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potted_music at 07:59pm on 25/11/2011
potted_music at 07:59pm on 25/11/2011Two holidays make a post :)
1) This year, I'm grateful for my adventure in transcontinental PhD-ing. I might have learned a lot of the academic stuff I'm learning here anywhere else, but I wouldn't have met these awesome people from all around the globe at any other university. Also, the one thing I couldn't have learned back at home, because you do need to be taken out of the home context to realize something like that, is just what amount of low-grade paranoia, anger, and general "do not stick out" attitude one can amass while growing up as any minority group in a posttotalitarian country. Not everybody is like that, sure, but many are, and I am. I'm taking baby steps towards overcoming that, and I'm grateful to people who put up with my emo :) Why had nobody ever told me that moving away from my homecountry will be like adolescense all over again? *facepalm*
2) Today is the Ukrainian day for remembering the victims of Holodomor and political repressions. While I have a strong knee-jerk reaction against the concept of national identity based on shared victimhood (which we Ukrainians often do do - I said "do do", yay!), here, away from home, away from the people lighting candles in memories of all the relatives they never got to see, I suddenly felt the need to light one too. So there.
1) This year, I'm grateful for my adventure in transcontinental PhD-ing. I might have learned a lot of the academic stuff I'm learning here anywhere else, but I wouldn't have met these awesome people from all around the globe at any other university. Also, the one thing I couldn't have learned back at home, because you do need to be taken out of the home context to realize something like that, is just what amount of low-grade paranoia, anger, and general "do not stick out" attitude one can amass while growing up as any minority group in a posttotalitarian country. Not everybody is like that, sure, but many are, and I am. I'm taking baby steps towards overcoming that, and I'm grateful to people who put up with my emo :) Why had nobody ever told me that moving away from my homecountry will be like adolescense all over again? *facepalm*
2) Today is the Ukrainian day for remembering the victims of Holodomor and political repressions. While I have a strong knee-jerk reaction against the concept of national identity based on shared victimhood (which we Ukrainians often do do - I said "do do", yay!), here, away from home, away from the people lighting candles in memories of all the relatives they never got to see, I suddenly felt the need to light one too. So there.