A good way to procrastinate.

A weird thing has happened to me since I started grad school...

My family relationships have changed...

My relationships with childhood friends have change.

Often times I feel as though we are in different worlds, speaking a different language. I was bred in a totally non-academic environment. That doesn't mean that my family and friends are not educated, or intelligent. I think the two are often confused...lack of formal education all too often becomes synonymous with lack of "intelligence" and it shouldn't. My mom has her master's from NYU. My grandmother never made it through elementary school, yet I have never met people as smart, savvy, and wise as they are. I'd pay good money to see someone descend from the Ivory Tower and operate, navigate, and survive as well as my childhood friends can.

But I digress, my point is that I am being bred in new kind of culture. A culture where all their is is grad school. I get so consumed with the day to day of it all, that I often don't even feel like talking. I wonder what it feels like to them, do they think that I have become a different person? It breaks my heart everytime I talk to my grandma and she tells me ,"Don't forget about me, give me a call from time to time", oftentimes I find myself rolling my eyes and saying, "yes grandma" and thinking, "if she only knew". But it breaks my heart... It breaks my heart, because there is a kind of chasm that is forming between me and my family, and YES, I blame grad school for it. My grandma came to visit and all I kept thinking about was all the work I was falling behind on. My aunt came to visit, and ALL I KEPT THINKING ABOUT WAS ALL THE READING I WAS FALLING BEHIND ON. I couldn't enjoy them because I was consumed with worry and guilt about what I wasn't getting accomplished. Grad school is the center of my universe, and that is foreign to me. So much so, that I often, VERY OFTEN, break into a mental fever over it; just as your body does to protect itself when a foreign organism has invaded it.

Last week I called home, I was going out to eat with my friend and was having a conversation with my mom at the same time. Feeling as though I was being rude, I kept apologizing to my friend. "I am sorry..." I kept saying, "...now my mom wants me to talk to my aunt...","I am sorry..." I said, "...now they want me to talk to my other aunt who is visiting from the Dominican Republic"..."I am sorry..." I said, "...now they want me to talk to my cousin". And that's when it hit me, what hit me was the sack of pennies named "this is how much I HAVE changed"--I had nothing to talk to my cousin about. This is a cousin that I have grown-up with, super close, until the grad school chasm started to form.

It's not just me...I have another cousin... she's getting her master's in nursing, looking into getting her Ph.D. and when I go home and ask about her her other cousin says, "You know, she's in her own world. She thinks she's white now".

AND THAT ALWAYS GET TO ME! Now because someone wants to further their education that seems to become analogous to being White. I wonder what they think about me when I go home and stay home, in bed, catching up on sleep instead of going to visit them. Do they say "Well you know, she thinks she's white, too good for us". Have I lost my "cred"?

There's this kind of culture limbo that I often find myself in, not quite a part of the one grew up in, but not a part of the one I am now being "raised" in.

It's sad, really, how the gap seems to be widening--on both sides.

Socratic Buddha on deconstructing family relations during grad school.