I simply have nothing to publicly update, and can’t think of anything interesting.

Here is a short list of my non-complishments these past few weeks

1) learning to be confident.

-> this isn’t as easy or simple as it seems! can one really change one’s personality in the hours before a job interview? each walk (of shame) back from the ocs interviewing facility is an entire existentialist struggle. “why am I so apologetic? I should be more like an Olympian! was I confident? overconfident? was it hard for them to hear me? should I have expressed more enthusiasm? doesn’t expressing too much enthusiasm make me seem rabid?”

2) twitter-azy

-> knowing nothing of domestic politics; head completely empty of health care legislation knowledge, I have become one of the official twitter-ers for the hpr. outside of reading twitter, sharing blog posts on facebook, and reading mashable, that social media blog, I have done little else that can even vaguely be claimed to be “productive”. Although perhaps serious social media divas can justify the time they spend as “building important social media skills for possible career,” I can only watch the slowly growing number of followers @harvardpolitics has with a glazed over expression. It’s like that summer I spent leveling up my neopet in middle school, all over again.

3) thesis-crisis

-> social studies demands that I find an advisor and narrow down to a thesis topic. the word “methodology” has been rattling around my brain like some kind of torture device. sometimes, in desperation, I start to write stream of consciousness word-association paragraphs about my supposed “academic interests”. Below is an excerpt of the ramblings of a confused product of “liberal education.”

Russia. civil society. happiness. transiiton economy. informal practices? legal theory? ledeneva?! Pravda! Wow I know about Russia! Yeah, like about Putin and oligarchs/silovarchs and the Kremlin; about problems with federalism and minorities, voting fraud, other parties, alcoholism, foreign policy issues with Ukraine, Poland, natural gas, Gazprom, other huge conglomerates, tunneling, but I can’t read those newspapers…where will I get my data from!? Oh I know! I can do a paper on China! Yeah! Even though I can’t read Chinese papers either. Wait, wasn’t I interested in Foucault at some point? Yeah! I want to learn about perspectives and level of trust in government and stuff! But I can’t do ethnographic research…and there are no surveys…all avenues are blocked…