at Clemson

Well, I'm in the town that I'll spend most of the next five or so years in (assuming nothing crazy happens). I'm all moved in to my apartment. I'm happy with my apartment, I like my roommates (the two I've met!), and I like the area so far. There's not too much to do but I kind of like it that way. Less distraction. More time for creative activities with people (and for studying eventually). I think I will be happy here :)

I had to arrive on Friday to do paperwork for getting paid. After that, Dr. Hodges and I went out to lunch and talked about some possible projects for this fall. They all sound interesting, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm currently getting other things in line--parking pass, student ID, textbooks, course schedule. I have a desk in the lab (by the window!) that I have cute things for. My things are unpacked and I'm putting finishing touches on my room. I visited a church with the Hodges, Lizzie (a labmate), and Brandon (a friend from UNCC) last Sunday. Lizzie and I have spent a good bit of time together over the past few days. Chad (friend from Winthrop, entering Ph.D. program here) was up for TA training today and we had lunch at Super Taco, which was very tasty. Patrick came up on Saturday for the wedding of two of my friends. I've found the workout room here, laid out by the pool, read the first Harry Potter book, "repaired" my computer (did you know that swapping the keyboard and mouse plugs will cause it to not start up at all?). So far there's not too much to do and I'm a bit bored, but I know things will begin full-speed on Monday so I'm trying to savor the last few days of nothingness.

I think that the wedding I went to on Saturday was my favorite wedding that I've ever been to. Other weddings have been good, but this wedding was different from all of them, and, I think, closer to the way I would like my wedding to be. Instead of a love song solo, there was a congregational hymn about love. There was a sermon-type-thing about the kind of love the Bible calls us to. The whole church took communion, which the bride and groom helped to serve. All in attendance were asked to confirm their support of the marriage. I don't remember what the vows were, but they were different than is typical and I remember liking them a lot (and up until now I've always much preferred the traditional).

The reception had a lot of excellent food, and instead of typical dancing they had a band and a person who was teaching contra dancing, which I really liked, because I can't dance for real and because I hate sketchy dancing at a wedding. Their first dance was a dance with everyone. We had to leave at the cake cutting but it looked like everyone was having fun.

I think the reason I liked this wedding so much is because it wasn't as closely focused on the couple as the other weddings I have been to. Of course, a wedding is primarily about two people committing their lives to each other, but it's not like you live in a bubble with your spouse after you're married to them. There are still other people--your friends, your church family, your community. As a couple you are called to love and serve them together, and they are called to support your marriage and encourage you. I remember at Lea's wedding that the pastor charged the wedding party to do everything within their power to support their marriage, and I liked that a lot too. When I have a wedding, I really would like it to be more church-centered like that. I've never liked sappy love songs and I'd rather us all sing a hymn. I'd like to put more focus on God's love than our love, and I'd like to make the ceremony include the audience as much as this one did. I think the ceremony reflected the order that priorities in a marriage should take: God first, your spouse second, your surrounding community third, and all else following.

The contra dancing (whether this was intended or not) was, to me, an extension of including the entire audience in the wedding. Because I lack dancing skills (even to the point of hating stupid dances like the electric slide) I had always thought that there wouldn't be dancing at my wedding, but I would love for there to be something all-inclusive and fun like this. I always feel awkward at weddings where there's dancing, and I'd rather people not stand around awkwardly at my wedding reception.

A wedding is no time soon for me, but this one really made an impression on me and I wanted to write about it before I forgot.

My other random observation from my time is how luxiuriously I live...we all live. Today I was thinking about how nice it was to have a dishwasher, icemaker, thermostat, and full-sized oven. Then I realized that a lot of the world doesn't have electricity at all, or a computer, or Internet. I don't think I necessarily have to go without these things, but I do want to work more on appreciating "little" things like that. I never want to have the mentality that these things are my rights to have. I want to appreciate them for the blessings that they are.

Okay, that's it for now! Orientation tomorrow, classes begin in a week!

irony

The ad after my previous post: "#1 abs program in America! The truth about abs, click here!"

another quote

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a dieter, but (like any woman) I have my share of body image issues. But lately I've been thinking about it and wondering--why do I want any of these changes anyhow? What's so desirable about the smaller jeans size, the flat tummy, and the smoothing of other 'imperfections'? 

I realized that I really have no idea why I want these things. I don't consider myself unhealthy; I'm in fair shape and I eat right. I look okay in clothes. I have the love and approval of family, friends, and boyfriend (and I always have, even when I was many pounds heavier). The best I can guess, even though I don't really watch TV or read magazines, it's just some implicit cultural standard. Instead of addressing culture, though, I'm ready to step up and address my attitude about it, because that's the only part I can really change.

