After you euphorically write down the new list of tasks (I like making to-do lists, like all typical type A personalities), you look at it. And then your belly sinks and your head gets all foggy and you can only whisper "zuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut."
Because that is an elephant's worth of stuff to do.
On the topic of elephants: I just finished Tintin au Congo last night. There are many distressing things in it, including the length of Tintin's shorts (waay too much knee, boy reporter! down boy! you are not a Rockette), and the fact that apparently Herge couldn't get any real Congolese to pose for him so he found a bunch of twelve year old Belgian boys and put them in blackface instead. It also occurred to me that while I really liked the Spielberg movie, Tintin himself is a bit of a priggish jerk, not to mention fanatically racist. And his relationship with Milou/Snowy the dog borders on the bizarre. They talk to each other? In French? That is worse than Lassie. The fact that Tintin is Belgium's national hero/icon is making me think very long and hard about this country again. And has made me more aware of the hemlines of men's shorts than ever before.
Back to the to-do list. The grim reality that EXAMS are coming, and coming quickly (okay, after Christmas, but still pretty soon), and that they're getting added to the papers, presentations, Christmas markets (!), holiday concerts, internship applications, and travel plans we've already got dotting our calendars has thudded among us all like the aforementioned elephant. Since we are decidedly lacking in Tintins at ULB, it continues to live and prod us with its scary ivory tusks. Exams are coming, and since we don't get evaluated basically at all during the semester that means that our entire academic fortune is on the line come January 7th. Yay. Merry Christmas to us, and a happy new year.
I like how Belgians handle stress though. There is the moment of blood-draining panic; "zut, l'examen/l'expose, il vient vite, quoi!" Then there is the glance at the others: "ben, oui." Then, a short discussion: will it be difficult? will it be different than last time? will we need to read that bibliography he handed out at the beginning of the year? This is all done very calmly, however; and the conclusion is always that it will be challenging but, "benh, ca va, ca va aller." Perhaps we will photocopy a few more articles; perhaps we will discuss this a bit more later over a beer; but ultimately, everything will be okay. I don't see the same existential stress on my classmates' faces here that I saw at Davidson or Sciences Po. This may be because I'm hanging out with philosophers and ethics majors, who spend so much time thinking about the meaning of life and death that everything else seems of relative unimportance. This may also be because I'm at a huge state school, where yearly tuition is about the same price as my school books for one semester at Davidson (if you're Belgian), so retaking a year isn't a big deal. But I think it's also pretty darn Belgian: things will be hard, and, hey, you may not be the best at them, but you'll probably get through them. And if you don't, you'll still survive. Chill out.
Makes sense, I guess, for a country that's survived the carnage of two world wars fought on its soil; that constantly fights internally with itself; that's only gotten breaks by breaking its colonies; and that remains an afterthought, a passing-through point from Paris to Berlin, a city and a country presumed to be grey, soulless, messy, bureaucratic, bizarre. Brussels knows it's never going to be beautiful enough to compete with Paris; will never have enough financial force to compete with London or even Antwerp or Amsterdam; will never be punctual enough to give Berlin or Munich a run for their money; will never have rich enough history to rival Rome or Madrid. But, that said, it is also confident it will survive; it will remain intact, a hodgepodge of colonial-era excess, bullet-pitted suffering, crumbly industrial ghosts, sterile bureaucratic infrastructure, and postmodern architectural essays, long after the factory smog, the red rubber, the mustard gas, the Nazi tanks, and the diplomatic eco-exhaust have dissipated. Brussels has survived since the Roman empire was still jangling swords around Europe; and while it's probably never gotten an A (and never made it on Rick Steve's must-see list for sure), it's still around. Like Tintin, whose gun never seems to work, whose outfits are always tragic, and whose hairstyle is dubious on good days, it's kind of a misfit; it will probably get cornered by a scary bearded man; and it will probably say stupid culturally insensitive things on a regular basis; but when there's an elephant's worth of work or danger charging, it will probably take care of it (maybe by having a monkey shoot it, as Tintin does in the comic book, inexplicably).
As someone born and raised in America's can-do, must-do workaholic society, a funny mix of Calvinist work ethic and suburban overachiever culture, I don't understand the type-B mindset towards work, stress, and achievement. Thriving and exceeding, not surviving and existing, have always been standard to me and my peers. But it's nice to see people who don't collapse into bundles of nerves and stress and coffee when exams roll around; who are quietly confident that things will be okay even if they're not; who afford themselves and their professors the "quart d'heure academique" in which one is on time as long as one is not more than fifteen minutes late. While I don't know this for sure, I get the sense that not everyone at ULB is doing everything they do (drinking beer after class?) for their resumes, or to build a network, or connections (though they are often doing just that). I think sometimes they do it just to chill. Just for fun. And they do it even when there's an elephant in the corner, staring them down with trunks of stress.
That's something I didn't see at Davidson. It's a special breed of courage or at least insouciance.
Final thought on Tinitn: He is a journalist. Apparently people are clamoring to give him tons of money for his stories. But he doesn't take it. He stays with his little Belgian newspaper. And he never seems to worry about deadlines. He just goes on the adventure, says some racist stuff, makes some poor sartorial life choices, gets saved by an airplane (lots of deus ex machina, and that machina is always an airplane, for some reason), and comes up with a great story. He probably spends an hour writing in the whole story each time. He never stresses about work, just about giant cobras.
And while little about Tintin is realistic, and most about him is not worth emulating, there's something to that: to letting the adventure happen to you, to letting the present preoccupy you, to letting the story come to you, rather than stalking it like a great white hunter. It probably will: that great epiphany when the research clicks, the problem makes sense, the thesis statement solidifies, will swoop down on you like a prop plane driven by cheery Brits. Just hope it's before the water buffalos get you.
Okay, that's enough. Tintin's metaphorical possibilities are well worn out now. And I have got some elephants to tame (or, perhaps, some prop planes to hail).
Tintin and Milou being nice and racist (in scandalous shorts):
i don't know why you're hating so much on the short shorts. i've got a pair way shorter than that.
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