Tag Archives: Tufts

Into the Abyss

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So I have previously mentioned that part of my process come panic time involves a giant whiteboard.

This is a survival mechanism which I developed in my Master’s.  Often, a graduate student lives in three to four different worlds an each world is represented by a separate syllabus.  Each has its own deadlines, requirements, readings, library pile, points of interest on the internet, points of contact at the department, rules, regulations, and practices.  Often, meshing these worlds together is the cause of a great deal of stress come finals time (see my momentary freak-out about over scheduling myself towards the end of last semester).  Also, because a course can contain many little assignments in addition to a large one, often things can get lost in the shuffle.

To combat this, I developed the whiteboard technique.  Whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed by deadlines, I make a chart.  I list what the assignment is (and, if it requires further specificity which due to the nature of grad-school courses it often does not, who it is for), where to send it (if you’re talking about abstracts and publication submissions, often those e-mails can get lost in the shuffle as well), and when it is due.  Then I leave myself a place to check off when the assignment has been completed.  On the side, I create a list of ongoing projects with no due-dates, just things that I need to remember to do.

Getting it all down in black and white (and often also orange, purple, and green when I’m feeling whimsical) helps to assure me that a) I didn’t miss anything, b) I won’t miss anything, and c) I really and truly do have a handle on my life.

At the end of the semester, when all is said and done, I leave the whiteboard there for a while with all of its check boxes intact.  It gives me a sense of accomplishment to see that I’ve met all my deadlines and, at the end of a semester, one needs all the sense of accomplishment one can find.

But the other day, I took the leap.

I erased the whiteboard.

It’s pretty freeing to be able to sit at my desk and have a giant blank slate hanging over me.  Of course, my summer projects are taking up a lot more of my time than I had anticipated (I dramaturge eight to ten hours a week, German class four hours a week, study approx. ten hours a week, have been trying to catch up on my sleep, my e-mails, my reading, my knitting, my life, and my gym schedule, I haven’t really had time to touch my papers that I wanted to brush off over the summer yet but it will come).  These ongoing projects, though, the kind with no deadline, they’re not exactly whiteboard material.  It’s like looking into a great white expanse of nothing.  My time is my own again.  I’m not working under pressure, I’m not working under any imposed or hard end-stop, I’m just working as much as I can as fast as I can.

…so I guess on the other hand not having white-board deadlines also means that I’m probably working more in between all the other things I do, but at this point I’ll just relish the change of pace.

 

Dramaturgy

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Alright, now that I’ve been distracted by zombie Hamlet, I suppose I should actually check in about this giant project I keep alluding to.

Tufts Drama does three department shows a year; one in the Fall, one in the Spring, and one bridging the gap between the two semesters.  This year for show number two (the gap-bridging show), we are doing Measure for Measure and I have been appointed the project’s dramaturge.

Besides being one of the best words in the English language, “dramaturge” is actually a really fun and exciting position to hold.  The dramaturge is the person on the creative team who does all the research for a given show.  That research can be pretty expansive and weird at times; how do you pronounce this word?  Is this prop period?  What did they mean when they said this?  Where would this character have gone to school?  Would that character have read this book?  In addition, as resident scholar, the dramaturge is often asked to help edit a playscript of a show to create a performance edition.

As resident Shakespearean, I was called upon to lend my brainpower to the project and, as you can imagine, I’m having a blast.  Over the summer, we’re creating our actor’s edition which, while this may sound like a tedious and boring task, is one of the funnest incarnations of work I’ve ever had the pleasure to deal with.

My director has requested that the final show run no longer than two hours.  As Measure for Measure is a show of 2,938 lines which runs approximately three and a half hours in performance when uncut, this is no small task (especially to a text purist like me).

To make these trims (and to make the show read to a contemporary audience when the actors are going to be undergraduates with no specialized training or expansive experience), our process so far has been as such: we meet for three hours once or twice a week and read the entire script aloud to each other.  As we go through, we have found ways to either cut, trim, or keep lines.

