Now that it is both necessary (viz. my professional life), and possible (viz. I lost 85 pounds), to pursue a life of fashion, the dictates of modal logic compel me to do so.

In the world of shopping, I am like a child just learning to walk. Fortunately, I already have very strong feelings about women’s clothing-- that is to say, I think 90% of it is ridiculous-- so I can dismiss a huge fraction of the possibilities out of hand. That leaves all of greater San Diego for me to scour in the remote hope of finding that hidden gem, secreted away, just for me, among the taquerias and auto shops.

Let loose on this planet with reliable transportation and 900 sq ft. of empty living space, I’ve been building up my personal aesthetic from diverse sources. In general, when out of doors, I buy things impulsively, just to establish some kind of psychic link to the places I’ve been. My most recent acquisition, of which I am quite proud, is what I will call a rustic lantern from the Panikin gift shop. It has no identifying features other than looking rustic and authentic, which makes it fit nicely among the other wares at the Panikin gift shop.

If my attitude towards decor-shopping is joyous and lighthearted, my attitude towards clothes- (and other necessities-) shopping is uptight and Kantian. I frequently use Groupons just to have some kind of pretext for entering a place. When I whip out my groupon and present it to the inspectors, I feel strangely like I’m re-enacting the scene whereby my parents first “showed their papers” to get into this country so long ago. It feels legit.

As a morbidly obese teenager, I was deprived of the formative shopping experience that serve to shape one as a normal, functioning, gendered, and free individual. On one singular occasion (some kind of “dance” ritual at my school), I ventured out to go dress-shopping and BY SHEEREST CHANCE, I found a GORGEOUS gown that actually, truly, fit and looked GOOD. I saw the price--$200--and my heart sank. When I later reprised my truly extraordinary find to my parents and tried to convince them to fork over the cash, I spoke in the assumption that $200 was an astronomically large sum (as I believed at that tender age), and perhaps because of this, the excitement and urgency was not properly conveyed in my voice: they refused (as I remember it). In the years that followed, I gradually came to know and to understand that women routinely spend this much on clothes without any compunction, that my dad was unambiguously loaded, and that my sister oftentimes took whole coteries out to eat at restaurants and then paid the ENTIRE bill with my dad’s credit card. (Needless to say, I had no comparable social life.)

Now, as a thin person, I not only have license to shop, but I can moreover play the role of trendsetter. There are few women’s clothing stores that I find tolerable. One of these is H&M. I have a fond memory of finding myself in an H&M shortly after the first big wave of my weight loss (~50 pounds in sophomore year of college) and marveling at all of the quality merchandise. All the pieces seemed so REAL, like they were meant to be worn by women who stood for something, whose lives consisted of something more than mediating phone calls in a ruffled blouse. My judgement may have been colored by the fact that I had recently lost a lot of weight.

I had a chance to recapture that moment, and to test the soundness of my initial impression, when I spotted a fragment of concrete announcing “H&M” in bright red lettering, scarcely visible from my position in an adjacent shopping center. Further research revealed that the wall separating me from H&M marked the bounds of an entirely different city (I was in Encinitas, the much-hallowed H&M was in Carlsbad), and that the H&M in fact formed part of a much larger enterprise, a communal shopping retreat for yuppies and their ilk, going by the name of “Carlsbad Forum”.

Carlsbad Forum, despite the democratic overtones in its name, caters to a very special crowd. This becomes evident when one considers the several high-end yoga studios lining the upper floors. (The layers of meaning inherent in the label “Haute Yoga” positively boggle the mind.) It is evident in the presence of lululemon athletics, which has been fiercely lambasted elsewhere for promoting elitist bourgeoisie values. And it is made evident simply by the scores of white, mindless, vapid women who glide serenely past the shops or delicately prod their food while seated (on display) in front of posh cafes. All of the foregoing may be explained by the fact that Carlsbad Forum is situated about 6 miles (source: Google maps) from Rancho Santa Fe, reportedly “one of the richest communities in the country”.

My H&M sighting was significant in light of the fact that H&M merchandise is not available for sale online. My preferred mode of shopping is unquestionably online shopping. The great gift of online shopping is that it allows us to circumvent painful social realities, which (in my opinion) are endemic to life in America. Furthermore, all of the specifications of the items are neatly and unambiguously laid out online, right down to the washing machine instructions. Bear witness to some of the most cutting-edge technology of our time-- On victoriassecret.com, where you can toggle between different colors for a shirt-- the mouse click changing only the color and nothing else in the image.

