m happy with it.
Tuesday
This was one of those days I just couldn’t get out of bed. I took two separate naps before I’d even gotten out of bed to brush my teeth or eat something. I just felt velcro’ed in. I eventually called my mom and she encouraged me to drink water. I immediately found the energy to get up after a couple sips. Funny how that happens.
I had another spin class at 4:45, so I left the house around 4 as the sun was all golden and the day was beginning to feel like it was winding down even though I’d really just gotten up.
On the metro a man got my attention and said he didn’t want to bother me, but wanted to tell me I was beautiful. I said thank you and averted my eyes. He politely interjected again to ask if I had a partner. I always say yes to strangers when they ask. He said, “Okay” and moved to another train car.
Though I didn’t like the feeling that rose in me as he got my attention— that worry about what kind of interaction I was about to have, I appreciated that it was respectful. I began to write a text to my family group chat about it, and just as I was typing someone sat so closely behind me that it startled me.
I glimpsed another man in the reflection sitting at the edge of his seat with his legs in the aisle coming up to my seat. He wasn’t particularly tall and the seats slope backwards so it’s pretty hard to sit so close to the person in front of you. There were a number of seats in front of behind me, but he picked the one directly behind me.
My stop was approaching so I didn’t immediately move, but I could feel this guy behind me. In the reflection, he looked so close that he could smell me. Maybe he was smelling me. I don’t know for sure. As I stood to leave, I caught his eyes on me. He stared at me with an annoyingly satisfied smile even as I walked away from the train.
Was he doing what I think he was doing? Maybe. Maybe I am scarred from weird experiences with men on the metro, but then again, sometimes you know what’s going on and you don’t have to have a direct confrontation with someone to know. Either way, I was uncomfortable.
I spent my spin class thinking about how in Belfast I used to feel invisible because I didn’t meet the beauty standards, but here I feel hypervisible in a way that makes me feel unsettled in my body in a different way. How frustrating to be made to feel uncomfortable, unsafe even, in your own body, and to wish for just a little while to not even occupy a body if it means being subject to such unwanted attention.
Wednesday
The laundry I did on Monday night was still piled on my bed, mocking me with every new wrinkle gathering on the sleeves and legs of my clothes. I addressed the dishes piling in my sink first. One by one into the dishwasher. Why is that so hard to do?
I thought about recording a timelapse of myself cleaning my kitchen— partially because I thought it might help with accountability, but also because I’d briefly thought about posting it on Instagram. I cringed that the thought even passed in my head and cursed myself for being so online and so inclined to compulsively document and share every mundanity in my life as if I were an internet personality. God!
I live alone and hadn’t talked to anyone in person in five days outside of passing interactions with strangers, so I settled on setting my iPad up on my stove and passively watched a Sims build on Youtube while I wiped down the seven feet of kitchen in my studio apartment.
Eventually I got to the laundry, but it wasn’t until after I took a nap underneath it (as I’d been doing for the two nights prior.)
The rest of the day I watched This is Us until the sun went down. I almost wondered if it was getting boring— if they were running out of plot to explore and if I should abandon the show, but then, of course, they got the drama together and I have been a puddle since! I’m on the back end of season 3, so no spoilers if you’re ahead! I’ve still got three more seasons to enjoy and it’s already hard enough not reading the episode descriptions!
Around 10pm, Armin texted that I had a package downstairs and he’d brought it up for me— how nice! I didn’t know what it could be as I hadn’t ordered anything recently. A box from Maddie B. (yes THE Maddie B!) sat on my doormat.
I opened it up with my kitchen scissors while swaddled in my bathrobe. I immediately cried. Four letters— one from Maddie, Karen, Cate, and Hali, stickers from my favorite place in Greenville (Swamp Rabbit Cafe), special soap, chocolates, shower steamers, those under-eye patches that feel so good especially when they’ve been in the fridge for a while, stationary, tea— all of my favorite things.
I recently shared with my friends that I’d made a big decision that required a lot of honesty and self-courage to come to. They knew this semester and living away from home has been difficult, so they got together to send me a care-package from home. I felt so seen and taken care of.
I’m not ready to be more publicly explicit about this big decision, but I know that it is the right thing for me. I feel twinges of fear when I think about all of the details in the lead up to the actual living of this choice, but I feel an inner stillness about the decision itself that lets me know this is right.
Thursday
My friend Holly is a first-year in the history department, and we’re taking an architecture class together (it’s cross-listed in American Studies and about way more than just design.)
We sat down for lunch outside of Snarf’s and the first thing she asked me was, “What do you think is up with Kate Middleton?” and boy did we have our theories!