 So, basically, for three to six hours a week plus the time I spend adjusting the actual text afterwards, I go into work, read Shakespeare aloud to my director, explicate the passages with her, bat around ideas about how to make this work onstage, find ways to explain what some of the more archaic words and concepts are, and try to figure out if these words/concepts will read to a modern audience and, if not, how can we alter or cut them to do so?

Yea, it’s pretty much my dream job.

The cutting battle is slightly blood because I, as I mentioned, am a text purist.  My director is not.  She is very open to hearing my ideas and defenses about why something should remain, but it does mean that I have to go into a session prepared with sword and shield to defend the text.  This, honestly, is my favorite part and really why I got into the field I am in.  In order to make something stay, my director must understand why it’s important.

My director is a very experienced very talented woman, but not someone who has had extensive experience directing Shakespeare and not someone who has had my experience training with and utilizing the text.  We come at things from very different angles and this makes for a more-than-interesting battleground over the text itself.  She works in the extremely practical (or, as she puts it, “popular”) mindset.  I work in the more traditional (but not stodgy!) mindset.  Together, we represent two sides of a divide which has plagued my field for generations.

Shakespeare Studies as a field is divided into two battlegrounds: the English department and the Theatre department.  As a subset of the theatre department, you also have the scholarly thespians, and the practical thespians.  All of these factions bring different mindsets to bear upon the text.  The English people are all about the book and text analysis, sometimes edging over into history (not of performance techniques or even performance in general, but rather of the events surrounding both the writing of the play and the play’s events).  The scholarly thespians deal with history of performance as well as contemporary performance, edging into how this is of use to actors.  The practical thespians are all about performance.

So we’re not of COMPLETELY different camps (at least I’m not in the English department), but we are definitely on two sides of the scholarly/practical divide.  Coming together to create this project is really what I wanted when I decided to get my PhD.  I love Shakespeare.  Period.  I love everything about his plays, how they’re performed, and how audiences react to them.  Having the opportunity to craft both a set of amateur actors’ experience with Shakespeare as well as an audience’s experience with Shakespeare is the ultimate gratification for me.

 

This process is also teaching me a lot about theatricality and the meeting of the great divide within my field (something which, honestly, I thought I had a better handle on having been an actor in a past life).  Where does literary studies meet performance studies and how far can one straddle the boundary without falling into it?  Also; how can we communicate meaningfully across this boundary without smothering the other side’s instincts and without disrespecting the other side’s experience?

As a field, I think these are giant questions which we are going to be working on for many years to come.  I certainly don’t have readily available answers.  It is all too easy for both sides of this divide to go into expert mode and disregard the other side entirely and, because of the odd power structure of a theatrical production, this can result in a lot of hurt feelings and bruised egos.  Any of us can choose to cover our ears and sing loudly “I’M RIGHT!”.  But what do we learn from that?  And, more importantly, what do our students learn from that?

Deutsch

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So one of my summer quests is to learn to read in German.

One of the requirements for most PhDs in the Humanities (I know for certain English and Theatre Studies, other areas I’m not so clear on) is a reading knowledge of two languages other than English (alternately, a deep comprehension/fluency of one other language).  This requirement is often best taken care of in the early stages of your coursework so that it doesn’t hang you up when you go to do big things like comps and orals.

For me, I came into the program with a fairly solid reading knowledge of French.  German, while it seems esoteric, is a good choice for someone in Theatre Studies as the field was basically conceived in Germany, though like most things conceived in Germany fell apart during that big black hole in history that began in Germany.  Nowadays, the Free University of Berlin is a fairly happening place (especially for Shakespeareans and especially over the summer).

To assist in my quest, the school has hired one of my colleagues in the English department to teach a reading-in-German tutorial for anyone in the humanities required to pass such an exam as mine.

