I am so excited to announce that Ruthie will be sharing her wonderful gift of writing with us about once a month. I first stumbled upon her blog, Zaftig, about 10 months ago and was touched and inspired by her thoughts. A single mom struggling to put herself through school, she'll be starting grad school this fall (she's in the middle of her move to the new city as we speak). She pours out her heart and her fears into her writing and makes you want to put your arms around her, yet she has a dignified and confident way about her that makes you want to follow her into any battle.
I am very honored that she has agreed to my request to contribute her thoughts here periodically to give us yet another perspective on various topics. She answered a few questions for me to post her introduction:
So... Here's Ruthie!
Linda: Have you taken the MBTI assessment? If so, what is your type?
Ruthie: I'm ENTJ. I was surprised by how accurate the results seemed to be-- particularly some of the specifics about the quality of extroversion, because while I am social and outgoing person who finds it easy to talk to other people, I am extremely guarded about my personal life (in real-life relationships--outside of the blogosphere, that is). The results said I was "contained," which it also said is out-of-preference for extroversion.
My individual type description-- including the out-of-preference characteristics-- was "ENTJ--Contained, Realistic, Tender," which sounds like a strange combination but fits me pretty well.
Interestingly, Linda, I think the out-of-preference quality of "containedness" (probably not a word!) has a lot to do with another one of your questions-- the one regarding very personal posts. (See **question below)
I think the blog was an outlet for expression of things that I couldn't let out in my normally-self-contained everyday life. There are a lot of things I share on the blog I wouldn't have the courage to say aloud-- that's reflected in my personality type, evidently. That was an interesting insight for me.
(NOTE: Ruthie has taken MBTI Step II assessment. When she speaks of "out of preference," she is referring to the detailed facets that the Step II looks at)
Linda: How long have you been a part of the blogsphere?
Ruthie: Almost two years. My first blog post was in 2006, around the time my grandfather died, in September.
Linda: What is the most difficult thing for you as a single mother and a full-time student?
Ruthie: There isn't one most difficult thing. There are a lot of little things.
It was easy to bite off more than I could chew and think that I could do it all-- one semester my junior year I had two jobs and a full-time course load, and I was commuting from a city an hour away to the university. That was a bad semester. I had a number of minor anxiety attacks and I smoked a lot of cigarettes. (A few months ago I finally quit for good.)
In college very few of my classmates and friends had children. They were often shocked to discover that I had a child. Their basic inability to relate to my position and my inability to be a "regular" college student was often frustrating. Sometimes I fleetingly wished I could go out for drinks with the rest of my friends after a big exam or go to Mexico for spring break, but more often I'm disappointed that there aren't very many people who relate to my non-partying, atypical-college-student lifestyle.
I think this will change in grad school.
Linda: Do you feel that there is equal respect for highly intelligent women (as there is for men) in the world of academia?
Ruthie: It depends where you are. There's a double standard for women in general-- an ambitious or very intelligent woman is generally viewed with slightly more suspicion and disdain than an ambitious, intelligent man. It could be a lot worse, though. It's certainly better than it was.
Linda: **You have been very brave to share some very personal stories with the world on your blog. I have done it as well, because I felt that being vulnerable in front of others makes me grow. Is that also your case?
Ruthie: That's part of it, but I think it's also the postmodernist in me, wanting my fleeting expression to be validated externally. For a long time I wrote volumes and volumes of things-- short stories, brief descriptions, journal entries, scraps of things, that no one read but me.
Then I thought: If no one is reading this, why am I expressing it? There were a lot of things I thought and felt that I couldn't tell anyone who knew me personally-- like the process of working through my failed relationship with my son's father-- that I desperately wanted to express. Blogging gave me a relatively safe outlet for expressing what was on my mind without making myself too open to people who knew me in my everyday life.
Now the two worlds are beginning to intersect-- my mother discovered my blog and subsequently shared it with my father and brother, and one woman I met through the blogosphere actually ended up being a source for me on a piece I wrote about climate change-- she was an atmospheric chemist at NASA, studying climate change in the Arctic. It's interesting to see how the two worlds are intersecting.
Linda: Are you interested in writing some guest posts for my blog on various issues to share your perspective?
Ruthie: Yes!
::Ruthie
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