Obiter Dictum

whatshouldwecallgradschool:

credit: tvconnoisseur

@ Katie: you know how we do!

I’m going to make gray and white hairs sexy.  Got no choice, really.  Them’s be popping up on me head like crazy! (I think)

As tired as I am of grad school right now, I know I’m going to miss it like crazy when its over.

Part 1 found here.

Now here is something I’ve noticed during my time in graduate school.  Much of my artistic side has not been given a chance to flourish due to the endless onslaught of work which any grad student has to suffer through (much more so if you’re idiotic enough to enter a program which makes you complete your coursework within a year).

I’ve noticed that I do not feel very artistically deprived, despite the complete lack of artistic expression as previously practiced.  For a while, I questioned if that side of me was truly that important, reasoning that if I did not feel a big loss, it obviously could not have meant much to me.

However, I’ve come to realize the naivety of that line of thought.  Here’s why: 

The arts have manifested themselves in the much more logical, analytic part of my brain. It shows itself in the creativity required to answer complicated mathematical expressions, wherein time after time I feel like banging my head against a wall when I simply cannot figure out the logic to get from Point A to Point B.  Slowly, however, I am able to slowly grasp the answers and conceptualize the abstractness of what I am doing into some form of concrete thought. 

And that ability is born through short bursts of incredible creativity in which I finally see a solution, something which makes sense in the contexts of the theories I am trying to grasp.  It is also ridiculously pervasive, changing the way I think and analyze things.  Now, my thoughts require much more creative expression to connect them together, whereas before certain connections were just accepted for lack of an interest in understanding them. 

But I still retain adoration for my previous form of expression, so it is important to understand that this new realm of thought is not replacing the old, it is just one hell of an addition to my abilities from less than a year ago.

At this rate, I’m not even going to give a rabbit’s pellet of a shit about income inequality.