MiT, 1st senior, day 10, 2nd senior day 12

In my last few morning meetings with senior #1, she had not been ready; I usually found her in her bathrobe when I'd knock on her door at our appointed time. The activities coordinator suggested that we switch that around, so today I met with my second senior in the morning and my first senior in the afternoon.

That, worked out very well. In fact, my first senior was 15 minutes early this afternoon!

In the morning, my Rock Star senior and I looked at all the prints that she'd made so far (18 of them!) and picked out the ones that she wants to work on some more. There was the one verse with the spelling error that she wanted to correct (she decided to handwrite in the correction). There were two that she wanted to add watercolors to, so we hand colored 30 prints today. The rest we'll finish next time.

In the afternoon, my mercury senior was very talkative today. She's usually not so talkative, at least not in the morning; so she probably is more of an afternoon person. She clearly is very fond of the first watercolor she finished, and is lamenting that she hasn't been able to complete another one since. So we talked about what she could add to one of her unfinished pieces, and one of my suggestions was to add some ducks or geese to the water. We practiced making ducks and geese most of the afternoon, and I think she had a good time; although I think in the end, that's not how she'd want to finish the piece. But that's ok.

The highlight of the evening was the Marjane Satrapi (author of Persepolis) talk. Time goes by so quickly, it seemed like just a few weeks ago that I bought tickets to the Orhan Pamuk and the Satrapi talks, but these 2 talks bracket the 2007-2008 Literary Arts lecture series, so I know it's been a while.

One thing she mentioned — the book is not an autobiography, rather it's the telling of the events around her, as observed by her. By framing it in the first person's view point, it's much easier for people to relate to.

I don't know if that's the reason or not, but when I was watching the movie, I did feel as if it was telling my story. There are a lot of superficial similarities between our lives—I left home at 15 to go to school in another country, she at 14; we both grew up under repressive governments (although she had more awareness of that early on than I did); we both grew up with wars (hers was much more physically real, mine was more rhetorical); we both had to live within a dominant culture that knew nothing about our own cultures; we both went to live with strangers (my situation worked out very well, hers did not); we both had grandmothers who were strong presence in our lives; we both fell in love with guys who cheated on us (she was smarter, it took me a bit longer...what can I say).

She is much more of a rebel than I am though. I've never been a rebel, and I'm not sure if I'm sorry or happy about it. Exactly what does it mean to NOT be a rebel?