My band director in high school, when we were tuning, always used to tell us, "If it sounds wrong, change something [push the tuning slide in or out]. If it sounds worse, do the opposite thing." I think it works the same way when you're out of tune with the world. I need to change something. I just don't know which direction to go in, and whether it will sound better or worse.

I think that more than anything else I hate being toyed with and manipulated. It seems to be coming up a lot lately, both with attempts to formulate a decent plan for housing next year, and in... other things. And the worst of it is being trapped, not having any leverage to say, "No, you can't do this, because if you do I'll ______." It's the control freak in me, I guess. But more than that, it has to do with personal dignity. To have the ability to get out of a situation before you've turned into merely a tool for someone else, to fill a space in their housing plan, or just to do the dirty work because your boss says so even though it isn't part of your job. To an extent that's the attraction of not having a family and kids (among other things -- don't get me started about the chipwiches and running the flag.) That's what will trap you and keep you from being able to walk out of that job, that relationship, that apartment with the troublesome landlord: people who depend on you. And there's freedom in being able to say "The hell with it, I refuse to be treated like this anymore, if it means I end up living in the street for a while, so be it." There's a certain dignity in that, if only because you're making the choice for yourself. It's the only freedom we really have, to preserve the illusion of control in a world where there is none.

As I walked down the hill from the station tonight I wondered what it must be like to work at three thirty in the morning plowing, or running one of the snowblowing tractors, or the funny little machines with the spinning brush that clears the footpaths; working late late at night, piercing the darkness only with flashing orange lights, breaking the silence only with a dull whirr, long after everyone else is asleep, just so that we spoiled brat college students can wake up in the morning to find the streets and paths and stairs all clear, as if the snow fell around our walkways just for our convenience.

Sometimes it makes me sick, and maybe this sounds ungrateful, but sometimes I wish I could wake up and pick up a shovel to clear my own paths, instead of running off to class, detatched, immersed, as if there was nothing more important in the world than a passage of Herodotus, not even thinking that someone else must have kept the snow from piling against my door so I could get out in the morning.

It's no secret to those who have had to listen to me that I've been having a rough semester so far, for any number of reasons, some big and some little. I had thought that the energy was back, but somehow it backfired on me. It's hard to keep a positive outlook very much lately. But I keep trying to find little moments here and there where I can completely forget about the things that are troubling me. Like last night, on the bus back from Brown, curled up in my corner, covered with a jacket to keep myself warm, with my friends beside and in front of me, Peter, Paul and Mary singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" on my walkman, and the yellow moon hovering next to my window, watching over me on our way home. Perhaps if I can cling to that moment of peace, it will sustain me, even when the rest of life is battering me over the head.

I only realized it this morning, sitting in Greek class. For so long now I've been trying to be the antithesis of the stereotype. Everything that people said all women were, I would not be, and every complaint they had, I would use my own example to counter. I don't remember when it started. Perhaps it was in that abyss between high school and college when I started to develop that feminist awareness. What was it that one professor said? Something about how feminism is about developing awareness, and that once you start becoming aware of the little imbalances, the little injustices in the way the world works, you can never go back. She was right. I find myself thinking this way unconsciously. I never decided that I was going to try to be the antithesis of the stereotype and prove them all wrong. But here I am, feeling frustrated because I am a nervous driver, so what am I to say to those who snidely remark that putting a woman behind the wheel of an SUV is asking for trouble? I know there are plenty of women who drive better than me, but still I feel guilty for providing a case-in-point. And sitting in Greek class, aware that in our three-person class it's the two guys who are by far the better students, and wondering if someone will soon say that it's because women aren't smart enough to pick up a difficult language like Greek. Feeling like I ought to apply myself more, for the sake of proving the point. And that's when I realized it and I started to wonder, when did I become the spokesperson and the standard for all womankind?

I maintain that the best kind of friend is the kind that will insult you to your face and defend you behind your back. I wish I had more of those, really. These days, it seems like hardly anybody has my back. And no one's willing to look at me and just say what needs to be said.

Somewhere in the back of our heads, I think we all have this image of college where students are empowered, where we're all out protesting things and saving the world, like it's still the '60s or something. As we transition into adulthood and we're finally on our own we develop this power, this influence over our world, and all of a sudden our opinions matter and people listen to us and we can do anything. But here I am, at college, with our country about to go to war (and for what?), and I feel impossibly far away and devastatingly useless, one tiny voice in a sea of apathy that covers me up like static. And what's more, I can't even effect change here on my own campus, when ResLife decides that we're their new experiment and they make miserable new housing policies, segregating each class, making less and less options. And it's not just me, it's so many of us, and we're yelling (because aren't we paying them lots of money for this?) and they're not listening, because we're just students and they don't have to, and in the end, helpless, I call my parents, and ask them to call ResLife, because no matter how much they try to tell us we're adults here, they treat us like small malleable children, and even though I'm nineteen I still need my parents to make my opinion matter.

earlier -- later