Thoughts that go through my head while revising for exams

1. What are those people at the university library doing? I mean, the ones who are there for 10 hours or more per day. The ones who have been there 10 hours or more per day for months. They can’t possibly be working efficiently, or they would be done now. They would have read the library by now if they were reading at my speed. They are probably just succumbing to a false belief in The Osmosis Theory of Higher Education: the idea that close physical proximity to books and professors will make your brain absorb knowledge even while you update your Facebook status, watch random Youtube videos and take three-hour-long coffee breaks. (See this definition of “study”)

2. Why, oh why, did I not move into the university library months ago? The osmosis theory is so accurate, and if (when?) I completely fail at my exams, knowing that I had completely sacrificed all my free time to prepare for them would at least mean that I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about studying less so that I could spend my time dancing.

3. I would rather be dancing. I would rather be dancing. I would rather be dancing.

4. Whatever. No matter what my exam results are, at least I spent some of my exam revision time dancing. That’s learning too.

5. Economic history is fascinating. I love this. I just hope I can remember all this fascinating stuff when I have less than an hour to answer questions like “Why are some countries rich and some countries poor?” or “What determines economic growth?” (Why don’t they just add “What is the meaning of the universe?”)

6. I am one of the luckiest people in the world. My current “job” is to read interesting articles, thoughtfully curated and uploaded for my convenience by some of the most acclaimed geniuses in the field of economic history. Seriously, I have no reason to complain.

7. If it weren’t for the stress of knowing that some of these geniuses are going to judge my writing about what they’ve spent their careers researching, I would be having the time of my life.

 

For Norwegian readers, I have written more about university osmosis here.

I illustrated this post with pictures of books, because I enjoyed browsing for pictures of books. In reality, because I don’t actually like working with paper, my real study situation looks like this:

Picture sources: 1, 2, 3 and the last one was taken by my mom, Lena R. Andersen

Red wine in the snow

My dad posted Tim Minchin’s Christmas song White wine in the sun the other day, about atheist Christmas:

Some of the hymns that they sing have nice chords
Though the lyrics are dodgy
And yes I have all of the usual objections to miseducation
Of children forced into a cult institution and taught to externalise blame
And to feel ashamed and to judge things as plain right or wrong
But I quite like the songs

Just like Minchin, and just like my dad, I’m not religious, but I still love Christmas. I prefer the Christmas songs about parties in the winter to the ones about Jesus, because I like to relate to lyrics. But I think Norway would have a big feast centered around lighting candles with family members even if there wasn’t a single Christian Norwegian, if only to have something to look forward to when it starts to get cold and dark. Just like Minchin, I will be travelling to another continent to meet up with family this year, and that’s what I’m looking forward to, not the presents, and certainly not the church service – which I’ve skipped for the past few years to watch over the turkey and hang out with my dad.

For two years in a row, I attempted a Christmas-music-themed advent calendar (here’s the original, with links to the old blog), meaning I blogged about Christmas music every day in December. Both years, real life got in the way. This year, I am a busy grad student, and there is no way I am going through that blogging schedule again. But as I sit here in my living room, next to blinking colorful lights and a (plastic) Christmas tree, listening to a playlist of Christmas pop/rock music, that Christmassy feeling is pulling my focus away from my Economic History essay (this week’s topic: the role of technology and policy in global trade integration in the 19th century) and towards walking around in a winter wonderland while listening to jingle bell jazz songs.

So here’s a selection of blog posts about Christmas:

• Have yourself a lonely, depressing little Christmas – Why my favorite Christmas music is sad
• Wonderlaaaand – Christmas in Brooklynese
• What are you doing New Year’s Eve – survival guide to a potentially disastrous night
• Happy bilingual holidays – Why my favorite Christmas music is in English
• Have yourself a traumatizing Christmas – Carol of the Bells freaks me out
• You have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile – Why the original Grinch cartoon is the best Christmas movie ever.
• Am I really dreaming of a white Christmas? – What that song is really about
• Why I probably won’t be buying you a Christmas present
• Christmas music economics – The price of French hens, milkmaids and a partridge in a pear tree

Writing is an addiction I’m glad to have

I can’t remember when I first noticed the lump on my right wrist, but when lifting a fork became painful, I knew I couldn’t ignore it anymore. On May 13th, I left work and went to my doctor because my wrists, fingers, arms and shoulders were hurting so much that it prevented my lunch from reaching my mouth.

