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I like to wear bows, in my hair or on my head.

Photographed in Berkeley on February 21st 2011.

When one is in one’s seventh year of receiving academic training at a university, one must stop kidding oneself. When one finds oneself pursuing one’s second master’s degree, it is time to confess that this is not education anymore. The past couple of months – as a matter of fact, ever since first coming here – have been for me a tumultuous time of recognizing decisions as well as sacrifices made previously. For a long time, I wasn’t sure that I had what it takes to excel as a graduate student. For a long time, I was stuck in a way of thinking that was either knocking in open doors or putting up blocks on open roads. For the longest time, I considered perfection the only thing worth striving for – unable to see that it is the mess that renders creativity, that one needs chaos as a contrast in order to recognize harmony. Last Sunday after church I broke my promise to make this February my “Buy Nothing Month” by sneaking into H&M in San Francisco just to ‘have a look’. Naturally, a girl like me never leaves H&M having just had a ‘look’. I found a delightful new bow [see picture above], and a lovely flowing, long red skirt. But as I was trying out the skirt in question, I realized with a look of horror on my face that the size 6 was too narrow in the waist for me. I contemplated the dreadful situation at hand. What to do? What is this, anyway? I’ve never worked out more on this side of 20, and yet I’m not a size 6 anymore? It was a great disaster, comrades, if there ever was one in my American life so far. Forced to ask for a size 8 – which fitted me just right – I kept constantly thinking to myself for the next couple of days “a size 8 is not okay”. I can’t be a size 8; my world is largely constructed on the fact that I’m a size 6. It was a terrible situation. All of the sudden, I realized that this was the exact same reaction that I had to getting a B+ in January. Back then, I kept thinking to myself “a B is not okay”, and this I did for days, at length, until I finally understood that a B is really okay, and that I’m not finished as a scholar because I got a B+. And I’ll probably get lots of more Bs throughout my career as a graduate student. Just as likely is it that I will not be a size 6 for the rest of my life – no matter how perfect that would be. The time has come for acceptance of oneself just as one is. For the longest time, I tried to hide how serious I am about my work. I’m not hiding it anymore. It feels like I have opened up my eyes – be it on the fact that I have two articles to write for two important conferences this spring, one at Stanford in April and one in Moscow/Vologda in June – to a reality which needs my acceptance of it for it to accept me as well. Excelling in classes at graduate school, being a flawless size 6, constantly improving as a runner [though most of the time my knees hurt and I feel like I want to throw up], as well as trying to be a good friend to my awesome friends, figuring out my tax situation and running a household with cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and dishes is just a little bit more than one can handle.

Now let us add ‘conducting interesting scientific research’ to this long list of duties, and I think all of my comrades will understand that third time is indeed a ‘charm’ when it comes to relations with representatives of the opposite sex – plus, how does one give up what one does not have?

I’m okay.