Learning to read in a language is a skill set entirely different from learning a language.  We did not spend the first day talking about our names, how we were, and where we lived.  Because we have a very limited time frame and are expected to retain a whole lot of information, this course is essentially a strategy guide for quick and dirty German.  Here’s how you recognize a noun, here’s a verb, here are common irregular verbs, now go learn all the vocabulary you can stuff in that little brain and come back later.  It’s a lot more technical; let’s break down this sentence (almost diagramming the sentence) and figure out which words we absolutely need to look up.  How many trips to the dictionary can we avoid?  How much can we clarify what you’re actually looking up and what you will find when you do?

This is made slightly easier by the fact that German, like English, is a Germanic language (and, to be even more technical, a West Germanic language).  It’s closer to English than a Romance language and thereby has a great many cognates which can help the English-speaking German-beginner.

It’s also made slightly easier by the fact that in my undergrad I decided to take a smattering of all kinds of languages.  Flash back to the first semester Freshman year, my brief flirtation with Latin.  I had a slightly longer affair with Italian, and the longest-lasting

This picture might best encapsulate my time in Dublin* *this is not entirely true… but that is a whole nother book of stories…

was with Irish (two and a half years of Irish Gaelic and a summer living in Dublin later and, while my Irish has decayed over the years from lack of use, I may still know more than native Irish people who don’t live in Gaeltachts).  Latin taught me grammar.  If you want to learn English grammar, go learn Latin.  I also taught me the meanings of cases and declensions, a building block for many of the other languages I’m working with.  Irish taught me how to deal with an inflected language (that is, a language in which word order doesn’t really matter).  This is the same in Latin, but since I lived with Irish longer I was better able to grasp the concept.  German word order is often strange and unusual because the rules governing sentence structure are not the same as they are in English.  Italian taught me to order in restaurants and buy a verb dictionary.  Seriously.  More irregular verbs than any language a sane person would actually want to learn.

So, while German is foreign, it’s not completely foreign.

It’s also delightful to be learning something new and different.  I’ve spent so long with a certain kind of schooling (namely: go home, read this book, do some research, come back and talk about it, write a paper) that having a new way to exercise my mind is almost salivatingly good.  Last night, the teacher handed out worksheets!  I haven’t had a worksheet to do since the 90s! (…almost as long, by the way, as I haven’t done higher-level mathematics…. I think I may see a corollary here…)

So, yes, they basically throw you in the deep end clinging desperately to your dictionary like a lifeline.  And there’s a lot of vocabulary to memorize.  Like… all the vocabulary.  The more vocab you know, the fewer trips to the dictionary you need, and thereby the faster you are at translating.

But it’s fresh, it’s interesting, and it’s extremely different from the kind of learning I do during the year.  While I can’t really call it a vacation, I can call it a drastic deviation from my regularly scheduled programming.

Year One: In the Books

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As if 08:30 hours this Sunday morning past, I have done the inevitable, the wonderful, what I thought for some time was the highly improbable; I have finished year one.

Yes, ladies and gents, with one click of a button, that final final was sliding on home to the comfy cozy inbox of my professor and thus closing the book on half of my coursework (…though actually more than half because this year consisted of six classes and next year will consist of four, but let’s not quibble over the small bits, shall we?)

I would like to say that I sent the e-mail then promptly took my pants off, got cozy on the couch, and didn’t move for several days, but in reality I sent the e-mail, ran around my house for a while, drove for two hours, and worked a sixteen-hour day followed by a night of sleeping like the dead then went to a dramaturgy session where I spent two and a half hours sifting through Measure for Measure line by line and explicating every fine detail for my director… when I came home from that THEN I took my pants off, got cozy on the couch, and didn’t move for several hours.  Unfortunately, today can’t be as carefree as yesterday as I still have two professional deadlines nipping at my heels in addition to several personal projects which require my attention…

But I did buy myself ice cream last night.  And I do feel a certain sense of levity.  And I do feel utterly and completely accomplished.  Summer just tastes different – like watermelon and strawberries.  And, having finished my last final, I can safely say that it tastes like summer.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, let me take a moment to revel in what I actually just did.  Over the course of the past year I have: survived the initial shock of PhD work, thrived in the Tufts environment, learned more than I can possibly describe (and learned about a whole host of other things that I now need to learn), kept up with a rigorous course load, not driven myself crazy, met the demands and expectations of my wonderfully demanding professors, kept myself on track professionally and hit all the professional development goals I had realistically set for myself, maintained contact with the outside world (some sections of it more than others and at some moments more contact than others), not made an abject fool of myself in class (and if I did, I don’t know about it because ignorance on this front is bliss), come to grips with my job as a professional academic, stepped out into the wider world of academia at two large conferences with my shiny Tufts byline…

And blogged faithfully twice a week to prove it all!