We all assumed it was tendinitis in the wrists, a typical repetitive strain injury. I was a journalist and front page editor spending most of my free time swing dancing and tweeting – of course my wrists were strained!

I was told to stop writing for two weeks. Then for two more weeks. Then for two more. And eventually it had been three months.

Read the rest of this blog post at Nascent Novelist, where I was a guest blogger this week.

Photo by Åsmund Solberg Nilsen
(Nails done to celebrate 4th of July, in case you were wondering. This hand was the the stripes; the other one was the stars.)

Moving in

My blog, According to Julie, has just moved to this new address, and I have just moved to a new address in London.

I will spend the next days/weeks moving in to both of my new homes: hanging posters on my bedroom wall, uploading photos for my blog header, shopping at IKEA for pillow cases and browsing WordPress for widgets.

While I get things sorted out, read this article about IKEA, moving and finding a home:

When you don’t live in one place for very long and you can’t afford fancy furniture that might break when you haul it halfway across the world, IKEA becomes a sort of haven. After all, it’s exactly the same everywhere on the planet. You know that if you’re in Europe somewhere and you have a sudden hankering for four-dollar Swedish meatballs you can walk in and get a plate of them for four euros. You know that if you’re stranded you can just walk in and collapse onto any sofa and no one will tell you to leave.

All old posts will be on both sites, but new posts will only be published on this one.

First impressions of living in London

It’s been about two and a half weeks since I moved here. I am still not home (it won’t feel like home until I have internet access in my apartment), but I look forward to settling in. Here, in no particular order, are some thoughts:

1. Just before leaving Norway, I noticed that I was using the word “practical” too much. I described everything as convenient and useful. Now that I live in London, my new over-used word is “ridiculous.” No water pressure in the shower if my flatmate is doing the dishes downstairs? Ridiculous. Purely decorative balconies, with no doors from the house? Ridiculous. It takes 14 days for Virgin Media to connect me to the internet? Ridiculous. I can’t buy one beer; I have to buy six? Ridi. no, practical.

2. I like British friendliness to strangers (let’s shorten it to FTS). Norwegian FTS doesn’t exist in cities. French FTS doesn’t exist at all. American FTS goes way too far (There is no way the sales assistants at department stores like my outfits that much). British FTS is all about small talk.

3. Small talk, contrary to popular belief, does not necessarily revolve around the weather. The important question is how you got to where the small talk took place. Did you take a bus or a train? How delayed was the London underground today? (Apparently, this last week was historically bad, tube-delay-wise.)

4. The London School of Economics and Political Science (let’s shorten that to LSE) wasn’t joking when it described itself as “international” and “diverse”. I don’t think I’ve met any English students so far. I’ve met plenty of Norwegians though.

6. There doesn’t seem to be ANY connection between what the weather is like and what the English Londoners are wearing.

7. Although I like to believe you can do anything in London, being spontaneous is a lot harder here than in a tiny city like Oslo. It takes you two hours to get anywhere, and once you’re there, so are thousands of other people.

8. I think I will start speaking British English with an American accent. Queue is a distinct word, more specific than line. Flat is shorter than apartment. As long as we aren’t sharing rooms, I live with my flatmate, not my roommate. Our flat isn’t flat though; it has stairs.

9. Most of the advertisements on the underground are for books or cultural events. I like this. And I like that I see so many people on public transport reading novels.

10. I also like that no matter where you go, there will be a pub serving fish and chips and an assortment of beers on tap. I am writing this at my new local pub, surrounded by families, couples, the pub’s dog, and a few people like me, with laptops and coffee.

Quick update

I have just moved to London for a one-year Master of Science in Economic History at LSE. School starts in about a week. My wrist is completely healthy, and my new laptop has plenty of half-finished blog posts. I am in the process of moving for the fourth time in two months.