The fallacy of composition notwithstanding, my fashion sense has much in common with my shopping style. I take comfort in constancy. I wear the same basic outfit every day (tank top, yoga pants, cardigan)-- a veritable uniform!-- with color being the only variable that changes from day to day; and even then, the harmony between the colors of the component pieces remains a constant. Among my standard-issue tanks, the most prized are a Spartan green called “Scout’s Honor”, and an understated Peach, which has aged gracefully into an even more understated Ivory. (Sadly, these two are nearing the end of their shelf life, and I prepare to usher in the next generation of tank tops.) This is not to say that I don’t have some signature pieces, among them a velvet blazer and a gothic gown, but these rarely come out of the closet. I wouldn’t mind having a solid pair of black boots, possibly like the ones on Star Trek.

Now given free reign at H&M, I am immediately confronted with the choice between a) making a systematic study of the place, in the style of rationalists (read: Leibniz, Kant), or b) letting myself be buffeted around by the sensory stimulation, responding immediately to whatever catches my eye, as a brute empiricist (note to non-philosophers: this is unfair to empiricists; I harbor something of a grudge towards empiricists). Left alone, I would survey the place like an ardent naturalist and take meticulous notes to ponder at length alone in my room. But any impulse towards intellectual abstraction is checked by the demands of social etiquette. I simply can’t go around like a crazed journalist recording the placement of the circular kiosk racks, the demographic profile of the clientele, and the width of horizontal stripes on this black-and-white sweater. Shopping has a cultural etiquette of its own, and I am, all-too-clearly, very new to the game.

Fortunately, there is much to like about H&M, no doubt due to its European origins. In my time there, I observed a genuine satchel, cardigans and blazers in abundance, and rows of darling Oxford leather shoes that look like they might have belonged to a female Indiana Jones (or even better, like Rachel Weisz in "The Mummy"!).



Granted, there was a fair amount of what I term “ridiculous” items-- stuff with ruffles and frills, deliberately oversized sweaters which I honestly don’t comprehend, and lots of items too gaudy and vulgar to mention... but at least no velour pants with writing on the butt! 

Consistent with my view of aesthetics as “first philosophy”, one of my ongoing goals in life is to defend and project a unified artistic vision. When I was done shopping at H&M, I caught my reflection in the mirror and realized that everything I had snagged was some shade of orange. That, coupled with the brown plaid jacket I was wearing at the time, served to make me look like Autumn personified. Insofar as my aim is to project a coherent whole in my style and my pursuits in life, I think we can say that I was successful.

(edit: I received an epic 34 text messages from my sister, who apparently didn't appreciate that line about her. what I gathered from her messages is that she denies it.)

(edit2: I realize this post is stilted and disjointed--thank you, Philosophy education!--but I intend to clean it up sometime in the near, or not so near, future)

Each night, when I have finished my hyper-analytic language-math work that pays the bills, I turn to online jeopardy (sponsored by facebook!) to reconnect to the world and my fellow man. It is like the evening tea, and serves much the same meditative function.

The opening page assaults you with a tasteless rock/jazz (I honestly don’t know which one) rendition of the jeopardy theme song, followed by a page where you spin a wheel-of-fortune rendered in equally tasteless early 90s-era computer graphics. It is purely a formality. The spin does however award you with a random sum of money in the currency of this fictional universe, which can then be used to purchase what are called “boosts” (which are essentially various types of cheats). Having become accustomed to the use of fictional money, one feels a sense of cognitive dissonance when prompted to input ‘real’ credit card information in the event that one wants to buy extra episodes.

The prevailing aesthetic of the game is minimalist and non-partisan. The game is awash in a neutral blue: sanitized and bereft of any cultural indicators. The categories (equal parts academic and popular) may be likened to the “basic level concepts” which psycholinguists are so fond of invoking. I keep my gaze fixed on these categories: they serve as guidelines in my ongoing effort to reprogram my brain so that it is more in alignment with the ethos of mainstream america. (yes for alignment with mainstream america!)

