When Sweden killed the McFlurry

“The only regional cuisine I haven’t enjoyed is Swedish. I figured I’d be all over it, considering how much I adore the meatballs and ligonberry sauce in the IKEA food court. But when we ate at a Swedish joint, they served us a dish that was scary enough to change my opinion of the entire country. Fletch ordered potato sausages, which sounded great, right? We imagined thick country pork sausage, nicely seasoned with sage, blended into a chunky patty, studded with red potatoes, and browned to perfection. Maybe they’d even come with gravy!

What we got was a bowl of two-inch-long glistening pink tubes. They were so phallic that we had to cover them with a napkin.”

- from My Fair Lazy by Jen Lancaster

During my junior year of college, I spent a semester abroad in Växjö, Sweden. Particularly during my first month there, I did an enormous number of stupid things. For instance, wasted an entire bottle of laundry detergent because I did not realize the reservoirs in the washing machines drained directly into the tub; I just kept pouring, waiting for the stupid thing to fill up, until I ran out of detergent. I also managed to get stranded at 3am so I had to resort to hitchhiking. I went to Rome without really knowing what the Roman Forum was. And, in one of my proudest moments, I got locked in a shipping yard.

Still, some of my funniest memories of Sweden have to do with disgusting Swedish food. Don’t get me wrong. The Swedes have many delightful dishes that I genuinely miss eating. Pytt i panna, a dish consisting of fried sausage and potatoes, topped with a fried egg and beets, was a staple for me while I was there. I’ve tried to recreate it with some success, but I wish I could just buy it frozen again. Swedish bolognaise pizza is delectable. Our version of thin-crust pizza just does not make the cut. For years, I looked for and attempted to bake my own Swedish chocolate balls, which are a chewy pastry flavored with coffee. I did finally taste their awesomeness again last year at Russian Tea Time in Chicago, but that’s the only place I’ve seen them. I’m starting to lose hope that I will ever taste a meatball-and-beetroot-salad sandwich or genuine Swedish pear cider again.

So yes, I did enjoy some types of Swedish cuisine. However, there are some other foods that the Swedes eat that are downright horrifying. And due to my complete ignorance of Swedish language and culture when I arrived there, I tasted much more of the horror than I intended.

My troubles started at the grocery store on the day I arrived. I was completely terrified and overwhelmed, and I basically wandered around the store throwing anything that looked vaguely familiar into my basket. One of those things was a package of brownish deli meat that I took to be roast beef, because really – what other processed deli mean is that color? Let me tell you what other processed deli meat: horsemeat. I bought, and eventually ate, horsemeat. Sweden – 1, Katie – 0.

Many of my other food issues revolved around seafood. While I’ve grown to like fish in recent years, it’s still not my favorite, and at age 21 I still didn’t like it much at all. Still, I knew that the Swedes were big on caviar and herring, so I had resolved to try some. Then I found out that they eat caviar by squeezing it out of a tube onto toast. Out of a tube. Onto toast. Their breakfasts look like someone smeared cinnamon-flavored toothpaste on bread. And the herring? They don’t eat it until it is fermented. Fermented. As in, broken down by bacteria. And believe me, it smells just as bad as you are imagining right now. I found out these little pearls of information before I actually tried either one, so I was going to give myself the point on seafood.

However, later in the semester, the international student organization hosted a dinner featuring several traditional Swedish dishes. One of these dishes was crawfish. Full-bodied, still-in-the-shell crawfish. As the poor thing was already boiled and on the plate in front of me, I decided to try it. The native Swedes told us how we should go about eating the crawfish. First, pick it up and suck the juice out, they said. Ok, I thought. THAT is gross. I’ll just skip that part and move on. Next, they told me to use my thumbs to break the shell. This part I did – and sprayed my entire table with crawfish juice. Oh. That’s why they suck the juice out first. Sweden – 2, Katie – 0.

As I experienced these horrors and others, I’m only a little bit ashamed to say that I often retreated to somewhere familiar: McDonald’s. I couldn’t go wrong there, right? The apple pies were a little different (better, actually), but otherwise the menu was close to the same. One day, I decided to splurge and get a McFlurry. The worker asked what mix-in I wanted, and I pointed to the Oreos. She pointed to the bit and said, “This?” while raising her eyebrows in a way that seemed to ask, “Are you sure?” I said yes, that, thinking something along the lines of I happen to like Oreos, ok?

As I walked back to my dorm, I put the first spoonful in my mouth, expecting bliss. Know what I got instead? Black licorice, with salt on it, mixed in ice cream. The Swedes eat salty black licorice the way we eat the red kind, and that is what was in that bin, not Oreos. Despite the warning from the McDonald’s cashier, I had ordered and tasted a salty black licorice McFlurry. FAIL. Sweden – 3, Katie – 0.

Yes, I definitely had some bad food experiences in Sweden. They were disgusting and embarrassing, but they make great stories. And, in some cases, they also make for FANTASTIC pictures.

Autopilot

"Jane Edelsborough was a widow in her early fifties. A statuesque but untidy woman, she normally dressed in loose ethnic clothes and sandals. She had a commanding intellect, but no one would have guessed it to look at her. Berrington found such people baffling. If you were clever, he thought, why disguise yourself as an idiot by dressing badly? Yet universities were full of such people--in fact, he was exceptional in taking care over his appearance."

-from The Third Twin by Ken Follett


When I was an undergrad, I had a professor who wore the ugliest shirts I have ever seen. He seemed to only have three or four shirts that he just cycled through repeatedly. The least offensive of the bunch was a plain red turtleneck, which he always wore with a pair of brown corduroy pants. They took steps for the worse from there, with the worst one being a mustard-yellow sweater that had huge patches on the elbows and shoulders. The patches were red, green, blue, and brown -- each one a different hideous color.

He was the only instructor that earned the title "ugly-shirt prof," but I had plenty of others professors that clearly put very little effort into what they were wearing. The clothes might not always be so ugly, but they were usually plain, and each professor seemed to own only a handful. Every couple of weeks, the outfits (that's a generous term, really) would repeat.

Now that I work on the fringes of academia, I have found that this phenomenon is not isolated to my alma mater. Professors everywhere seem to dress the same way. They are always clean and somewhat presentable, but almost never stylish or even neat.

This trend fascinates me. Over the years, I have formulated several theories that could explain why academians seem to put so little effort into their appearance. At first I thought it was just laziness. Most professors who fit this profile of wearing the same boring clothes over and over had been doctors of their subjects for a while. They had already finished a PhD and attained a job in their respective fields, so why bother dressing sharply? After years of being forced to sell their ideas to others, there was simply no one left to impress. But this first theory went out the window when I got to grad school and noted that many PhD students (who still have a long way to climb) also fit the pattern.

Next I thought it was more of an issue of comfort. Academians tend to work long, late hours. They almost never operate on a traditional 9-to-5 schedule. Instead, they work against deadlines, alternating periods of 3-hour days with periods of 14-hour days. Maybe they just dress in simple, comfortable clothes just to make those long days more tolerable. But after a couple years of working at a university, I discovered that most professors don't mind those long days so much. They are so interested in what they are doing that it usually don't seem like such a sacrifice to them. I really doubt that they are making wardrobe choices on account of their schedules.

I'm now on to a third theory that feels like it is close to the truth. Over the past few years, I have had the privilege of working with some of the most brilliant minds in my field. My bosses are the rock stars of mathematics education. And I can tell you the one thing they have in common, the one thing that has set them apart: they are always thinking. Always. Their minds work like conveyor belts; when they solve one problem, all the rest are waiting on the belt. They never stop thinking about their work.

