"Faithbook: What's Your Status?"

Dear friends,

I wholeheartedly wish I were a man. This is a commonly lamented phrase on my part, as my former roommate Danielle can attest. I do not mean this in the sense of: "you might see me someday on a TLC special with a large number of gauze bandages." What I do mean is that I think everything about life might be better if I were a man.

A lot of the time, I think this when I observe male teachers. I have never had a strong, influential female teacher in my life. Yes, I have taken classes from strong female teachers, but not a large enough dose to have any sort of significant influence on me. I think, this is one of the reasons I am vastly insecure about my capacity to succeed as a potential female teacher. It seems to me that the strong female teachers out there are often beloved because they are quirky and cool in a way that most of us wish we could be, but cannot. Cue Lauren Winner.

Herein lies the problem. I am not a man. I do not wear trendy rhinestone glasses. Thus, I am destined for failure. "Gosh that's unfortunate, Sara, couldn't you just pick up a pair of glasses?"

When I worked at camp, I worked with a guy the first summer named Ben. Ben had presence. He had control. Once during FOYB (feet on your bunk/flat on your back, etc), one of his boys was being a naughty, undesirable camper. So, Ben marched him out of the cabin, sat him on a bench, and stared him down until the boy supposedly broke down and repented of his transgressions. This is an ability I do not have. I (perhaps thankfully) could not break a child down by staring at it.

The same was true of my male teachers in high school. Their mere presence commanded respect, while the demeanor of my female teachers provoked the students to raise questions regarding their sanity. I found this to be less so the case in college, but still more likely the case than not.

These are things I think about on a regular basis. Would I be more confident and easy-going if I were a man? I was recently reading an article called "Perfect Girls," and I feel as though it is more characteristic for females to seek perfection in all aspects of their lives. Perhaps this is an untrue and unfair generalization. Nonetheless, I feel as though if I were a man, I would probably be 20x more chill than I am now.

[I need to point out that if I heard another woman talking about these same things--about how she has these thoughts about female inferiority--I would be appalled. Nonetheless, I can't help but have the thoughts myself. And I don't know what to do with that.]

In other news, looking at the buildings on campus keeps me grounded. I look at the architecture of the chapel and the divinity school and think, "I spent 4 years worrying about how I would get in and pay for grad school. Everything worked out beautifully. How can I now have the audacity to want to go home?" There are people who would do anything to be here, and I instead want to be in the VPH, drinking a white chocolate, coconut, hazelnut, vanilla mocha with 4 shots, and feeling accepted. I miss these things because both the VPH and lattes remind me that I had an identity. Indeed, in the religion department and at the Hoek, I was "Sara Moser," and my name connoted an identity. If I wore a Christian T-shirt, I didn't have to explain to people: "I'm not really a girl that wears Christian t-shirts. I am just fascinated by Christian pop culture."

The other day on campus, I wore the t-shirt I got this summer at the youth event I went to: Against a bold dark brown, white and blue letters proclaim and demand: "Faithbook: What's your status?" As I walked up the chapel steps, a girl I have had 2 conversations with was sitting with a group of other friends, some of which I sort of knew. "Sara, I like your t-shirt." "Thank you!" I said, and then attempted to launch into a discussion of how I actually felt really self-conscious because "I'm not actually the kind of girl who wears Christian t-shirts." In the midst of my disconnected, awkward ramblings, one of her friends, a girl in my Old Testament precept, remarked: "I have that t-shirt." "Ahh hellz. I think I had just better stop my explanation and never wear this shirt again." But then I continued to wear it that night when I went to work phonathon, and I became "that girl who is the only graduate student doing phonathon, who goes to the divinity school, and who wears Christian t-shirts."

"Dear secular pagans, please do not judge me. I am not crazy. The shirt is funny, I swear."

I know that in order to have an identity, I need to perhaps talk with people from time to time. I need to speak up in class. I am going to start forcing myself to say at least one thing in my precept groups. Kind of like on that MTV show, 'Made,' where the introvert wants to become the prom queen so her Made coach makes her talk to 20 people over the lunch hour. Maybe I could find my identity by pretending I am in a competition to become prom queen. Gosh, that's a horrible idea, but still.

So, although most aspects of my personal development are spiking downward as of late, I just yesterday did something that was both really good and revolutionary for me and really dumb and terrible. Yesterday, I was supposed to have a job interview for a program called America Reads. If I would have got the job, I would have tutored children in area schools, and I would have been paid twice the amount I make at phonathon to do so. However, because I am a daft fool that is actually not assertive at all, I am absolutely incapable of quitting a job. I have tried. I tried multiple times to quit A8, and it just never worked. I think I have issues with not wanting to let people down. What this means is that because I started phonathon and looked the phonathon supervisors in the eyes, I already feel deeply bound to them and thus unable to quit. Furthermore, they started telling me that my pledge rates were amazing and that I was doing a great job. My pledge rates had darn well better be amazing, considering this is MY SEVENTH SEMESTER DOING THIS JOB, but I feel as though now that they have affirmed me, I am obligated to stay.

So, I canceled the interview for the high-paying, resume-boosting job because I am a daft fool that cannot quit a job. But the thing that is really good about me canceling the interview is that I did so because I knew it is not in my best interest right now to have 3 jobs [I am mentoring the football player as well]. I don't know how or why I am always crazy and get so many jobs, but I think it was a big step on my part that I canceled that interview.

Well, I need to go and study for my first big test. I think the last test [excluding language tests] that I took was Vonder Bruegge's Galatians exam. That was probably last September. I hope I remember how to take a test successfully.

Best,
Sara