Writing soon

A quick update on the wrist situation: I had an operation about a month ago. It wasn’t tendinitis, but a ganglion. I feel much better now – and I’m writing this with both hands! – but I am still not quite well enough to write full time. I will be back soon. Very soon.

If you can read Norwegian, check out my dad’s blog post about all of this.

Not writing

I’m not writing. No blogging, no Twitter, no E24. I have tendinitis, a repetitive strain injury, in my right hand. My physiotherapist says it’s probably De Quervain syndrome. I just know that I have a bump on my right wrist, and writing (typing or by hand), as well as using a mouse or trackpad, hurts – and keeps hurting for days.

I can read. I can dance. But I can’t write. I am slowly typing this with my left hand. For almost as long as I can remember, writing has been my all-purpose solution – my work, my fun, my therapy. Without it, I don’t feel like myself – but I will be back.

To all my champagne people…

“We have a champagne relationship, protected from a lot of the everyday wear and tear that other couples go through. We are free to do as we wish, but at the same time we know we love each other and that whenever we meet, it’s fantastic.”
- Victora Bugge Øye, interviewed by the magazine D2 about her long-distance relationship (my translation)

If my life were to be retold in film, and to realistically portray the big emotional moments, it would have to include scenes like this: I sit on my couch, staring, shocked, at an e-mail. My cell phone beeps just as I am waking up, and I start the day with a little dance of joy when I read the text I just got. I log onto Google talk in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep without a few lines of encouragement from the other side of the world. I hide behind a tree in the center of Oslo to cry and scream into my cell phone. On opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, my best friend and I each open a bottle of Sam Adams and toast each other via Skype.

Has anyone done that yet: Made a film where the protagonist is always physically alone, only shown interacting with characters through videochat, Facebook, e-mail, blogging, phone calls etc.? Because some of the most important characters in the story of my life have been people who are hardly ever there in the geographical sense. But they are always there in the sense that matters: there for me.

I fill my long-distance friends in on my life in great big heaps of information. Sometimes just composing a response to “So, what is new with you?” can be a way of clearing my own head, making sense of my priorities.  There is no time to waste on everyday small complaints, but for the real problems I prefer to go to my long-distance people, the ones who do not have to deal with my life every day.

Perhaps I just want someone to accept my side of things. Long-distance friend won’t say “Really, that guy?” when I describe a crush, because they’ve never met him. Long-distance friends won’t let a secret about me slip out when they talk to my co-workers or family members. Long-distance friends won’t notice if I skip past the boring or embarrasing details of a story. And yet, long-distance friends manage – again and again – to call me out on it when I’m not being completely honest with them or myself. Because they’ve been listening.

Distance has a way of focusing the attention within a friendship. There is no need to involve anyone else, to introduce friends to friends, boyfriends to families, no need to struggle with integrating the person I am when I talk to Friend A with the person I am when I talk to Friend B. Instead of going to parties with groups of other people, we interact in one long two-person conversation.

When people say online communication is impersonal, I don’t understand what they mean. On the contrary, it can be immensely personal, if it works like this: I think of you, and I tell you so immediately. I don’t have to wait until I see you to let you know I had a thought you should know about. You are directly connected to my thoughts.

That being said, sometimes I need a hug. And sometimes I need a hug from someone specific, someone who lives too far away.

And maybe I do idolize my long-distance loves because I don’t have to deal with them on a regular basis. Whenever we see each other, it’s a cause for celebration, for champagne. Like at most events involving champagne, we gloss over the imperfections and pretend there won’t be a tomorrow. But maybe that’s a good thing. Sometimes it’s best to view life as a series of beautiful moments. That’s what my (roommate who happens to be a) therapist says. 

Knowing you are loved – even from a distance – can be enormously comforting whenever your geographically close life feels less than great. Drinking water alone is easier when you know there will be someone to drink champagne with someday soon.

The photo was taken in Paris, by Julie Balise. We drank champagne on the last day we lived in the same country.

Meme

I like question-and-answer memes because I like answering questions about myself (embarrassing, but true. I also like filling in questionaires.) But I also like memes because when I go back and read the archives, the answers are like a little piece of frozen time, with tiny details of my life that I would never specifically blog about. So even though a meme is not really "serious" enough for my blog (eh, whatever), here’s one: