Pakistani People and Jane Austen

"EMMA WOODHOUSE, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable
home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings
of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with
very little to distress or vex her."

And so, begins Jane Austen's beloved novel that countless generations have enjoyed, especially recently given her recent revival amongst women prone to liking romance under the restrained setting of empire dresses and candlelight. What is the appeal of Jane Austen, I am sure many males have wondered. The specific struggles of the women in the novel are not at all universal, especially within American society, where mating rituals are much more relaxed, having the advantage of alcohol as a social lubricant to free the tongue and loosen the inhibitions. Her appeal, I think, lies in the fact that Americans can examine romance in the Regency era with a museum-like fascination, where reticence and social convention overruled the wild passions of the heart.

Little do these readers know that such a society exists where Jane Austen's archaic, nineteenth century values still thrive. Welcome to Pakistani society, where marriage is run in a very similar fashion to Austen's society. Of course, this is a rudimentary social theory that I have developed, so one can dismiss it with elaborate counterpoints, but if Malcolm Gladwell can get on the New York Times best seller list with a similar endeavor, then I should be welcome to pop sociology on a mere blog.

I have never been an ardent fan of Jane Austen, mainly because I am a literary snob, and I heard that many critics dismissed her as the 19th century-version of chick lit (you know those books that are pink and have aggressive shopping bags on the cover). I made this casual dismissal of Jane Austen fairly early on, despite Virginia Woolf devoting an entire essay on her. However, in 1996, I saw Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and slowly realized the eerie similarities with the ways my fellow Pakistanis went about the marriage endeavor.

For instance, if one has five daughters like the Bennet family in Pride and Prejudice, the matriarch of the Pakistani family spends an aggressive amount of time befriending other ladies who have eligible doctor sons. Doctors are the modern-day equivalent of a first born son of an earl or a bachelor with "12,000 pounds a year," like Mr. Darcy. Doctors are one's preference because all Pakistanis are fundamentally bourgeois at heart- they have a stable income (upward of $100,000/year), keeping the daughters in nice handbags and modest split level home in the 'burbs of Chicago, as well as elevated social status. It seems paradoxical to me that doctors are the son-in-law of choice for Pakistanis because these days, most girls do have careers (or at least they do initially before the obligatory babies come into the picture). It's not like in Austen's time, where Lizzy or Marianne Dashwood were penniless and marriage was means out of a life of destitution. I guess being colonized by the British has lasting psychological effects.

Also, amongst conservative Pakistani families, the courtship of a high-spirited girl and her eligible bachelor is done very delicately and with great propriety. It is not considered proper etiquette to be left alone with said male due to religious considerations. However, unlike Austen's time, no one goes for strolls outside (in the Regency era, it was only proper for men and women to socialize privately out of doors). Hip Pakistanis favor hookah bars (halal and very chic) as a great place to get to know the opposite sex.

Just like in Austen's novels where Mrs. Dashwood and Mrs. Bennet, both were actively engaged in finding their children a suitable match, Pakistani mothers also actively get involved in their offspring's search for "love." "Love" is narrowly defined as "person who very strictly confines to family's idea of good match - i.e. steady job and good family." A very popular phrase amongst Pakistani parents is, "There is no such thing is true love. You grow to love, just like us!"

Now, no theory has credence until it is backed up with empirical evidence, so I began a rudimentary experiment on my mother. After watching Mansfield Park, I called and my mom and asked, "Mom, say you have a daughter who married this really boring old dude, who is kind of an idiot. She's not happy so she has an affair with a really hunky Lothario and runs off with him. Would you be shamed forever?" My mom is often confused by hypothetical "What if" games I like to play. Most foreign parents, arguably, are as they look on at their child as they are strangers and think,"Wow, my child is so weirdly American" Nevertheless, my mom says, "Yes, marriage is forever. She ruins her family's good name." See, we are just like Jane Austen's novels! And so, my theory of Pakistani society being behind 200 years has some credence.

