being a masters student in BA

So I enrolled in this public university that has an anthro program run by a friend of a Columbia prof., who I adore and saw when he was here for an anthro conference that I attended at the very end of last September. We had spoken about the fact that I wanted to do a research project about narratives, images, violence and trauma as parts of the struggle to define Argentine national identity, and relating these themes to a specific moment, the 2001-2002 economic crisis (La Crisis). So, it is a Sunday night and I am entering my fourth week of school.

Here is what I can say so far:
The quality of higher education is really really good. The professors are amazing, and even though a masters isn't free at a public university, I'm paying 500 pesos a month. I would convert that into dollars, but by the time I finish writing this, the value of the peso may have changed, so I will leave it up to whoever is reading this to look up the most current value and do the math themselves. The paying on a monthly basis is weird. I paid late, and it really just didn't matter.

There is no: here is your syllabus, now go to BookCulture on 112th St. and they will have all of the books for your class ready for you to go and spend a ridiculous amount of money on. Everything is photocopies. It really adds up, when you have to constantly print and copy, and it's a stupid thing to complain about, but it is such a hassle to even get the readings. I have classes in two different buildings that are their own institutes, both of which make up the Centro de Antropología Social at the UNSAM (Universidad Nacional de [General] San Martin). There are the administrative staff that are in charge, among many many other tasks, of getting all of the materials to the photocopy shop, each institute uses it's own, the closest. One my classes just got it's readings ready the end of the third week of class, but we still had a ton of reading assignments. The prof. kindly suggested that we do more of our reading and we pointed to him that they weren't available yet, which troubled him, but was out of his control. At Columbia one spends a lot of time feeling guilty about the reading they never get to, I am trying to let go of the shit-I-didn't-do-my-reading-for-class guilt, because if you actually are incapable of accessing the readings, it's a good excuse that everyone in your class has.

There are a lot of foreigners. Venezuelans, Colombians, Brazilians, French.

Anthropology is taught in a much more traditional manner, as higher education in Argentina is highly influenced by French and British models, at least in terms of the social sciences, or even classifying anthro as a social science (of course I'm talking about social/cultural, not medical, forensic, etc.). I'm scared that after taking classes called "Anthropology of the War Machine" or "Hidden Worlds, Secrets Spaces: Childhood and Modernity", I'm too out there for sort of conversations or class topics, but it's a an "out there" that really needs this grounding. I need to learn how to do fieldwork, which is a required class, and definitely a huge gap in my ability to do any sort of project instead of just thinking about it.

I was set up with an adviser as soon as was admitted who works on the same theme as want to, which is the anti-undergrad CU experience. He answers emails, he is pushing me hard, he talks ideas and methods through with me and he is quite impressive.

It's weird to be the girl from the States. People just assume I don't know Spanish, which is a sort of a strange assumption, as it would be sort of strange for me to keep going to three hour classes if language were an issue. Also, after almost two years here, I better not have language issues, except for academic writing (that will be my biggest challenge). Of all of the foreigners in my classes, I have been here the longest. On Friday, I was sitting with my maybe sort of new friends, one is from Venezuela, a guy, one girl from Colombia, and four Argentine girls. The passed the mate around, but never offered it to me, which I could write a mini-ethnography on. I've probably had ten million times more mate than the Luis or Marcela, who are South American, but from very different cultures than that of Argentina, whereas I am seen as such an outsider, that I'm considered so distant from so many things, yet I know the city better, or understand the biting irony more. I do have the non-native speaker accent, though, and so I am always thought of as this complete weirdo non-native speaking yanqui who is super-informed about Argentine politics. It's so common to be from the States or Europe and to have an Argentine ask you "why are you here" and laugh a the ridiculous idea of someone from the "primer mundo" choosing to be in Argentina.

I love being a student, which I knew before, but this new huge life change is just really showing. I love talking about ideas, doing reading, being in classes, loving a topic so much you just want to keep reading and talking and researching. So I have confirmed, not surprisingly, what my passion is, and when I do my doctorate in the States I will have had my first graduate student experience in Buenos Aires, and that will be one other reminder of how much this place will mean for the rest of my life. I will always remember this city as being a huge part of my transformation into adulthood, whatever that is, as a space of transformation in general, or of finding myself as I was already, but coming to understand it more...
My time here gets richer and richer. I know that I don't want to spend my life here, but I do know that my life has been and is being hugely shaped by having lived here, now including on an academic and intellectual formation of my mind (if that makes any sense).