This means that the rest of the things that us average joes think about -- like the clothes that we wear -- don't get any time in the conscious brain. Academians just operate on autopilot. You know how, when you wake up late and have to rush out, you end up having no memory of choosing your clothes? I imagine that it's like that for academians all the time.

People in all walks and phases of my life have branded me as a smart person. I was on top of my class in high school, and no one was surprised when I graduated from college cum laude or got accepted to a prestigious graduate school. Many of these people are probably expecting me to get a doctorate someday. It's just what smart people do. But this line of thought has only made me more sure that academia is not where I belong.

The people that succeed in academia are the ones that choose their clothes on autopilot. I, on the other hand, go to autopilot while I am running so that I can spend that time deciding what I will wear that day.

I could never become a research scientist or professor. I love cognitive science and I love math -- but I also love the moments when I can stop thinking about them.

Time

“’This is the first time I’ve known what time it was, since I left the Sherstons’ house.’ Bree was ignoring both Mrs. Bug’s raptures and the instrument in her hands. I saw her meet Roger’s eyes, and smile—and after a moment, his own lopsided smile in return. How long had it been for him?

Everyone was squinting at the setting sun, waving clouds of gnats from their eyes and discussing when they had last known the time. How very odd, I thought, with some amusement. Why this preoccupation with measuring time? And yet I had it too.

…

I laid my hand on his, where it rested on the box. His skin was warm with work and the heat of the day, and he smelt of clean sweat. The hairs on his forearms shone red and gold in the sun, and I understood well just then, why it is that men measure time. They wish to fix a moment, in the vain hope that so doing will keep it from departing.”

~from The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon

Last Saturday, I visited the Museum of Science and Industry with my friend Shannon. One of the highlights of the visit was meeting Kate, the “museum roommate.” Kate won the Month at the Museum contest, and has been living at the museum for almost 30 days now. She’s had unprecedented access to all areas of the museum, gone on fantastic trips around the city to make appearances, and met some remarkable people, including astronaut Jim Lovell. I’m sure it has been an amazing experience. I’m insanely jealous.

But some part of me has felt bad for her over the last few days, too. Her blog posts and videos have started to frequently mention how close she is to the end of the month. When I think about how I would feel if I were in her shoes, my heart aches in sympathy. I’m sure I would be a total mess.

You see, I’m afraid of endings. At least, I’m afraid of endings of good things. I don’t just dislike them. They tend to send me into a spiral of obsessive panic, and here’s why: I can’t stop them from coming. No matter what I do, I can’t stop time. I can’t even slow it down. It just keeps passing, whether I am ready or not. The ending always comes. Time is one force that I simply cannot control.

I know that the mysterious and unstoppable nature of time is just a fact of life. That hasn’t stopped me from trying to find ways to control it. For many, many years, every time I saw the end of a good thing coming, I did anything I could to make it seem farther away. When good things did end, I did anything I could to pretend otherwise.

This play I am in is over? I think I’ll protest when they try to strike the set. I’m graduating high school? I’ll come back in the fall to help with band camp. I got a job in Chicago? Yes, but I’m only going to keep it for a year – then I’ll be back!

Obviously, they took down the set of my senior play, I did eventually go to college, and although I did give up my first Chicago job after a year, I did not move back to Michigan. The endings all came, and they were permanent, despite my protests.

In the past few years, I’ve come to better terms with the reality of endings. I know they will come, and I try to deal with it as best I can. Instead of pathetic attempts to pause, slow down, or reverse time, I instead try to make the most of the time I have. My mission in life now is to live in a way that always makes me feel like I’ve done the best I can. It sounds like a good and healthy thing, but sometimes it leads to its own brand of worries.

I live in constant fear of regret. My goal is to feel like I’ve taken every opportunity that’s available to me and made the most of all of them, and quite honestly – I never feel that way. For example, I’ve followed museum roommate Kate through her blog, and wondered every day if I should have applied for the job. It would have meant risking my real-life job. I had enough vacation, but we had a ton of work this month and they might have hired someone to replace me if I had requested 30 days off. Yet some part of me whispers, “There would have been other jobs, but that experience would have been once in a lifetime.”