I cannot even describe how grateful I am to everyone this year for the support, the love, and the cheering section.  I’ve said it before, but I don’t think I could have known what I was getting into even if someone had attempted to tell me.  This year has been rough.  You, dear readers, have definitely made things more bearable and for that I am so thankful.  

Some Statistics for this Semester…

Total library books taken out this semester: 77
Total minutes of in-class presentation given: 85
Total turned-in pages at end of semester: 70
Total pages of drafts written: 337
Total performances attended: 13

So, Dani, you just finished the first year of your PhD, what are you going to do now?  Well, I do have one class over the summer.  I’m taking a German for Reading course in hopes that it will help me pass an exam to fulfill my second language requirement.  I’ve never studied German before and it’s been a while since I’ve done any kind of learning other than “read and discuss”, so this should be very interesting.

In addition, I have a few papers I’ll be taking some time to polish and submit.  It’s time to publish lest I perish, and being a model ABD ain’t just a pipe-dream for a kid with a hope and a dollar.  I will also be making as big a dent on the comps list as I can in my copious amounts of free time.

To further impinge upon that free time, I’m serving as Dramaturge for Tufts’ 2012 production of Measure for Measure.  We don’t start rehearsing until deep fall, but the summer is when we’re getting our acting edition together.  This means that I’ll be spending my days working with the director to get the script into the shape we want it (much more exciting and difficult than it sounds – don’t worry, I’m sure that this will be blog fodder all summer long).

This year, I have been pushed to the outer walls of my limits.  I have accomplished things which I, at points, didn’t think possible.  And, I’ve done it with panache and style!  Here’s the good news for all you faithful readers (and perhaps the bad news for me): the worst is not over by a long shot.  I’ve been fastidiously advised by my senior peers as I was crossing the finish line this semester that coursework is the easiest part of this entire process.

Well, darn it.  I guess I should spend another year in easy land and truly brace for what’s to come.  Because if this is easy, then I’m not sure how I’m going to handle the hard stuff…

But for now, I am hopeful.  It’s a beautiful day, I have a paper to revise, and my red pen is itching for some action.  After that I’m going to lounge on my couch for a while before a rock-climbing date with my favorite traveling companion.

Today: the rock gym.  Tomorrow: the world.

And for now: I will take a much deserved bow.

Finals Land

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Good friends and readers,

Hello from finals land.

This is a place slightly different from “finals panic” (which I was experiencing a few weeks ago).  This is a place where everything is mapped out, everything is drafted out, and all I have to do is continue working at a good clip to slide into the finish.

My last final is due May 13th.  And man, I cannot wait to plonk that baby down and close the book on what has been a phenomenal, engrossing, enormous, scary year.

The thing about finals land is that it is extremely draining.  The writing process, for me, is a slow one and one that requires meticulous drafting and re-drafting.  As I have previously mentioned, it takes between 6 and 8 drafts for me to produce something that I feel comfortable turning in.  I like to work on one draft a day but, as I am currently simultaneously grappling with three large papers, that means I’m required to produce approximately 21 drafts to feel good about my product.  I have 13 days to do it.  This means that I’m going to have to average 1.6 drafts a day (provided I take zero days off between now and due dates).  Which, realistically, means that I’m going to have to be churning out two drafts a day to give myself room for a breath sometime this weekend.

What this really and truly means is that my brain feels like a wrung-out sponge.  I feel like I’ve given everything I have to this semester and I simply have nothing left to give.

