Too Much Information

I already feel as though I suffer from the above and you want me to learn more things??

Right now I'm living in fear of my inbox.  I obsessively check Gmail all day long; granted, usually when I'm in front of a computer for any extended period I have Gmail open, but I anxiously watch the number in parenthesis in my Firefox tab to see if there's a tick upwards, meaning there's something new for me to read.  And as some of you know, I don't clear my inbox out, so we're not talking about seeing a (2) or (3) next to Gmail - Inbox.  Right now I have a... (4323) up there, and probably about 70% of that is mass emails from the Jackson School and also from fucking Rakuten because I can't seem to unsubscribe.  They send about 6-7 messages a day, and believe me I get pissed when I'm faked out again for some useless advertising in Japanese that I'm too lazy to read.  

I'll keep the whining portion of this post to a minimum since I've been making the same complaints in the last couple of updates I've made.  I'm anxious about hearing back from schools since it seems some decisions are getting turned back a bit earlier, and the friends I have here at IUC have said they received notice ahead of the stated early March deadline the schools give you if you flip through their applications-related FAQ's page.  It's gotten to the point where my left eye is twitching again and if I'm not paying attention, I quickly find myself clenching my jaw, which makes me paranoid I'm going to wear down the enamel on my molars and where would I be without teeth?  Like I said last week, my best guess is I won't really hear anything for another week or two, but you still never know.  And that's kind of the problem: not knowing.  But on the flip side, knowing has its own set of pitfalls and responsibilities, which never cease to make me a little crazy.

This is a topic I've ruminated on before, but what's really lit a fire under the ass of my internal monologue is this website Grad Cafe.  I was introduced to it by Deirdre, who in turn I think first heard about it from Garrett, in which case I blame the both of you.  It's a forum for aspiring grad students (that is a weird phrase now that I'm looking at it) and though I haven't inspected all of their related materials, the forum/message board that sticks out most is the one related to application decisions.  It's presumably their most popular as well because there's also a page with people blogging about their applications experience, and who on earth wants to read about that?

::Meta Crickets::

Anyway, people post on this board when they've heard from their desired departments, good and bad.  It's not to say that one student from every program is going to be posting, but there seems to be a sizable community of people using the board.  I suppose its function is to 

a) let you brag

b) let you beg for pity

c) get all snobby about being rejected (my favorite posts are the ones that are like "I graduated from an Ivy League school with an Ivy League education with an Ivy League GPA and P.S. my  Ivy League shit don't stink either."  LOVE it)

d) let those who are waiting on pins and needles know when they should expect to be hearing back. 

Obviously I fall under D, and I doubt I am going to be shuffling around in categories A-C once decisions start rolling in.  However, as of late I have been fighting myself not to look at Grad Cafe (and if you also are waiting to hear back from schools, DON'T START USING IT, JUST DON'T.  There is absolutely a reason I haven't linked it here.  I realize that it's probably too late now that you're reading this and you're curious, but do yourself a favor and never get a taste of its demon nectar) because it is really much more trouble than it's worth.  My trouble is this: the knowledge is a burden.  How does me knowing other people have heard back from schools help me at all?  It doesn't make my decision come any faster, it doesn't make the letter/email they send me any more what I want it to be... it's a complete trap.  I mean, if other people are already hearing back, then chances are if you're still waiting the letter you're going to get may as well read: NO.  So my goal has been to keep my viewings of Grad Cafe to a minimum if not eliminate them entirely.  The most I've succeeded in doing is limiting myself to one view every 24-48 hours, which still seems like too much.  The fact is I will know all the decisions eventually - some sooner rather than later - and once I do know, I'm going to be able to look back and wonder what my problem was.  It'll either be that I'll think I was worrying and fretting unnecessarily or (more likely) think I should've enjoyed this space of time where I was unhindered by the burden of knowing the truth rather than heaping on more anxiety due to either checking or fighting the urge to check Grad Cafe. 

