Monthly Archives: February 2012

Achievement

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Oh.  Yes.

So, gentle reader, do you know what I just did?

I just finished all of the assigned reading that was on my desk.

This moment is a magic moment every week.  It generally happens at some point on

ohhhhhh yea!

Monday morning directly preceding my 1:30 class.  After a long weekend of toil, struggle, cramming, doing everything I can to convince myself that I have more in me, over-saturating my spongy grey-matter with words, words, words, I eventually reach a moment where I simply have nothing left to read.

Of course, this isn’t actually true.  I could always start on the readings for next week.  And I also have my own research to do.  There’s always something more on my desk, and generally it involves class work of some kind, even if it isn’t ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED RIGHT NOW READING.

But research reading goes beyond… beyond I say!  It’s a cherry on top of the literary Sunday.  It’s the other task that can get done between the more pressing weekly things.

This week was a doozy.  Eight full-length plays, one one-act, one full book, one theatrical preface, and eight articles/book chapters ranging in length from seven pages to twenty-seven pages.  On the whole, I calculate that this week’s reading load (simply assigned for classes, mind you, discounting any extracurricular research or leisure reading) was 783 pages’ worth and spanned literature representing approximately four hundred years of history.

No wonder I’m tired.  Seriously.  I haven’t even touched final papers this week (except for one trip to the library with some scanning which I have yet to read – 48 more pages, as well as the glorious bounty of one book – 160 additional pages, and more books awaiting to arrive via ILL – realistically about 500-600 pages combined).

Yea, I did all that reading and STILL cleaned up nice. I am awesome.

I also managed to attend a fun-filled social gathering this weekend with a bunch of dear friends, most of whom I haven’t seen in some time.  Of course the usual conversation starter “how have you been?” was asked over and over, to which one has the option of the easy reply (“Oh, fine, you?”), or the long-winded one (“BHSWOERND:LKJF:JSIFOWEO:JKDM<N>FJK:JXKJOIJ!” “….?” “Well, my brain is leaking out one ear, but I’m ducky!”)

I’m also beginning to wonder about the outer-limits of information retention.  There have got to be studies on this somewhere… at what point is it simply counter-productive to read more?  How much can you truly cram into three pounds of gray matter while expecting to not only retain it, but also process it critically?

In addition, I’m well and truly wondering about expectations of PhD students cross-programs.  Two out of three of my professors this semester are new to our department, so in theory their pedagogical styles are not yet indoctrinated into Tufts ideologies, which leads me to believe that perhaps this work load isn’t entirely uncommon.  If that’s truly the case, how does anyone have time to think for herself?  When imbued with THIS MUCH of EVERYTHING ELSE, at the end of the day the last thing I want to do is squeeze out an original idea.  There’s a very fine line between being inspired by the different readings and notions kicking around in one’s head, and being stifled by them.  While I’m not an expert on pedagogy, I for one would be very interested to see a study on the curve of original thought as it relates to the amount of other stuff an individual reads.

We know that good readers make good writers.  Period.  The best way to teach grammar, syntax, and heck even style, is to have the student read.  But do EXORBITANT readers make good thinkers?

….things to ponder as I wade through another week.  I’m hoping to carve out time for some of my own research this week which means either less class-reading, or more brain integrity.  Maybe it’s like lifting weights; the more you do it, the stronger you get.

Somehow, though, I’m pretty sure that that only applies to a point.

A Step Back

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Yesterday, it was brought to my attention that perhaps I’m not being entirely fair in my depiction of graduate life.  In fact, to quote the individual who precipitated this, it was mentioned that I depict the department as “some kind of Dantesian circle of hell”.  In light of this, I want to take a moment to clarify some points and hopefully make my motivations in blogging a little less opaque to people who may stumble across this and misunderstand my intentions.

First things first: I am extremely lucky and entirely blessed (by a nondenominational atheistic power) to be where I am.  I love my department and I love my university.  Despite the rants and ramblings that appear here all-too-often, I recognize that I am one of the few (the happy few, the band of brothers) who had both the good fortune and the chops to be admitted to a place at a prestigious institution such as Tufts University.  My department is small and I have never been (and will never be) reduced to a barcode (despite what the University healthcare system may think).  My professors are supportive and giving of their time and expertise.  The library is a bastion of useful resources.  The research librarian is smart, patient, and wonderful.  My colleagues are brilliant and unafraid to challenge ideas even if they think it will make them unpopular.

In short, though like anyone else I have bad days, I can’t think of a better place for me to be spending the next 4-6 years.

Next: I love my job.  Period.  It is challenging, stimulating, and incredibly fulfilling.  It is also extremely stressful, but show me a job that isn’t (and isn’t mind-numbingly boring).  My hours aren’t set, I don’t get to walk away from my desk at 5:00 (or even on the weekends), and I’m always buried in projects.  But you know what?  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  I’m a restless heart and a compulsive multi-tasker, being in a cube is absolutely mind-numbingly soul-suckingly awful for me, so I have chosen a vocation that caters to these personality traits.  This also means that I have chosen a vocation that I live with, 24/7, and in which I alone am accountable for the successes and failures that I face.

As I said, this is an extremely stressful situation to be in.  Oftentimes what this means is that my creative outlet (i.e. this blog) is a way to work through the everyday stress which I am experiencing.  I make light of the things that are upsetting me, I re-frame them in an entertaining fashion, and in doing so I aim for a measure of catharsis.

I do try to blog about positive things but on the whole I find that things which are going well are boring, and things which are going according to plan even duller.  There is nothing interesting about a plan coming together in exactly the way I expected it to.

What this also means is that when I have more work to do, the blog explodes into a downward spiral of hellish depravity.  In hindsight, perhaps I’ve been a bit too negative recently.

Let me assure you that, though I may dramatically recount my foibles through this completely cumbersome year, I am doing so with a grin.  My goal has always been to depict graduate life in a realistic fashion; the good, the bad, the velociraptors.  I don’t want to present a rose-tinted haze of nostalgia for one’s salad-years, but I also don’t want to make you (dear reader) believe that I live in a bookish hell of theory-demons in which highfalutin’ tweedy professors flog me day in and day out with bad Hamlet quartos.  Neither of these things are fair assessments and both would be a disservice to my colleagues and my institution.  Rather, believe this:

This is the tale of a girl who had only some idea of what she was getting into and would like the rest of the world to be a bit more educated than she was when she decided that she wanted to continue her education.  She began the journey with a map but no guide and things which appeared one way often weren’t while things which appeared another often were.

I am Alice and this is my wonderland.  Fanciful, beautiful, fleeting yet all-too-real, perplexing and lateral, a place in which things I thought I knew vanish into sand and things which I am learning are life-saving skills, a place where my bourgeoning expertise is valued but I must always enter with a beginner’s mind, a place where I must leave some weapons of the past at the door and cling to others (but I’m not always certain which is which), and above all a place I wouldn’t dream of giving up for anything.

A Weekend Off

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Usually, the beginning of the semester is a time to ease in to all the things that you forgot you had to do.  The first month or so of any semester is like a smooth, steady ride into the inevitable panic of finals.  Since generally all you have to do during this time-period is keep up with your class reading, it’s a way to re-set your schedule, re-set your brain from whatever break you just came off, and just get back into the groove of things.

my work... on my coffee table... yes, I do have a Shakespeare rubber duck. He helps me think.

As you are all (dare I say painfully) aware, I managed to burn the candle at both ends at the very beginning of this semester.  That did not bode well for the progress of things.  I spent last week shambling place to place like an empty-headed pre-caffeine zombie just trying every survival technique I had at my disposal to get me through my day.  Something had to give because I knew that, soon enough, I would be hitting finals research mode and with the way my brain was running, there was no possible way that I could handle more than I was already doing.

For most of us, this past weekend was a long weekend.  I hadn’t really planned on it being as amazing as it was but, as luck would have it, my life often coalesces in my favor (after an extraordinary amount of work, of course).  I spent the week putting my affairs in order and due to an academic calendar re-shuffle had one less class to read for.  And that, my friends, made all the difference.

It meant that I was able to take two days off and do nothing but spend some time with some of my favorite girlfriends.  We have a tradition, you see.  Every few months, this particular group gets together and participates in a handful of ritualistic activities.  These activities always include: playing board games, talking about yarn, drinking wine, eating

Said beautiful and bounteous spread... why yes, that is strawberries with nutella and dark-chocolate-peanut-butter

from a BEAUTIFUL and BOUNTEOUS spread which we have lovingly dubbed “the charterusery” (“charcuterie” but with “chartreuse” mixed in because that’s how much you glow at the yumminess), and chatting about girl stuff (i.e. our lives, boys, and crafting projects).  Sometimes we mix in day-trips.  Previous day-trips have included: yarn stores, hiking trails to picturesque gorges, wineries, and anywhere that we can have up-scale chocolate treats.  This weekend, however, we made the collective decision that we were all too burnt out to do anything that involved changing out of our pajamas.  So we didn’t.  We watched Up, I finished a pair of socks I had been working on, and I didn’t read a single page the entire time.

Then, to cement how wonderful my weekend away was, I spent my extra day on the town with my favorite partner in crime.  This was a sudden change-in-plans as I had slotted Monday for a catch-up reading day after my weekend away.  As it turns out, I managed to cram all my required reading in before I left on Friday so I could have a spare day to not think about anything remotely theatrical.  I took said partner in crime shopping (since, you know, boys can’t pick out their own clothes).  We grabbed lunch.  Then we went rock climbing (yes, I’m afraid of heights and I love to rock climb, I’m a creature of contradictions, I know).  There’s a great gym here in Boston that has just about everything you would want from an indoor place – top-rope, a hefty bouldering cave, even lead climbing if you’re into that sort of thing (I’m not… it scares me).  Rates for students are extremely reasonable, especially if you have your own gear (even if you don’t, it’s $20 for a day-pass and equipment rental… you’d pay more to go see a movie).  If you don’t know how to belay, you can boulder or take a class (slightly more expensive, but a one-time expense and worth it if you’re at all interested, especially if you have a partner to go with).

me modeling the socks that I made.... I should really try to get someone else to take the picture next time

The end result was an endorphin-flooded, utterly relaxed, totally re-invigorated mind ready to take on the next bit of the semester… which is good because I have two conference papers to give in March, some publication deadlines looming, two more big and two more small class presentations in addition to three finals papers, planning for the summer, and bracing for comps.  I need my brain on point, and this weekend was precisely what I required to make certain that that happened.  So… thank you, dead presidents.  Your gift to me this weekend was worth more than words can say.

A Moment of Gratitude

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I’ve been doing a lot of complaining lately.  This semester is really wearing me down, and because of that I’ve felt the need to comically whine about all the things that are stressing me out.

But a few things have happened this week that have made me realize that I need to take a break and express how truly thankful I am to be where I am right now.

Yes, this semester is hard, but you know what?  Last year at this time was even harder.

I have a couple friends going through the PhD application process (some for the second or third time).  Watching them doing it (even from afar) has been like watching a documentary on war: I remember what it was like, it was well and truly awful, watching it from a distance has made me re-experience some of the feelings that I felt while going through it the first time, and I am so very very glad that I have the buffer of “it’s happening to someone else right now” because you seriously couldn’t pay me enough to put myself through that again.

The application process itself is hard work.  You pour your soul into those aps and you agonize over every piece of it; what should I put in my personal statement?  Should I talk about the work of scholars whom I admire in this program, or will it make me look like a brown-noser?  Should I quote them at themselves?  How should I format my CV?  When you only have about ten pages of information with which you must present your very essence, every single letter is critical.

Then you submit the applications sometime between December and early January… and you’re free for a time.  Hitting the “send” button is a culmination of all the soul-wrenching work that you’ve done in the past few months.  It’s like those last steps as you reach the peak of the mountain; the hardest part, but also the most fulfilling.

And then you wait.  For several months.  You sit on your hands, unable to do anything, unable to say anything, unable to plan anything, with nothing to do but worry.  What if you get in x place, where will you live?  What if you get in y place, how far are you willing to commute?  What if you don’t get in anyplace, what part (and how much) of your integrity are you willing to compromise for a paycheck?

And you start making back-up plans.  Like “Well, if I don’t get in, I’ll just go do this and try again next year.”  And you convince yourself that those back-up plans are just as good as (if not better than) starting the next leg of your journey.

And you wait.

And you lose sleep.

And you bite your nails.

And then you check the gradcafe forums and see that some people have started getting their decision letters, and that just begins the vicious cycle all over again.

Today, I had coffee with someone who has gotten into my program and is considering it (amongst some others).  It was a true pleasure to meet and speak with him, and it made me think about how weird it is to be on the opposite end of this process.  Just a year ago, I was the person sniffing out the programs.  Just a year ago, I was in limbo not sure where I was going yet.  Just a year ago, I was embroiled in a decision making process that was stressful, difficult, and absolutely draining.

The circle has come round.  I’m the expert now, the person who is where other people want to be (or think they may want to be).  That is an indescribably odd thing; to quote Joni Mitchell, “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now”.

So for today, I am grateful.  I am still stressed out and tired, but nowhere near as stressed out and tired as I was last year.  I have a ton of work to do, but at least I’m not worried about where I’m going to live come July.  I don’t see an end to my crazy amounts of everything, but at least I have a plan to get it all done.

I really do love my life.  Even when the going gets tough.  And, despite the down-sides to my job, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

…and now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

My Undying Love

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Ah February; the semester’s well underway, I can see myself through to spring break, but it’s not quite finals season yet so the inevitable end-o-semester panic hasn’t set in.

Every February you go about your business, your everyday life, your chores and things, blissfully unaware that anything out of the ordinary is about to happen to you.  And somehow, it does.  It creeps in – slowly at first so that you don’t even notice it.  It begins to take over certain aisles in the grocery store, the bookstore, the coffee shop.  It begins to sneak into your everyday life waiting, just waiting, for the opportune moment to strike.

And then, just when you’re least expecting it, BLAM in your face like a ton of bricks.  Facebook blows up, it’s all anyone can tweet about, and there’s just no escaping it every year.

Every.  Single.  Year.

I hate Valentine’s Day.

Ever since I was a wee Danielle I’ve hated Valentine’s Day.  At first it’s no big thing, right?  An excuse to decorate a cardboard box and pick out those paper valentines to give to your classmates.  An excuse to eat chocolate and those awful chalky conversation hearts.

But then, gradually, as you grow into the awareness that not everyone gives everyone a valentine and why are the popular girls so special because they have boyfriends and I’m still sitting at the geek table and oh god why don’t I have a boyfriend and wait, every guy I know is gay, I couldn’t have a boyfriend even if I tried and why does it happen to me every single February that I conveniently manage to be between any semblance of a relationship and what am I doing wrong with my life?

Some years I manage to forget it’s coming and every year I convince myself that I’ve steeled myself against it.  A stupid holiday really.  An excuse to sell and buy stuff.  Why would you need a specific day to tell anyone that you love them, shouldn’t you love them every day?

I’ve heard enough arguments against Valentine’s day (and I’m sure you’ve heard them too) that I’m not going to re-capitulate them.  Suffice to say that, as a perpetually single person, they all ring like empty platitudes in the grand canyons of emo that is single-girl-self-pity.  Inevitably, no matter what I do, I wind up sniveling into a bottle of wine at the end of the night telling myself that it’s okay because I love me and that’s all that matters really.

It has not escaped my attention that there is no small amount of irony that a self-professed lover of all things about The Greatest Lover of the English Language hates a day which should be filled to the brim with Shakes-scene.

So for that, and for everyone out there who is single today, and for everyone out there who is likely going to spend the night with a chick flick and a box of chocolates they bought themselves, and for everyone out there who is feeling a little down because the people around them who are all “oh, it’s no big deal” even though they are still taking someone out to dinner tonight and thereby have no clue how big a deal it is, I’ll say this: this year, Shakespeare loves you.

No, really, he loves you.  Truly, madly, often ironically, the Bard is here to profess his deep and undying love for you.  Excuse me as I get out my literary ouija board…

“Doubt that the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”
-Hamlet, Hamlet, 1.2

“One half of me is yours, the other half yours
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours.”

            -Portia, Merchant of Venice, 3.2

“O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand,
That thou mightst think upon these by the seal,
Through whom a thousand sighs are breathed for thee!”

            -Queen Margaret, Henry VI ii, 3.2

“Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service.”

            -Ferdinand, The Tempest, 3.1

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.”
-Helena, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1.1

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”

            -Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, 2.2

Also, as a present from me, I give you one of my favorite comedic pieces.  I even dressed up for the occasion (got out of my PJs for you today, folks!).  This is Berowne, Love’s Labour’s Lost, 1.1.  (…Apologies for the less-than-optimal video quality.  All I’ve got is my little mac.  Enjoy!)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sMqNIDEZFg]

Have a happy Single Awareness Day!

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead

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So while my week hasn’t gotten monumentally better (I’m still tired, still professionally worn out, and still grinding away at that unending pile of stuff to do on my desk), it also hasn’t gotten monumentally worse (the judicious application of delicious crepes, good beer, time at the gym, and a wonderful friend with a massage table has certainly helped me stay in the game mentally).

In addition, a few things happened in the past couple days that went a long way towards assuring me.

Let me explain.

This semester is killing me in a way that I didn’t think possible.  I remember experiencing the same bone-weariness at about this time last year; but at about this time last year I was in the middle of the PhD application process, holding down two jobs plus full-time school, and my entire life was up in the air as to where I was going to move when I got booted out of Jersey in May.  I had a reason to be bone-tired.  I honestly thought that I would never experience that level of weariness again.

Au contraire, mes amis.  Apparently it is possible to revisit that exhaustion.  My meltdown at the beginning of this week precipitated an influx of personal queries.  I began to doubt myself; could I really handle this?  It wasn’t this bad last semester, or am I just getting older or something?  How is it that I am already May-tired and it is only February?

Then I began to look around me at the faces of my comrades.  Inside of class, outside of class, running into each other in the library, and I realized something: I saw the same weariness reflected in their eyes.  The same empty staring into space that I was experiencing.  The same vacant expression which undoubtedly meant that one had ground one’s brain into a pile of mush with the cruel mistress of Chekhov and gray matter was slowly leaking out one ear.

Then I began to listen to what they were saying in class.  Of course everyone here is smart, everyone here has something to say, but I realized that none of us were on point.  None of us were keeping up.  We were all drowning together.

Then I did that thing you’re not supposed to do: I brought up the reading load.  You have to do it gradually, you see, so as not to startle anyone.  There’s this understanding in the academy that yes, you will try your best to read everything, but there’s no certainty that you will be able to do it as closely (or in as timely a fashion) as one would like.  The great paradox is that you’re not supposed to talk about this; it’s an unspoken understanding between the students that we’re all trying, but realistically there’s only so many plays you can read in one week.

And trust me, I’ve tested the outer limits of this theory.

So I worked my way around to it, edging it into the conversation, trying my darndest not to sound like the weakest link.  “So… has anyone else noticed that our workload has perhaps increased this semester?”

I was met with a barrage of “YES!” “OH MY GOD!” “How do they expect us to read all of this?” “I’m drowning here!” “I’m going nuts!”.  It was like everyone was waiting for someone to bring it up.  Everyone was doing the same thing I was; glancing side to side in hopes that they weren’t the only one.

What a relief!  No, really, I can’t even begin to express how good it feels to not be the penguin on the edge of the iceberg in seal-infested waters.

It doesn’t help the fact that I’m tired, but at least now I know that I’m in the race and not dangling behind it like dead weight.

Validation number two came from an off-handed comment by Professor X when talking about graduate writing (and, in particular, the work he has seen us do for his weekly response forums).  I’m deep into the editing process of several conference papers and I have recently received some extremely productive (though not entirely easy to swallow) feedback on my writing.  The transition from “student” to “expert” is not something that anyone really handles gracefully, and it’s extremely developmentally appropriate for a graduate student to have trouble with it.  The issue, you see, is one summed up by said professor when speaking about our writing;

 “Many of you fall into the trap which ensnares many graduate students right up until the dissertation; relying too much upon others’ work and not leaving enough space for your own ideas.  You do so much research and want to include it all that you cut yourselves short at expressing your own scholarly thinking.”

 DING.

This is my problem.  This is my problem in a nutshell.  I swim through so much scholarly work that it’s become so difficult to differentiate what I think about anything.  Of course I can summarize and quote at you until doomsday, but what is my opinion?  I’ve spent so long trying to re-hash other peoples’ ideas that I’ve lost my own.  And that is where I am with my work right now; where is my thinking and how do I express it in my writing?

Not going to lie, it feels good to be asked what I think about something; genuinely asked to write about my own thoughts.  It’s also scary as hell.  When I rely upon the work of others’, it’s not my ideas that are presented to criticize.  But it’s time to cross that bridge.  It’s time to put my stuff out there.

 So that’s the next step.  It’s not going to be easy, but I feel really good about being pushed to another level with my work.  So what if I feel like a squeezed-out hand towel?  There’s still something left in there.  This semester’s about giving 110%, overcoming myself, and surpassing even my own expectations.  I can sleep in June.

Some Days you’re the Bug, Some Days you’re the Windshield.

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Yesterday was perhaps the single most awful day I’ve had in a long time.

I’ve been overwrought for a while now preparing for my first BIG presentation this semester.  I managed to secure the ever terrifying “first presentation for department’s new professor” slot for one of my classes.  Professor Y is wonderful and extremely supportive, but that only goes so far to allay the panic.  There is (of course) a certain degree of concern that goes into any major presentation, but I would say that I get more stressed over presentations for professors I like than those for professors I do not like.  At least with a bad professor you can blame any fault in your work on his teaching methodologies (warning: only goes so far) and/or bemoan your state with your colleagues afterwards.  When you do work for a good professor, there’s the greater fear of not measuring up to her standards or even (gulp) disappointing her.

Suffice to say that I’ve been HARD at work to ensure that this does not happen.  That in itself was enough to send me into crazy stress mode, but to top it off a few things happened in my personal life that simply broke the frazzled camel’s back.  And, at the pinnacle of my misery, I received a rejection from a journal to which I had submitted an article.  Not a huge deal and totally expected (really, publishing is a numbers game and finding the right fit for your work), but it definitely was the rancid cherry on top of my sewer sundae.

I’ve spoken a great deal about “survival mode” in the past few months and I realized that perhaps now was a good time to take a moment and really quantify this.  How, when you’re bawling messily into a hastily grabbed handful of tissue so that you don’t drip onto the piles of work laid out for you, do you cope?  How do you pull yourself together and still manage to make your deadlines, and (perhaps more importantly) do so with panache?

Well, let me tell you how I do it.  It’s not easy (I would go so far as to say it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done… and that includes surviving two years as a little white girl in Newark without getting shot or robbed), but it is possible.