This same obsessive compulsion is also what drove me to study abroad, go to graduate school, apply to the Peace Corps, and run the marathon. There’s always something bigger and better I feel like I should be doing. It is all an attempt to escape the fear that someday, I will look back at my 20s and wonder why I wasted them going to a 9-to-5 job. When I read friends’ newsfeeds on Facebook, and I see them teaching in China and Uganda or touring the world on a cruise ship, I feel like I am probably not making the most of my life. And the worst part of it is that there are no do-overs. Not only is time unstoppable, there is no rewind.

But there is one thing that I try to keep in mind when I get into a panic over this: no matter how much I do, there will always be something bigger, better, braver, and more amazing that I could have done. Even when I have taken the big, risky opportunities, I often look back and wonder if I made the very best of them. Like I said earlier, if I were museum roommate Kate right now, I’d be in a frenzy, trying to make sure my last few days were everything they possibly could be.

After a lot of reflection, I’ve come to realize that there is only one thing I could regret forever, and that is doing nothing. I may not always be seizing every day for its extreme potential, but as long as I am spending my days working a job I love, getting out into the community to do some volunteer work I enjoy, and spending time with people who make me happy, I don’t believe I will look back with any great regrets. I don’t have to do everything. I just have to do something.

It’s easier to say all that than to make myself really believe it, of course. But as I sit in my quiet apartment right now, listening to the ticking clock mark the passing time, it feels like the truth. I can’t go back and take opportunities I missed, but time will continue to pass, and there will be more opportunities tomorrow.

Unique

"All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done, the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints."

-from "SantaLand Diaries" in Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

On Saturday, several of my friends were running in a 5K race, and I set out to cheer them on. Armed with pieces of computer paper lamely decorated with Sharpie markers, I went out and stood along the course, hoping to pick my six friends out of the 30,000 runners.

I stood near the start at first, then after all of the runners had gone by me, I moved to a spot about a third of a mile from the end of the course. At this point, the runners had gone about 2.8 miles, but because there was also a 15K race that was coming up behind them, the sign at that spot said 9 miles.

As I walked up, I heard one runner say, “9 miles? Wow, we have gone farther than I thought!” His out-of-breath friends chuckled at the lame joke, and they kept running. Less than a minute later, someone else said, “Wow! Miles 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 just flew by!” Then, someone else: “9 miles! We are such rock stars!”

For the whole 30 minutes or so that I stood there, it was a constant chorus of the same thing. I’d say at least one in every 20 runners saw the 9-mile marker, knew it was absurd, and felt the need to make some clever remark.

I have to admit that I smiled at the first couple of cracks. It’s mildly amusing. But after about 5 minutes, it got really old. I understand that as each person said something, it was the first time they had heard it, not the fiftieth. To each person, it was a new joke, and he or she happened to be the first person within earshot to come up with it. And since they weren’t standing there like I was, all of them got to just keep running, and therefore continue believing that their jokes were original.

It’s generally an innocent and harmless thing, thinking you are saying something new and clever. The phenomenon’s worst effect is annoyance. For example, while I only had to put up with the 9-mile jokes for half an hour, I have put up with people asking, “So, are you rich?” after seeing my surname for the entire 27 years I have been on this earth. Every time, I force a smile and give my stock answer: “In spirit only.” But every time, I want pull out a tally and say, “I am not laughing because you are the 1,443rd person to say that to me. That doesn’t count the people who have said it more than once.”

I try not to hold this kind of thing against people. I know my level of annoyance with unoriginality borders on irrational. But I like to think the one positive effect of my surliness is that I don’t see myself as all that clever, funny, or unique. I’m just a very good conversationalist. I hate small talk. It makes me feel fake. So, I usually don’t force people to listen to my lame jokes and expect them to act like they’ve never heard them before. (Or at least, I don’t think I do. Leave a comment if you disagree. Seriously. I don’t want to be that person.)

