How To Find Your Waist And Some Less Motherly Advice

Olga, Cassie, and a mildly compliant Lady Margaret

This weekend I had the pleasure of some friends staying with me… one of my Gettysburg friends, Olga, was here over the weekend until she flew home to Finland Sunday, and another friend of ours, Cassie, came down Saturday and then drove Olga to the airport. I felt positively spoiled because I got to play with friends a mere week after graduation and I didn’t even have to drive anywhere. Well, technically I did drive over to my grandparents’ farm so that Olga could drive my car, but that was just for fun.

On a completely unrelated note, there seems to be some confusion among unnamed friends of mine about the location of one’s waist. Contrary to what some might think, your waist and your hips are actually not in the same place. I understand that this might be confusing, so let me go ahead and clear this up for you. Plant your feet on the floor. Now bend to the side. Put your hand on that spot where you just bent, just under your ribs. That’s your waist! Your hips are considerably lower than that… presumably, if you are wearing pants right now, they are covering your hips. If your pants ride low, the waistband is probably right on them. (In women’s jeans, this cut is called a hipster, but it is not at all related to the café frequenting, not-yet-popular band listening, thick-framed glasses wearing hipsters. Like your waist and your hips, these two hipsters are totally different things.)

On an actually unrelated note, I had the bright idea to clean out my room before moving my stuff from school back in… I can’t possibly fit all my books on the bookshelf here, and its time to take down those embarrassing posters that were on my walls. The only problem with this plan is that I have been various stages of sick since I came home—mostly allergies, although I don’t remember ever having them this badly before—so I have been somewhat lethargic and unmotivated, and I am still not unpacked. The sinus headache I have had for three days now seems to be best when I keep my head in the same position relative to the ground, which is not helpful for unpacking. So, I am talking the time to enjoy some of the relics of my childhood that I am getting rid of. Monday, I found some scented markers in my closet as well as some coloring books. So here is my advice: do not under appreciate the benefits of coloring. Coloring can happen in conjunction with a number of other activities, including watching tv, having long phone conversations with your college roommate, and listening to Mark Driscoll podcasts (all tested and approved). And I know you probably think you are too old to color, but I have found that it really makes these other activities more enjoyable because it is easier to focus on them. This is the same reason that I have a reputation for knitting a lot—it helps me concentrate on whatever I am supposed to be sitting still and focusing on. Even if you are not a multitasker, I still recommend you try it sometime. Sit down and color with a friend, since you would be having chats with them anyway. Just slow down for a minute and enjoy the simple pleasure of making a white page colorful. You don’t have to wait until you have a headache that keeps you from moving your head.

Lady Margaret is helping my unpack
because she is just so helpful. Or
because... boxes.

I will eventually finish cleaning out my old stuff and unpacking, don’t worry. And if someone can help me figure out whether to throw out all of my childhood rock collection or keep the calico rock, maybe it will happen a little sooner. ;)

My Epic (Unsuccessful! Discontent!) Adventure

Yesterday, I began “The Great Job Search.” In your mind, I hope this has an epic level that parallels some adventure on the Oregon Trail. I also hope that this particular adventure is not like the Donner Party’s. My goals are to (metaphorically) not get trapped in snowy impassible mountains, run out of supplies, or resort to eating questionably deceased relatives (to be fair, at least some of the Donner party died of natural causes like starvation and sickness). But enough of this morbid talk, on to something uplifting like… oh wait, job searching. 

To be fair, I didn’t actually start job searching yesterday. I had been working on things on and off during the semester until around April, when I decided that I really needed to focus on the research that I was doing and get the work done before I graduated. So I put the job search on hold until three days after graduation. Honestly, this wasn’t too difficult because (1) my research was way more fun and (2) as much fun as research is, I don’t actually want a research job right now. I love research and totally want to be doing it, but my real desire was to go to grad school and do research there. There are advantages and disadvantages to going straight from undergrad to grad school, which I will not list here for the sake of brevity. Regardless, the truth is that I want to be in grad school now, not here at all.

Oh, that feels like some forbidden secret, just out there on the page for all to see. Attention! Christiana does not have her stuff together, and she has not succeeded in all of her endeavors! Yes, that is real life. There are two things that you and I may or may not choose to learn from this:

1: Success. I tend to functionally operate as if success works the same way that sinlessness or a good reputation does. One strike and you are out. In my head, I know that success does not work this way, and that you have to fail many times before to you do something great. However, I often live as if one failure will reveal to the world that I am actually a failure. Not only is this not true from a worldly perspective^{geek footnote 1}but it also assumes a second lie that my worth is determined by what I do and not who I am^{geek footnote 2}. Basically, this mindset is wrong and generally unhelpful no matter what perspective you choose. So, this job search is an (uninvited) opportunity for me to work on functionally acting as if I believe what I know is true: I already have worth, and I am going to grow as I experience challenges and rejection.

