At university, I am one of those academically above-par students. My grades are good (Consistently floating above the 3.5 GPA mark every quarter), I do all the reading, I go to most of the classes (Those, anyway, that don't coincide with my art (Read:Nude) modeling stints), and I write insightful essays. My professors laud my potential (Somewhat despondently noting that it is chronically underachieved) and I rack up enough class participation points, event appearances, and thoughtful asides to convince everyone that I am a successful, hardworking, and altogether "with it" student.

So why is it, then, that I feel the ominous clouds of my "Spectre of Uselessness" shading my otherwise (academically) successful life? What is the "Spectre of Uselessness?" It is, first and foremost, a catch phrase coined by Richard Sennett to describe the effect of the modern-day capitalist economy on the lives of everyday people. This idea describes how the fast-paced, cut-throat world we live in, with its emphasis on getting ahead, maintaining a status as a "Renaissance person" and underlining, above all, the value of innovation, has taken away the feeling of personal utility. This is to say that our "Life narrative", or a sense of one's long-term achievements, is being undermined with the loss of individual craftsmanship and the promise of company or peer loyalty. We have to be adaptable, and always open to the next new thing just to keep up in the globalized world.

What this creates, then, is a turbulent environment for everyone; we are permanently locked in the 'graduation' state of our lives, with uncertainty always looming about future prospects. What is our next option? Will I make the grade? If so, how long will I survive in a new position? How do I stay ahead without getting fixated on the task at hand?

And why on earth is a 20 year-old feeling so arrogant as to even consider that she has contributed anything to a meaningful life narrative this early in the game?
For, last weekend, I was so self-pitying that I lay around my apartment in one of the prettiest regions of the country, languishing and bemoaning my feelings of ageless, timeless, and maddening wisdom. I had myself convinced that a privileged 20 years of life with all my loves, losses, moves, travels, languages, was enough. I sat around, trying to will myself, on the eve of the Obaminaugation day, to go into a cave on a beach in Santa Barbara and to just let go. I would be the terrifying discovery in a "Cave Rave" and, hopefully, join the multitude of those who were denied fame until sympathetic posthumous reconsideration.

Pathetic.

It's one week later. It's one administration later. And I am only (what I hope will be) 1/5 into my life on this earth. As my mom put it, if Greg Mortenson had given up and died up on a glacier somewhere in Pakistan, there'd be a much smaller movement going on in the name of the education of women everywhere. Someone has to give a fuck.

So where to begin? Where to develop my life narrative? I choose blogdom. Joining my mother (Whose blog, found at www.expateek.blogspot.com, is terribly funny) who, unlike me, keeps on the cutting edge of technology (I, on the other hand, meekly attempt to figure out how to sync up my phone-thingy so that it plays music, and unsuccessfully endeavour to open the pictures on my camera of 7 years in a thumbnail screen format), I will use a public forum and the gift of expression to try and make sense of it all. Convinced that I have a message to transmit, I will spurn my beautiful surroundings and eschew the health benefits of sunlight to hide in a room and send out transmissions from my bedroom floor. Everyone has to start somewhere.