A number of anecdotes follow...
During my junior year of College I wrote this paper with my roommate about the emergence of third-wave feminism and post-structuralism-inspired Queer Theory in Lesbian poetry. And the paper wove in and out of conceptions of "home" and "community" and while it was a rough paper to write, I learned a lot about feminism/queer things, and I learned a lot about collaboration and scholarship. Incidentally, I recently discovered that our process for this paper was very reminiscent of what Agile Software Development/Extreme Programing calls "Pair Programing."
At any rate, H. and I were very religious (in a way that is kinda touching in retrospect,) about setting weekly assignments for ourselves, writing lengthy notes and short informal essays for our mentor, and so forth. Crazy amount of work. And on one of these papers I wrote something that got a comment, I haven't a clue what I'd written any more but I think it was sort of coyly smart-assy, but the comment itself stuck with me, but the professor said:
Awkward, but endearingly colloquial
Which, I have to say, I think sums me up rather nicely. I used it as the subtitle of this blog for a few years.
More recently, I was talking to my friend Caroline and we--as we're occasionally given--were discussing food and cooking. I told her about my recent habit of making popcorn on the stove (my Air Popper broke) and about what I put on my popped corn. Which is these days, salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar.
And it's amazing.
Caroline's response was, however, priceless:
That sounds delicious.
[beat]
If a little abrasive.
I instantly remembered what the professor had written about my turn of phrase before, and thought "wow, that about sums me up."
I'd ask you all what you think these things say about me, but I'm not entirely sure I want to know.