Front page of Bren Orientation. The full PDF version is available here: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/PhDOrientationSchedule.pdf.
I met an Architect by the name of David yesterday. While we were munching on healthy food at Sojourner's Cafe (first time I ever went there), David proclaimed, "It's amazing how we must be slaves to bureaucracy, just so we can do our one tiny thing for our research!" Man, it is Monday, and I am feeling it today. Today, ideally, I would be working on my story, The Elephant and the Oak Tree. But no. What am I doing? I am working with my google calendar, google address book, clearing all the scrap notes from the last week, working on the Spheres and Waves of Bureaucracy to which I am now glued to. It was a fun week last week, but in terms of self progress and mental advancement, it was chaotic, choppy, and close to minimal. Talk about a Human Ecology of Size. I am LIVING my Ph.D. dissertation.
Two wonderful things about last week: (1) my advisor Oran has officiated my institutionally acceptable nickname "the scale girl" and (2) I am collecting data on people's responses to the word "ecopistemology." In fact, my writer friend Hector told me that inventing a word such as ecopistemology is essentially stating a bold hypothesis, and either people take it well or they grumble-mumble about it.
In essence I have to cater to bureaucracy, I have to create "flow" in my thoughts and writing, simply because I need to find a way to manage input of new data always coming to me. I have to learn how to harness it, rather than "tune it out" or have it "half organized." *Sigh.* Therefore, since there is a level of mindlessness to data entry, I made sure I partly deprived myself of sleep last night, such that I can exist as a zombie for part of the day. *Sigh*
I keep singing the tune to myself: Black wave / of a hundred leg squid / overcame / my growing conscience. Collective brain / can I co-exist? / Multi-align / Or collapse into abyss?
I just have to keep designing a "buffer zone" of my mind such that I can focus! I have to minimize bureaucratic backdrop to my work from an Immense Tumor to an Annoying Black Fly.
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