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citrus salsa and wine

Thought of the day:

In fact, many researchers believe that as a child grows, the influence of experience overtakes that of genetics. They think that ultimately only a fraction -- perhaps about 10 percent -- of an adult's personality is inborn.

It makes me wonder how my personality developed as it has and what parts I was born with. Also, it makes me wonder what parts I'd like to keep, and if there's anything I should try to change.

Today was a nice day. Today, Alberto premiered an award for the best dinner, and I won for chicken with citrus salsa, cucumber soup, noodles with herbs, and strawberries. I won w a bottle of wine which I shared with everyone. It kind of made my day. I also had a nice conversation with Nick, and he was asking me about coming to various events. Finally, we got an extension on the homework I couldn't figure out yesterday (apparently no one else could figure it out either), and with the TA's help, I think I now know how to do it.

I saw Albert for the first time in ages, though, which irrationally made me kind of sad.

9:42 p.m. - May. 12, 2003

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losing my mind

someone downstairs is playing beethoven's pathetique sonata. it's so beautiful. i have the music and used to try to stumble through it, but i can't play it anything like the person downstairs. they are quite incredible.

after days like yesterday i get so depressed and frustrating and it's hard to be friendly and sociable to people. i saw nick and he came in and said hello to me, but i was in such a foul mood i could barely bring myself to smile. (to explain the depths of my frustration let me say that i was stomping around my room and throwing pillows against the wall. i literally remember the last time i was this annoyed. fear not; i don't habitually throw things around the place!) however, later on i saw scarlett and abhi, and they made me smile and laugh. maybe this says something about nick.

11:51 a.m. - May. 12, 2003

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frustration

right now i feel like banging my head against the wall. i have three homeworks due tomorrow, and i haven't finished any of them. one of them i totally just cannot figure out and i don't know who to ask.

7:25 p.m. - May. 11, 2003

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random tidbit of the day

i have three homeworks due monday, so here i am working on a saturday. anyway, in a moment of distraction, i took a moment to dig up some data on something i've been curious about, average heights.

what i found is this:

the average height for a white man in the US is 5'10". the median height at 18 was 5'9.6" for whites, 5'8.64" for blacks, 5'6.9" for hispanics, and 5'5.6" for everybody

the average height for a white female is 5'5". i got lazy and didn't feel like converting from cm for the other races.

anyway, i guess that means i'm marginally taller than average. i was always under the impression that the average height for everyone was 5'10" for men and 5'5" for women, not just white people. i have no doubt income level has a lot to do with this. i didn't find data on average height for everyone (though if i get bored, i may just look).

8:59 p.m. - May. 10, 2003

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ice skating and q-cafe

ice skating is so much fun! i went with stephanie and some aero-astros, and once i remembered how, it was great. my shins and ankles are killing me now, though.

last night i went to q-cafe with stephanie and the ee's. it was fun - we asked peter to come and bring nick, and he came, but without nick. oh well. these ee's are nice, and it was fun to dance.

now i have SO much work to do!

4:05 p.m. - May. 10, 2003

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feminism

title ix is a fairly passionate topic for me, simply because sports were such a big part of my life in elementary, middle and high school. i'm not a great athlete, and if the support and encouragement for girls in sports hadn't been there at my schools, i undoubtedly wouldn't have played. and it wasn't all peaches and cream; when i was really young (6 or 7) i had coaches who never played the girls, and if it hadn't been for my parents i probably would have quit then, because the messages i was getting were: girls aren't as good as the boys, and therefore they don't deserve to play. (most americans don't support this position, but i have had "discussions" with abhinav in which he has argued that exact line.) anyway, there has been a lot of griping about guys' wrestling, crew, track, etc., teams which have been cut to make room for girls' teams. this is unfortunately. however, let's consider the cost-benefit analysis. before title ix, girls and women basically didn't play. something like a hundred times as many girls plays sports in school as used to. the cost has been funding for a few wrestling and crew teams. is it worth it? as far as i'm concerned, overwhelmingly, yes. the text from the 90s nike ad really does it for me: "If you let me play sports ... I will like myself more ... I will have more self-confidence ... I'll be 50 percent less likely to get breast cancer ... I will suffer less depression ... I will be more likely to leave a man who beats me ... I'll be less likely to be pregnant before I want to ... I will learn to be strong."

a long time ago, at the beginning of an english class, we were asked to define feminism, and then comment on-line about our thoughts. a flurry of girls posted comments about how they were all for equality, but they were certainly not feminists. (heaven forbid.) i simply cannot understand this. how can you not be a feminist when you are able to attend georgia tech because of feminists? when you are able to study engineering, and play sports, and vote, and use birth control because of feminists? in the history of humanity, women have been subjugated for the vast majority of the time. the past thirty years of relative equality and opportunity are a mere blip of history. sexism is not dead; read daniel's journal entry today if you think it is. even today, the majority of women in the world are treated like second-class citizens. while there are women in saudi arabia who cannot drive and women in iran who must veil themselves and women in africa suffering genital mutilation and rates of illiteracy twice or more as high for women than men in countless third-world countries, i cannot sit back and comfortably declare, "i'm all for equality, but i'm not a feminist." what is feminism, after all, if not a desire for equal rights and opportunities for women? how did "feminist" become a dirty word for so many women when we are reaping the benefits of the work feminists every day?

becca also has a nice list of five good reasons to call one's self a feminist.

4:12 p.m. - May. 09, 2003

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an imposter

In 'Schoolgirls' by Peggy Orenstein, she talks of fears she had in writing her senior thesis, convinced that people would find her out to be a fraud and not the smart person she was thought to be. The passage continues as follows:

'Back then, I went to my adviser and told her of the fears that were choking me.

"You feel like an imposter?" she asked. "Don't worry about it. All smart women feel that way."'

This short quote totally speaks to me. I've just taken a test, so I guess the doubts are stronger than usual. Every time I walk into a classroom these days, I count the girls. It's not hard; there's usually not many. It's become second-nature for me to do this. I look around at them and wonder how they got here, why we're here, and where the rest of the women are. Sometimes I sit in class smugly, feeling smarter than everyone else, thinking "I know this stuff. No problem." More often, though, I listen to the questions the Indian guys ask and think, "I will never be smart enough, or work hard enough, to ask discerning questions like that." I used to really want to be a professor. Now I'm not sure if I canor want to do it anymore. I was sitting next to a guy at dinner yesterday, and I asked him if he wanted to be a professor.

He said no, he didn't think he was smart enough. I thought, If he doesn't think he's smart enough, how can I be?

He probably has issues, too, though. As a white American, he's probably feeling some of the same intimidation as I am, surrounded by Asians who are willing to work hard, around the clock, to achieve their goals. When a good third of your class is Indian guys and maybe two thirds is foreign guys of some description, you start to wonder what you're doing here. Some days I love the diversity and multi-culturalism here. Other days, I wish it would all go away and I could be surrounded by Americans like me with a nice gender mix, like in high school or undergrad to a lesser extent.

3:00 p.m. - May. 07, 2003