Category Archives: PhD programs

One Stage at a Time

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Alright.  I think I’m firmly in the saddle.

It’s been (officially) twenty days that I have been in class as a PhD student.  This seems

I have no good ideas for pictures on this topic, so I'll just stick things here that amuse me

like all the time in the world and, simultaneously, no time at all.  It’s most definitely enough time to go through the various phases of first-semester-at-a-new-program.  Let’s talk about that for a while.

Phase one: Excitement.  Usually this happens when you’re far enough out that the program itself is a pale shade of what it will be.  Usually this occurs before you’ve moved to where it is that you are moving, before you’ve purchased books, because the financial and daily realities of your new program have really had time to dawn upon you.  This is the phase of starry-eyed possibility.  Anything could happen, what should you expect?

Phase two: Nerves.  Okay, you’ve purchased your books, you’ve got a parking pass, you’re settling in to your new digs, everything is peachy keen and dandy.  But… oh god… what does that really mean?  Where are you going to fit into your new department?  Will everyone be smarter than you?  Will you be able to handle the workload?  What if they just laugh you out of class when you tell them where you came from?  What if you say something dumb on the first day?  Better wear the argyle knee socks and sweater-vest.  Maybe you can at least psych them into thinking that you’re smart.

Phase three: Enthusiasm.  This isn’t so bad.  In fact, it’s kind of awesome.  They have a library!  They have free unlimited access to the OED!  They talk and walk like I do!  They also love books!  I can quote Shakespeare at them and they don’t get that terrified look in their eye!  They share my disgust with Julie Taymor!  Yessiree, I have landed in the right place.

Phase four: Sheer Terror.  Oh god.  Oh god oh god ohgodohgodohgod.  They want me to do what?  How do I even start this research?  What’s refworks?  That’s a lot of assignments that they’ve given me… that’s a heck of a lot of reading… I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to keep up.  Just bury me in a shallow grave now and cover me with historiographic handbooks.  Maybe the department was wrong about me.  I’m an utter failure.  I suck I suck I suck.  Why did I pick this dress, why did I pick this song, why did I pick this career?

...still amusing

Phase five:  Acceptance.  Well, no turning back now.  Best to just trudge forward.  If I budget my time carefully, I’ll be able to get through at least most of this.  If I’m super careful, I can even knock some of the small assignments off now so that I can focus on the big stuff in time to get it done.  Hey, maybe it isn’t all that bad.  Okay, my social life just flat-lined and likely won’t be revived until I have a diploma in hand, but who needs friends anyway?  I’m okay not going on a date until I’m 30.

Phase six: Blissful struggling.  Yep.  I’m FINE.  Nothing to see here.  Just me working at my computer.  Again.  Nope, can’t go out tonight, thanks for asking.  I’ll just stay home and read some more.  Yep.  Peachy keen.  Pursuing my dreams.  Loving the field….

….god I need a drink.

Shakespeare is my Co-Pilot

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Wowie Zowie, it’s been a hell of a week.

Today is Wednesday which means that I have officially been a PhD student for a week now.  I have attended all of my classes at least once (though two out of three of those classes didn’t really count because they were based upon syllabus discussion and random talking rather than any pre-assigned readings).  I have done a week’s worth of homework.  I have signed up for oral reports.  I have managed to keep on top of everything (as of just now, in fact, I am perched daintily atop my workload having completed all required reading and assignments for this week… though I have class in two hours which will mean that the reading mountain slides back down upon my head once more).

During the first class of my PhD career (the requisite course in research methodologies which occurred on Wednesday last – the professor wore a tweed suit and a bowtie by the by which means that my faith in the academy may be maintained), we went around the room introducing ourselves and our research interests.  This is thrilling in its own right because, for the first time in my academic career, I was sitting in a room full of (get this)

Sigh. Julie Taymor, I loved you once...

theatre people who weren’t my students!  Everyone is bombastic!  Everyone has a sense of humor!  Everyone can talk about Julie Taymor and her travesty of a Broadway show with some dexterity!  They understand my pain!

Due to sheer dumb luck, I was the last person to speak and introduce myself.  Programs like to have a broad range of research interests and so admit individuals who will open that demographic nicely.  As I understand it, my program’s resident Shakespearean just went ABD this year (having finished he coursework in the Spring) which leaves the mantle to me.  After a table full of Russian theatre, queer studies, vaudeville, and sundry other theatre interests which merited lengthy explanation, I opened my mouth.

“Hi, I’m Danielle, and I’m a Shakespearean.”

The professor grinned impishly, looked askance at me, and said; “You’re a Shakespeare scholar?  That’s like saying ‘I like books’!”.

We all laughed.  He wasn’t wrong.  I took a moment to feel slightly out of my element, and we plowed forward into discussing written assignments and term papers.

Panic erupted inside my head.  Should I have stayed with an English department?  Were my studies ill suited to a room full of dramatists?  Everyone knows that theatre as we know it is indebted to Shakespeare and, thereby, any theatre historian/scholar worth her salt will know something about the Bard.  Was there room for a Shakespearean at the table?  Was I doomed to be the bastion of information that everyone else knew anyway?  A redundancy?

Well there was no helping it now.  I may as well plow forward and feel out my research interests as I went.  After all, I’m a first year.  Nobody expects me to have a dissertation title yet (I hope).

Flash forward to the next day, my course in Adaptations.  We began to discuss assignments, areas of interest, readings, and the professor made very clear that this course was open-ended and designed to be tailored by the individual to his unique area of interest.  When we went around the room, we were each asked to name our favorite adaptation.

Adaptations?  Of Shakespeare?  I have to pick just one?  I was awash in a sea of possibilities.  Luxuriating in the ability to pull any number of things out of my hat; movies, musicals, other stage plays, comic books, video games…

As I glanced around the room and began to se beads of sweat form upon the faces of the

Guess my favorite Shakespeare Adaptation

resident Vaudeville scholar and our Wilde expert next to him, I couldn’t help but think that life was pretty darn good on my side of the room.  After all, I had Disney movies to talk about.  I could list Shakespeare adaptations for a week and still not mention them all.

Maybe this gig wasn’t so bad.

Flash even further forward to Monday of this week.  My History of Directing class.  The history of directing, the professor explained, was really a history of modernism.  Commence a discussion about modernism and the history of modern ideas (to which I had next to nothing to add but, ironically, was saved by my hard-won knowledge of Henry James thanks to a semester-long flagellation session last Spring).  Feelings of insecurity began to re-arise.  Was I not smart enough to do this?  Did I know enough random information about information to be a true scholar?  What was I even doing here?  I took copious notes, but even that couldn’t distract myself from the silence emanating from my corner of the table.

However then, oh then, the Professor backed up.  He backed up a lot.  He backed up to the inception of theatre as we know it.

And everyone knows when that happened.

That happened with Shakespeare.

He began asking questions to which I knew the answers.  He began talking about things that I had studied before.  He began to have a conversation which I could be part of!

And the most miraculous thing?  I was one of the few who could talk!  My colleagues remained mostly quiet, listening, as silent as I had been earlier.  Certainly there will be moments later in the semester when their special areas of interest will be discussed and I will return to being a post, but for now… I knew I could do this.

You see, Shakespeare is general.  Shakespeare is everywhere.  But far from being a weakness, that’s a strength.  I have something to say about everything because Shakespeare is a part of everything.

I’m important.  I matter.  And I can totally add to a classroom environment.  Oh and I’ll never be stuck for a paper topic because my research interest is applicable to well… everything ever.

Maybe it is like saying “I like books”, but when all else fails, nobody can say anything

always there. Even in a movie with a performance that's a spoof of another movie...

except that my Man Will is a vigilant angel; always waiting, always watching, always present.

Welcome Home!

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Hello and welcome back to your regularly scheduled blogging at its spiffy new home, Daniprose.com!

After a hiatus during which my previously mentioned threat to pretend to be illiterate took full effect, I am back on the blogging wagon. I hope that the new site, in all of its glory, makes up for a least some of the lonely moments spent wandering the web searching fruitlessly for readable and amusing academicisms. The MA really burnt me out and I’m still re-fortifying for September, but I think I’m ready to swing back into gear and flex the writing muscles so that they don’t atrophy during my precious free-as-a-bird summer break.

Taking the leap to a real grown-up blog via domain name is something that I’ve been wanting to do for some time now. The impetus to hold my breath and jump came from a dear friend who (bless her heart) got excited at the idea of giving me wordpress tips. I figured that if someone else could get excited about my work, then I sure as heck could muster the force to push myself to the next level. I’m still working on tidying house, so you’ll see some little tweaks here and there for a few weeks yet, but on the whole I believe the site will remain pretty much as it is now.

A note on previous formatting: when I migrated the old stuff to the new site, there were a few formatting glitches (as you can see). While I do care about the presentation of my carefully-chosen prose, there are over one hundred entries on this site. Short of hand-editing each of them, I have not found a way to address these formatting issues. As such, I apologize in advance for them, but they will remain (unless someone can figure out how to effectively batch-change them).

So why “Daniprose”, you may ask?

“Prose – noun. 1a) Language in the form in which it is typically written (or spoken), usually characterized as having no deliberate metrical structure (in contrast with verse or poetry). 1b) That which is plain, simple, or matter-of-fact” (OED 3rd ed.)

Prose is language without meter or poetry. Prose is simple, colloquial. When Shakespeare wrote prose, it was generally for his rustic characters; the clowns, the mechanicals, the shepherds. Prose is language that breaks the rules of form. For an actor, prose is oftentimes deceptively difficult to work with since your regular Shakespeare tricks are useful only for the metered poetry. A passage of prose is riddled with wit, jokes, and nudges at the groundlings. It is to the point and cuts to the deep heart of any matter.

Some famous passages/monologues in prose:

Hamlet; Hamlet; III.i; “Get thee to a Nunnerie. Why would’st thou be a breeder of Sinners?…”
Henry IV ii; Mistress Quickly; II.iii; “Nay, sure, he’s not in hell: he’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom…”
Macbeth; Lady MacBeth; V.i: “Out, damned spot! out, I say!…”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: pretty much anything the mechanicals say, but famously Bottom IV.i: “When my cue comes, call mee, and I will answere. My next is, most faire Pyramus….”
Much Ado About Nothing; Benedick; II.i : “O she misusde me past the indurance of a block…”
Romeo and Juliet; Mercutio; II.iv; “More than prince of cats, I can tell you…”

Prose. The other white meat. And so, continuing on in the spirit with which we were founded, bending to Philip Henslowe’s frantic advice to a lovelorn Billy Shakes (“No, no, we haven’t the time… talk prose!”), with pen in hand we return to our hero’s saga and begin the prequel to Higher Education (Part 3): The Quest for the PhD.

>What a Crazy Random Happenstance…

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I’m not a highly religious person, but I am quasi-spiritual and I only believe in chance to a certain extent.
In his infamous essay upon the true nature of horror (“Dan Unheimliche” 1919; frequently translated as “The Uncanny”), Freud speaks about what it is in a certain situation which gives that situation a measure of eeriness, creepiness, or “uncanniness”.  He uses the example of a number (62, actually, though pity… he totally should have used 42… or Adams should have used 62… I digress) having no innate unusualness attached to it.  If one were to check one’s coat and receive the coat-check number “62”, it would hold no factor of eeriness whatsoever.  However, if one were to come across that number several times in one day, or repeatedly within one’s life, one would begin to feel a certain degree of strangeness attached to “62”.  If the number follows you, it’s a little uncanny.  And not just because of the idea that the number may be a creepy mouth-breathing stalker.  
So here’s my little uncanny anecdote, or rather series of uncanny anecdotes. 
To begin, we have to go way back to the dawn of Danielle.  Back when the Danielle you know and love today was a wee little Danielle (this, by the way, is a favorite story of my mother’s which she whips out at every possible opportunity so… if you’re coming to graduation dinner, expect to hear it.  HI MOM!).  This Danielle had no concept of space and the realities of it.  This Danielle loved animals.  This Danielle thought it would be a great idea to have an elephant for a pet.  This Danielle told her mother in as many words.  When told that the elephant would be too large and unable to fit in the house, this Danielle rationalized “but just a baby one!”.
Embarrassing story over, flash forward to the education of The Danielle.  The Danielle attended two separate high schools – the first a very large and well-funded college prep school where she felt utterly alienated from anything offered at the school itself, and the second a small under-funded inner-city public school where she felt that everyone understood her and she fit right in.  The first school’s colors were purple and white.  The second school’s colors were red and black.
Move forward again to the higher education of The Danielle.  The first institute of higher education which The Danielle attended (her undergrad) was a large, well-funded school where she felt utterly alienated from anything offered at the school itself.  The second institute of higher education which The Danielle currently attends (her Masters’) is a small, under-funded, inner-city public school where she feels that everyone understands her and she fits right in.  The first school’s colors were purple and white.  The second school’s colors are red and black.
The Danielle is now getting prepared to journey off unto what will hopefully be her final port-of-call in terms of her own formal education (though as a Professor she will never stop learning).  That institution’s colors don’t fit into the schema (brown and light blue… who the heck chose those anyway?) however, the mascot most certainly does.  Ladies and Gentlemen; The Tufts mascot:
 Yep.  I think Freud would agree with me when I say that things, in the end, always work out the way they’re meant to.

>Finding Hogwarts

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As per my facebook status yesterday (and, as everyone knows, if it’s on facebook it’s official), I have found my new Hogwarts.
Though this term has become a common metaphor in my life, I realize that I may be unique in that.  So, in case my vernacular doesn’t match the universe’s, I decided to take a moment to explain. 
By this point in the history of popular culture, if you haven’t read (or seen) enough Harry Potter to understand what Hogwarts is, you may want to check your pulse.  Seriously, how can you live in modern America (or any English-speaking country for that matter)?  Let’s take a moment, however, to dissect the particulars of the Harry Potter allegory in reference to how it can be applied to one’s everyday life.
For the first eleven years of his life (or at least for as many of them as he is conscious), Harry Potter lives in a world where he constantly feels like he just doesn’t fit in.  There is something about him that people around him can’t explain, he knows that he is different, but he can’t put his finger on why.  Those around him treat him differently because of this difference and, we come to find later, that they are mostly afraid of him because of this difference.
One day, Harry receives a letter which changes everything (well, actually, a series of letters – but we’ll try to keep this as simple as possible).  The letter is his passport to a place away from life as he knew it as an outcast weirdo, a place where people understand him, a place where powerful and intelligent mentors are supportive of him, and a place where he forges relationships which change him forever.  This letter opens a door to the rest of Harry’s life.
I believe that everyone has the potential to have several Hogwarts in their lives.  As we grow, we change and places that guide and mark these changes stand like touchstones on our personal timelines; monoliths to the people we were and the people we become.  Not everywhere we stop will be a Hogwarts, some will just be inns and taverns along the way.  To truly qualify for Hogwarts status, a resting point must: have left a significant (usually positive) impact on your life; have people who remain in your life (even in thought) for a good long time after you’d left it; have mentors who have significantly shaped who you became; and be a place where you felt like you were understood and unconditionally accepted.
Usually a Hogwarts will come to you after you have been through a particularly rough patch.  If you, like Harry, feel that nobody around you truly understands you (hush, we all have an allotment for acceptable emo moments), you are likely to reach out to a place where people do.  Sometimes (especially if you work hard enough), you’ll find it.  Sometimes it will find you.
The Hogwarts will always be a place where you are surrounded by “your people”.  A place where you are in tune with the culture and feel comfortable without trying too horribly much. 
The Hogwarts is a place that you know like the back of your hand.  A place you can call home, if for a brief time.  It gets extra points for having “magical” nooks, but they’re not necessary.  Any place can be magical if you have a large enough imagination.  Trust me, I live in Newark.
I have had the distinct pleasure and luck to have attended three Hogwarts in my life and I’m about to move on to a fourth.  The first was the Professional Performing Arts High School in Manhattan.  The second was Shakespeare & Company (the first time around… the second time was a bit… complicated).  The third was here at Rutgers.
And the fourth, it looks like, will be Tufts.  Hold onto your hats, folks – we’re all in for five to seven years of academic anecdotes and miscellaneous literary fripperies. 
Danielle Rosvally: The Quest for the PhD has officially begun.

