New Kid on the Hallway

I think this is a sign of progress

The Kalamazoo Call for Papers landed in my mailbox yesterday. Out of habit, I opened it, glanced at the page, and found I wasn't even a little curious about what sessions were being offered by whom. So I recycled it instantly.

(No disrespect to the fine institution that is Kalamazoo, or anyone organizing/presenting there. It just didn't feel like part of my life anymore. And I think that's probably a good thing.)

Good luck

To everyone taking the Bar this week!!!

Ow

So, I have all sorts of things I wanted to say in response to the hair-dye comments, but this evening, I went out for my thrice-weekly walk-run thing (did I mention I'm doing this Couch-to-5K program? No? So, I'm doing this Couch-to-5K program, which starts you out with very little running and works up gradually, and I've got to the point where I'm running half the time, and am quite enjoying it, actually, although an arthritic snail would pass me with ease, but anyway...), and between being a little sleepy and not picking up my feet, and futzing with my iPod, I managed to trip on the delightfully uneven sidewalks and fall flat, COMPLETELY shredding my knees and semi-shredding my hands on what is clearly ancient and deteriorating concrete. So I'm not feeling very conversational now, and will have to get back to the hair comments tomorrow.

(I think almost worse than the massive gashes in my knees was ripping one of my fingernails in half, well below the quick - but I'll let you know after my knees have the night to stiffen up.)

(And can I say, I'm a little peeved no one even asked if I was okay? I passed at least two people, with blood dripping from my knees down to my socks, and no one said said a word to me. I guess they figured if I was up and moving I was fine, but still!)

Politics of hair dye: a frivolous and self-indulgent post

So, my current dilemma (because doesn't one always have to have a dilemma?) is this: do I dye my hair before classes (and interviews) start, or not?

Recently I have noticed (and moaned about on Twitter and Facebook, so apologies for the repetition) that I have a LOT of gray hairs coming in. Especially in my bangs, where the gray hairs are starting to coalesce into a streak - it's just a proto-streak at the moment, but I don't think it will take much longer before they make their presence known as a bona fide streak. Sadly, my hair's not quite dark enough for this to present an interesting contrast; it looks to me simply faded and blah. Although given my hair color, for the moment the gray can kind of masquerade as highlights...

I'm torn about this gray hair. On the one hand, it intrigues me. And I often like it on others; there's a woman where I work now who's going gray (early, I would say), who has her hair short and salt & peppery, and looks GREAT. On the other hand, with interviews coming up next month (should I have any), I worry about being a job candidate with gray hair. (I honestly don't think this would bother me if I were still in academia; but it's hard to know how to regard gray hair when I'm already 15 years older than the average job applicant. It's not so much that I'm worried about age discrimination - if an employer doesn't want to hire me because of my age, dyeing my hair won't make a difference, and I'm sure I wouldn't want to work for them anyway - as just looking *different* from the other candidates. Advice about interviewing for legal jobs [as, I guess, for all jobs] is a very odd mix of "stand out!" and "look exactly like everyone else!!", and gray hair doesn't look like everyone else in my position.)

I have no moral objections to dyeing one's hair. If you like your hair the way it is, great; if you don't, welcome to the joys of better living through chemistry! I've colored my hair a lot in the past. But coloring your hair when you don't have any visible gray isn't anywhere near as fraught as choice as it is when you have gray hair - all of a sudden I have a political issue on my hands: women shouldn't have to buy into the modern beauty myth! gray hair is beautiful! aging is good! Do I not want to be gray because I don't like the way it looks on me, or because I've bought in to the modern view that women can only be attractive when they're young??? etc. etc.

The other element of this dilemma is purely practical. Usually I get highlights, but that's not a very good method of covering gray (although it might help them blend in a little more). The nice thing about highlights, however, is that they grow out reasonably well. If I do all-over color to get rid of the gray, am I doomed to continue ad infinitum in order to avoid gray roots? What if I decide I'm done with color and want to let the gray come in - will I have to deal with growing out the dyed bits? (I have to say, I don't really care about dark roots with blond hair, or brown roots with red hair, or whatever roots that make it clear your hair color is an aesthetic choice; but I REALLY dislike the way gray roots look growing out of darker hair.) I'm also really tempted to try henna for a change - I know people who use it, and it makes one's hair beautifully glossy and shiny, which I would really like, and I like red hair on me. But henna is pretty permanent - more so than chemical dyes, if you do it right, I understand - and very hard to get out of your hair (you can dye darker over it, but it's hard to lighten it). I'm also worried it would come out a bit flat-looking, since I'm used to the multi-colored hair of highlights.

Really, I think my issue is that I'd like to try the henna, but don't want to try it just before job interviews in case I screw something up and really don't like it. But I also want to do something to my hair before interviews, partly because I think it needs it, and partly as my usual way of coping with stressful job situations (i.e. if I can ensure that I look PERFECT, I will be bound to get a job!!!). But I also don't want to pay to have a stylist do my hair and then dump henna over it a month later, so it would mean I'd have to wait a while to try henna (maybe till Christmas?) (I should point out I have actually bought the henna, so it's burning a hole in my pocket, if you know what I mean!).

So I guess, after all this buildup, I'm just curious: how do you out there (women AND men) feel about gray hair on yourself/others? Do you/would you dye, and why or why not? (and have any of you used henna?)

Defensiveness

It's so funny, going back to school, starting a new profession, and learning to write a whole different way again. I remember seeing someone online (probably one of you lovely bloggers out there) talking about how when students have to tackle a new subject, their writing skills tend to deteriorate initially as well. That is, when you're tackling something hard and new, it's hard to write up to the level of skill you learned for another context.

I completely feel myself doing that; it's harder for me to avoid problems in legal writing that I know I routinely avoided in historical writing. But even more so, I've regressed in terms of my reaction to feedback!

I think by the time I left academia, I'd got pretty good at not taking feedback personally (or, I should qualify, not taking *reasonable* feedback personally. Petty, nasty feedback is something else entirely). I whole-heartedly subscribe to the idea that if someone reading your work makes a comment in which they appear not to "get" what you've written, what to take away from that is that your writing in that section needs to be clearer. But now that I'm working my way through a new style of writing, when people give me feedback on something - say, suggesting that I need to emphasize X - my automatic response is, "That's not what I meant! I wasn't talking about X at all!"

I may be older than many of my fellow students, but I am not older in studying the law, and I react to setbacks or criticism just like the newbie-est of new students. It's a little weird.