Writing about the Thing about Which I'm Not Writing

I've been having a hard time blogging lately. Part of the issue is that in the summer I'm out of it - out of the habit of thinking about academic things, out of the habit of writing daily, out of my usual routine that keeps the blog chugging along when school's in session. Also, I find that blogging is generally directly linked for me to the level of busy-ness in my day-to-day life. It may be counterintuitive, but the busier I am, the more I blog and the more that I have to blog about. As I power down into summertime mode, I just don't have all that much to report. I mean, sure, I've got things going on, but one can only recount so many trips to the gym or the pool, so many phone conversations, so many books read or papers written. It's not that I'm not interested in the stuff I'm doing or having a good time - in fact, this summer I've really felt like I am relaxing, but again, how does one write about that in ways that are interesting? There's also the complication that I choose not to write directly about my research, and since I've been pretty research-oriented of late, that means that there are things I probably could blog about but that I choose not to in order to keep the veneer of the pseudonym intact. This doesn't feel uncomfortable - it just means that there's a limit on what I can discuss about certain things, which then leads to fewer posts and more mundane posts.

And then there's the elephant in the room that I don't know how to blog about.

And I want to find a way to blog about it, because I think to do so could be a good thing - depending on how I framed it - but I don't know how. And I've been thinking a lot about it, and I can't seem to come up with a way. So, what's my damage? Why is this posing such a difficulty for me?

• One difficulty is that I'm resistant to turning a real life person into a fully fleshed out character on the blog, which would be essential for me to blog about this in a non-evasive way. Now, I've turned people into characters on here before, and without any terrific angst, so it's odd that I'm feeling this urge to "keep it real," as it were. And that feeling is connected to a kind of protectiveness - like I don't want to translate what's going on in my real life into a story to be consumed because I feel like sometimes when I do that it can be a kind of violent act - like it turns a person into a "type" that I then control, and I don't feel like that's always in my best interest to do that, even though it is something that I have historically had a tendency to do.
• Another issue is that I'm not entirely certain what I'm feeling or what I really want to say. And while this wouldn't normally stop me, in this particular circumstance it matters because the person-whom-I'm-choosing-not-to-transform-into-a-character actually reads the blog, and so there's another layer of audience at work, which complicates things. It's one thing when you have a fixed audience in your head, an idea of "your readers" that is kind of a composite of all of the people out there who might happen upon what one writes. It's another thing entirely when there is that audience and then also an Audience-Member-Who-Knows, and who might perceive one's musings as some sort of revelation, when really one's musings are generally not revelatory nor are they intended to be so. One might say that this is what it is to write with accountability, which so often those who choose to use pseudonyms are accused of trying to sidestep. But it's not that I don't feel accountable for what I write here or that I don't think I am accountable under normal circumstances. Rather, it's that because I've chosen to write a blog that has a diaristic tone (though it is decidedly not a diary), I don't want to fall into the trap of being read as if this IS a diary. I don't know, that probably only makes sense in my head. But the point is that I don't want to write something and have it be read as if it's what I "really" think about things. Because the likelihood is that it wouldn't be, or that it would only be a partial picture.
  
• Finally, and I think this is the real problem and is related to the previous bullets, there's this feeling of vulnerability that's stopping me from being able to write in a funny way or an honest way or in any sort of way that would allow me to actually capture what's going on. One of the things that I think attracts readers to my blog is that I have found a way to be honest in this space, or at the very least to write in an honest way, even if there is embellishment, etc. And I can't write honestly about this because I can't objectify it - I can't put it in its place in writing. And that's seeping over into the rest of the blog, too, that feeling of vulnerability, and so instead of just writing about other stuff, I'm not writing about anything worth reading. I'm not producing writing worth reading.
  

And so I'm posting tonight in part because I think that this is a bad thing. I don't want to fall into some sort of blogger's block because there's this one thing going on in my life that I'm feeling uncomfortable with pinning down. But it's also making me think a lot about what I've used the blog to do, and I'm wondering what's changed, or if something's changed, with what I need the blog to do for me or with what I want the blog to be.