>A Sunday List

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Well folks we’ve officially hit crunch time again… or maybe still.  It’s kind of hard to tell at this juncture.
I apologize for the frequency of random lists in the past few weeks, but I’m having trouble doing much that fits into a consistent narrative… and better posting something than nothing, right?
1)    One of my professors decided that in lieu of a standard in-class presentation on pre-assigned reading, she would turn the reigns over to us for half a class each.  Essentially, each student has the opportunity to teach an hour and a half’s worth of material in lecture some week.  This week is my week.  I decided to teach Love’s Labour’s Lost with an emphasis on the 2000 Kenneth Branaugh film and its repercussions as a performance as it resounds with film audiences.  I love this film.  Apparently, I’m one of the only people in the history of its viewing who does.  Every article and/or review that I can find has something middling to say about it (if not scathing).  The only alternate explanation for this phenomenon that I can fabricate is that I’m the only person in the history of its viewing who’s not ashamed to admit that I love it.  In any case, paper forthcoming on this topic… possibly for the Blackfriar’s Conference this year as I so-far have come up with nothing better for that…
2)    There is something so vindicating about telling people that I will be in a PhD program next year.  Apparently getting one’s PhD is much more impressive than getting one’s MA.  Whenever I talk to people about it (both people whom I know for some time and people whom I have just met), they get horribly impressed in a way that they didn’t when I talk about the MA.  This makes me happy and appeases my inner academic snob.
3)    It occurs to me that I might just be happy that they are no longer asking me “Oh, well, what are you going to do with that?”  Apparently, having a PhD to have a PhD is reason enough to want a PhD.  The instances in which I have been asked the loathed question have rapidly decreased since I was admitted to a program and can tell people that that is my plan for the next several years.  It may just be because I am telling them about some goal I am actively perusing rather than some goal which I am nearing the completion of (going into a program rather than graduating).  Either way, I will take it.
4)    This does not make it any less irritating when the random person does ask “oh, well, what are you going to do with that?”  My hackles still rise, I still get upset and angry, I still feel the need to chew them out using fifty-cent words and theatre jargon.  I think what feeds this problem is the fact that most people who do ask me that question aren’t willing to listen to my entire explanation.  I want to change the face of American Shakespeare Performance, thank you very much.  Arrogant self-righteous jerks.
5)    Okay, maybe saying that makes me an arrogant self-righteous jerk… but someday I’m going to be DOCTOR arrogant self-righteous jerk… so I’m entitled, right?
6)    ….sometimes I am what I hate about academia.
7)    At least I’m still cute.