The questions themselves are of intermediate difficulty. The science questions are REALLY easy (what does this say about the american public?) When I am not certain of the answer (a not very frequent occurrence), the following are some of the strategies I have found to be effective, provided they are applied judiciously:

1. The answer is the only one you have heard of.
2. The answer is your first instinct.
3. The answer is your second instinct.
4. The conventional approach: apply powers of concentration; consider all possibilities and probabilities according to a suitably complex formula; deploy all the resources of decision theory, social psychology, and optical theory.
5. Approach the game with confidence (aside: This strategy worked wondrously for the SAT when I took it in high school.)
6. Read the mind of the testmaker. You’ll know you’ve succeeded at applying this strategy when you see your performance improve according to a quadratic equation, i.e. exponentially. (this may be taken as an illustration of the “learning curve”.)

I feel a little better about myself after I play facebook jeopardy.

I have been deferring my end-of-semester reflection on the courses I took this semester, for fear of inadvertently influencing my grade. Now that I have my straight A’s safely tucked away, I’m going to try and make some sense of the events that transpired. If this post comes out sounding eager and optimistic, I will take that as one point in favor of going on to Ph.D. in my ongoing, internal debate as to whether I should go on to Ph.D.

My 795 course, entitled Pragmatics, was my entry-way into the field which I currently claim to be my primary research interest but for which I have had no formal introduction thusfar. Pragmatics has a history in Oxford Philosophy, and I have romanticized it as my opportunity to join what I am calling the Great Conversation. It is fitting that our class met in a conference room and our prof, a remarkable man who earned a J.D. totally unnecessarily to fill out his resume, one day wore tweed. 

My final paper, which you can read on academia.edu, exemplifies academic writing. This is a very specialized industry that doesn’t really require you to be well-read or creative (this is arguable). Your success is measured in proportion to your level of dedication to a field and a practice that no one cares about, that will alienate you, and that will suck your soul and leave an empty shell behind. It took an embarrassingly long time to write that paper. I was trying to make all the words univocal, as if in pursuit of some platonic ideal or universal language. I was often paralyzed by the thought that everything I write commits me to a claim that I will have to defend at some future date. Some parts came out genuinely stilted (like the conclusion, and the second paragraph under “Relevance as a Property of Cognitive Systems”, if you’re reading it), like I am just learning how to write. It’s very out of character. I spent a lot of time “moving sentences around”, which is understandable when you’re trying to articulate an utterly novel concept like “mutual manifestness” and “cognitive environments” (read it and see what I mean).

My other class was “History of Linguistics”. I deftly arranged it so that I could write about “History of Pragmatics” for my term paper. (The prof didn’t seem to mind). This paper was even more labored and pedantical than the other. I used a lot of martial metaphors. I tried above all to be “clear” and “logical” (these are highly valued qualities in academic writing), which would have resulted in a bland and insipid paper, but I made up for this by including a lot of impressive vocabulary. No one can argue with vocabulary.

The history of pragmatics, I learned, develops the same insights that I found so exciting in Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty as a sophomore in college, but without all the riddles and neologisms and arcana. I ended up photocopying the $153 book and returning it for a refund. It’s now collecting dust in a pile on my floor, like history should. I am not against returning to it with fresh eyes for some future project.

I will leave you with this dialogue as a form of entertainment in a resolutely un-entertaining blog:

On the subject of flat feet, which i happen to have:

me: I think I did something wrong in my development
he (long beleaguered by my vocal and repeated denunciations of liberal sexual attitudes): it's because you didn't lose your virginity until you were 21
me: yes, exactly! you know me too well

Now that it’s winter break, I have no excuse not to go to the gym every day. If there is a gym culture, I don’t know about it nor do I care about it. I just want to be left alone on my corner treadmill and painstakingly monitor my health with the help of the handy electronic displays.

I started going to the gym regularly about 5 weeks ago. The gym has opened up a new world for me. The most palpable reward has been an ease of breath. The Greeks equated life with breath, as indicated by their use of the word pneuma to designate both. (They also praised athletic beauty.) I find that the gunk of 1500 yrs of history (someone correct me if i have wrong information #armenianhistory) cleared away when I address someone in speech. I will have to learn how to control my newfound power. Now the meaning of my ex-roommate’s expression “in the same breath” (which she used perhaps too often) becomes clear.

I run like a total bourgeois. I barely lift my legs, and sometimes I even run with my arms down, like the guy from Little Miss Sunshine. I noticed an Asian guy running just like this 4 treadmills to the left once, and i wonder if this is his own personal style or if he was just copying me. It is helpful to have a full-body integrated experience to learn about my innermost self. normally i just lift arm weights. consequently, i have vestigial legs, and frequent dissociative episodes.

