Finding my feet

When I started graduate school (in communications, for you Nosey Parkers) we had a required class where we essentially learned to be critical readers of scholarship. One of the books we read was a sociological study of patterns of friendship among the wives of men going to MIT on the GI Bill immediately after WWII. They were living in temporary housing, in small blocks of eight apartments, four up and four down, all opening not into a hall but outside, like a motel, with stairs at either end. This meant that some people had to pass by other people's apartments to leave or get the mail. The book went on to show that when they surveyed people to find out who their friends were, some people were chosen by more people than they chose. And they drew all sorts of conclusions, but the main pattern they found was that if you walked past someone's door, you were more likely to call them a friend.
Then we got to the end of the book, with the survey, and that was the gotcha!moment. Because they had drawn all these conclusions--100 pages of conclusions--based on a questionnaire that said, "Name three people you consider friends in the development." So if people had more than three friends, it was really chance who they named that day. The whole study was crap, and for more reasons that I could go into but won't.

For a while this week, there were more people choosing me as a friend than I had chosen, which I found intriguing, though all of them I fairly immediately chose back as my friends and the gap in time was due more to my cluelessness in checking my friends page than anything else. However, it mitigated some of my periodic "am I a fangirl?" freak out. And once I had added these friends, all these lovely new journal entries showed up on my friends page! (I know, I know, that's how it works. Stay with me.)

Well, one of those entries was actually saying nice things about me! Imagine that! Now, we Muses have a solemn vow to each other not to get big-headed, so I shan't do that. But it is always gratifying when a writer you admire, that you think is doing good work, thinks you are doing good work as well. So another big thanks to vanityfair for her blurb. And right back atcha, babe: everyone reading this should go read Love Under Will. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. I somehow managed a well-written review after chapter 9. I hope I can do as well for the newly posted chapter 10, but as was said in another context, I don't know if I can match the intensity of the other day. Sophomore jinx and all.

That said, I think I'm finally getting more confident about this stuff. thalialuna said, "Believe in the Story." And so I shall.

--Clio