Sleepless Dreamer > Recent Status Updates

how tired am i of this semester on a scale of one to "I just procrastinated working on assignments by adding a countdown to my timetable in the hopes that seeing this has an end will fix my severe lack of motivation"?

Applying knowledge gained from my degree like:

When I hang a Pride flag before my roommate moves in, the flag becomes a fact of life rather than a question of debate. If she doesn't like the flag, she will have to decide whether to ask me to remove it. This is me using non-decision power (and being slightly a jerk of a roommate).

How bad of a dialogue facilitator are you on a scale of one to "Palestinians and Israelis are bonding over your lack of skills as a way to break the ice because you've managed to upset everyone in the group"?

Pro-tip: using puppets of a jackal and a giraffe to make your points is embarrassing and fairly demeaning, especially when we're talking about our personal lives.

Racial dynamics Americans don't consider: Ugandan and Kenyan exchange students around me are criticizing how bad Israelis' English is in a way that seems cruel and belittling. At this point, if they were from the US, I'd easily say their behavior is Western-centric and self-absored but as their English is a result of colonization, it feels wrong, like who between us is suffering of English more?

I have sketching pencils, a kettle, a book about the Talmud, my pastel highlighters and fairy lights but no pillow, plates or any kind of cooking utensil. This is so very on-brand for me moving.

Also on brand: me starting conversations with every single human being I see because oh my god, human interaction! Hello friend!!!

“Israelis aren’t very Jewish anyway, as far as my relationship with Jewishness is concerned. They’re too macho, too ripped and aggressive and confident. As I say of them, "Jews without angst, without guilt. So not really Jews at all.”

Well, that's rude. I assure you all, I have more than enough guilt and angst to go around.

The idea that the word Jew (and all of its various versions like Yid or yahoodi) could simply be used as an insult never stops hurting my feelings.

My brain: I am fully vaccinated. Everyone here is fully vaccinated. This is not dangerous at all.

Also my brain: OH MY GOD, SO MANY PEOPLE IN ONE SPACE, I CAN FEEL THE COVID IN THE AIR.

“I felt that studying the manner in which the Jews were killed told one very little about the manner in which the Jews had lived."

Being a Politics major during elections like, "I'm unable to speak about anything else other than the elections".

I am convinced that one day I will find my grade situation absolutely hilarious but that day is not today and now I just want to spend the day lying in bed crying.

If you have ever considered studying Economics in university, I have just one piece of advice for you: Don't. Don't do this to yourself. Don't subject yourself to this level of misery and anguish. Run as far and as fast as you can, while you're still able to.

Me, every time I share notes with classmates: I am such a great person. I am singlehandedly holding this class together. Everyone would be doomed without my fabulous contributions.

Top signs a paper is by an Israeli leftist:
1. Using the word Palestine for pre-1948 instead of Mandatory Palestine (centrist) or Eretz Israel (right wing).
2. They over-exaggerate the importance of the Mizrahi-Ashkenazi divide. 
3. They criticize academia for being elitist while taking part in the very thing they oppose. 
Extra points if the criticism includes clunky foreign loan words and/or English in brackets. 

“[Fascism] opposes modernism, Enlightenment values, Marxism, and Jews.”

One of these is not like the others.

I'm taking too many courses, I should drop a few.

Five minutes later:

I signed up to three more courses, oh dear. Future me will totally figure it out.

5 years of studying philosophy and I still assume understanding Kant well enough excuses me from having to understand any other philosopher, like excuse you, Kant is my friend and that's it.

Ravenclaw things: Receiving full credit on an exam question but still getting annoyed at the professor's comments. I'm not doing this for grades so I'm totally going to be offended, despite the grade.

(also, this might be the first time that anyone has ever told me my writing is too brief)

How is the seventh week of exam season going for me? Well, I just stepped on my cat, dropped my headphones and immediately thought, "I am failing at every single thing I do in life".

“Moreover, it was only in the previous year that the PLO had hinted in its “Ten-Point Plan” that it would be open to a two-state solution, something Israel vehemently opposed at the time.”

The heck? The PLO's 10 point plan basically said that they'd sign diplomatic agreements in order to continued with the armed resistance until they'd get all of the land. That's not a great way to start coexistence in two states.

Me last year: Public policy is for boring people who want to spend their lives sitting at a desk and doing bureaucracy.

Me, after reading papers in medical anthropology, bio-ethics, women's studies, reproductive medicine, family law, infant psychology and development economics for my Public Policy paper: Public policy is the coolest thing ever, oh my god

"And as Derek Penslar notes, “Not a single one of the founding figures in the history of Zionism and Israel would be allowed to speak on campus today in a Hillel facility. All of them were willing to consider alternatives to pure Jewish sovereignty in Palestine – and that includes Herzl, Ben-Gurion, and Jabotinsky.”

This!!! All of us should keep this in mind.

"She could not go on this trip because she would be stopped at Ben-Gurion airport on account of the Lebanese stamps in her passport, and because her going would prevent her from traveling to Arab countries."

Wrong on both counts- Israel doesn't stamp passports (exactly for this reason) and as a US citizen, you can def visit Israel after being in Lebanon.

I realize that saying "Hitler did not finish the job" is a horrible thing to say but I also find it hilarious? Like, it comes across like Hitler procrastinated too much, I can't take this seriously.

Hebrew quirks: the difference between "his argument" and "his mistake" is one letter and I hate this philosopher so much that I keep messing them up. My brain is convinced "his mistake is ...." is a better sentence than "his argument is .....".  

"the Palestinian violence forced [the Jews] to shift their focus and prepare for military struggle against the Palestinians rather than the British. This adjustment in strategy was critical to achieving victory against the Palestinians in the first Arab- Israeli war of 1948, a victory that ultimately led to Israeli independence."

This is an interesting take that I've never heard before.

"I’m not sure of the Israelis’ thinking process, because the Israeli approach to BDS has been erratic."

A summary of Israeli policy decisions about the I/P conflict in general.

“Your daughter’s face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things.
 
But God, 
doesn’t she wear
the world well?”

I want to memorize all of Conversations about Home.

“I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel. I’m bloated with language I can’t afford to forget."
 
"I thought the sea was safer than the land."

"I spent days and nights in the stomach of a truck; I did not come out the same. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body."

“Anything that leaves her mouth sounds like sex.
Our mother has banned her from saying God’s name.”