Pluralism; or, Insight from The Bachelor

I’m going to tell you about my first assignment for my MPA program, which I turned in on Wednesday, and which has served as a sort of psychological block to writing anything for fun. For someone who delivers such interesting lectures, our prof assigned us terrible topic- something about discussing the theory of political pluralism, how it affects public administrators, and how they have to cope with the subsequent environm,…..  fakfa;gjkfhhhhv  vhhhhhhhhb;.ghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh oh sorry, that was my forehead squarely hitting the keyboard. Never mind that the professor, in three 4 hour-long classes, had never once uttered the word “pluralism,” and the one reading assignment related to it was super-dense and untouched by yours truly until last Sunday around noon. Of course, on said Sunday around noon, the proposition of a hike in Griffith Park with my brother, Heather and Nico the wonderdoodle sounded like a much needed break from those initial two pages I had so diligently poured over.

Cut to Sunday evening. Interior. A blond woman sits alone by a dark window in a bright yellow kitchen at a laptop. She makes a salad. She starts to type.

Cue crying.

So, yeah, I sorta had an embarassing breakdown at my breakfast nook Sunday night. It was pathetic. But for about ½ hour, I was convinced that a) I’d never manage to complete a 5 paged double-spaced paper; b) I was the same procrastinating mess I’ve always been since I could remember, or at least, since pagers were en vogue; and c) under the perfect storm of circumstances, I could’ve hacked off my right f-ing hand too, Aron Ralston!! 

Before I fell too far into the vortex, I called my beau, he graciously talked me down from the brink, and suddenly I was singing, “I know that everything, know that everything, know that everything….everything’s gonna be fine.” I started typing, and somehow, started explaining the theory of pluralism as I vaguely understood it.

I had a major moment of realization during this process, something akin to what I like to imagine the rose-less women on the Bachelor must feel like when watching themselves on TV 6 months after it’s all said and done. That realization being, despite what we'd like to believe about ourselves, we're all a little nuts. Sometimes the crazy just hits and there's just not much you can do about it but let it run its course. I can't judge these women, because they are me.



tragic.

At least I keep my "crazy" confined to my Los Feliz kitchen (and occasionally my boyfriend's closet- don't ask). On a positive note, our professor mentioned that 5 page paper would probably be the toughest assignment of our whole program. Not as tough as competing for a vapid blond man with a trust fund, but tough nonetheless.