Intro and Grad School: By the Numbers

Intro to this blog thing:

I moved to Chapel Hill from Charleston, SC about one month ago. I planned on starting this blog then, but grad school keeps you busy. Anyway, I started this blog as a way to keep in touch with people (because I hate Facebook--it's scary) and let everyone in SC and whoever else cares enough to spend their time reading my blog know what's going on in my life...so here goes

Grad School By the Numbers:
Here's a recap in numbers and a few letters of what I have experienced in the last month:

• 2.6 billion: the endowment of UNC Chapel Hill (does CofC even have an endowment? I think not)
• 28,136: total number of students at UNC Chapel Hill
• 8,177: number of those students who are graduate or professional students
• 1,000: the approximate number of pages I read per week (in addition to the 25 books above, I also have numerous articles to read)
• 839.38: dollar amount of "student fees" at UNC; what's that include? football tickets and basketball tickets, which I will never use
• 816: the amount of money I get paid every two weeks for being a TA and for thinking (it's nice)
• 729: acres of campus at UNC compared with 4 at the College of Charleston
• 169: students in my TA lecture class
• 91.5: radio number of NPR in Chapel Hill; I heart NPR and I especially enjoy "This American Life," "A Prairie Home Companion," and "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" (apparently grad school has turned me into a old lady)
• 80: the temperature of my apartment usually--no central heat and air; I made a promise to myself that I will never live without the best invention ever--air conditioning--again
• 71: the age of my anthro theory and ethnography teacher, who I love. This man knows EVERYONE in anthropology! He knew Clifford Geertz, was lost in the mountains of NC with Margaret Mead, met Malinowski, and Cora DuBois was his graduate school professor. He was present of the AAA (American Anthropology Assocaition), and was awarded the Boas Award in 2002 by them. I want to be taken under his wing.
• 60: students in my recitation classes (I lead discussion, which has only been clarifying material and actually teaching them...)
• 37: the age of the oldest member of my cohort
• 30: minutes it takes me to walk to class; most of which is uphill
• 21: my age, which makes me feel inadequate considering the average age of my cohort is 28
• 14: the size of my cohort, which is very big
• 12- number of times I thought I would breakdown (I haven't yet)
• 10: the number of orientations I have attended in the past month...I still don't know what the hell is going on
  
• 9: people with Master's Degree in my cohort
• 6: people married/with significant others in mycohort
• 5: total number of people in my TA office, which is actually 5 desks in a room decorated with LOL cat print outs with anthropological sayings. The one above my desk says, "We is alienated from our labor" and has a picture of a cat attacking a CPU with a screwdriver. I also have been bequeathed a Che poster by the previous desk owner, so my area is very Marxist, and students who come to my office hours I am sure suspect I may be a Communist
  
• 3: recitation classes I have; all on Monday; the number of classes I have; the number of hours one class lasts; the steps away I am from "Papa Boas": me:Peacock: DuBois: Boas
  
• 2: the number of times the "patriarchy got me" according to my 71 year-old theory teacher because I have a first name that is a last name. He actually called me by my last name when asking me to read a question aloud, startled because I realized after 10 seconds he was talking to me, I said, "Wow, it's been a long time since I was called by my last name." He thought my last name was my first and told me I could Psychoanalyze him during the break (we were covering Freud) for using my last name. I said it was no big deal, since I did have two last names, one for a first name and one for a last name. He said, "yeah, the patriarchy got you twice" (he knows of my feminist identity)
• 1: year I have to wait to move into an apartment with Bravo (seriously, are there no gay men or women on this campus?! 4 ESPNs and NO Bravo?Also, the time I have to wait until the reading load lightens and "operation bootcamp"- pushing you to the brinks to discover if grad school is for you; what I have affectionately named year 1 in grad school, some call it CORE year because we have two CORE classes (Theory and Ecology and Evolution)
  
• 0: extracurricular activities. This is the first time since 6th grade where I am not involved in something outside school. If feels weird, but I have NO t free time.
  
• P+: the grade on my first ever grad school paper for the 71 year-old theory teacher. the grading scale is H (high pass), P (pass-what usually everyone gets), L (low pass, 3 of these and you are OUT), F (fail--as in you fail at life and grad school) We had to meet with him individually to discuss our papers. I ALMOST cried. But, that's a good grade, you are thinking. I almost cried (we are talking voice cracking, squeezing tear ducts here) because he validated me. The rockstar said I did a very good job and I was above where I needed to be, and aboved some of my cohorts. I said, while holding back tears, "Thank you, that means a lot especially since I am the youngest." "You are?," he said. "Yes, I just graduated in May." He told me how he was the youngest in his cohort too and how he never spoke in class (I speak in class, though feel like an idiot afterwards), so I was doing better than he did. And, I am sure a tiny bit of the almost crying came from the fact that I wanted that H (which no one got one, only H-) because I am a perfectionist, but I am working on it.

So, in these few weeks of grad school, a lot has happened. I have read an obscene amount of material, made four friends, am coping with the fact that I actually do belong here, even though I have questioned it often, and I am learning that it is OK to be a P+ student or even a P student, but I still shoot for the Hs.