>Holiday FAQ

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Ah the holidays.  I love the holidays.  Lots of good food, good smells, everyone’s in a better mood, pretty shiny decorations go up, and things begin to wind down for the winter here in academia-land.
There’s only one problem.  Holidays inevitably mean family, and big parties, and otherwise excuses to see people who you don’t generally talk to the rest of the year.  Normally, this is a welcome (if drama-filled) change from the humdrum.  However.  This year, things are… slightly different.  I’m a little bit stressed out due to everything going on in my life, and I’d rather not have to explain the reasons behind this to every single person who doesn’t usually talk to me more than once every few months.  It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s not that you’re not important to me, it’s just that I’d rather not think about the progression of my life right now.  It’s exciting, yes, but also terrifying and having to dredge that up in front of an audience ad noseum brings me back to my conservatory days.  I’m not afraid to cry hysterically in a roomful of strangers, they beat that out of me at Shakespeare & Company, I’m just trying to slip into a happy numbness for a few months before I really start worrying about my life.
So, loved ones, in lieu of explaining all of this over Christmas Ham and Chanukah Latkes (yes, we do both, don’t ask), I’m writing a list of Frequently Asked Questions right here on the blog that you can read, enjoy, then (if I’ve failed to cover anything to your satisfaction), go ahead and ask me specific things.  That way we can all have a happier holiday season.  You don’t have to awkwardly stand around while I’m falling to bits about potential near-future crises due to “poor life decisions”, and I don’t have to fall to bits about it until rejection/acceptance letters come sometime this Spring. 
Thank you, in advance, for your understanding.
Q: So, what are you up to these days, Danielle?
A: Oh man, I’m super busy.  Work at the studio isn’t slowing down, we’re coming up to grading the last set of papers, my own finals are due, and I have PhD aps that I’m trying desperately to get off my desk.  Also starting to really worry about the Common Reading Exam in March, but that’s only a small percolation because everything else on this list comes before that.
Q: Oh?  Where are you applying?
A: Brown, Tufts, and Columbia. 
Q: Only three programs?  Wow.  What are you applying for?
A: Yea, only three.  There’s only three in the Northeast that really work for me, four in the country if I want to apply to Stanford but I don’t really want to move out to California.  I’m applying for a PhD in Drama (some schools call it “Theatre Studies”), but it basically means the intersection between scholarship and theatre, which is what I study anyway.  I mean, if I don’t get in this round, I could try to find an open-minded English department, but I’d rather be amongst theatre people, you know?  The English-iesh don’t really know what to do with me…
Q: What do you plan on doing with that?
A:  Well, I want to open my own theatre someday and I figure that people will be more willing to give me money to do that if I have letters after my name.  I have some pretty revolutionary ideas about American Shakespeare performance; I want to start a real classical repertory company and link it to a University’s theatre department.  That way, young actors will learn the old-fashioned way; they’ll learn everything about the stage, all facets, and they’ll get a chance to work with more experienced actors which I really think is golden for them.  It’s important to understand the theatre in all its aspects, and I really want to create a generation of “Renaissance Actors”.
I also envision it as a place where scholarship and practicum meet; a sort of Shakespeare Mecca.  We kind of have that here in the states down at the Folger in Washington, but for the most part Shakespeare scholars and Shakespeare actors/directors don’t really talk.  I think there’s a lot to be learned from both sides, and I would like to see it performed that way.  I want to have an open dialogue across this scholarship/practicum rift, see if we can’t heal it up some.  I’m wondering what kind of theatre that will make…
Also, I firmly believe in experimental Shakespeare.  And I don’t mean like “Hamlet on the moon”.  I’m thinking of something pure and classical, yet hip and contemporary.  I’m still working on how all these ideas mesh together though… but I’ll have some time.  It’ll take me six years for the PhD anyway.
Oh, and I want to be a professor.  Because really, it’s the coolest job title ever.  And can you think of anything more fulfilling?  I get to instill a new generation with my ideas about literature and theatre?  Count me IN!
Q: Oh… uhm… you know that’s not really very practical.  Your back-up idea is being a professor?  Do you know what the unemployment rate…
A: For newly-minted PhDs?  Yes, yes I do.  But I can’t shoot for the moon just because I’m frightened of where I’ll land.  It would be stupid to compromise out of fear.  I know I love theatre, I know I love academia, I know a lot of things that I hate doing.  I’m not going back to working in a cube just because someone tells me “no”.
Q: Well… what if you don’t get in?
A: I spend a year conferencing, trying to get published, up my hours at the studio, and try to find a couple sections of something to teach somewhere.  Make my application better, then try again next year.  I mean, really, these programs take two to four people a year.  When you’re talking about the top ten applicants to Columbia or Brown, you’re talking about people who all have 4.0s, who all have perfect GREs, who are all amazing writers.  They don’t reject you because you suck, they reject you because you’re not what they’re looking for that year.  I could get ousted from being offered a spot just because they have another Shakespearean currently working through the program, or someone on the selection committee really wants to work with another applicant.  I mean, for all intents and purposes, they may as well take the top ten applications, pin them to a wall, have a couple beers, and throw darts to see who gets in.  I understand that, and I’m prepared to accept whatever comes.  But if you don’t try, you’ll never know, right?
Q: I guess that makes sense… but won’t you have a ton of debt when this is all through?
A: Not any more than I have now.  These programs are all fully funded.  They would pay me to read books for six years!
Q: Hey, didn’t you want to go study in England?
A: That’s the best part!  You get two fellowship years for these things.  You are required to take one your first year just to acclimate.  Usually, people take the second in their sixth year to write their dissertation, but there’s nothing saying you couldn’t take it in your fourth or fifth.  I could take a fellowship year, then go research in Stratford or at the Bodleian if I needed to… all on the school’s buck.  How awesome is that?
Q: Pretty neat!  When are your due dates?
A: December 15th, January 3rd and January 15th, but I hope to have them all in by January 1st.  Once my finals are in, I can really concentrate on getting the last two banged out.
Q: And when do you find out?

A: They aim to tell you the second week of February, but it’s not like undergrad when there’s a certain day that you get the letter in the mail.  They do expect to hear back from you about your decision by April, so sometime before then.
Q: So what are we drinking to celebrate/commiserate?
A: B. Nektar Vanilla Cinnamon Mead.  And thanks.  I have a feeling that I will need all the calming vibes I can get for a few months…

>Nemesi… Nemesooses… Nemeses….

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Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a new nemesis.
He haunts my footsteps, breathes down my neck, nefariously hangs in my thoughts all day.  I peer around street corners knowing that he may be waiting there for me.  And I know (because it’s written on a whiteboard in my room) exactly how long it will be until our final show-down.  The big shebang.  He taunts me, teases me, waits until I’m least suspecting then pops his head into my life with a menacing and yet seductive grin. 
It may even be one of those love/hate nemesis relationships.  You know the ones, where we have tense action-filled sequences followed by long cold showers.  It’s like Lara Croft and Alex West in the first Tomb Raider movie (shush, I don’t make fun of your taste in movies).  We’re a perfect match for each other, we just have some slight differences in opinion which make working together a dangerous task.
These personal statements are kicking my rear end into submission.
The other day, I saw on my colleague’s facebook status, “Why is it that I can write publishable articles about random and esoteric historical events and yet you ask me to write two pages about myself and I freeze up?”  I think this about sums up the experience.  Sure, I can write.  Sure, I can write well.  Sure, I like being me.  But somehow asking me to justify my research, my past, my future, and my meaning for existence in 800 words or less is proving a task almost too daunting.
This stems from several intimidating factors.  The first of which is the stakes of the situation.  The personal statement is, as far as I can tell, the catch-all for the PhD application.  It is where you get your last ditch effort to explain yourself, discrepancies in your work, anything that the rest of your application may fail to entail.  Considering that the rest of the application is pretty much a Q&A, your transcript, your resume, and a writing sample, that’s no small task.  Essentially, you have to make yourself human rather than a barcode.  Tell the committee about yourself, your research, why you love them, why you would fit in at the school, what your plans are… oh and it should be in and interesting and readable format, not just a bulleted list.  Somehow, all this together makes me feel like King Arthur returning gloriously with a recently acquired shrubbery only to be told that, due to ridiculous reasons beyond my control, I must now bring another shrubbery only slightly higher and arrange the two shrubberies so that they get a two-level effect with a little path running down the middle.
Oh and then, of course, I have to cut down the mightiest tree in the forest using only a hearing.  The personal statement is one of the most highly weighted portions  of the PhD application (along with the writing sample).  So not only does it have to do a great deal in a short amount of time, it has to do that damn well.
As if this weren’t enough pressure, the personal statement is also a horribly subjective bit of writing.  There is absolutely no way to tell what program director x or application reading committee y is going to be looking for in a stellar personal statement.  I could think it was perfect and they could disagree with me.  My mentors here at Rutgers could tell me it’s awful, and the reading committee could absolutely love it.  In a way, it’s like preparing for a test when you aren’t sure what subject you are going to be tested on.  With only a vague notion of what any given program is looking to take from this little piece of writing that suddenly means everything, how’s a girl supposed to cope?
Maybe as a result of the pressure, I find myself freezing whenever I think about my PS.  The worst part is that having a working draft isn’t helping.  Usually by the time I’ve cranked out draft one of any piece of writing, I’m at least ready to tackle it to the ground and beat it into submission with a red pen.  This is so different.  It’s like a part of me.  It’s… delicate.  Fragile.  There is absolutely no way to be subjective about this writing.  I can’t self-flagellate with a red pen.
The clock is ticking and with everything else going on in my life, the sooner I can get application number one off my desk (Brown, due December 15th), the better.  I can’t believe that I’m being held up by two little pieces of paper.  Not even paper!  Pixels!  I’m being held up by a hodgepodge of pixels!
My consolation is that everyone I know who is going through, has been through, or is thinking about going through this process (or one like it) feels exactly the same way.  I’m not alone in this crazy world of  personal prose for the propagation of potential professional philanthropy.  Somehow, that seems cold comfort.  That’s the thing about a nemesis: no matter how many people are on your team, you always have to face him alone.

