Brief Bio., Ie. How on earth did I get suckered into being a Russian Studies Major?

I went to MC for many reasons, one of them being that my parents didn't want me to go to art school. Why not art school? Well that whole trapped with a bunch of manic art students for four years only to never made a dime was one reason, and MC's International Studies being the other reason. Much to their despair, after coming home at the end of my freshman year I broke the news to them that I was not, as planned, going to be a French studies minor, but, rather, was going to be a Russian Studies Major. The look on their faces was reason enough.

This is not to say that my decision was a fuck-you-mom-and-dad decision. Rather, I got to MC, realized the IS major was a skeleton, and realized, furthermore, that the French Department was a damn wreck. My mother has always had the dream that I would be the next Jackie Kennedy, and hhad me spouting off in French with near fluency by the time I was 12. Strong-willed, unfortunately for her, does not even begin to describe my personality. So throughout high school it was the whole activist thing, which nearly got me kicked out of school, and then I got to college--which my parents hoped would be a viable alternative to art school--and only got home to inform them that their little finishing school daughter would soon be chit-chatting in gutteral Russian (which nearly gave my mother a heart attack), and would be prancing around Eastern Europe in her Calvin Klein boots and twin sets. Sheer horror can not begin to describe the general tenor of their reaction.

I have to give my father credit for taking this whole earthquake better than my mother. To my mother's credit, she immediately pointed out that Jackie was interested in Russian art TOO, and started to reconcile her shocked horror. That is, until I announced that I would most likely have to study in Russia in order to graduate with my major. Now, consider that my favorite curator, Murat Guelman, was recently beaten nearly to death in front of his offices, there was that journalist that was shot down in Moscow--suffice it to say my parents threatened first to never talk to me again (which I didn't take that badly), and then threatened to disinherit me (which considering my aversion to work in general, I took to heart).

After having a near nervous breakdown over j-term due to my advisor's insistance that I had to study abroad and he preferred Moscow, I came back with the counter-offer of Prague. Accepted. Which is why I'm soon going to a country where I have no knowledge of the language. Or anything else for that matter. In fact, the only thing I know is that I'll be endulging in the Abstinthe that is illegal in Western Europe, and hopefully not getting robbed.