Why I blog*

Holy shit! Epiphany! I blog because this is the one place where I really give myself permission to be an unrestrained nerd. Ok, I claim to have embraced my nerdiness, but frankly, that's only in the realm of statistics. I am a statistician, and so I have 'permission' to be smart and enthusiastic and dorky about math stuff. But, and I think this is one of the reasons this blog so often covers non-math topics, I pretty regularly reign in my interest in and excitement about other 'dork' topics.

Pretty much all smart people, somewhere along the line, learn that it's inappropriate to 'flaunt' their intelligence in public. We learn to let others speak in class, to tone down our passion, to make ourselves more socially acceptable, so as to spare the feelings of others. Now, there's a fine line between healthy, realistic pride and hubris. And there's a fine line between healthy, realistic humility and shame. I thought I had managed to walk these parallel lines, primarily because I never fell into that (all too common female) trap of pretending to be dumb. But guess what? I'm just the other side of that coin - pretending to be less enthusiastic. Because I am that particular combination of smart and enthusiastic. Not just about math, but about ideas. About the meanings of words and actions and motivations and culture. And, frankly, it's not all that often that I have the opportunity (allow myself) to let that enthusiasm run wild. I got a fair amount of it at Case, and I think that's why one of my earliest thoughts during orientation was, my people! A lot of us were that combination of young and smart and naive and we challenged each other to rise to the mental occasion, be the topic movies or paintings or computers or theater or math or literature or science. No one was ashamed of being smart and curious and excited. We organized a group (albeit short-lived) to sit around and read plays, and talk about them, just for the hell of it. We (ok, Chestnut and AWB) created $25,000 Pictionary and we got off on making our friends guess incredibly complicated categories (I'm personally most proud of getting the audience to guess Things America Does that are Hypocritical by drawing a timeline of our relationship with Saddam Hussein).

I still catch moments of unrestrained mental work - the high I feel after APHA and DGH meetings, the feeling I had sitting across from Kathy while she got choked up about her research...but most of the time I'm actively working to tamp myself down, to make myself smaller. To not revel in attending nerd lectures and being just as excited (and moved) by meeting Margaret Atwood as Paul Hunt (ok, maybe Paul Hunt was a little more exciting).

And I think that's why I've started writing more since moving here - I'm trying to create the space I left behind, the space where I didn't have to pretend, to act slightly apathetic and unmotivated and disinterested in topics other than my chosen profession. The place where it wasn't pompous to reference works of art or drop an author's name.

And already I'm back pedaling in my mind - I don't mean to imply that my friends here aren't smart, aren't engaged, etc. etc...But fuck it. I'm making my own space to be smart and enthusiastic and unrestrained in my dorkiness, across the board. And I'm going to work harder at making that space off the internet too.



*I thought about saving this post until tomorrow, it seemed callous to post a big me, me, ME thing on 9/11. But the truth of the matter is...the most noteworthy thing about this day, in my person life, is that it's AWB's birthday. Of course, I stopped this morning for some quiet reflection. I sympathize with all the people still trying to carry on with their lives, still carrying around missing pieces. But it feels equally callous to try to drumb up some false personal sense of loss. I was lucky - I didn't know anyone who died on 9/11/01. I don't know anyone who lost anyone. I feel an abstract sense of loss - the impact that day had on our country, the events it set in motion. But to hold that up against someone else's personal loss...to reminisce about that morning, sitting in my advisor's office, not sure what to do next, friends coming over to our house...it's not important. We were all ok.