Fear and What to Do About It

When we were in France over the summer, Étienne, the man we stay with in the south, asked me if I was afraid. I had just told me about my work in Chicago; I had given him the Al Capone-laden spiel I developed specifically for French people, but he ignored all that and focused on what I had said about working in North Lawndale. "Are you afraid?" he asked, in French of course, and at first I wasn't quite sure how to respond.

No Americans I know would have asked me that question. Even Americans from Étienne's generation, who with age have become more nervous and wary, always greet my work explanation with an interested, "Oh. That's quite something," or a vague, "Well, good luck," or an admiring, "What a wonderful thing you're doing." I've had people ask me if I'm excited. Indeed, they mostly ask without asking: "You must be so excited!" they exclaim, as if they're informing me. You must be so excited. If not, what?

Very few people have even gone so far as to acknowledge that I might be nervous. My parents know I'm nervous; they know my face, after all, and, as Roommate J once told me, to the people who know how to read me I'm not so much an open book as a hefty tome. So my parents know, but very few others do. I'm sure all the Fellows were nervous before they started, but you won't catch them talking about it at the mixers where we're supposed to put on a professional demeanor and you won't catch them talking about it in bars where we're supposed to be impressing each other. Everyone is supposed to be so excited all the time. Sometimes they're allowed to, and, indeed, expected to be, completely stressed out.

Rarely nervous, never afraid.

I will be driving to work instead of taking public transportation. My hours are such that I would frequently be leaving after dark, and the walk to the El would have taken my half a mile through the neighborhood and under an underpass. My parents were generous enough to let me borrow/have the car, and I was fortunate enough to find housing with parking (for a fee). It was my mother's idea, but I hastily agreed. Étienne would doubtless see these logistics, this hasty agreement, as proof of my fear. Mere nervousness, he might well think, is not enough to drive someone to make alternative transportation logistics.

Maybe he's right. Certainly, right now, sitting here, typing this and thinking about this coming Monday my stomach is in knots. However it's difficult to separate all the nervous strands: the wish to do well at one's job and the worry that that won't happen, the still-a-little-vague terms of my employment and the completely unknown factor that is my boss, the fact that I've had this apartment for almost a month now and still haven't gotten a paycheck to help me out, the thought (irrational or not) that I might not make a very good teacher, the clothes, the traffic, the drive.

Yes. I admit it. I'm afraid. But of what changes minute by minute, and sometimes there are whole hours when I'm not afraid of anything. I also know that mine is a luxurious fear, that when I finish up work I can retreat to my nice studio in Lincoln Park and that, while it is still an urban environment, it is nothing compared to the places my students will spend the night.

There is nothing special about my emotions. More people feel like this, I am absolutely sure, than they will admit. It is possible that in a week or a month I will look at this blog post and laugh and shake my head with the knowledge that I had nothing to worry about. I'm excited (I must be), but I'm also scared, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that, in and of itself. The problem arises when you let that fear affect what you do or don't do. You have to be on the lookout.

When I go to the dentist (not frightening in the least; merely uncomfortable), I like to pretend, while the dental hygienist is banging around in my mouth, that I am being tortured for information I will never give up under any circumstances. I pretend I'm a spy (shocking, I know) and my job and my life are on the line. Driving to work, I might pretend I'm Dido Twite, the heroine of Joan Aiken's Wolves Chronicles. She knows what she has to do and if she gets lost she brushes herself off and gets back on track. She finds kindred spirits in unexpected places. She always gets the job done. She doesn't really know what she wants to do with her life, but she follows the breadcrumbs from situation to situation and somehow winds up in the right place eventually.

I'm putting Dido Twite on my bookshelf alongside Mary Ann Singleton and George Smiley. She is the perfect role model. She doesn't let fear cloud her judgement, but she's not so foolish so as to pretend it doesn't exist.

My Kind of Town, Chicago Is

Just a quick update before my battery runs down: I have arrived! The internet has yet to make its presence known at my abode, so updates may be few and far between. I did venture forth to, at long last, do my duty and write on the fellowship blog. I've pasted part of it here, so you too can known what I've been doing:

My Kind of Town, Chicago Is

Frank Sinatra really knew what he was talking about.

Having one of the latest start dates, I just arrived in the Windy City on Wednesday. Since then it's been a mad dash to set up internet and activate electricity (I'm sure I'm not the only one who could now write a dissertation on the ins and outs of sitting on hold with ComEd and AT&T), get a physical with TB test for my employers (at the CVS Minute Clinic, which I had never heard of before this morning), and do the first round of groceries. Currently I am sitting in the Lincoln Park branch of the Chicago Public Library, benefiting from free WiFi after picking up my library card. One of my supervisors...just sent me a list of reading I might find beneficial before I start work a week from Monday. I must admit that I feel a little like I'm back in high school, cramming months of summer reading into the last few days of summer, but I'm also excited. I can see myself, this weekend, stretched out in a park somewhere preparing for work.

In the midst of all this, I've managed to enjoy several tranquil moments. On my first evening in town, I joined my fellow fellows and other members of the alumni community for a meet and greet picnic at Millennium Park where we were serenaded with John Adams' The Chairman Dances and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, part of the Grant Park Music Festival. I chatted and listened to music. I ate way too much watermelon.

Yesterday evening I strolled around my new neighborhood, Lincoln Park. The weather was perfect, which just enough breeze in the trees and a lot of young families wandering around and, like me, enjoying the last days of summer.

I'll be living in Chicago in a week. I've been hearing friends tell me about baking therapy for years. Finally, two days ago, I baked chocolate chip cookies. Then, yesterday, I baked banana bread. Tomorrow it might be brownies. I'm going to have to start giving some away soon, or risk showing up in Chicago ten pounds heavier with a mad case of scurvy.

