Actually, it starts with several questions, most of them panic-induced: how did I get here? Why am I here? Why am I staying here? Am I supposed to be here? And then just a lot of question marks, exclamation points, unintelligible muttered noises and some breathing into a paper bag or some such.
Once upon a time, I up and moved my whole, personal, self-contained life to Washington D.C., where I had no safety net, no friends, and only a few scattered family members (who were, nonetheless, supportive and awesome). I wrote my way through that, both personally and professionally, largely while working for Media Matters (side note - MMFA, what is up with the new weird HuffPo type design on the mainpage? this is not a good look for you). When my internal clock there said my time was up, my Boston wife and I took off for Africa - like you do - and we blogged our way through that. And then the tornado picked us up again, whirled us around, and when we landed, I was in Boston in an MA program at Simmons in Gender/Cultural Studies, and she was tumbling into a position at the prestigious Fenton in NYC - and living with my adorable sister in Harlem.
And I am in Boston. I live here and work here, I drive here (painfully, with a degree of terror - how must the non-natives feel?) I cook and eat and drink quite a bit here, and I want to write here. I want to write myself into Boston, express it, construct it. I want to build a Boston and an experience here all my own, with my words. I want to write about the strange ways I relate academic discourse and theory to the things around me, particularly pop culture, because I am afraid that if I don't, I will lose the ability to communicate concisely what I mean, what I think about something.
Academia can be very circular and insulated. This is at once highly productive - get into a pressure cooker and see if you don't cook a little faster than you would in a regular oven, just see if you don't - and slowly alienating. The language is different than the vernacular I am accustomed to, and frankly prefer. I want to master this - I am here, after all, to achieve a Mastery of this material, an odd and disconcerting thought, and one I frequently fear I may not live up to - but I would like to still be able to hold a conversation with someone outside my department by the end of it. It may be touch and go. I am easily influenced by my surroundings.
I am used to working, and while I still work, my priority is learning, and trying to live up to the standard that my lovely, incredibly smart peers have set for me, and the example set by my freakishly, unnervingly brilliant professors. I often feel lost. And I am reassured to know that almost all of feel that way, most of the time. I think our department is made up primarily of a bunch of the Lost Boys; none of us are quite sure what we're doing, we all feel a little behind, we're all finding our way slowly, convinced once in awhile that we're probably slowest, relieved when we discover we're not.
All in all, for all the lost in the woods feeling, I feel I am not lost alone, and I feel privileged to be in the presence of my travel companions. Not all who wander are lost, you know. On the other hand, the breadcrumb trails left by various theorists in my field seem to lead only in circles, and I feel they may have constructed it that way on purpose.
