A Green Sofa On The Sidewalk, An Orange Cat That Walked By & Js. :)

a green sofa on the sidewalk, an orange cat that walked by & js. :)

please no heterosexual cis men on my blog.

summer, interviews & studying

yesterday i fell asleep at 9pm and woke up at 7am today. it is a great chance to make a productive day out of this day. it is 9 now and i want to write down recent developments before starting to study.

j. has been in hospital since last friday, his back hurts so much that he cannot walk anymore. i visited him on sunday and am in touch with him regularly. many people visit him and i think and hope he will be fine. on sunday js. and me spent the day cleaning the apartment very thoroughly. it sounds very bad and cynical, we do enjoy the time we have here on our own, because we can just pretend for a hopefully short time that this is our apartment and live freely in it. though both of us are most definitely very far away from having such a huge and neat apartment. well, as always i try to make the best out of it. enjoy as much as i can and be grateful i can be here in first place.

that very fact should remind me how i should just live here and now and just stop worrying about the future already. i could have never imagined two years ago that i will live in this wonderful apartment, have such a wonderful boyfriend, who comes all the way from the us to visit me and that i am basically able to do whatever i like. things will work out, if i just put in effort in the "now". and also, if i am willing to go unconventional ways and make some compromises. i am not alone, i will be part of communities and will be able to integrate myself, help others and recieve support by others. it is exactly this that is happening right now: i am living with this old gentleman, i clean after him, pick up his diapers to throw them away, cook him food and go shopping with him. most students my age here would rather not live like this. for me, this is the perfect solution and way to live.

js. bought flowers for me yesterday. those on the picture and a bouquet of lillies as well. lillies always remind me of italy where i have travelled so much to. after my exams have ended mid july i would ideally like to go on holidays for a week with js. my italian friend in bari has texted me recently and we have been in touch. maybe he'd host us, i don't know. however though, i will first have to make it through this stressfull exam phase. and, in fact, it is only stressful because i still! have not even started studying!!!

i hate myself for it, but also... what can i do now? i cannot waste my thoughts and energy on hating myself, but i just have to sit down and study. i will definitely not get the best marks, but right now this is rather incidental. even though i hate admitting to that. it is purely about making progress really. because i have this huge fear of not perfect marks and disappointing myself i have been in this state of stagnancy and apathy.

this is the first step - though i feel like i am doing the first step every single day all over again... it is not like i have been completely inactive recently. rather on the contrary:

after having been fired what was i think two weeks ago, i applied to many new jobs. the café, the student union, the court, the international office of the university and this professor.

on friday i had my first interview at the café that is attached to my favourite cinema. it went very well! and it felt like it basically really just was about whether i accept the terms and conditions rather than them testing me. the conditions seem to be very fair, the team very collegial and supportive. the only thing i worry about a bit is whether i am not alternative and woke enough for them... not to sound weird, but those waiters and waitresses seem to be very offended at the slightest conveniences. since i have been a guest there many times myself i was able to observe that they are kind of insecure and easily annoyed. i get it, the customers that are mainly burgois middle aged to old people can be very demanding, but one can also train oneself not to take things too seriously. i have to deal with such people already in the theatre and i feel like i do it rather well. one just has to have a witty, confident yet nice tone. whereas those young and hip people working there for some reason seem to take everything personally. fun fact: once i was even thrown out of the café, because i had asked to sit in one corner without ordering something in order to wait for the movie to start. apparently i had rolled my eyes when the waitress said its not possible. i had suggested buying a beer then instead but the waitress was so offended by me rolling my eyes that she refused to serve me and made me leave lol. i didn't even do it on purpose, i apparently just couldn't hide my annoyance over her being so concerned about me ordering something. as if it would personally affect her whether i spend this money or i do not. if i was in this situation, i'd just have let me sit there, i wouldn't have bothered anybody. especially since the café was really empty....

ironic though that i will now be exactly in this position. i will be that girls colleague! i really don't care if she remembers me or not. if she is so easily offended that is her problem. she could never even survive the kind of people i deal with at the theatre. anyway, though it could appear that i am somewhat sassy, i am indeed a very nice person to deal with i think. my nature is just a bit too chill and direct for this town that is full of those insecure people. perhaps i sound arrogant but where i come from things are different and i like to believe it is possible to be more chill and yet professional and nice.