The fact is I'd rather not know Grad Cafe exists at all.  But now that I have this knowledge, I feel responsible for it.  The information is there for me to use.  And I know it is also a question of self-control, but I already wield so much self-control in most every other aspect of my life that sometimes it's too exhausting to try to rein myself in.  I haven't caved in yet today, but I'm sure I will later.  Ultimately, it feels a lot like this:

But the thought I'm having here is related to something bigger that I've thought about for quite a while.  Sometimes it's just better not to know.  We're taught from a young age that knowledge is power; that we should always want to know what is going on around us.  Education is meant to combat ignorance; it was never stated as such, but the implicit goal here seems to be that there is some end to knowledge and it was your job to find it.  I remember when I was in 7th grade my social sciences teacher was getting particularly frustrated with a couple of the rowdier students and said something to the effect of: "You know, if I were to put Mariko in a closet [pretty sure you could get arrested for that, Ms. Stewart, but go on] with every book in the world, she'd come out knowing everything."  I'm kind of flattered?  I guess?  I'm not even going to get into what's wrong with that statement.  In the end, though, I clearly took this red pill with a giant swallow of water as a kid because I am also indomitably curious about everything.  If the knowledge is there to be had, I'm going to grab it by the balls and swing that sucker around.  And I'm pretty good at finding out what I want to know without being too invasive.  This trait of mine never was a problem until recently where knowing has caused more pain than not.  A lot of this is more personal than I'm willing to go into here, but just trust me when I say that I eventually got to the point where I had to dam up certain tributaries of information and remind myself that I just didn't want to know.  

 Only if there's an after party.

Knowledge forces you to be responsible for it.  You just can't ignore the fact that you know.  It does something to you, or demands that you do something about it.  Another thought I had after reading Freedom is just what the modern, well informed person is supposed to do with the knowledge of all the suffering, inequality and unfairness in the world.  I have to grapple with this all the time because sometimes it just seems like enough to have to get my own affairs in order, and then you see headlines about starvation, genocide, environmental destruction, and so forth and I just don't know what to do about it.  It'd be irresponsible of me to turn away, but at the same time I'm very aware of my own powerlessness and also my own selfishness.  I wouldn't exactly overwhelm you with all the hours of community services I've ever done, petitions I've signed, or grassroots organizations I've involved myself in.  This ties directly into the shameful apathy I sometimes display, which comes as a result of realizing that I can't care deeply about everything.  I also have the unfortunate habit of getting too invested in certain topics (and people for that matter), and the knowledge that comes with caring so much just piles up and piles up until it buries you in the ground.  It's just there: you can't move it, you can't change it, it sits there and mocks as a painful reminder of your ineffectiveness.  I eventually get to feeling that if I care about one thing I therefore have to care about every thing and that is much too much for me to carry. 

To spare you having me sound too much like an out-of-touch newscaster, access to information is everywhere these days.  Actually, KT shared a video with me last night of famous people all confused with this thing called the "internet" from the early 90s, which seems like an apt thing to embed here.

Lol, old people.

Anyway, it seems like you have access to pretty much everything if you care enough to search hard for it.  But is this such a good thing?  And I don't mean this in the way that some public figures talk about how the TV and internet are rotting our brains and how are the little people supposed to tell the difference between what's true and what's not.  No, what I'm trying to say is that it's doing me as much good to  check the Grad Cafe forums as it does some people to obsessively stalk an ex online to see what a great and fantastic life they're leading without them.  There has to be a point where you say enough's enough!  I can't be responsible for all of this!

And all of this holds for me so long as I have the choice of not having to know.  If you want in on yet another one of my personal failings, it's my obsession with choice.   Don't tell me I can only have the red or blue pill because I will insist on choosing for myself.  I mean, right now I'm sitting here consumed with thoughts about higher education, which is all related to my need to have the choice of how I am going to proceed after IUC.  I don't like feeling limited and I want to be able to make up my own mind about pretty much everything.  However, this is not to say I am particularly good at decision-making.  In fact, I am terrible.  We have to turn in a sheet tomorrow for the 4th and final quarter of IUC about the different classes we want to take and I can't make up my mind.  I have all these choices and all these options, and picking one means that I'll never really know how the others would have turned out had I chosen them.  My thought process pretty much goes like this:

Choice is limiting.  You insist on having every option at your disposal, but then what do you do with your power to decide?  Go one way and you can't know the other.  And as Kundera  says, there is no such thing as a right or wrong choice because it's impossible to compare the results of your choices.  You can only live one of them once.  And of course there's always the problem of awareness; maybe you think you only have 2 choices in a certain situation, but you're quite likely overlooking a 3rd, 4th, 5th or more because the choices you've made in the past led you to believe you only had the 2.  

At this point in the post, I can just imagine your face:

Or perhaps:

Yes, I'm just a tiny bit crazy and should stop here so that I can get some work done and take my mind off all of this.  The one gleam of hope here is that despite my own reservations about a Ph.D. program, I clearly care about the outcome.  If I really didn't want to go, I wouldn't give a damn.  But as this twitch in my eye is telling me, maybe this is something that I want after all.  

But fuck all of that, let's dance: