"Grad School's a Mindf***"

My friend Lisa said (the title of this post), as we were chatting before our GSAC meeting about all the things nobody ever tells us, but that we're expected to know (like how to study for oral exams, how to deal with a committee, how to have a real life, how to deal with catastrophe, etc). I thought she was being a little extreme, and I imagined this conspiracy of professors determined to ensure the inadequacy of all upcoming generations so they could maintain their own supremacy.

That's not quite how it works, but Lisa wasn't wrong, either. Another wise person told me "Graduate School is designed to make you insane." But who designed it? Our professors didn't. Way back in the 1200s, as my ancestors were taking control of southern Ireland, the first medieval universities were preparing to battle for another millennium about which came first, the bridge on the river, or the fording livestock. A great question of medieval theology was whether knowledge was good, or whether knowing anything made you fallen, like Eve (and later, Faust).

I think our insecurities became articulated there, and haven't been dispelled since. My professors didn't design the system; they inherited it. And now they use it to oppress us, the 99%. (Okay, that analogy doesn't quite work, but it's how I feel).

Grad school does mess with your brain - much like mumification. To properly traverse the system, we must Know Things nobody tells us. Only those who grew up with academic parents (or possibly in expensive private schools) Know these Things. Asking these Things labels us immediately as Outsiders trying to break in (not that it's not totally obvious anyway, because we don't speak Academese).

We're supposed to think critically, so we question our choice of career (there's more money almost everywhere else except the nearest call center), our field (only other academics will ever read this), our work (what does he MEAN by "too much theory?"), but not ourselves.

No, we're very sure of ourselves. We're absolutely certain we're Too Stupid To Live. We're very sure we're in the wrong field, the wrong career, the wrong department, and we chose the wrong committee. But we can't stop now: Forward Momentum.

Imposter Syndrome

I don't know how many of you understand high-pressure situations like a PhD program, but "Imposter Syndrome" is actually pretty common. It's the belief that you shouldn't be where you are, that you can't compete with your colleagues, and that your place among them is some kind of clerical error (in the words of one professor, who was actually describing a hypothetical B+, "they mailed your acceptance letter by accident").
Most graduate students feel IS at some time, (unless you're either Becky or Ryan, the two most suitable, confident scholars I know) and mostly, it goes away when the anxiety wears off. For the most part, we're all where we fit, and if we don't fit, the rejection will drive us away fairly quickly. Sometimes, the only thing we need to fit in is the same level of determination.

Two horrific things complicate my case of IS.
One of my good friends and fellow scholars did so badly on a paper once that his professor LITERALLY told him he wasn't sure how he'd even gotten into the Masters program. The horror of the situation is not his rejection, but that secretly, I believed that professor. I do not think that person, as much as I love him, is suited to academic life or thought. And that mental betrayal is one great key to my own insecurities.

The second key to my insecurity is a deep familiarity with my weaknesses. I'm not lazy, but I do not estimate well time required for a project, and I cannot figure out how to give myself time to draft, or hold myself to an arbitrarily early writing schedule. I'd love to have all of my seminar papers written a month early, and I could take that month and hone them down until they were something I could be proud of, no matter what the grade.
But I can't, so my papers are inevitably finished mere minutes before they're due, about two drafts short of my own expectations, and so when they receive a grade I always feel that my professors have been tolerant and generous - I never get to feel self-righteously indignant that my efforts did not return well-enough.

I forgot to mention a third key to IS insecurity: I suffer from crippling anxiety. But that's neither here nor there, and I can't afford the medication.

My process is broken, and I am incapable of fixing it. My own determination is not enough. I only have one semester of coursework left, but what about my reading? My dissertation? My career? Will I look back at my inadequate study habits and blame them for having to teach introductory-level rhetoric courses for the rest of my life? Will I be able to adjust to an almost completely internally-regulated system?

Fall Break - Projects Update

Currently, I have three long-paper assignments under construction. They include the happiest accident I have ever suffered in graduate school: his name is Henry Cornelius Agrippa. 

Though he's mostly known for his tirades against necromancy, and other occult practices, he also wrote an hilarious book against learning/academia of any kind. It's a riot - sometimes because of its archaic language, and sometimes for its quaint reasoning (even more ironic, because he declaims syllogism at least once per page).

I'll be using it to create a setting for the anti-humanist argument, and then I'll place Doctor Faustus and Prospero in that landscape and watch them duke it out. Should be epic.

In other news, I'm writing yet ANOTHER paper (and presentation) on Shelley's political poetry, and still finishing up Arcite, Emelye, and Palamon.

I can smell your jealousy from here.

The Agonies of Decision-Making

My time as a free-floating, course-taking student is ending.

I met with the Director of Graduate Studies today to select my final classes, and discuss the necessities and opportunities of formally selecting my graduate committee. I'm satisfied with whatever courses or seminars I land in, because I enjoy learning everything (except Edmund Burke, it turns out). Unfortunately, I can't learn everything all the time. Specifically, reading for my exams will require that I focus my study with the view of landing, after sliding down the rainbow of theory and literature, at a dissertation pot of gold, ie. a solid thesis. My area of study during my reading year (and adjacent areas) will define my marketability in academia, and my Director gave the impression (by stating it quite frankly) that dividing my areas of study too far would decrease my marketability by dividing my attention.

I am stuck. I have some brilliant ideas and years of solid coursework in the Romantic era, and 18th/19th Century Literature, but an overwhelming passion for James Joyce - not any of the other Modernists (though I have some background in the Decadents, Aesthetes, and Post-Colonialists, adjacently) - but Joyce as a writer. I want to be a Joycean for the rest of my life.

Apparently, I have fully recovered from my committment issues.

My mother's advice is to stick to the Romantics. Eve's advice is to go where the money is (really? If money motivated me, why would I study literature?). Anne Jamison might have more pertinent advice. She too reads Joyce, but is teaching a course on Vic Lit (I think) next semester. Her current area of study is Kafka and Christina Rosetti. Frighteningly brilliant. Becky warned me about this situation, having been in it herself just a few weeks ago. She studies Rhet/Comp at ASU. Her theory is reassuring, but doesn't necessarily match the fears I have from Howard's little chat.

Becky's theory: We must make decisions/committments to achieve our potential. The act of committing allows us to travel further along a specific trajectory, and does not necessarily preclude the possibility of adjusting our directional momentum. The restrictive nature of deciding creates the momentum, and refusing to decide creates inertia. Once we have achieved momentum, we can alter our course by applying the necessary force, which is still easier than overcoming inertia. Becky is a genius too.

I am not a genius. I'm just smart enough, and just hard-working enough to succeed, but only if I make the decision to excise a mental limb. With my teeth. If only the decision were more like ejecting TARDIS rooms. *sigh*