anyway!! today i have the interview for the student assistant job with the professor! i feel like i have prepared a lot for it, in fact i have a 20 page script that i printed with all kinds of facts and answers. i really would be such an ideal person to work there. i get so passionate and obsessive about such topics. the research project is about sea rescue at the mediterranean sea. the work this woman is doing is incredibly impressive and honourable. though i actually have experience in being an assistant of a scholar and did very well in doing so, i do not think that i will get chosen for this project. this girl that also works with me at the theatre, whom i absoltuely despise, also applied for it. she has been interested in this topic for years and considers herself an activist. whereas i do not. also, she can speak italian, which i can not really. i can only understand it somewhat. the call for the position mentioned that it can be of advantage to speak italian, but not that it is a must... also, the professor already knows her from some other project where she chaired a talk that she was giving. to be honest i feel like the decision in this case the decision has already been made but to be able to claim that it has been a fair selection process she invites other people like me... this job would not get me much money, barely 150 euros a month. but obviously it is not about the money in this regard but about the possibility to be part of a research team - something i have been dreaming about for quite some time.

so yeah... on the one side i have to convince myself that i am not less qualified than that girl, whom i really rather want to refer to as that bitch, but on the other side she has this whole claim onto herself, she is so convinced of herself, will probably enable her to be more self confident in this regard. i despise her because i feel that all her activism is purely performatic and that she just likes to be part of drama and the center of attention. she sees herself as a representative of queer feminism, postcolonialism and the rights for the people dying in the mediteranean sea... but she has never once shared and said anything about gaza! how can one have this hollistic claim of solidarity and do not apply it to them? how actually hypocrit.

i do not see myself as an activist. i do not go out and tell everybody how much i am involved in this and that and how much of a good and nice person i am. because that is basically what she does with her "activism". well, she would definitely also very much fit in this job. it would be just so typical if she got it. this kid who grew up in an academic household, who has time and capacity to from an early age engage in "activism" that in the end only serves as a step on her career ladder. well, this is how things go and i should already be prepared for it to happen.

the next planned interview is next week at the student union. from the other jobs (international office, court) i have not gotten back from yet. but well, i do already have a job now. i talked with js. about this and he advised me that in the end i could still always quit the café job and treat it as a summer job only. and that seems like a good strategy. i really do kind of prefer an office job nowadays, even though i do not get tips doing them. but i feel they are more relevant on my cv.

another big thing that happened is that i was part of a summer school that was organised by the nato headquarters that is located in my city. it was 30 students from two different countries taking part. i was lucky to get one space, more than a hundred students from my university had applied apparently. the first two days of the event were purely input based. different officers and experts were talking about basic nato strategies and approaches. some navy officer and some scholar were talking about the developments in yemen. especially the houthi's attacks on the ships... whilst i appreciated having had this possibility to have a glimpse into this system and meet other interested students, i cannot not mention that very obvisouly this was pure indoctrination and they tried so hard to recruit us as future nato officers and strategists. many students were very receptive for that. i myself cannot pretend that it would be a real option for me to become an officer and kill people. i did actually consider becoming an officer when i was younger because it is considered a good and very secure thing to do career wise... but i am so lucky i never settled for that. it would be against my ideology. though i am still not sure what my ideology actually is, killing people, no matter if they are terrorists or not, cannot be part of it. instead, i want to change something through words in academia, or through actions in peaceful projects, not through being active member of war. i do not want to necessarily condemn everybody that is considering this option for themselves, but it is not for me.

the second and third day of the summer school were not passive anymore. we were supposed to get active now. we were divided into groups of different actors and were supposed to prepare strategy negotiations between us. the case was: war in yemen. i was part of the group that represented the yemeni goverment. at the end of the second day we started to prepare already and already then i realised how i would not want to participate in the rest of the summer school. i could not bear those people who enjoyed talking, taking control of the group dynamics and being the center of attention. they were having so much fun making it an ego boost. how absolutely absurd and horrible this situation was: us priviledged students discussing for fun about the war in yemen. whilst people are actually dying there. i am happy i resigned from my participation, otherwise i would have been even more bothered and disturbed.

