Subsumed by the hive mind!

I walked into the Academic Affairs office the other day armed with an agenda--I would lay it clear that my program was not meeting my needs and that I needed to negotiate a change. But as I sat down in the institutional metal chair on the opposite side of the desk from the Associate Director of Academic Affairs (hereafter ADAA, pronounced as acronyms in the military, phonetically--Aydah--as opposed to spelled out) and she commenced our meeting, I changed. The hive mind demanded it.

Actually, I wilted some time before this. I did not tell ADAA that I had come to demand a change in situation. It was with all the independence that I could muster, in fact, that I wrote ADAA to ask if it were possible to perhaps to humbly inquire as to the prudence of maybe cross-registering for a course in the Environmental Management program.

After I sat down in that chair, palms sticky from the sweat of my repressed rebellion, she and I danced the kabuki that workers and queens do, she setting the bounds of our discussion, asking me to provide relevant information, and I obliging, she analyzing and I elaborating, both of us always the subjects of our relationship and not its choreographers. And the perfunctory end--with some further instructions in hand and a satisfied beating of wings, I buzzed off, as it were.

When I look at what I've done the past few months, this is the pattern. I have been agentless, performing within the strictures of the comb the role I am designed to play as a student. And I am amazed, because while I try to actively seek ways in which to remold my relationships with the hive, my body and mind are constantly drawn to dancing its dance and thinking its thoughts.