The Life of a Perpetual Student

Sorry for the long break between posts, but as it is summertime, my productivity and grad-school related activities have bottomed out. I had plans, so many plans, and I have managed to ignore most of them. But an upcoming move to a new apartment, and the realization that I only have one month left to accomplish my to-do lists has spurred me into action. The result? I am now micromanaged to the hilt. I have set up a reading schedule for myself. Last semester I found that this was the best way to keep me on track and efficient in my reading. If all goes as I’ve planned, I should have the following five novels finished in 17 days, leaving me with two weeks or so, to read all the other stuff I’ve been ignoring.

• Vanity Fair by Thackeray (roughly 45-50 pages a day)
• Great Expectations by Dickens (roughly 25 pages a day)
• Jane Eyre by Bronte (roughly 25 pages a day)
• The Moonstone by Collins (roughly 15 pages a day)
• Frankenstein by Shelley (roughly 15 pages a day)

I’ve indulged my obsessive-compulsive self and used post-its to mark each stopping point. Now all I have to do is sit down for about 3 hours a day to get some good reading time in. And hopefully this will leave me time to revise a couple of papers and do other critical and fun reading (hah!). Here’s to hopeful micro-organizing skills…

So, since this is really the first post of this blog, I thought I would give my nonexistent readers a little info about myself. The reason I wanted to start this blog is that I have recently left a fully-funded ph.d. program in field A to start another program in field B. I have a master’s degree in the first field (which, by the way, is NOT what I majored in as an undergrad) and now I’m about to apply for a master’s in this second field (again, not my undergrad major). I have my reasons for leaving a relatively comfortable position in one program for the unknown (ok, sometimes downright shaky) path of a new field, and they go a little something like this:

• My husband and I were living 800 miles apart and it sucked
• My husband was about to move 2800 miles away once he finished his ph.d. and that would have sucked even more
• My program wasn’t really feeling like a good fit for me (despite the fact that they liked to give me money)
• I have had this nagging suspicion that the reason I chose field A in the first place was out of sheer whim: it was there; I seemed to be good at it; I had just moved out to be with my husband (note the trend) and I couldn’t work in a dead-end job for much longer; and I desperately wanted to go back to school.
• While fantasizing about my future (in which I had a paycheck), I just couldn’t picture myself teaching in field A.
• I had the amazing ability to cry in front of my advisor, even on days when I felt great and on top of the world. Now, I’ve been known to cry quite easily (even at commercials), but I had NEVER cried in front of a professor before. It was excruciating, and almost like an out-of-body experience. Perhaps I should have recognized this as a sign that my relationship with my advisor just wasn’t working….

So I moved with my husband and I am currently trying out field B, which is closer to what I studied as an undergraduate. At the moment I bear the lovely title of “non-matriculated grad student,” which makes things tough. In the first place, I have no funding, and if it wasn’t for the fact that my tuition was paid for as one of my husband’s benefits, I wouldn’t be taking classes at all (the prospect of which scares me). Second, I have no department, per se. I hang out with a few other grad students, but I don’t get the emails about department functions, etc. And I’m concerned that I have closed one door only to walk into a dead-end hallway with no real way out. In a post about grad school, Dr. Crazy had mentioned that it was a process that attempts to transform a “good student” into “an intellectual being.” In order to do so, Dr. Crazy argues that one has to let go of who one was before and become something new, while retaining a core sense of self (if at all possible). And this is what I need to do more than ever. I need to let go of the grad student I was before and embrace my new identity as wholeheartedly as possible. And I have to catch up, fast.

Which brings me to the title of my post. I recently received feedback on my first seminar paper. (Please bear with another slight digression). One thing that I had always been assured of in my previous program(s) (at least until the last quarter), was my writing ability. But in that last quarter I received the kind of criticism that gave me nothing to work with. My not-so-great-response?: I spiraled into a state of writer’s block that lasted for a year. Even in my master’s program I never really received any constructive comments on my writing. Now, as a perfectionist, I know that my writing needs work, it always does. Yes, there comes a time with every project when you have to let go and say “good enough” and hope for the best, but a piece of writing can always be revised. Even when I asked directly, I was not given much feedback. Until this semester. I. Am. Thrilled. My writing in field B needs a lot of work, in part because I have to adjust to a new kind of discourse. But I made silly, undergraduate-style mistakes that can only mean that my “system” has to change. No more caffeine-induced writing marathons the day before a paper is due. No more frantic, last-minute changes of research topic. I’m sure my husband will appreciate the change (it’s not pretty to see me in manic-writing-mode). But I sure will miss the coffee…

Ahhh, the dreaded first post.  Here it is in all its glory…