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The Beautiful Moment

@falenburg / falenburg.tumblr.com

Some of the most bizarre and interesting years in our lives are about to start. The beautiful moment is one in which we allow for our lives to change.
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“It’s funny—I was just talking to my friend before this about how in the Instagram era it’s so easy to edit your life so that it looks perfect. But I bleach my top lip and tweeze my eyebrows and you’d never get to see that, even though it’s a part of my routine. There’s still so much shame around the things you do to get ready while you've got a towel wrapped around your head. It’s important to me not to edit that out. I’ve been bleaching my top lip since I was nine. I don’t do it very often, but I do it! There’s that, and I use Fur Oil. I’ll use that anywhere from the ends of my hair to my eyebrows to my pubic hair. It’s an amazing all-purpose product.”

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2017: practice in not giving a shit about things that don’t matter and giving a shit about things that really do.

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Me: *notices big soft dog bed in corner of Professor’s office* Is that for your dog?

Prof: I bring my dog to work sometimes. Would you like to meet her in office hours sometime?

Me: YES. IN FACT, I know MANY grad students who would love to meet your dog!!!

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It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.

Cheryl Strayed, Wild

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Reunion with @rgfellows (and fulfilling New Year’s resolutions)!

  • Tea with honey and pita chips with soft goat cheese and delicious sausage
  • Talking about life and BS in one’s life and the election and grad school and Harry Potter and how Snape is definitely not “the bravest man” (just something you kind of have to say since he dies)
  • ...while the rain fell softly and softly fell outside...

Can’t wait to go to the ICA with @rgfellows on Saturday and admire/laugh at all the modern art!!!

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New Year’s resolution: spend more time with @rgfellows on the East Coast because I will no longer be losing my mind over soul-sucking exams.

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Well, having my Professor find my Instagram and “follow” me is not ideal...

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That young Professor who I’ve never seen NOT wearing a suit, the one that’s stated he “doesn’t do social media,” and the one whose never tried a Cheez-It before this May....decided to get a Facebook. He friend requested just about everyone (including us grad students, who might still be taking classes with him). I was thinking it was going to be a very strict professional thing (he is very careful with his image), but right away I’m bombarded with a profile photo of him in a cowboy hat, another one of him eating a whole pizza (I’ve legitimately never seen him eat before), and another one of him wearing Kanye shutter shades. What???

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@rgfellows is coming to Tufts!! I’m very excited to welcome her to the East Coast. Time to pull out those thick sweaters and warm scarves!!! AND PREPARE YOURSELF FOR AMAZING APPLE CIDER.

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reblogged

Yay!! I just found out that I got accepted into the art history Masters program at Tufts! I’m still waiting to hear about funding and to hear from other schools but it was one of my top choices so I’m thrilled! :)

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falenburg

YESSSSSS CONGRATS CONGRATS CONGRATS!!!!

SUCH AWESOME FABULOUS NEWS FOR AN AWESOME FABULOUS PERSON!!!

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Going to this school is: walking through wood paneled rooms full of grandfather clocks and sinking my feet into thick carpets on my way to a class taught by Homi Bhabha (who will talk about that one time he was asked by Coca-Cola to write on “globalism”) and wondering if I have mud on my shoes.

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I wonder if the very privilege that is often a given when it comes to entering and remaining in academia is also what traps many aspiring academics. The more well-off and entitled one is, the more likely it is that one has the resources to tolerate living off a graduate stipend for an extended amount of time. For the least privileged, delaying one’s earning power and full participation in the economy is often not an option. Some of the brightest public-university students that I have encountered in my teaching career do not feel that the life of the mind is even a possibility given the long training time and dubious job prospects. When I reflect on my time in academia, I do realize that being here is an enormous privilege and that, sadly, with the precariousness of the system today, it seems like a place that is most welcoming to people of privilege. Ideally, academia should offer more stability for and be more welcoming to those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. To me, that is the greatest tragedy of the devaluation of academic labor: the sacrifice of true diversity.

Financing the Life of the Mind by Sarah Ruth Jacobs

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I don't like work - no man does - but I like what is in the work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.

Marlow in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

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For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

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