Well I feel about a million times better just because B. Sarllllo was incredibly kind and interesting and not snooty and scary at all. She smiled down upon me benevolently. And she told all about her "little" magazine and how they started it, she talked about printing, and all the nitty gritty, and the importance of conflict, and what some of the conflicts were. And how a magazine is almost always about a group of people who are all a similar age and that is the way it should be, but then if it is going to make a transition then at some point you have to figure out how to pass it on and how it is difficult to make connections to younger generations, but they managed it fairly successfully. I was very relieved that it was not like we were put on the spot, all of us there, and that i would not be immediately outed as an imposter. And I no longer felt like an imposter once I realized though i am not of the same caliber of, well, intellectual rigor, I do the same stuff that she did really with the same drives. and should value that a little bit. It is true that if there were a dictatorship, i would be one of the people doing what she did. and some people in the room i know they have worked as editors on univ. mags but that is honestly very, very different than putting out zines with no money and yet the freedom to do whatever you want. B.S. talked about following your whims and how the little mag that is independent is a testing lab for ideas. And it is super important to have it outside of academia. and that part of the importance of it is the immediacy and now-ness of it, so that you might have a couple of ideas in an article that you didn't think much of, but they sparked something t hat years later it's clear developed into something important or that people are still interested in; but that later-feedback, if that's all you want, write a book, and it's the fast feedback loops that are interesting for a magazine.
i'm feeling slightly more motivated but less scared. Also, prof. f. wrote me a nice (yet scary, as always) email about how she is going to be a hardass on me but it is because she has total faith that I can do it. (but what, and why?)
what I really want to do right now is go make the 2nd issue of c0mposite because it's been so long that I'm afraid I'll never do it.
I'm wondering very seriously if I should be aiming for december. In theory I will have all of June and maybe 2/3 of july to do it in. But there are relatives, and vacations, and I've made barely any progress on it this semester. December? Could I tutor part time? I'm having serious trouble here figuring out what I'm going to be doing. everything in flux. am I reapplying to Bezerkely? or not?
I had this one professor get her panties all in a bunch over me once. She's all "I want it to be said that I DISCOVERED YOU!" which was very flattering and all, but the only thing she ever did in actuality was to show me the bulletin board with the creative writing contests on it, oh, and she came to one of my parties. I think she liked to imagine herself as this encouraging older person who could elevate me, undiscovered and unwashed, into some kind of fame and fortune, but the thing was, she had no access to that in the first place.
So anyway, I launched into that story not to dis your professor, just to say that I liked the feeling of being told I would do "great things" too.
Posted by: Jo | April 07, 2005 at 06:55 PM