There are some academic culture things that are strange and difficult for me to deal with, and I wrestle with the contradictions and confusions -- but there are also moments like these:
Waiting for the bus today, I ran into another ENE grad student (2nd-year) who asked what I was holding. It was a book by Wenger and Lave on Legitimate Peripheral Participation, and I said so -- and instead of going "why are you reading THAT?" we both went "yay, communites of practice!" for a moment (I didn't need to explain it!) and then she went on and I caught my bus as if that were ordinary, and it is ordinary here...
Getting emails from your professors at 1:30am. Not last-minute emails, not stressful or panicked emails, just normal emails -- because of course, you know, sometimes you end up writing emails in the middle of the night, working from your living room...
At the coffee shop discussing our impending book club -- my advisor and a bunch of her grad students, just for fun -- nobody could decide on just one book, and then someone else piped up and said "let's just read them all," and the table nodded, as if it were -- of course, let's read them all! What else would we do? Not read something?
Where everybody's answer to "so, how did you end up here?" starts with "well, it's a long story," and launches into a passionate tale of going here and there and trying to find a home to study with other people who'd understand their strange desire to hop between established disciplines...
I dunno. Where's home? So many places and spaces feel like home, and don't at the same time. But gosh, is it ever nice to find these unexpected glimpses of comfort, of belonging without having to ask or modify the world to fit me. It's not often that I'm in spaces that feel like they were built for me, and I'll appreciate what I can get.