First of all, she’s definitely not in this plane of existence anymore. Or if she’s not you know *slides finger across neck* she’s definitely not physically well. Twitter investigators have said what’s-his-face has a horsey mistress, and she’s pregnant. Did what’s-his-face (I literally don’t know his name— what is it?) and Kate get into a physical altercation, and now she’s seriously injured? We don’t know, but we think she’s been Diana’d.
Is that offensive? Hopefully not. Anyway, I’m pretty anti-monarchy, but I am now deeply invested in the Twitter memes about this scandal, and we’re in desperate need of laughs in this day and age, so I’ll take what I can get.
Feel free to send me your theories.
Friday
My friends are slowly coming back from wherever they went over break, and seeing them makes me feel like a real person again. I have moments where sometimes I feel unreal— just like a sim, and different things will ground me, like hanging out with a friend or feeling small in nature or getting a good sweat on during a workout. But sometimes those same things send me into a sim spiral. Lowercase ‘s’ because I’m not talking about the game, just talking about feeling fake.
The internet says this is a mental health disorder linked to anxiety called depersonalization and derealization. I think I’ve experienced this since I was a kid— I remember specific times when I’d be having a really fun and busy day with my friends, but as we were settling into our last activity— dinner maybe, I’d feel so zoomed out of my body, like I was watching a movie, but not actually experiencing the moment, and it just wouldn’t feel real. It’s hard to explain. Some people apparently feel really disoriented and upset by this feeling, but I don’t feel that way. I just feel a little off-kilter, like I’m in a dream.
All of this to say, Armin and I had coffee and he told me about his trip to DC. He’s from Germany and studies American gun culture, so he always has interesting things to say about all of the #EagleScreech things we Americans don’t even blink twice at.
One of those is just how on-the-nose and obviously conflicting with reality DC’s symbolic landscape is. How the cultural value rhetoric at all of the monuments— not even just the monuments, Armin brought up the VA as an example because they had some inscription about caring for those who fight, their widow, and their orphan (I Googled this, and it’s an Abraham Lincoln quote) but we know veterans aren’t supported the way we often talk about from a cultural value perspective— about justice and freedom and whatever isn’t even close to what values we uphold IRL.
Saturday and Sunday #2 (kind of)
I could be patient and wait to finish this newsletter-meets-blog after I’ve experienced Saturday and Sunday #2, but I’m going to leave something for myself here. I’m already block-scheduling my time for the next week and a half to make sure all my shit gets done. We’re rolling into week 10 of 15, so we’re getting towards the finish line. I will be crawling and dragging my body to the end— I just need prayers that I make an 80 in Stats and don’t need to repeat it come fall semester.
I’m going to spend my weekend setting myself up for success for these last few weeks. Hopefully, I will receive good news soon about my summer research plans. I have two projects— one for my artistic methods fellowship and the other for my social justice fellowship— that I want to make some progress on. For my social justice fellowship, we are asked to propose a longer-term project that we’ll work on in the year following our programming. I’m planning to create hypothetical syllabi at the intersections of Sociology and Public History for future classes I might teach. I don’t have any fancy titles yet, but I imagine myself teaching a class on Black public intellectuals, a place-based/field-trip-heavy course on public history, symbolic landscapes, and community museums, and definitely a class on social justice scholarship.
My artistic methods fellowship has been more nebulous, but it has challenged me to think a lot more creatively about how I approach my social science research. I get to work with undergrads this semester in an action lab to create mock-ups for future public-facing projects and exhibitions related to the virality of racial terror. I notice, even in facilitating the action lab, that my ideas about what public-facing scholarship can be are much more nontraditional and artistic, and it doesn’t take away the rigor of the data and stories we are presenting but instead allows us to think about urgency, impact, and audience in ways that I don’t often find traditional work considering deeply. I like having the opportunity to stretch what I think of as “rigorous” scholarship and to find creative applications of work that otherwise might be read only by people like me at an institution. It makes me feel hopeful for my future work and excited by the possibilities.
I thought I’d feel more dread about this weekend approaching, but as I’m reflecting on my break I’m realizing that I still have a lot to look forward to. I can hang on for five-ish more weeks.
The CycleBar format is usually this: 25-30 minutes of in and out of saddle spin with choreography that simulates going up and down hills on a bike, then a song-length set of arm exercises while spinning your legs with weighted arm bars, and about 10-15 more minutes of in and out of saddle spin to finish hard and cool you down. It’s kind of nice to stick to the format because eventually your body just knows and the 45 minutes is over before you know it. On the worst days, though, its monotonous and the songs are all bad and the cycle star motivational monologue (read: unnecessarily oversharing) makes you wanna gag.