But as I was thinking about this issue, I realized that I can’t let myself completely off the hook. I may not think I am unique in positive ways. I don’t see myself as funnier than average, or more organized, or prettier. I have never even really thought of myself as smarter than average. Even though I always knew that I was at the top of my classes, I was never really thought about how I compared to others. I cared that I did well, but if everyone else did equally well, that was ok by me. I just wanted to be good -- not better.

However, I do often see myself as unique in negative ways, and typically, that belief is completely false. And the result is never low self-esteem. The result is always a completely lame and unjustified pity party.

The classic example of this is my reaction to my injuries during marathon training. I struggled with shin splints while I was training for the half marathon last year, but I was able to push through that. This year, I felt like there was no way I could struggle like that a second time. But, I did. In the first half of the training season, my shin splints got so bad that I had to drop out of one of my bigger races.

After that, I got my gait analyzed, and for quite a while, my shin splints went away. I was so relieved, and felt like I had solved the problem. But eventually, despite the fact that my running form was greatly improved, they came back. Hundreds of miles into a marathon training program, despite the fact that I went through some grueling and embarrassing training sessions with a coach, my shin splints came back anyway.

I started to get angry. It just did not feel fair. Why I was I the one struggling so much with this? I was working really hard; I was completely dedicated to my training. Other people were wimping out and skipping runs and losing motivation. I would happily run all my miles if I could. Other people may be struggling with minor injuries, but I was the only one to be chronically injured despite my dedication. It just was not fair.

With the help of a friend, I was able to get past my shin splints and get through my big long runs. I felt vindicated. But then, two weeks before the marathon, I developed a brand new knee injury during a taper run. Then I was mad again. Sure, there may be a lot of people who get injured during training, but I was the only one to get injured during taper. I was the only one having to face the choice of trying the race with the risk of serious injury or sitting it out with the risk of serious regret. Only me; just me; I have it worse than anyone else.

I seriously thought like that. And clearly, none of that is true. I’m sure there were hundreds of runners that fought injuries during taper, and hundreds more that are still fighting with shin splints. I believed I was singled out by the powers of the universe to suffer. And it’s not the first time.

So, I have a new project. I call it “Project: Get Over It.” I’m going to work on not seeing myself as such a victim all the time. I’m going try to stop being so jealous of all the people that don’t have the same problem as me, and remind myself that there are people who do have the same problem as me.

It’s not going to be easy. But with a little self awareness, I think I can do it. It’ll take some positive vibes, but I think I can manage those. After all, I am rich… in spirit only.

City Mystique

“Just as Daisy’s house had always seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses, so his idea of the city itself, even though she was gone from it, was pervaded with a melancholy beauty.”

--from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I love Chicago. It’s been 5 years and 5 months since I moved here, and I feel as though the city has seeped into my soul. I love the natural beauty of the lakefront, and I love the engineered splendor of the architecture. I love the hundreds of free outdoor activities in the summer, and I love the festive atmosphere of the streets and stores in the winter. I love the easy accessibility of downtown, and I love the diversity of the sprawling neighborhoods. I was terrified to move to Chicago, and honestly, I probably never would have done it if I had felt like I had any other viable alternative. But now I am truly happy here. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

That’s why the past couple of months have been more, shall we say, pensive than I expected. It’s been a little more than three years since I finished my master’s program, and I’ve been asked many times if I am thinking about going back to school for a doctorate. This question never really comes a surprise to me. I have always been good at school. “Smart” has always been a part of my identity. I’m sure many people – even me, at times – expect me to someday become Dr. Katie.

I am not opposed to the idea of it. I think that studying a subject that I really cared about could be a personally and professionally satisfying episode in my life. Once I put some space between myself and my master’s program, and after I got over the emotional trauma of finding a job, I started to entertain the idea of entering a doctoral program.