Since I am in a high-tech, resort housing situation, all the treadmills are equipped with tv screens, rather flamboyantly called “Cardio Theater”s. I am skeptical of all forms of television. Food Network is the only tolerable station. I favor Barefoot Contessa (she reminds me of my Italian aunt (we are related by marriage)) and Giadia, who i presume is also Italian. The twin goddesses.

I prefer to do my lifting at home, but on occasion I will take advantage of the leg machines, since squats are AWKWARD. After a time, I migrated over to the upper body machines, which is where I shine. But I feel safer not encroaching on the mens’ territory. Let them think they are superior to me.

The gym, we all know, is a form of state control. (I think I am citing Foucault?) And it totally makes sense now, on a bodily, physical level. The gym keeps me in line (quite literally), which I suppose is the function of boyfriends in most people’s worlds. Going to the gym is a form of good citizenship.

Related to this, someone surreptitiously subscribed me to Women’s Health magazine (I suspect my mother). I am naturally skeptical of publications pandering to feel-good 30-something women. It is essentially a state-run propaganda to encourage liberal sexual attitudes in women, masquerading under the banner of “healthy living”. Nevertheless, I’ve found that the magazine serves an artistic (and psychological) function by keeping it open on my table.

I have also recently discovered a show called Misfits, featuring a diverse cast of British young people who develop supernatural abilities after a freak storm. (british+paranormal. what’s not to like?)   I already barely talk to people and listen to VNV nation all day, the result of which is that I am immersed in British accents all day. it is a beautiful beautiful thing.

Apparently there is a stigmatized, marginalized non-standard British accent (spoken by Lauren Socha). I didn’t think there was such an accent. They all feel universally godlike. The first episode of the first season opens with some comment on this accent. It is extremely funny. watch it. (from around 1:50-2:00) http://www.hulu.com/watch/248938/misfits-one. i can spend the rest of my life studying english accents and be happy. (This is actually a practicable career path. my first choice however is lexicographer.)

What I love about British people is that they are so candid, they wear every passing emotion quite transparently on their faces. Let me draw your attention to adorable, huggable Nathan (played by Robert Michael Sheehan), and his equally cute (though perhaps not as cuddle-able, in my opinion) co-star Iwan Rheon. Since I need some direction in my life, I think I’m going to set my sights on winning their love, in real life. It can be done!

If any of my (three) readers have remarked on the passing of my livejournal, I’m happy to report that we’re back! For those who are desirous of intimate details (I am used to divulging these, as I come from a family with no sense of privacy or personal boundaries), I applied for a job (a real one! in the world!) and I had to take measures to protect my identity. (I know I myself am inclined to Google Search people on the Internet, and naturally I extend my reasoning to other people.) It has now been just about two weeks since I last heard from them, so I think we can assume that I didn’t get the job. (I’m sorry Barnes and Noble, that my manner of showcasing books to other people magically transports them to a museum of antiquities and this is not the image you wish to project. I wish you well.)

I captured a shot of this anachronistic pirate manning the helm at BN on Halloween.

The whole semester I have been engaged in a halting, back-and-forth (albeit persistent) effort to withdraw from school. Part of the problem is financial, and all talk of money automatically implicates talk of parents (it shouldn’t be so). Therefore, I recruited the help of a therapist to help mediate between my parents (conservative, fundamentalist brick walls) and me, but the results have been indefinite. The therapist (whom I hand-picked based on the dual criteria of tenor of voice on the voice message and picture online) is a Persian lady, very warm, with an ambiguous accent. She made some inroads in her talks with my parents over the phone, from what I can tell. But, considering the fact that I am still in school as of today, November 13, we can say that she has not been successful. To her credit, our talks have been valuable.

I have complex reasons for wanting to drop out of school. In a word, I will say that it has spirited me away, to a dark place. It’s “not for me”. And it is not consistent with the american ethos of freedom and opportunity. and we all know i want nothing but to learn how to cope in this country that I have been thrown into without proper acculturation.