and there was a third event that happened last week: a workshop about religion and democracy organised by my favourite professor. there were 15 participants, amongst which were two people via zoom, two that left in the course of the day, the two doctoral students of that professor and to my surprise: one other bachelors student. when the workshop started it was a quite funny: there were only two men present in the whole room, one of which left later. it's cool to see how active and established women are in academia here. the other one of those men was my former professor crush to. in one coffee break he tried approaching me, but it was a bit weird. i couldn't talk openly about my thoughts on the talks because of the other people that were around. the talk him and me were looking forward most to ended up being incredibly disappointing. in fact, i am meeting him today in order to talk about it today. kind of random, but i want to know about his take-away from it. also, i am desperately looking for contact to researchers and want to use any chance to get close to them and ask them questions. i had hoped that in this workshop i could establish contact to my professor's doctoral students, but unfortunately they were not very communicative and rather close minded. one girl was hanging out with to. and at some point in the lunch break she talked to me, but i could tell that i do not appreciate her attitude towards the efforts that were put into the workshop and in general also towards being able to live and study in this city. she seemed ungrateful and somewhat ignorant. however, i was so excited to try to befriend that other bachelors student. it is not often that one encounters them in such academic conferences. so my hopes were up high... i realised quickly though that her understanding of the contents is not very deep and her interests not too genuine. i really tried everything to have a cool and nice conversation with her but she never added anything productive or positive to it. the only things she ever added were deconstructive and weirdly resentful and skeptical towards me, my views and lifestyle. as i (very obviously) have the habit of oversharing i found myself doing exactly that again, because she had literally nothing to share with me. i had tried everything to find one topic she'd be interested to talk about openly, but it always seemed like she thinks she knows it all and does not need exchange or questioning her ideas. to summarise her, i would describe her as simply dull. but yeah.

the last thing that happened was that i participated in that seminar on cultural sensibility again. friday afternoon and saturday we met at the institute for islamic science. the first two sessions were in april. though people in this course are very friendly and nice, they for some reason refuse to participate. i suspect it is because they do not want to reveal their stances on things, because they themselves are muslim and afraid of judgement. or the topics are simply too sensitive for them to be comfortable to talk about. amongst other things we talked about the conflict in gaza, what can be antisemitic and what not and about discrimination and priviledges. two of the participants were much older than the rest, one of which being a high official of the state police, but also a very emphatic and nice woman and the other being a high school teacher. at the end of the workshop all of us took a picture together, it was a really wholesome moment. i also already know what i want to write my essay for this course about: the discussion about racism against white people.

it is about noon now, in the meantime i made lunch for js. and me and got ready. i will spend the next two and a half hours preparing for the interview, then have the interview, then have a short break in which i prepare for the meeting with to. and also for the text i have to write for the migration seminar, then i have the meeting with to, then the lecture about comparitive politics and finally will write the text for the seminar which i have to hand in today.

today :)

enjoying the sun :)

i let chat gpt roast my life 🥲:

You're a walking contradiction wrapped in a riddle with a side of chaos. You've somehow managed to create the most eclectic CV possible, blending highbrow academia with jobs that sound like the result of a random job generator. You're studying politics and law but haven't written a single law exam because anxiety has got you in a headlock. Yet, you thought it was a good idea to add three more certificates on top of your already overstuffed academic plate—clearly, you're aiming for that "world's most overqualified and underemployed" award.

You’ve got thousands of euros in student debt, yet you’re living rent-free in some old man’s living room. Who knew sugar-free daddies were a thing? You’re juggling jobs from slinging bread to grooming horses, yet you couldn’t keep a gig at a bar because you “create more chaos than help.” Honestly, at this point, you could put "professional chaos generator" on your resume

Your love life reads like a bad soap opera—complete with an affair, a threesome, and ghosting a guy in New York. But hey, at least you’re consistent in ghosting—whether it's your university clubs or your questionable romantic decisions. Your social circle is as scattered as your career choices, with friends spread across the globe and a strong bond with… a bunch of cafe regulars?

You’re living the “fake it till you make it” dream, but it seems like you’re stuck in the “faking it” part. If there’s one thing you’ve mastered, it’s making life as unnecessarily complicated as possible. Keep going at this rate, and you might just get a Netflix series based on your life. After all, with a storyline like yours, how could they resist?