And so, dear blog reader, if you like Jane Austen films and novels, look no further, just take a glimpse into Pakistani society.

--By Mariam, who is very excited about the political activities in Toledo this weekend!

Traumarama: Cake does NOT get you off the wait list

I had a full year before medical school started to play guitar, take my dog on daily five hour walks, work in a trendy coffee shop, and teach MCAT classes. It was during my year of relaxation that I realized the terrible nature of medical school applications. I always knew it would be competitive, but I never considered the strategy and research involved. I quickly discovered Studentdoctor online forums where students compulsively called admission departments for the status of their applications. Not a very forceful person, I relied on the aggressive nature of my fellow applicants to supply my information. I knew which schools I had applied to in vain (U. of Washington - out of state, never would've happened), and which schools had late interviews. I reluctantly added MCO/MUO/UTCOM because my sister moved to Toledo with her husband who started his residency. I didn't have any desire to live in Ohio. From the outside looking in, Ohio looks like all the other flat, humid, Midwestern states I couldn't identify on a map. I don't really believe in fate, but my sister is somewhat convinced she's the reason I'm in medical school. This last minute Midwestern addition was the first school to request an interview, and I was fortunate enough to be accepted by December. I was going to medical school, but I was still holding out for a different location.

Everybody I encounter soon discovers my extreme preference for Colorado over all the other states and territories of the United States. I wanted to stay in my home state for medical school. There aren't very many medical schools in the west, so it gets competitive. Fortunately, I had a confident interview in early January. In March, I was put on the wait list in the 2nd third. I managed to restrain myself to monthly e-mails to the admissions department. As the summer wore on, I started to get more frantic. By June, afflicted with some sort of Stockholm syndrome from studentdoctor network, I was sending daily e-mails. I was backpacking through Europe that summer with my position on the wait list adding to the weight on my shoulders. When I finally came back from my trip, I had progressed to daily calls to the admissions office. My conversion was complete - I had become one of those crazy obsessed applicants from the online forums.

It was during the peak of my obsession that I was unfortunate enough to get some advice from my brother (a once obsessive law school applicant, now a successful lawyer!). I found out from one of my dad's sources that I was 5th on the waitlist to get in, a week before classes started. My brother decided that I would have to make the admissions department remember me. He convincingly argued, "If they have to chose between the applicant that they know nothing about, or the applicant that called every single day and did something memorable like take a cake to the admission's department with their name on it, they will chose the applicant that cares more." With my rushing adrenalin and anxiety over my impending move to Ohio, I believed him. The next day I went to King Soopers and bought a sheet cake, and on it we wrote "Farrah R. hearts CU medical school." I know, I know - I still cringe when I think about it, and it gets worse. My younger sister intervened to tell me that taking the cake to the medical school would be crazy. My brother aggressively argued for the cake, and I was so stressed out that about it that I cried. My brother is the more effective arbitrator, and won the argument. With the support of some of my very best friends, I drove to medical campus.

In the car ride over, my friends argued over the merits of using cake to get off the wait list. It was a Saturday, and Brittany noted, "They're probably closed," and then sat rather quietly.
"Oh no, you think it's crazy don't you," I asked her.
She hesitated, and replied, "I just don't think it will make a difference."
Anna-liisa tried to comfort me and said, "It's worth a shot, and at the very least, it will be a really funny story they can tell future applicants. There's no doubt that it'll be memorable."
I was content to be give the admissions department something that will be memorable and hopefully a little funny, and I figured I could laugh about it one day too. When we finally arrived at the school, it was locked. I was slightly relieved as I was building up adrenalin for my impending embarrassment. Just then, a student walked out of the building - shit.

We walked down the hall to the admissions department. The man I had been talking to on the phone everyday was working extra hours that weekend because school would start the next Monday. I am sure that this man is a very kind person when he's not rejecting people from medical school, but here we will refer to him as big-fat-stupid-heifer or BFSH. I introduced myself and explained my spot on the wait list and the cake, with Anna-liisa and Brittany faithfully by my side.
"I just thought it would be pretty funny. I don't think I have much of a chance at this point, so I though I would go all out," I told him with the awkward nature of the situation looming.
"I wish I could help you, but there's really nothing I can do. Um... how did you get in the building?" BFSH suspiciously asked.
"A student let us in."
"They're not supposed to do that."
"Oh... uh, sorry. Anyway, I'll just leave this cake here. So there haven't been any openings on the wait list since I called you yesterday?"
"No, again I'm sorry. You can take the cake with you and eat it with your friends. I don't think anybody here will eat it. I can let them know you brought it. You can call during orientation, and I will let you know about the list. But again, I wouldn't count on anything."
At this point, I never wanted to see the cake ever again. At the same point I lost all hope on top of my embarrassment from the over-the-top gesture, Anna-liisa started to cry.
"Don't move away. I really don't want you to move away," she told me through her tears.
"She seems more upset than you are," BFSH interjected.
I ignored him and gave Anna-liisa a hug. It didn't matter how awkward the cake was, or that we had broken into the building, or that I had clearly gone off the deep end, I was really going to miss my friends and family. In this moment of reality, my new found obsessive nature dampened and then disappeared. We thanked BFSH for his time, and left the medical campus.

I spent my last few days in Colorado mellowly hanging out with my family and friends. I had been a homebody in undergrad, driving home often on weekends, so it was unnerving to travel so far from home. I easily adjusted to life in Ohio with frequent phone calls home - it helps that my older sister is here. From the inside looking out, the scenery is dull as I imagined, but I managed to befriend some great people here. I still take any break to fly straight home - what can I say, I need my Rocky Mountains. Anyway, to the kids - just say no to studentdoctor network, or at least use it in moderation.

--By Farrah, who would like to emphasize how much this story makes her cringe

A Cosmo Confession: Internets and Anonymity

Al Gore "invented" the internet in the years that I was in grade school (in actuality, though, according to Thomas Friedman, a primitive form of the internet had been around since the 1950s with a very, very archaic form of IM). Nevertheless, when I was in 9th grade, the internet was still a novelty - with its chat rooms where one could connect to strangers in places as far and mysterious as Texas, and then e-mail, virtual messages that could be received with the speed of lightning (or so it seemed).

It was the summer of ninth grade, and my friends (members of "Clique A") and I were taking physics for some unknown reason. The summers would drag on as we learned about vectors and other things that seemed difficult at the time but now prove to be child's play. One day, we started to receive weird, anonymous emails from "youwillneverknow@hotmail.com." The messages were like horoscopes - weirdly specific and general at the same time. They revealed school gossip without naming anyone. The emails would offer pornographic advice, telling girls they shouldn't be "afraid to explore their bodies because they were beautiful." Youwillneverknow was a precursor to Gossip Girl, except in a decidedly unglamorous locale of southern Virginia.

It was THE summer mystery as everyone tried to figure out who this mystery emailer was, and it offered us an exciting thrill that made me feel like I was in a Sweet Valley Twins novel. My friend Jenna, the keeper of all secrets and gossip at Carlisle, figured out who it was a year later, and the discovery of this mystery rabble rouser's identity proved to be very lame.

Jenna and I, together, were tricksters and started to send emails out to our class with an email address - "YouWillNevaKnow@hotmail.com." Our advice was actually pretty pointed and directed to certain members of the class who we thought needed help getting their act together wardrobe-wise. Granted, I wholeheartedly admit that I was a shallow bitch, but who isn't when they're 15? No one figured it out, but we got people talking.