Unlike me, my old kitten Magnolia (we called her Maggie) had
obviously learned contentment at an early stage of life.

2: Contentment. I am not exactly sure why God has me at this stage of life. But I have been seeing more and more that it is at least partially to teach me about contentment. If you had asked me right around the time last semester when I was getting rejections from the grad schools I had applied to, I would have told you that I was honestly excited about learning contentment. That was because I was silly and forgot that learning contentment is about as much fun as learning patience. When you ask to learn patience you suddenly find yourself in a million and one situations that naturally make you impatient until you learn how to find patience independently of your situation. Similarly, it’s not that I have suddenly become content (“Oh, look at that girl, life circumstances should have gotten her down but she is just so content!”) but instead find that all of the circumstances that should make me discontent DO make me discontent. Great. So I would now describe myself as not exactly excited but still looking forward to learning this thing that I obviously have not learned yet: contentment.

And with that thought, I am back to the job search.

*Geek Footnote 1. Carol Dweck is a psychologist who has done research in a variety of settings exploring what she has defined "fixed mindset" versus "growth mindset." Essentially, the difference between the two is whether people view personality/core qualities as 'fixed' by nature, or changeable over time. Not only has Dweck demonstrated that learning can change characteristics we would consider to be 'core', but she has demonstrated over and over the benefits of having a growth mindset over a fixed mindset. Her research has tested these ideas in varied environments including the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, aggression in both bullies and victims, prejudice and cross-race relations, and more. For an awesome review, I would suggest her 2012 article "Mindsets and Human Nature: Promoting Change in the Middle East, the Schoolyard, the Racial Divide, and Willpower." (Unfortunately, I can't link you to the full article here... I will have to learn what non-institutionally affiliated people do to access full text articles because this scientist has been incredibly privileged and sheltered for the past 4 years.) 

*Geek Footnote 2. 

“…yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.” (Galatians 2:16) 

 “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God," (John 1:12)

We are not defined by what we do. In fact, we are not defined by ourselves, but by Christ. Our worth in him makes any worth we could dredge up for ourselves pale in comparison.

Prologue

And so, it begins...

Two days out from graduation, and some explanations are in order. What is this cat blog thing, and why has it come about?

Well, now that I have two bachelor's degrees in my pocket and am wise in the ways of the world, I am ready to bequeath this wisdom to the...nope. Not at all. I am certainly not wise (proverbs will back me up on that) and I am not here to tell you how life is. Well, actually I am going to talk to you about how life is, but in more of a reflective, verbally processing my life sort of way. Hopefully it will make some sense to you (or not, but that's just broadening perspectives, right?) since life is a shared experience. If it doesn't make sense, feel free to tell me... I prefer dialogue to monologue.

I have come to a new stage of life. In the research world, you don't call someone a post grad. What have they just graduated from? They might be a post-doc, doing research just after a PhD, they might have a masters but no doctorate just yet, or like me, they might be in-between a bachelor's degree and graduate studies. We call those post-baccs. It's a murky in-between stage, but there is a lot to be learned here.

So, what can you expect?

1) Well, cats. Obviously cats. Somehow, these cats will be related to the topics at hand... that might get tricky but don't worry, I am skilled at the art of tangental relevance.

2) Life chats. Thats really what we are having right now... I have basically no idea where I am going to be and what I am going to be doing in the foreseeable future (funny, since it is supposedly foreseeable), and as things happen, I am going to tell you about them. Granted, when I say "as things happen" I am talking more about the little things of life than the big ones. Life is lived in the daily experiences, one step at a time. Want to go for a walk with me?

3) Ramblings, musings, and scatterings of useless knowledge. I am a verbal processor to the max. I couldn't tell you whether I am a thinker or feeler, but both come out as words. I get overly excited about many things science: psychology, biology, genetics, the brain, the way our bodies work, evolution... ah! The way God made us and the world is SO COOL. Additionally, I have a healthy dose of the know-it-all genes that are passed down through the Martin family, so you are likely to learn things you never knew you needed to know. Like what points of the day you should be wearing sunscreen. Or why using your laptop late is keeping you from sleeping. Brace yourselves, a stream of mostly knowledge is coming.

I met this lovely little kitty while I was on an adventure in South Africa.
Now, you and I are about to go on another adventure. Get pumped.