Unfortunately, I’ve not got the option to stop now.  There’s this last little bit of mountain to climb to get to the top of what’s been an arduous (but entirely rewarding) year.

There’s this saying in clown training; “find the energy”.  There are two zones in clowning; “the red” which is where you are when you are in-nose and thereby in-character, and “the black” which is somewhere below that, not quite fully to the point of true clown yet.  You get tired really quickly in clowning, it takes a lot to keep yourself going.  When you’re training to do it, you are constantly told to “find the energy”.  ImageDo whatever you need to do to keep yourself in the red.  Dance, throw stuff, run around, keep going, dip into the deep part of yourself where you store the bits that you don’t generally access and use those to fuel whatever it is you are doing until it’s done.

And really, these days, that’s all I’ve got.  I’ve got to find the energy to keep going, no matter where that energy comes from (at the moment, it’s coming from some lovely earl gray I’ve been drinking like it’s my job, though I may switch to something a little less caffeinated soon… also, girl scout cookies never hurt…).

In a few short weeks, I will be able to collapse and have a break (and trust me, in the two weeks between finals and my summer German class I intend to take full advantage of break time… if my past experience with graduate school has been at all indicative of my future experience with graduate school, I will be laid out on the couch unable to move for a solid three days before I regain the capacity to speak much less function in the real world).  In a few short weeks, I can pick up a book that I want to read and read it for no other reason than “I want to”.  In a few short weeks, I can hit all those extra random deadlines that have been lurking on the side of my whiteboard all but ignored because I simply did not have the time to devote attention to them.

…at least nature cooperated today.  It was a gray, dreary day here in Boston – the kind of day that really does make me want to curl up on my office futon with a blankie, a French press full of tea, and my writing to red-pen.  So that’s exactly what I did.

And I hit my writing goals.  Here’s hoping that mother nature continues to cooperate and doesn’t insist on too many beautiful days between now and the 13th.

Happy Tuesday

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Good friends and gentle readers,

Hello from finals panic!  Things are progressing apace here in Dani-land and I’m steeped in the inevitable mountain of reading, research, work to do, not enough hours in which to do it, library books, and yenning for my social life that comes with the end of the semester.

As such, here’s a completely random list of things that have crossed my mind/desk this week.  I don’t have a single sustained coherent thought to share, but maybe this will serve as a brief entertainment while I struggle to not get run over by the homework truck.

1)    Tea is great and wonderful and everyone should own a French press.  I get most of my tea from adagio, and have even tried my hand at blending my own.  My blends can be found here.

2)    Good god, if I need to explain to another undergrad at the library that no, I don’t want to just leave my returned books in a stack by the door, I want to watch you return them for me while I stand here checking them off my list because I have a giant mountain at home and I really can’t be financially responsible for a lost book, I’m going to beat someone with a bad Hamlet quarto.  I understand that it is possible to leave one’s books by the door.  There’s a giant sign there that tells me so.  I also understand that you’re busy checking your facebook or e-mail or whatever.  I also understand that you’re being paid to sit at this desk, so please just scan these books for me and don’t roll your eyes at me.  In my day, we had to walk uphill both ways to the library in ten feet of snow without shoes on!  You don’t know how lucky you have it!  Harumph.

3)    Knowing that I’m stressed, and knowing that I’m having a hard week, my

Charles and Mary Lamb.... also not particularly attractive individuals...

best friend brought me a copy of Lamb’s Tales From Shakespeare.  I cannot think of a better finals gift.  What says “I love you and I am here to make sure you don’t drive yourself crazy with schoolwork” like a well-loved copy of early nineteenth century moralized children’s stories based upon Shakespeare’s originals written by a matricidal kook and her quasi-incesty brother? (…no… I’m serious.  The Lambs were effed up.  Also: I love it).

4)    I got interviewed as an expert for GSAS’ blog post about academic conferencing!  It went live today; you can check it out here.  I love feeling legitimate!