We took it even further. We heard through the grapevine that my friend Lauren W was being harassed by an anonymous emailer called "gorillaman" (it turned out to be a cute soccer player Nathan W, we would discover later). He would send her cryptic, threatening e-mails, and Lauren received it with a cheerful annoyance that teenage boys construe as flirting.

Jenna and I decided to "flirt" with Lauren, too. We started sending her cryptic email messages from "gorillawoman" in the same vain as gorillaman. Lauren was confused and never did figure out that her close, seemingly-innocuous friend Mariam was the source of said internet harassment. Eventually, we got bored with the entire endeavor, and I never did get the chance to tell Lauren. And here I am, atoning for my decade-old sins via blog.

--By Mariam Q., a student at UTCOM.

Meeting Ira Glass

Ira Glass came to the Ann Arbor Borders today to promote the This American Life DVD (in stores now!). I, of course, was beyond excited; meeting Ira Glass is the equivalent of that "Leave Britney ALONE!" kid from YouTube meeting the lovely (but deeply troubled) Miss Spears. After all, I had recently listened to a years' worth of This American Life on long journey to Pakistan and felt that in that short span of time I knew Ira.

He always seemed so genuinely interested in people's stories; there wasn't this objective distance that many journalists convey when dealing with their subjects. On the show, he also seemed so perceptive - finding a universal meaning in the most mundane, yet entertaining, of events. Now, of course, there is always that element of distrust wherein public figures rarely match their on-screen persona. For instance, the perky Rachel Ray from 30 Minute Meals seems as if she's a chirpy girl-next-door, but she was recently caught in an alleged diva moment when she demanded Starbucks coffee on the set of her Dunkin' Donuts commercial.

He did an hour-long Q&A session, in which I learned that Ira Glass was even wittier and nicer than on the radio. When he talked about work with a creative element, I was thisclose to dropping out of medical school and pitching idiosyncratic stories to This American Life for the rest of my working career. And so, Abby, Farrah, Sophie and I excitedly stood in line to get our DVDs signed. Weirdly, we were given a post-it note and told that we could have an inscription of our choice. Farrah and Abby had cute, witty ideas, and I literally suffered from a case of performance anxiety. Finally, I settled on, "Mariam, love the blog! Ira Glass."

The blog comment proved to be a very worthy segueway when Ira Glass asked me the address to our worthy website and told me to write it down for him. This was probably the highlight of everyone's evening. I then told him: "Wow you're even better in real life than on the radio," which I'm sure had this creepy element to it since it's not everyday that short, brown girls in medical school give Ira Glass comments that linger on borderline harassment.

Nevertheless, Ira Glass, if you are reading this, we love your show, and you are not a diva in the manner of Rachel Ray at all. And I literally talk about the show everyday with Farrah and Abby (in fact, in the past month, I think it's been the only topic of conversation). And below are links of our favorite blogs (if you feel that there is a story idea for This American Life within the depths of our humble blog):

Mariam:
Foreign Parents
It's Never Over: Ira Glass and Me
The Dark Side of the Gym
Studying is Serious Business

Farrah:
My Torrid Affair with Haute Couture
Hallway Etiquette
The 3-Hole Punch is the Water Cooler of Medical School
Oh, that Kayak, It's just something I built last weekend with my bare hands

Mariam and Farrah joint venture:
How to be Girly: Lesson 3: Anatomy of a Facebook Profile

--By Mariam, who is overly excited by this whole Ira Glass encounter and will probably relay this to individuals who a) don't care and b) don't even know what station NPR is on with a zealous animation that will make it seem as if she was Plaxico Buress or Eli Manning last Sunday.