My 660 class (History of Linguistics) is remarkable in that there is a huge disconnect between the readings (challenging by any measure-- one syntax reading drew parallels with Principia Mathematica) and the lectures, which are (to put it gently) elementary. The prof is good-intentioned. He is quite a character. He has a habit of asking “What happened in 1066?” regardless of what class we’re in. Having been in another class of his, I was prepared to spit out “The Norman Invasion”. This doesn’t diminish the fact that I, and I alone, answer most if not all of the trivia “fact” questions he asks in class, thereby gaining some esteem when there are few opportunities to do so. Some answers I have supplied: Feynman; “Darwin’s bulldog” (the prompt was "Chomsky's Huxley" or something of that form); atlatl. (yes i am keeping count). I might well get an A on the strength of my trivia knowledge alone.


The Bayeux Tapestry, "depicting the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England"
(Wikipedia), which I dutifully learned about in my AP Art History class. The Norman conquest is
significant from a linguistic point of view because it led to all the Latin loanwords being borrowed
into the English language.

The possibility of an LSA “Halloween party” presented itself some time last week, in the form of a facebook “event” notice. As I am trying to find some balance in my life, I thought I would seize this opportunity and approach it with a positive outlook. It sounded innocent enough-- a modest gathering of Linguistics Society fellows. Having had minimal contact with this demographic, I can assume that they harbor no preconceptions about who I am or where I come from (always the burden). That, coupled with the eminently non-threatening nature of the event, compelled me to join in.

My costume, which I assure you I took great care in devising, consisted of purple eyeshadow, and... purple eyeshadow. (But, if you are being generous, my jacket and shaved head could be construed as representing a military theme.) What else can I say, but that “I came as myself”.

Finding parking in the North Park district of San Diego, when there are presumably a non-insignificant number of pre-Halloween festivities going on, was humbling. It brought home to me the urgency of becoming acquainted with the laws and customs of the nation I currently find myself in (and which has no connection whatsoever to my upbringing or acculturation-- I went to Armenian school). I only wish I had spent those lonely nights in high school memorizing the layout of city streets rather than frantically scribbling down my AP Calculus homework.

The party turned out to be a genuine “college party”, with Linguistics students representing only a small minority. The surest sign of this was the persistent “hip-hop” music. I voiced my complaints, but to no avail. Sometimes, you cannot bring down the “man”, only just defer the task for a while.

Outside, I gravitated towards an Air Force 1-costumed individual and his companion, some friendly-looking folks. They turned out to be med students at UCSD, one of whom went to Stanford for undergrad. We had a fairly long chat. Always operating on the principle of personal gain, I came away from the experience with a facebook-add.

Then I went home to my lonely bed to lament the coming of the next day, another anxiety-ridden, fear-inducing workday with no hope of compensation and no hope of anything in return. :(

Now that I have established a home base from which to conduct operations, I’ve been venturing into the outlying territories, largely in the interest of [intellectual] commerce.

I’m focusing my attention on North County for the time being, since I have something of a “history” there. I have made this trip several times in the past week. There must be a warp zone or cosmic loop or topological folding between here and there because oddly, my gas seems to be running at high-efficiency during the duration of my drive. I know this because of course I keep a meticulous record of my energy consumption and expenditure (in terms of money, food, fuel), because you never know when the CIA (or nosy Armenian parents, as the case may be) are going to come knocking down your door to question your whereabouts and recent activity.

I gravitated towards Barnes and Noble, the fountain of creation and ingenuity and good things to come. (This station formerly occupied by Borders). I still have trouble finding my feet in parking lots. Luckily, the city’s architects have thought to include crosswalks (in friendly handicap blue) for those functionally-impaired like myself. 

Some prima-facie observations: BN has 1 standard-sized shelf devoted to philosophy, while they reserve 4 for “Teen Paranormal Romance” (apparently a genre in its own right?). Also I don’t approve of their collapsing “Fiction” and “Literature” into one heading. As for the adjoining Starbucks, I am so pleased to see that they list the calorie contents of their products in plain sight to the consumer. This is very progressive.

All the same, the calorie-content of their treats are exorbitant and unforgiving. I suppose I will have to have my eye on that maple pecan scone from the moment I wake up.

But I came here with a purpose. I set up my artificial defenses (shaved head, unwavering gaze, military coat, aesthetically-neutral accoutrements) and settle into my morphophonemics reading. There is a woman at 4 o’clock whose voice is maddeningly discordant (but not in the way that raspy women’s voices are discordant). It was so disorienting. There are at least 3 (unrelated) women (girls) studying nursing. They are uniformly physically fit and attractive. I take it these are the model members of society? (I must have missed something in my education/socialization).

