well..
the thesis is done, presented and approved.
presentation was a different experience, I hope I handled it well, since this is the first “real deal” presentation I’ve done in my life.
I am also very happy with my project iki. Servet Ulas, you are a king!
My family, Enrico, my friends, my teachers but especially Elif Ayiter, my thesis advisor, thank you for your support all the way.
I am quite speechless today.. I am a bit dizzy. Last night, when we return home from the presentation I became sick, nausiated and with a massive headache, I threw up all night, till the morning.. my mom says it’s the stress, I never felt it but my body did obviously. The stress rash, allergy is slowly dissappearing as well. thank god. I’ve had it almost 2 months now..
slowly things will find their original flow, starting with my sleep.. it is 2 o clock and I feel sleepy. I know it may sound weird to put it like this but, for the last couple of months I couldnt sleep until it’s 5 or 6 so it’s something, a step.
my sister is also graduating this year, from highschool (deutsche schule ıstanbul) and taking the university exams as well as applying for universities in germany. she wants to be an industrial designer or an architect. well since I am a visual communication designer and my dad an architect, it kind flows in her veins I guess. She’d make an awesome graphic designer actually, she has the sense, the talent and the eye but she doesn’t want it and I am not gonna push her.
last night when we returned home my mother was crying with pride. she was saying to us “do you know what a graduate is, a graduate is a person who is able of all things in her field, I have two graduate daughters, I couldn’t ask for more from god.” I am very happy that she feels this way. All my life, I was the strange one, the rebel in my family. my cousin, the daughter of my aunt, has a phd in genetics and biochemistry, everyone in my family from my mom’s side are teachers etc. and I was the constant drunk, depressed chick. who was doing something nobody could understand. at a certain point, even though that they are well educated people who went to grad school, my parents were even unable to understand what I was dealing with. I am glad, now they can understand and be proud. I know this may seem like the words of a person who needs approvel from her parents but honestly, I always craved for it. I don’t know why.. my mother critisized and still critisize us in every way possible. she always wants us to be perfect and at the very best possible.(she even had mad fantasies of me and my sister going to harvard law school once) so maybe it’s a need..
I want to talk about my mother a while.. I want to reason why she does what she does to us..
She was born and grew up (till middle school) in Kumburgaz. It’s a little town, almost a village near but outside of Istanbul. She has an older sister and a younger brother. Both my grandparents immigrated from Romania (a part of it, which is now Bulgaria) when they were children. My grandmother (whom I never had the chance to meet because we lost her when my mother was 20 from breast cancer) was a Village Institute trained teacher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Institutes) (as well as my grandfather) who took the entire population of her village against her to become a teacher. At that times people in rural areas thought that a girl who goes to school (esp. a school that is away, like a boarding school in this story) after a certain level of education would become a whore. My grandma’s father was understanding and he agreed on sending her to this boarding school miles away from their village. The people of the village were so pissed off that, when one day at the end of the school year my grandma wrote a letter to her father to pick her up from the school the villagers tore the letter and my grandma without his parents knowing that she will be returning home that day had to walk kilometers from school to her home, seeing her parents working in the fields without a clue what was happening,
this lovely lady is my grandmother.
My aunt and my mother studied middle school and highschool in Istanbul, in a all-girls boarding school with a wonderful garden, called Erenköy Kız Lisesi. Later my aunt took the same path as her parents and became a Biology teacher and my mom even though she studied German Language in university and international relations in grad school became a stewardess for Turkish Airlines. While she was studying in university, she began to work as well, at the age of 17. Until her retirement in 1996, she worked day and night, for us, sometimes leaving us with my dad and my nanny for a week when she had flights to far east. She traveled the world. She is one of the most determined and ambitious people I’ve ever known. Sometimes too much. but I can’t blame her, if she wasn’t like that she would have been a mediocre educated small town person (like my uncle, for example, he is a lazy electric technician who I don’t really like that much for what he’ve done to my mom and aunt-who is basically my second mom-). She tried and tried and worked and worked. I am glad I am able to make her proud. I am very happy. and I feel lucky to have her as my mom. I love you mom.
my sister, my mom and I