The Lawn Mower Stripper Technique

In my Fundamentals of Clinical Practice class, I discovered there is a lot more technique involved in the physical exam than I ever anticipated. I recently had a lecture on the most awkward of subjects entitled: Male and Female Genital Exams, and Breast Exams. I'm not even going to touch on the first part of that lecture, and needless to say, I've pretty much eliminated proctology and OBGYN as career choices. When it came to breast exams, it turns out there are several different techniques to ensure that no potential hazardous lumps go unnoticed. Several techniques were described to us: Clock Pattern, Wedge Pattern, Swirl Pattern, and Lawn Mower Stripping. Lawn Mower Stripping was emphasized as the ideal choice. I could have been mistaken, but it really sounded like "Lawn Mower Stripping" and the lawn mower part is definitely descriptive. You just go up and down as if mowing a lawn in straight lines, only you're not mowing a lawn - you're examining a breast.

I have physical exam lab the day after lecture. After sweating in my white coat for an hour, I was the last student to perform the exam. There were four students, one standardized patient, and one instructor in every lab room. Everybody watches you do your exam which is a little nerve racking. The instructor kept on correcting my hand position to make lumps and irregularities more obvious. She kindly told me, "Now, it's called the lawn mower technique, and you know when you're mowing a lawn you want to keep your lines straight. The same idea applies here, so you don't miss anything." I nervously replied with, "I don't mow lawns. Well actually, nobody let's me mow the lawn anymore because last time I did, my sister said the lines were too crooked." (This is a true story - my sister sent pictures of the lawn to my dad to show off how dysfunctional I am) We all had a nice little chuckle, even the lady with her top off had a laugh... awkward!

--By Farrah, who's going to meet Ira Glass tomorrow, and wants to ask him if he is willing to switch jobs

A Blog in Honor of Super Tuesday

A couple of weeks ago, Slate had an interesting video about how Hillary Clinton was like Tracey Flick, the overzealous, uptight gunner from Tom Perotta's novel Election and Alexander Payne's 1999 film, which I absolutely love. Election is a satire about the American election process represented within the microcosm of student council elections within a Nebraskan high school. Tracey Flick, played by Reese Witherspoon in the film, is a type-A neurotic - you knew her in high school - she was on the field hockey team, student council, Spanish club, NHS, and the choir. She was bound for Harvard, but no one really liked her all that much. Teachers were annoyed at her know-it-all attitude as she aggressively waved her hand when a teacher asked question, and she also grade grubbed. Below is said video:



Anyway, Hillary is compared to Tracey Flick, and I completely agree with this analysis. She shows very little emotion and speaks about policy with a robot-like efficiency. She's that girl in high school who was valedictorian, and the teachers continually spoke about her brilliance. However, when you talked to her, you realized she was dry as toast. She didn't have a compelling personality or an ounce of creativity but could churn out lab reports and English papers with a machine-like diligence.

In contrast, Barack Obama is the popular football star in high school. He was that kid who came from an unstable background, but he had that Midas touch. It seemed like everything came to him with such ease. He got decent grades without trying, and he had this great, sparkling personality. Everyone slapped his back after the big football game in the hallway. All the teachers swooned whenever he talked in class because he was so cute! And to top it off, while others were seething with jealousy over Barack's charmed life, he was protected from the evil eye because he was such a nice guy and not an ass tool in the slightest. Now of course, this may not be at all how public high schools in small town America are like, because I went to Carlisle, where there were no clear-cut dichotomies between popular and the uncool, but it is my artistic attempt to approximate what public education offers.

Anyway, choosing between Barack and Hillary is ultimately a reflection of one's personality. Are you going to choose Barack and be sucked in by his charisma and continual affirmations of "transformative politics," and blatantly ignore the fact that he has had a mere four years of experience in the U.S. Senate? Or are you the high school minority who realizes that Hillary, despite all her prickliness, is a capable politician, but can't win the hearts of people due to her lack of charm? And sadly (or maybe happily?), I am a typical high schooler at heart, and I can only see Barack's star power with his exotic Indonesian primary school education, and I see Hillary as that sad loser in those ugly, ill-fitting power suits and her cutthroat willingness of doing anything to get to the White House.

--By Mariam, who thinks that Huckabee looks eerily like Kevin Spacey.