poke at "Student Dysphoria"

diff --git a/content/drafts/student-dysphoria-and-a-previous-lifes-war.md b/content/drafts/student-dysphoria-and-a-previous-lifes-war.md
index 6eebe63..d7f7fb1 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/student-dysphoria-and-a-previous-lifes-war.md
+++ b/content/drafts/student-dysphoria-and-a-previous-lifes-war.md
@@ -14,19 +14,24 @@ That carefree selfishness is gone now, subordinated to the war effort. And so so
 
 The first shots of the last war came on 29 November 2007. I was a schoolstudent at the University in Santa Cruz. Coming into that quarter, I had been excited to take the famous "Introduction to Feminisms" course, only to find, as the quarter wore on, that it seemed to be taught in a dialect of English that I could not speak. The texts and the professor kept describing features of Society as _oppression_ as if simply to condemn them. I agreed with the condemnation, of course, but I could not understand it as _knowledge_ and could not produce such sentences in my own voice; I wanted an explanation of how the oppression _worked_.
 
-My subsequent difficulty in writing the required papers for that course weighed heavily on my soul. The failure to live up to expectations would have been shameful for any course, but as a _male_ squandering the privilege of being allowed to take "Introduction to Feminisms", it was simply unbearable. Unable to reach the prescribed word count for the final paper, I had a hysterical nervous breakdown at the end of the quarter, crying and screaming for hours, "I betrayed them; I betrayed them." (The professor and the T.A., who were kind and deserved better than to have to teach a male who _couldn't write_.)
+My subsequent difficulty in writing the required papers for that course weighed heavily on my soul. The failure to live up to expectations would have been shameful for any course, but as a _male_ squandering the privilege of being allowed to take "Introduction to Feminisms", it was simply unbearable. Unable to reach the prescribed wordcount for the final paper, I had a hysterical nervous breakdown at the end of the quarter, crying and screaming for hours, "I betrayed them; I betrayed them." (The professor and the T.A., who were kind and deserved better than to have to teach a male who _couldn't write_.)
 
 Ironically, in the inferno of shame over having betrayed my mandate to the University, my attitude towards school flipped practically overnight. I had never been the most _diligent_ student, but I had mostly accepted the duty of getting an "education": I didn't always do my homework, but when I didn't, I at least felt guilty about it. But suddenly, the difference between schooling-as-education and actual _learning_ became distinct. I had _always_ been a voracious reader; for years, I had been filling little pocket notebooks with my own thoughts—clearly, school itself couldn't take credit for everything I knew. I took a leave of absence from the University and went back to my (previously, "summer") job at the supermarket, with the intention of being an explicit autodidact. I had always learned from books "in passing", in my "free time", but now I would give it the full force of my _legitimate_ effort—it wasn't "leisure" anymore; it was my _actual_ work.
 
 And not just reading, either. I remembered enjoying the linear algebra class I took in winter quarter freshman year at the University, although the course had gone slowly, such that a year and a half after it was over, I found I didn't recall what an eigenvalue was, although I had retained mastery of taking the [reduced row echelon form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_echelon_form#Reduced_row_echelon_form) of a matrix. But what did it matter that the "course" was "over", if I didn't _know_? So I got out the textbook [(Bretcher, 3rd edition)](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144938.Linear_Algebra_with_Applications) and [set to work](/images/math_page_1.jpg) ...
 
-[TODO: the trauma of having no function other than to obey; that's why actual work didn't feel oppressive ]
+This was fine, for a while. I learned from my books, and—there was a _dignity_ to working at the supermarket. It was boring, to be sure, but at least I had some function other than simply to obey a designated authority. You can _tell_ when a customer's latte is too foamy, or the coinmag on checkstand 1 needs to be swapped out, on its own terms, and not because the teacher said so.
+
+But making $9.40 an hour at the supermarket indefinitely (and paying a nominal rent to live with my mom) didn't seem like an acceptable destiny for someone of my social class. It was assumed that at some point, I would have to figure out how to get a grown-up job (although probably my colleagues who had been at the supermarket for 30 years wouldn't approve of me calling it that).
+
+[TODO—
+A+ cert, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heald_College, diff eqs., ending up in community college/SFSU]
 
 I hated the social role of "student" and the whole diseased culture of institutional servitude. I despised the way everyone, including and especially the other "students", talked about their lives and the world in terms of classes and teachers and degrees and grades, rather than talking about the _subject matter_. I wanted it to be _normal_ for boasts of acheivement to take the form of "I proved this theorem and thereby attained _deep insight into the true structure of mathematical reality_", rather than "I got an 'A' on the test."
 
 (Where, sure, it makes sense to take a test occasionally in order to verify that one isn't self-deceiving about the depth of one's insight into the true structure of mathematical reality, or in order to provide some amount of third-party-legible _evidence about_ the depth of one's insight into the true structure of mathematical reality—but the test score itself isn't the _point_.)
 
-I hated the fact that, if it weren't for my desperate efforts to start intellectual conversations with anyone and everyone, people would assume I was one of _them_. Being perceived that way by Society _hurt_. I was frequently moved to rage or tears just getting through the day in that dehumanizing environment.
+I hated the fact that, if it weren't for my desperate efforts to start intellectual conversations with anyone and everyone, people would assume I was one of _them_. Being perceived that way by Society _hurt_. I was frequently moved to rage or tears just getting through the day in that dehumanizing environment. (The supermarket didn't feel like slumming; community college absolutely did.)
 
 That part of my life is behind me now—not because I won my ideological war against institutionalized schooling, but because I _escaped_ to a different world where that war is no longer relevant. My autodidactic romance had already included some amount of computer programming, and taking a [9-week web development bootcamp](https://www.appacademy.io/) leveled up my skills and self-confidence far enough for me to easily find a well-paying software development job. (As with the supermarket, the code bootcamp didn't feel dysfunctional and oppressive in the way that school did, precisely _because_ no one cares if you graduated from code bootcamp; it was very clear that the focus was on acquiring skill at the craft, rather than obeying the dictates of an Authority.) So I went on to live happily—if not ever after, then at least for a brief, beautiful moment from 2014 to mid-2016.