>New Horizons

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You know what’s funny about higher education?  As soon as you get comfortable in one place, it’s time to figure out where to go next.  It’s like a gauge of how long you have been somewhere versus how long you should be somewhere.  If you know the good lunch spots then you can be nearly certain that your number is about to come up.  If you have the hours of the local starbucks (or better yet, independently-owned coffee shop) ingrained in your memory, if they know your drink the minute you walk in the door, if you’ve established a table at the local café with free wifi, if you just figured out how to use the library system efficiently, if you know where to go for the shortest lines at the communal printer, you should also know that it’s time to be looking onward, upward, outward, and packing up the gypsy caravan to hit the next destination on your long journey to academic enlightenment.
And so, since I’ve finally found a grocery store that I like, I know that it’s time to figure out where my next port of call is.  PhD programs.  The thought is intensely frightening and exciting, gratifying and thrilling in that going-up-the-lift-hill-on-a-roller-coaster way.  And still, here I am, knee-deep in websites, e-mails and pamphlets.
I visited Columbia this past Friday to explore their PhD in Theatre Arts program.  I was shown around (and bought pinkberry!) by the wonderfully brilliant and exceptionally helpful Joseph, a current student in the program.  As we talked and meandered the campus (by the way, if you ever get a chance, go see the library… it looks like Hogwarts), a few thoughts were high in my mind.
Don’t get me wrong; I’ve been gearing up to be Dr. Rosvally my entire life.  If theatre wasn’t a source of academic inquiry, I would have either had to give up the goat and go to med school (sorry mom, not gonna happen) or give up the dream and just be Danielle (don’t worry, mom, not gonna happen either).  I’m also not implying that there’s no place for Theatre Scholarship, because as this blog and an entire field can attest to that is incorrect as well.  But to me, that place is in the theatre itself, not in a library.
Geologists live in caves, botanists forests, ichthyologist by the ocean.  Let the English majors have their libraries, we should be in the theatres getting our hands dirty.  The problem that I have with most Shakespeareans (either thespian or scholar) stems from this issue: theatre scholarship does require books, but it also requires a stage.  So when did the two become so segregated and why?
I don’t really have an answer that can be backed with charts and figures (but granted, I haven’t exactly researched it… yet).  What I do have is a lifetime of experience and from my experience, I can tell you a few things.
The first is that nobody likes to be told how to do their job, especially not people who having invested so much time and money into it that they have acquired a PhD, DFA, MFA, or some other fancy set of letters.  Merging scholarship and practicum must be done delicately, otherwise the thespians feel like the scholars think they know better (and they probably do think as much) and the scholars feel the same way about the thespians (again, likely the case).  Without a mutual appreciation for areas of expertise, hard feelings are to be had all around.  The best directors (and most interesting theatre people I know) are individuals who have devoted their lives to the craft.  There is a reason they are called “theatre people”, it’s not just a job, it’s a lifestyle.  The same is true for scholars; here are individuals deeply invested in their work (as obscure or off-the-beaten-path as it may be).  Neither the scholars nor the actors know how to react to people from the other side of the fence.  Shock?  Awe?  Pity?  What is this strange art, so closely related to what I do, and yet so very different and how should it effect my own work?
I hate to make a sweeping generalization, but let’s face it: most actors aren’t exactly the bookish type.  They are practical people, people who are in their bodies, people who are required to face every scary inch of themselves publicly and make the discoveries held therein fresh on a nightly basis.  Actors are a resilient breed, unabashed by rejection.  They are survivors, warriors, and the good ones are some of the toughest people you will ever meet.  Actors are creatures of emotion.  They have to be.  If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be able to perform.
Scholars thrive off mental energy.  It takes a certain type of person to hammer at a research problem until it breaks, to argue on paper with people long dead, to face an ancient academy of peers with an idea that is entirely new and different.  Scholars are thinkers just as actors are feelers.  Logic, reason, discovery, curiosity, and a healthy dose of red pen go into the making of a scholar.
I’m not saying these two groups are diametrically opposite, but I am saying that they are fundamentally different.  I’m also not saying that an individual couldn’t fit both descriptions (if I was, it wouldn’t say much about my self-awareness now, would it?).  I am saying that to breech a gap like this takes courage, faith, understanding and trust.
I don’t think either world is ready to do this yet.  A level playing field hasn’t been established and neutral ground hasn’t yet been created.  To bring these two worlds together will require more than just a kid and a dream (mostly because that and $2.25 will get you on the subway).
I think I’m up for the challenge, but I’m going to need help.
Visiting the program at Columbia was inspiring.  It made me believe that I’m not the only one out there thinking about these things.  It showed me that sometimes you do need to re-visit old haunts in order to move forward (story for another day: how I didn’t go to Columbia for my undergrad).  Most importantly, it got me totally stoked for submitting PhD applications.
Thanks again, Joseph. 
Next stop on the PhD prospectus tour: Brown.