5)    My tweet has made it to the final round of voting for the Tufts GSAS Tweet of the Semester competition.  I managed to win this last semester, and I’m hoping for another win this time.  I’ll let you know when voting for the finals opens up.  The winner receives a gift certificate to the school bookstore (which, for a graduate student, is THE BEST THING EVER).  Go team Dani!

6)    I sat down the other day to begin the pile of research that’s on my desk and, in the first book I cracked, came across an essay by my mentor over at Rutgers.  It made me smile to see his name in print first thing in the morning and, while not entirely surprising since he IS an authority on Johnson and the book WAS about Shakespeare and Johnson, still somehow felt serendipitous.  Also: right or wrong, it gave me a cosmic sense of hope.

Since I can't think of anything else to put here, here's an adorable baby sloth.

 7)    Tally of total library books checked out this semester: 68 and counting.  Books currently checked out: 31.  Books currently unread on my desk: 8.  Days until last final is due: 34.  Number of projects that still require completing in that time period: 7.  Number of projects which require completing in the next seven days: 3 (not counting the one I finished yesterday).

8)    …and miles to go before I sleep.

Running Errands

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The other day, I managed to pull some downright miracles out of thin air.

One of the problems with the Tufts campus is that it is built upon a hill.  Legend has it that

Tufts circa 1853

Tufts’ founder Hosea Ballou II had the campus built upon Walnut Hill (one of the highest hills in the Boston area) so that Tufts folk could (literally) look down upon Harvard.  The first building on campus was completed in 1854, entitled at the time “College Hall” (since renamed “Ballou Hall”).  Today, this building is the central nexus of all things Tufts.  The university has grown around the building and, as a result, around the hill.

But not just on one side of the hill, oh no, that would be far too easy.  It has spread and spawned on both hillsides, creating a situation such that to get anywhere on campus you literally do have to walk uphill both ways.  At one foot of the hill is the largest nexus of student parking.  At the hill’s peak various administration buildings.  On the opposite hillside is the library (amongst other things).  At the extreme opposite foot of the hill is Aidekman arts center, where my department is housed, and where all of my classes (and our personal Drama Graduate Lounge) are located.

Due to a series of applications, administrative red tape, and various things that I had to drop off/pick up in various places, I had to be in several locations in a short span of time.

Now.  There is a parking lot directly next to Aidekman.  This is extremely convenient on days when I just have to go to class and make no other stops.  However, when I have to do any amount of printing (in the general graduate lounge), go to the library (to drop off/pick up books), or really do anything else on campus, I opt to park in the WAYFARAWAY lot to ensure that my chores actually get done in the process of going to/coming from my car.

 

A map, for your reference

The other day I had to: stop at the administrative building to drop off a funding application, stop at the library to drop off some books, stop at the experimental college to drop off an application for a class that I’m proposing to teach next semester, go to class, stop at the library on the way back up the hill on the way to my car to pick up some books, then head to my car in time to head home.

To make matters worse, I was in a bit of a time crunch because my dance partner was due to show up at 6 PM.  My classes usually get out around 4:30, leaving me plenty of time to run a few tawdry errands and skid home just before 5.  It takes me about an hour to go from academic chic to ballroom dancer (including a dinner break).

Timing was going to be tight.

To complicate things further, I had to swing by the grocery store on my way home to pick up some bits and bobs for dinner.  And then my class let out twenty minutes late.  And then my dance partner texted that he’d be at my house about a half hour early because the combined forces of traffic and his job had treated him particularly well that day.

Keep calm and carry on?

Someone with a cosmic time-turner must have realized that this simply wasn’t going to work, because as I was trying to sprint up the hill with an armful of books, figure out what I was going to wear that night, and compile my grocery list simultaneously, apparently the streets of Arlington became a veritable parking lot.  I skidded to a halt at home with enough time to spare that I was able to chew my food, and my partner ran late enough that I was actually ready to go when he arrived.