First attempt at banana bread. It was delicious, the circumstances notwithstanding.

Stress cookies

You're never alone with your thoughts in our kitchen.

I won't say that the baked goods fixed everything, but the technical stuff distracted me from unproductive worries and it gave me time to think about things I can legitimately take care of. If I've learned anything it's that I'm going to have to have a goodly amount of flour, sugar, baking soda, and butter stored away for my first months in Chicago.

Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series. Where do I begin? With the fact that they got me through both finals and my first summer away from home freshman year? With the fall junior independent work I wrote on serial fiction and Tales that led my adviser to, memorably, ask me, "Would it be productive to look at gay sex?" With my crush on Brian? With my fondess for Michael and Mrs. Madrigal? With the sudden, unexpected kinship I now feel for Mary Ann, a Midwesterner who shows up in the city for the first time at the beginning of the first book and finds more than she expected?
All good places to start, but I can't quite bring myself to start anywhere but my return home after Princeton graduation, where I found some mail waiting for me. There were several touching graduation cards, the most surprising and moving of which was a generous check from my aunt and uncle in Baltimore.
Now, I have had very little to complain about this summer. I went with my parents to France and to Colorado and spent quite a bit of time in each location. That being said, the thing I had been planning to do this summer--the thing I had been planning since last November--was a trip to San Francisco to see the new Tales of the City Musical.

I didn't think it was possible. I was short on funds and seriously short on time. But then I opened the card with the check and I knew that it had to happen, because I had just been handed this great opportunity and I couldn't let it pass. It was one of those Dickensian coincidences Armistead Maupin loves.
I spotted Armistead Maupin from across a room once, randomly. Roommate J and I went on a trip to San Francisco during our intersession break junior year and we saw him eating lunch with friends. I completely chickened out and didn't go up to him and say anything. I just nodded in what I hoped was a friendly and not off-putting manner when they passed by our table on their way out. He probably gets enough people telling him how much his books changed their lives and how much their grateful to know about other people who could get by on just five good friends, etc. etc. etc. Or maybe he could have used some friendly praise. Maybe he was having a bad day and needed a pickmeup.
We'll never know.
What I do know is that within a half an hour of getting the check I had booked a trip to San Francisco: plane ticket, parking at the airport, hostel, and, of course, theater ticket. I came in under budget. Huzzah! I could eat!
(I forgot to factor in gas. How could I know that prices would come to exceed my college GPA?)
I arrived in San Francisco on a Thursday evening. I grabbed a snack, talked with my roommates in the hostel, and went to bed early. On Friday I took a very long walk. I made sure to stop by City Lights. They give the best advice.

I made it back to the hostel and showered before I met up with Y, a friend from Princeton who just started as a grad student in chemistry at Berkeley. We ate at a Greek cafe and strolled around and I gave him advice on how to make friends (invent a roommate, watch copious amount of High School Musical, talk about it to everyone...don't ask). He walked me to A.C.T. and I picked up my ticket and chatted until the last minute. Then he scampered off and I let it soak in. I had arrived!

The play was amazing. I marveled at the abilities of the cast. I laughed along with my seatmates at jokes only ready-made fans would appreciate. I pooh-poohed Brian's wig.
(At least I hope it was a wig.)
(Uh-oh.)
It must be said--and I'm not sure why this surprised me--my favorite numbers went to DeDe and Beauchamp. It had never occurred to me what fun those characters are in the first book. At first I thought they only served to buoy others' stories along, but they're a critique on the upper-crust and that's always a lot of fun.
Anyway, after the musical I went back to the hostel. By now it was something like eleven at night but I was still wide awake, and it had only a little to do with the guy playing interminable saxophone in the street outside. I lay in bed until three in the morning only to be awakened by my alarm at six. I hopped out of bed, got dressed, checked out, and hopped the BART back to the airport.
I really felt like seeing Tales of the City, which was a constant for me for most of my college career, was my final closing moment. Appropriate, since I'm moving to a city of my soon. Anyway, I got back from the trip (and the one in Colorado, which I had interrupted) and immediately packed the entire series to stick on my bookshelf in Chicago. You never know when you're going to need support and inspiration.

Yesterday, the Aged Ps and I drove up to Chicago to start the move-in process. I picked up my key and I took the first steps to getting my electricity service up and running. Strangely (or not so strangely, as my dad insisted), the electricity was already on and we got to enjoy the benefits of a wall air conditioner without paying for it. I will, however, be scrupulously honest, not to mention prudent, and call and declare myself once my paperwork goes through. I will then shell out every month like ComEd wants me to. In this area, at least, I am A Well Respected [Wom]an.
In others, I am less conservative. For instance, upon investigating my neighborhood further, these two things provided me equal joy:

The apartment itself is great. It's a studio on the fourth floor of what the incredibly helpful Apartment People representative called a two by four or something woodwork-y like that. It's a type of building that was favored by architects in the 60s, apparently.

It's a great space. The floors are hardwood, the kitchen is the perfect size, there's a bathtub, and I have more closet space than I've ever had in my life.

The only thing remaining is to make it a little more inviting. At the moment it's just white walls and empty spaces. I brought up a few things to get the party started, though, and the minute I began assembly I began to feel a little more mentally prepared for the year ahead of me.

I suspect I'm well on my way.

Welcome to the next stop. At Princeton, I learned above all how to be a BAMF instead of a rockstar. Now I'm exploring the gaps in my education and figuring out what it means, exactly, to be a city-dweller. All while tinkering with my neglected play, making friends, and trying not to eat pasta for every meal.
These are their stories.
Dun dun.