I read an article today from Jezebel, which occasionally has interesting and good stuff, though you have to sift through it. Here's an excerpt:

Really quitting dieting may mean not just letting that Weight Watchers subscription lapse, but also giving up thinness as a goal. It's still incredibly difficult, because people like Willett (and every women's magazine ever) continue to insist that it must be everyone's goal. But psychologist and eating disorder specialist Deb Burgard says, "the pursuit of thinness as a dream is a place holder. It gets in the way of asking, ‘What is it I am dreaming of?' "

This may be true not just for individual dieters, but for our diet-obsessed society in general. Also in the Times, Roger Cohen writes about the recent study that shows that calorie-restricted monkeys live longer. The child of a primate expert, he examines a now-famous photo of two monkeys, Owen and Canto — and thinks Owen, the well-fed one, is probably happier. He writes,

It's the difference between the guy who got the marbleized rib-eye and the guy who got the oh-so-lean filet. Or between the guy who got a Château Grand Pontet St. Emilion with his brie and the guy who got water. As Edgar notes in King Lear, "Ripeness is all." You don't get to ripeness by eating apple peel for breakfast.

"When life extension supplants life quality as a goal," he continues, "you get the desolation of Canto the monkey." Long life and even health have become goals in themselves, and we seemed forgotten that a long healthy life is for something — enjoyment. When we take health, longevity, or thinness for that matter, as ends rather than means, we get our priorities screwed up. We think it's acceptable to tell people to starve themselves so that they can fit Willett's definition of what's healthy — or Vogue's definition of what's attractive. We'd be better off remembering that health is about being able to do things with your life — including eat — and that thinness is about, well what is in thinness about exactly? If you look at a women's magazine, it's about health, yes, but also attractiveness, happiness, and personal empowerment — all of which can be achieved at any size.

-- from http://jezebel.com/5315977/times-discovers-women-who-dont-diet

What is it I really want? What are the dreams that the pursuit of a perfect appearance is getting in the way of? I don't know. But I certainly aim to find out.

I'm not going to start gorging myself on chocolate ice cream every day, and I'm not giving up working out at the Y. In fact, from outer appearances, very little will probably change. I'm happy with my current lifestyle, for the most part. However, I have resolved to start being kinder to myself, and not hate every cookie I consume or resent every tenth of a pound that changes on the scale. I'm not going to call myself a slacker for not going to the Y when I'm not feeling well. I'm going to stop staring at the mirror to point out imperfections, stop comparing my body to others, stop envisioning what it would look like to be different and start celebrating who I am and what I look like now. I'm going to remember that "charm is deceptive and beauty will not last" (proverbs 31:30) and that spiritual growth is my highest priority. 

Something I really want to do as a practical outworking of this is to not talk disparagingly about my body in front of other women, which will hopefully discourage them from doing so as well. Somehow it's the socially acceptable thing to do to criticize some aspect of yourself when someone starts criticizing themselves, but I'm going to stop doing that too.

Okay. Enough for tonight. One more day of chasing VBS kids coming up!

I was watching the Sotomayor hearings and thinking about this concept of "disparate impact", which I had never heard of before. The way I understand it, this is a way of saying that a situation can have discriminating consequences against a subset of people, even if there was no "disparate intent".

It really fits the problem for women in science, that we usually feel the effects of disparate impact before we have any evidence of disparate intent. And sometimes there isn't any intent to discriminate at all, it's just a matter of context- if you're the only woman in your research group, for example, you're going to feel the effects of being a minority sometimes, even if all the guys are super-supportive and really respect you a lot. Even in those situations, every once in a while, something will come up that makes you feel uncomfortable and left out. That's disparate impact. Whether it's a big impact or not. And then we come to the "death by a thousand pinpricks" metaphor for being a woman in science. That's a lot of little disparate prickings.'

--from http://youngfemalescientist.blogspot.com/

sometimes I feel like we get stuck in this.

There in the dark, her memory was refreshed, and she succumbed to her earlier dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring for. She regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way.

She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty...

--Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye 

(btw, why won't Blogger let you underline? It's a book.)

I think that the world is slightly unfair to people who don't get married immediately after college (or during college).

I signed the lease on my new apartment yesterday and I'll be beginning to move in in mid-July. This one has no furniture in it so I just kind of realized that I need to be working on picking out things now because if I don't I'll end up there at the beginning of August sleeping on a bed with no sheets, in a shower with no curtain, and with my desktop computer on the floor beside me. Now, my kitchen's pretty well set because I enjoy cooking and have had my own kitchen where I've lived for the past few years, but I need almost everything else new. It's amazing how what you pick out when you're 18 and going to college looks really juvenile when you're 22 (and how much four years of college use ruins things in general).

It seems that the kinds of things I'm buying are the things that girls getting married put on their gift registry: serving spoons, a new comforter, some nice towels, new drinking glasses because most of mine are broken, some wall art, bath mats, a shower curtain. Not that I want to be getting married right now, but I'm just saying, other people could be buying this for me, haha. When I do get married, I don't even know what I'll ask for. Wedding china, I suppose.  I'm sure I'll find other things to ask for by then.

I'm pretty happy with where I'll be living. I'm very happy to at least have it settled and not have to think about it any more. We leave for Alaska on Monday, return the following Tuesday, and then a week later I can begin moving in if I want. Things are going to be fairly busy between now and the beginning of August, even though it seems like forever away. 

Enough for now. Might write more later.

There is no attribute more comforting to His children than that of God's Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe that Sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children ought more earnestly to contend than the doctrine of their Master over all creation--the Kingship of God over all the works of his own hands--the Throne of God and his right to sit upon that Throne.

C.H. Spurgeon in his sermon on Matthew 20:15 (via my church bulletin this morning)