On Whippets and Children

A lot of people have sung praises of motherhood. Though I've never been a mother, I can understand some of the hype about children. The irresistible baby smell, the adorable way toddlers talk, the sheer cuteness of little people... the list goes on and on. However, there are others who just don't buy into the motherhood bit for reasons including (but not limited to) the pain of giving birth, the incessant diaper-changing, and the smart-aleck attitude of adolescents and teens.

For these types, I recommend having whippets, a breed of dog that belongs to the hound family. Here are ten reasons why they are a good option for people who are not into having children. (Most of these qualities are common to all dogs, though.)

1. You can choose exactly which dog you want to have. Then if they have ugly puppies in the future, you can just give them away.
2. When they misbehave, you can put them in a cage or on a leash without fear of being arrested.
3. It is easy to make them come to you when you call.
4. They never talk back.
5. They are always loving and sweet.
6. They don't eat much.
7. They will never smoke, drink alcohol, or do drugs.
8. Putting them through school is completely optional.
9. You need to bathe them only once a month, and they won't even smell that much if you do bathe them less often.
10. You can have new puppies even when your biological clock has ticked its last.

Just like everything else, having whippets has its downside. There's the shedding and the barking, and relieving themselves in unexpected places (though babies do this too). But the benefits of having them far outweigh the costs. Because whippets (and most dogs) are so lovable though, the biggest disadvantage to having them is actually their doggie life span. In all probability you will outlive them, so you have to be prepared to cope eventually with the grief of their loss.

Things I Have To Get Used To

I've been living in the US for 2 and 1/2 months now, and I would say I've acculturated well, for the most part. One would think it would be so easy to adjust to living in the US, since Manila does have a Starbucks in every other corner. Well, I've found that the little things are sometimes the hardest to learn.

I have to get used to all the doors working in a uniform manner. You pull it to go into a building, you push to go out. Sounds simple, but I still have to pause outside doors and chant a mantra (pull-in! push out! pull-in! push-out!) to make sure I open it the right way. (to clarify... doors in the Philippines open any which way; sometimes you pull to go in, sometimes you push, sometimes there's no door at all! just like most things in my country, doors don't follow a system...)

I have to get used to squirrels running all over the place. As someone used to seeing rats running about from city sewers, I still jump instinctively whenever I see these animals from the corner of my eye, half-expecting them to be rabies-and-leptospirosis-ridden rodents.

And finally... I have to get used to the speed with which Americans eat. I once joined my classmates for lunch at a pizza place, and found myself in the middle of eating my single slice as they all stood up to go after each eating two slices (and they actually left me eating alone in the table... a practice totally alien to Filipinos).

The Undergraduate and the Passive-Aggressive

I used to love Fridays. Like a lot of other people in the working or student world, T.G.I.F. was my battlecry. WAS. Now I dread the last day of the week.

To explain... I have a class on Convergence Reporting that meets Mondays and Wednesdays. Now that's totally fine. The problem is that part of the demand of this particular class requires that I work with a team of 3 other members, to produce a story every week that should be handed in by Friday at 5 pm. Meeting deadlines is nothing new to me, as I'd been used to cramming to do just that for the past several years in the television station I worked for back in the Philippines (to admit exactly how many years would reveal my age, thus the vagueness in reference to length of tenure). What IS new to me is that I try to meet this deadline with undergraduates; juniors, to be exact. American juniors, to be even more precise. That spells A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E, a personality type I have some trouble with, since I'm more a member of Club Passive-Aggressive.

So each Friday, we'd be scrambling to meet the deadline, trying to come up with a script for radio or TV or a magazine or the Internet, or a combination of these, as demanded by the assignment. As an unusually unassertive person (even back home), it's very stressful for me to deal with these young very aggressive students who always want to have their way, most of whom believe they know best. I am only one of two graduate students in that class, and the other one is a fresh graduate who is also American. A typical Friday would go like this.

Undergrad : Hey we need to write a script for our story.
Me: OK.
Undergrad : OK, I've started on working on it, and here's what I've got. What do you think?
Me: (After gathering up enough guts to actually say something) Well... I think MAYBE you COULD cut up this sentence, since long sentences are discouraged in broadcast. (I was not even trying to sound experienced, our teacher had already told us this in class).
Undergrad: Well, I think this sentence is perfectly fine as is. I don't understand why I'd have to cut this up! It sounds fine! (Throws her hands up in the air and dramatically pushes away from the computer) If you want to cut it, then YOU do it, because I'm not going to do it. I just can't! I hate rules! Why does everything have to be done a certain way! (Rolls her eyes at me as if I'm just a stupid blind rule-follower)
Me: (placating and ready to turn tail) Well, I don't really feel that strongly about it. Leave the sentence as it is, it's fine. (my thought bubble: Girl, you'll be eaten alive in the real world. Try telling that to your future editor)

This has been pretty much the weekly Friday routine, and it is difficult to explain exactly how and why these situations stress me out. So... I've decided to give up. I'm quitting the Convergence sequence next semeseter. I know I am weak... I buckled under the glare of the Undergraduate. But I also know that retreat is sometimes the best (and only) weapon of the Passive-Aggressive, when it is actually an option. Well, I do have a choice. I don't HAVE to quietly steam when a 19-year-old orders me around, and I don't want to engage in power struggles with people who think that the Philippines is somewhere in Latin America. Except for a couple of pretty cool classmates, I'm not going to miss them at all. Maybe next semester I'll have my Fridays back. Then I can celebrate by having a beer somewhere where my classmates can't get in unless they flash a fake ID.

The Eternal Student

As the name of the blog implies, this chronicles the adventures of this particular eternal student. I know there are a lot of eternal students out there, as this term is very broad, and it has numerous definitions.

One type of person who falls under this category is the student who finds a way to never leave college. These people have a knack for staying in school for an unbelievable number of years without being booted out. They enroll in the minimum amount of classes possible, drop them when needed, and change majors quickly, just as one department plans to kick them out. They have an uncanny ability to maneuver through the university's system to be able to extend the maximum residency rule, sometimes to a double-digit number of years. When the university finds out about their overstaying existence and finally gives them the boot, or their parents just get tired of paying their tuition, they manage to find a job that will support their student lifestyle. So they go to their jobs, then rush back to the university in their free time to hang out with their decades-younger classmates or orgmates. This situation is more easily maintained if the job they've found is in the university itself.

Another type of person who can be described as an eternal student is one who has taken to heart the maxim "the classroom is not the student's world, the world is the student's classroom", and has no compunction about actually saying it out aloud in public. These people think of everything as a learning process. ("He broke by heart when he went out with my best friend, but at least I learned something from the experience" or "I got talked into investing my life savings into a pyramid scheme and now I'm broke, but the experience really taught me a lesson") They're not really optimists, they're just adept at managing to get an education out of bad judgment or rotten luck.

I probably have some characteristics of both these types, and share some qualities with a lot of others. I think of myself as an eternal student not just because I always claim to be of student age, but because I feel there's always something to learn. Not in the profound sense as in "There's so much to discover in the world" or even in the practical sense as in "I want to learn Latin". It's more that I often find that there are just a lot of things I don't seem to know, as in "The deadline is TODAY? Why didn't anyone tell me that?" or "How was I supposed to know you can't make a left turn there?" I like the concepts of learning by doing and trial and error, and for the most part I just like finding things out my way, even if it turns out to be the hard way.

At any rate, there is always much to learn and much to know, and for this eternal student, the euphoria of reaching the eureka moment after an arduous process of knowledge and discovery is always followed by the feeling that I should have just read the freaking manual instead.