I'll let it rain on me.

Two things: I'm sort of worried about the rest of my life. I'm going to owe a lot of money and I'm going to have to pay it back for years to come. Fretting.

I'm also in Poland, in a hotel listening at the rain and reading about modernity.

I need to let go of one to accept the other.

I am more aware of the former because of my age. Everyone else in this program thinks I'm a baby, even, I think, the 22-year-olds (oh, pardon me, 23). I find it incredibly patronising especially coming from academics who deconstruct everything (except age, it seems). Our professors, some aged 60 and over, see us all as children, or young adults which is a euphemism for children.

"You want to work?" they ask me, incredulously. Yeah, I have a lot of fucking loans, I respond with exasperation. This heightens my panic about money, and makes me forget that I'm in Poland with REAL Polish people.

Like,

I signed off facebook with two of my friends yesterday because I had to listen to my Russian, blind violinist friend play some jazz next door. I was sitting back thinking how ridiculous it would be to explain that when I got back home, but in the moment it seemed normal and acceptable as a thing that happens in life.

But earlier,

I made some offhand comment about my disappointment with people that join cults to postpone accepting adulthood, a comment I was very proud of, and my deconstructionist academic peers said I was being ignorant. What is adulthood? Why accept such norms. Pish posh.

I was talking to the program coordinator for the Wrocław a couple days ago at lunch. I asked about her doctorate, which she was given a month ago, and she told me to stay away from the doctorate. It is NOT worth it, she said. Once you finish your Master's program, you feel unaccomplished and the doctoral program helps you feed your academic addiction, but you're stuck in it for years, head to the paper. Everyone is working around you and now you are a doctor of your subject. Where did your life go?

Another guy, a composer (one of two I've met on the trip), went to the New England Conservatory and then a conservatory in Wrocław for two Master's and told me he regretted his New England experience because of the expense. Really?

I'm going to finish reading and sit back all of tomorrow. I'll let it rain on me, real Polish rain.