Another site of interest is the LA fitness in the same general area. The LA fitness, properly defined, is nothing special. It is paradigmatically mainstream and therefore of not much use in furthering my agenda. I cannot bring myself to use the cardio machines, but I consider the yoga classes to be a fine forum for... promoting peace and solidarity, and the suchlike.

I befriended the (rather cute) boy at the front desk. He turned out to be (half) italian, which seems apt since I intend to use him for politicking/manipulative purposes. I gave my customary bombastic critique of the music as a pretext for initiating conversation. It was well-received. From there I sweet-talked him into giving me access to the behind-the-desk area, where I queried him about his training and the LA fitness computer interface capabilities.

(re: the columns. I revisited the bn, and I'm going to have to rescind my comment about the columns. they are not how i remembered them. i think i was in a daze either then or at the time of writing. something about the location must have made me think of another location, where there are in fact monumental columns. as a consequence, i have had to remove the picture.)

To Whom it May Concern (c/o San Diego State University Citation Processing Center):

I’m writing to contest a parking citation I received on Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 4:28pm in the Parking lot labeled ‘O’, on College Ave and Lindo Paseo (citation number SS007595856). I am a second-year graduate student in the Linguistics department and I currently use a parking permit labeled “Student” which I have clearly displayed on my front windshield at the appointed spot on the lower left (driver’s) side.

My reason for disclaiming responsibility for this ticket is that I simply did not know, and in fact I was absolutely sure, that this parking lot was open to students with the appropriate “Student” permit. I cannot tell you why I was under this delusion. Reflecting on it now, I can see how it may have had something to do with the “SP” designation on the parking lot signage, which is close in appearance to “S” and which may have led me to believe it indicated “Student”. (I have now learned, from the helpful staff at Parking Services, that “SP” is an entirely separate designation that applies to certain faculty.)

Another reason which comes to my mind, after the fact, to explain my mistake is the close proximity of the “P” lot across the street which is in fact open to Students (and which I plan to use from now on to service my attendance in “College Square” classes-- i.e. those on the second floor above the commercial sector on College Ave.). It is possible, in retrospect, that I noticed and registered that this parking lot was accessible at some point in the past (maybe when I was in a hurry and surveying the area for the first time), and then somehow, at some time, extended my reasoning to apply across the street without noting the different policy in force there.

Of course the reasons I give are merely speculation, since I cannot say myself why I mistakenly parked in the off-zone parking lot.

As a final appeal, I would like point out that I am new to parking permits, and the system in place at SDSU is, if I may say, less-than-transparent, and so it is my opinion that a minor lapse in judgement such as this one should be excused. This is, further, my first parking violation within the context of SDSU, and, if excused, I will have learned my lesson and take greater care to follow the rules and regulations to the letter. You are welcome to keep my letter on file and hold me to this the next time I happen to incur another parking violation, if ever.

Thank you for your careful consideration. I appreciate your time and attention.

Feel free to contact me via any of the above mediums with further questions or if any part of my letter is unclear.

Regards,

Salpi Vartivarian

From A Field Guide to the Urban Hipster, Josh Aiello, pg 12

"Despite their utter lack of joie de vivre, Goths are fond of engaging in a series of movements which technically constitute the act of dancing. A completely joyless enterprise, their "dance" features dramatic hand motions and is only performed solo. Concerned more with methodology than fun, this lumbering display requires vast personal space and is best described as a period of controlled flailing. Though specifics vary, the "dance" usually features exaggerated arm swinging, general swishing about, affected gestures, and a great deal of crouching.”

Flirted with the idea of dropping out of Linguistics. As expected, the decision was greeted with a firestorm from the Pater, whose stuttering, spluttering foreign accent makes his protests SO much more convincing. His argument was basically an appeal to fear. (you will be HOMELESS; you CANNOT come back home; I will call your university’s chancellor; etc.). Which did the trick, because now, at this hour, I am heart-grippingly on edge with no chance of getting to sleep without chemical inducements.

So in the end I decided to follow through with the original plan, but I’m going to make a conscious effort to *not* stand out in class, because with each stellar/mind-blowing/show-stopping revelation I make in class, I am that much more accountable and expected to maintain this level of erudition. I will simply make an appearance and keep my mouth shut.