The first step was to identify and narrow the field I was interested in. That turned out to be easy. Based on my experience in the Learning Sciences program, I think the ideal program for me would be in cognitive science, with an emphasis on mathematical learning and education. With that in mind, I started to research programs. In a pretty exhaustive search, I found one program that I felt was in line with my requirements; that is, there appears to be only one program in the country that is specific enough to my interests that it would feel worth it to me to invest the time, money, and energy to apply, let alone enroll. It was the Mathematics and Science Education Ph.D. program offered jointly by two universities: UCSD and SDSU – both in San Diego.

I visited San Diego earlier this year for a completely different reason, and I have to admit that I really liked it there. It was really lovely. Easy to walk, lots to see, and the feel of a big city but without the gritty, intimidating feeling I get from New York or Los Angeles. And the weather? Glorious. I would miss snow at Christmas time, but I’ve never been a fan of cold, and the climate of San Diego has its appeal. I found I could entertain the idea of living there.

What I could not entertain, however, was the thought of leaving Chicago. I really do love it here. Beyond everything I said at the beginning of this blog, the nature of this city has really helped me to come into myself. Living here forced me to face a lot of my anxiety demons and learn how to do things on my own. It forced me to figure out the things I really care about and the things I could let go.

I moved here as terrified, panic-stricken Katie. Now I am comfortable, usually-not-panicking Katie. I’m Chicago Katie. And I like her better than the old version of me. Even on the bad days, when I feel myself slipping back into feelings of ineptitude and helplessness, I can go and take a walk to remind myself that living here on my own is not something a helpless person could do. No, I just could not entertain the thought of leaving. I put the thought of the doctoral program out of my head.

Then, yesterday, I was looking at train schedule in and out of Kalamazoo, MI in an attempt to find a way home for the Thanksgiving holiday. I spent my undergrad in Kalamazoo, and I found myself thinking about my time there. When I started my freshman year, I looked forward to trips back to my hometown, because I felt safer and more confident there. I couldn’t imagine that I’d ever really live anywhere else. Later on, once I was comfortable, I hated being away from Kalamazoo, because I felt safer and more confident there. Kalamazoo became the place I could never possibly leave. Even after I graduated and got a job in Chicago, I told myself the move would not be permanent. I couldn’t possibly leave Kalamazoo.

I think you see the pattern here. It’s really kind of silly for me to think that I could not learn to be happy, safe, and confident living somewhere else. In fact, my record shows that I learn to really love almost anywhere I find myself. And each place has, in its own way, changed me for the better.

So, I don’t fear that I’ll regress into someone I don’t want to be if I move away. But I would miss it here. There’s no question about that. And I do wonder if, assuming I move away, Chicago might lose its mystique. If I go away, am I running the risk of never being able to come back? Would Chicago ever be the same for me again?

The answer is likely no. I no longer have any desire to live in either Saginaw or Kalamazoo. I can’t picture myself living there the way I can picture myself living in San Diego. However, after some reflection, I realize that Chicago would probably never go back to what it was before I moved here, either. Every time I ride the train through Kalamazoo or drive through my hometown, I get a little flash of excitement as memories flood me. Even though both places feel a little empty because most of the people I knew there are gone, they are still just a little bit magical for me. I’m sure Chicago would inspire the same thrill for me if I ever left.

I’m not saying that I’ve decided to move to San Diego, or even to apply to the program. There are a number of other compelling reasons why I don’t want to do that. I have a job that I love with the potential to advance into the very things that the doctoral program would prepare me for, without having to sacrifice thousands of dollars or four years of my life. My family is near enough to be accessible, and that wouldn’t be the case if I were in San Diego. And even though I always end up being successful in school, I don’t always handle the pressure well.

All I’m really saying is that the idea of leaving Chicago doesn’t scare me any more. As speaking as someone who has spent much of her life being afraid, any day I can cross a fear off my list is a good day.