We were on time to the dance (which was a trip in itself, by the by; a ballroomful of sixty and seventy year old couples who could quickstep and tango like pros all dressed in their cocktail best… I felt like I had stepped into some weird Gatsbeian time warp).  I got all my chores done.  Nobody collapsed due to blood sugar issues from not being fed vis a vis time crunch.  And my gluts are none-the-sadder.

Now to figure out how to fit in everything I have on my plate before I leave for the National Gothic Fiction Conference next Thursday…

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 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.

Gettin’ by with a Little Help from my Friends

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Since things are firmly set in motion and I think I’ve finally gotten into a good rhythm with my class reading, you know what that means.

Time to start thinking about final papers.

And, ideally, time to start doing more than thinking about final papers.

In my case, I’ve begun preliminary research on all three of my finals and am pending final approval on my (albeit currently vague) topics.

This means meetings.  Meetings with Professors.  During office house.

One of my Professors happens to be the chair of my department, so our little sit-down also meant that I had to opportunity to catch up on certain administrative particulars about my Tufts career.  The meeting was going so well, and was so brief, that at the end I had the opportunity to ask a few questions.  Really, the only thing that I could articulate at 10AM before I had finished my coffee was a broad and sweeping statement assuring that I covered my own bum in case of giant blind spots…  “So… is there anything else I should be worried about?”

He smiled and said, “Well, is there anything else you are worried about?  Some students find their first semester overwhelming, but you seem to be doing pretty well.”

I’m not going to lie, the vote of confident was nice.

However.  I had to laugh.

“Well, yes.”  I said, once I could manage a sentence again.  “But I was an actor in a former life.”

…. Oh yes, cool, calm, collected on the outside.  Let me assure you, Professor, it’s not just

We're gonna need a bigger boat...

“some” students who find their first semester overwhelming.  In many ways, the first semester has been akin to walking into a room and sitting in what you thought was a nice comfy chair.  Then there emerge straps from the chair which twine themselves around you and hold you firmly and securely in place.  After the initial shock of that, you realize that the chair is still comfortable; it simply cares for your well-being (clearly) and doesn’t want to let anything bad happen to you.  Just are you begin to wonder why it would be that a CHAIR would have PREHENSILE STRAPS and the vague notion stirs in your mind that maybe sitting in this particular chair wasn’t your most brilliant plan, the chair begins to toss and turn like the Minnow on that fateful stormy sea at the tail end of its three hour tour.  You become dizzy.  You become sick.  You become tired.  Everything is brand new, and there’s so much of it, shape, form, color, it threatens to swallow you whole…

…and then just as you begin to think that your sanity is done for, the chair steadies out a bit.  Oh it’s not smooth sailing, and there are definitely some rough patches, but you begin to get a feel for navigating.  You begin to understand where you have to exert pressure to help keep yourself from tipping.  You begin to anticipate the least comfortable positions that the chair could be in and learn how to prepare for them.  You even begin to think about how to fit this chair into your own living room so that the rest of your life can go on during the brief glimpses of calm ocean.

And (perhaps most importantly) you begin to spot other chairs.  You begin to get advice from those who have traveled further down this path.  You begin to learn from their mistakes, to let them guide you because they probably know what they’re talking about.  You bring your chair into synch with some of the chair-sitters next to you.  You all paddle together for a while so you don’t feel so alone.  You give each other advice about things you’ve found out during your sojourns on the open ocean by yourself.  You have a support network.

My colleagues have proven an invaluable resource in this journey so far, and I look forward to many years of that continuing.  It is strange and funny to think about how long I will potentially know these people, and how much they will influence my sanity (or lack thereof).  The department has provided multiple opportunities for academic boozefests (which, trust me, I have indulged in as much as so-far possible).  These have turned into a wealth of information-sharing, sanity-retention, and overall comfort-regaining in this crazy thing that I’ve decided to do with my life.

I suppose the moral of today’s story is such: learn to rely on those around you and provide as much support to them as you can because, trust me, you’re going to need their support in return.  Work hard, try to keep your eyes on a still point in the turning world, and above all remember the Hitchhiker’s credo.