Survival mechanism number one: understand that THIS IS YOUR JOB.  It may not be like everyone else’s job, you may do most of your work sitting in your PJs at home, but it is still a valid vocation and you get paid to do it (well… usually… if not, then you may way to re-evaluate your life choices).  Everyone has off-days.  Everyone does a certain degree of facebook surfing while at their desk.  But if you can recognize that your PhD is a FULL-TIME PROFESSIONAL GIG, it will go a long way towards mending your mindset about your work.

Survival mechanism number two: always keep a glass of water (or tea, or coffee) nearby.  This ensures that you stay hydrated and gives you built-in breaks at regular intervals to refill or pause for potty breaks.  Just make sure that those breaks remain short.

Survival mechanism number three: take care of yourself.  Eat well, sleep at least eight hours a night, and get your lazy bones to the gym.  It means that you get sick less and you feel your best (which is important when you’re grappling with the GIANT IDEAS floating around your head and on your desk).  Also it means you can carry more library books without getting winded.

Survival mechanism number four: your friends are your friends.  They are part of your life for a reason and, when things really go to hell, they are there to support you.  Don’t be afraid to tell someone that you need help.  They may not be able to do your research for you, but they can probably at least bring by dinner and give you a hug.  This was KEY to getting through my day yesterday.

Survival mechanism number five: know how and when to reward yourself.  Sometimes

oh, Ru!

I deserve a beer.  Sometimes I deserve a cookie.  Sometimes I deserve an hour or two drooling on the couch while watching bad TV shows.  Sometimes I deserve all of those things combined.  Understand what it is that you need to give yourself at the end of a hard day, and make sure that you do.  Remember the sage words of Ru Paul, “If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else?”

Survival mechanism number six: know when you have done enough and it is time to walk away.  Seriously.  You will always have more work to do.  I sometimes write lists of things that I MUST accomplish today, and things that can get bumped until tomorrow.  Set daily work goals.  When you meet your daily goal, STOP.  If you meet it early, STOP EARLY.  This is especially important during finals time when you-time is at a premium; remember that regular 9-5ers work for 7-8 hours a day.  If you are like me and up and at your computer by 8:15, working until 8 or 9 PM is, actually, a twelve-hour day.  Enough is enough.

Survival mechanism number seven: say it with me, “I am awesome, my work is important and pertinent, my department chose me out of hundreds of other applicants for a reason, and they haven’t kicked me out yet so I must be doing something right”.  I am particularly bad at this one and need reminding fairly frequently.  Luckily, I have mentors, friends, and colleagues who are very good at reminding me.  Implement a system for yourself that gives you some validation for your work; whether this means blogging, putting it out there more often, meeting with colleagues for coffee, more hours in your mentor’s office, increased e-mails home, or whatever you need to do.  If you don’t believe this, nobody else will.

Survival mechanism number eight: keep a bookmark folder of things that make you laugh.  Extra points if it has to do with your area of expertise!  Here are a few from mine:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWndLb3z5nY]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOWC5zf8YMw]

Shakespeare gotta get paid, son

SHAKESCAT!

Good luck and godspeed my friends.  Here’s hoping my week picks up, and that yours isn’t anywhere near as awful.

Podcast of the Black Swan Episode 7: How We Spent our Winter Vacation Part 4

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When we last left our heroes, they had been picked up by Disney’s security team (headed by the one and only Goofy) for wandering forbidden zones of the park and brought to the office of none other than The Mouse himself.  While waiting for The Mouse to be ready for them, Matt and Dani continued to broadcast from their jury-rigged blackbox and took some time to ponder the performative aspects of the Disney theme parks.  They were then advised that The Mouse was ready to see them and, courage steeled, they entered Mickey’s Inner Sancturm…. For the full low down, have a listen to our last episode here!

And so, I give to you the stunning conclusion of our podcast mini-series, “How We Spent our Winter Vacation”.  Yet again, crazy amounts of thanks to the ever-talented Matt Rosvally and the vocal stylings of Billy Maloy.

Check it out here!  I hope you’ve enjoyed listening as much as we enjoyed creating!