When I started blogging nearly 3 years ago, I wanted the blog to be something that articulated a fuller picture of my experiences on the tenure track, something that would flesh out the stick figure of the "single lady professor." I wrote about a lot of personal stuff, and I was angry a lot, and the tone was pretty brutal. When I moved to this space about a year and a half ago, the tone changed, and the blog became a bit less personal, but still, my agenda for the blog was the same, and I've continued to blend my more "academic" musings with more "personal" stuff. But what happens when you have something in your personal life that you don't want to reveal but that is taking up space in your life? And what happens when you don't really give a shit about the more academic stuff you might choose to write about, or at least you're not motivated by anything enough to choose to write about those things instead of the other stuff that's going on? I mean, there are things I might choose to write about. I might choose to write about my upcoming UK trip, or I might choose to write about teaching stuff I've been thinking about, or I might choose to write about funny things I see or do or movies I've seen or whatever. I've got material. But I'm not interested in turning that material into blogposts. I also might abstract the elephant in the room into some broader commentary on somethingorother, but I'm not interested in doing that either because it feels like a dodge.

What's ironic about all of this is that the very thing I'm resisting writing about would probably be most fitting to write about here in that it truly is "crazy" - not in a bad way, but in an "what the fuck?" sort of a way. The entertainment value of it would be HUGE - both for me writing and for all of you reading. But what if I don't want to use this crazy thing as material? And if I don't, what does that mean in the broader constellation of things? In the broader constellation of me writing on this particular blog, and in the broader constellation of the choices I'm making in my life? What (or who) am I trying to protect? What am I trying to hide?

There are no answers to any of these questions, or, there are answers, but they don't really satisfy. I suppose I wanted to write tonight because first I'm trying to write my way out of the block. And I guess I feel like that has value, because I know many of you out there have felt similar blocks and I feel like there's something positive about having somebody who tends to be pretty prolific and who tends to feel like writing comes easily to talk through this sort of thing.

But so I don't know what I'll ultimately decide to do, and I'm not sure how this will all play out in terms of what I choose to reveal or not to reveal here as the summer progresses. I do know that there will be a bit of a break from the blog when I'm in the UK, and that may be a good thing as perhaps a willed break from the blog will leave me refreshed and ready to write upon my return. I'm also looking forward to my trip because I think it will give me a good change of scenery and pace to think through some things without distraction and to figure out what exactly it is that I'm doing, as opposed to thinking, and then not thinking, and then throwing up my hands and saying "Oh, hell, I'll just go with the flow and see what happens!" (which is not my preferred operational mode).

So. You'll all just have to suffer through with me over the next couple of weeks (or not, you could just check back in around the end of July) and I promise I'll try to come up with something that doesn't suck and that's not stupidly vague to say. And who knows - perhaps this is just a little hiccup and two days from now I'll decide that all this writing-angst is manufactured and I'll turn the Person into a character and be done with it.

But now it's time for me to go to sleep. I've got a big day ahead of me tomorrow - lots to accomplish - calls to be made, tidying up to be done, hair appointment to arrange, writing to begin, errands to run, etc.

My Name is Dr. Crazy, and I'm a Procrastinator

Even when I know I can't afford to be one, apparently. Sure, I made many detailed lists, but then I felt kind of exhausted by that and so decided that what I really needed to do was to go to the mall. So I spent a couple of hours shopping, and then I came home, and then I got sucked into an "Engaged and Underage" marathon on MTV, and then I talked to A., and now, here we are, at 6 PM, and I've accomplished absolutely nothing that I need to accomplish.

And there are things that I want to write about but I don't exactly know how to write about them in this space. Part of the problem is that I don't know what I actually think about the things I want to write about, and part of the problem is that I'm not sure what is appropriate to reveal about what's going on with me, as it involves others. Hmmm. I need to find a way to abstract what's preoccupying me so that I can write about it here - otherwise this promises to be the most boring blog in the world for approximately the next month or so. But so anyway, suffice it to say that I do have material - I just don't know how to translate it into something that will be of interest to others or in any way entertaining. I'm hoping that I get some inspiration when I begin work in earnest on my conference paper tomorrow.

Oh, Hell

Ok, so in the span of 24 hours I've gone from being a lazy and procrastinating person, thinking, "Oh, I have all the time in the WORLD to get things done before my trip - two weeks! I can procrastinate for a week, and then I'll take care of business, and then I will be off! Hurrah!" to being a slightly hysterical person going, "Oh my stars! What the hell! How shall I get all of the things done?!?!?!"

You may wonder why there is this dramatic change. Well, in part, this is just the sort of person I am. I am the sort of person who veers wildly between lazy and hysterical. It is also because I learned today that it looks like I will be having a visitor in one week's time, which means that days have been shaved off my previous schedule. Now, don't get me wrong: I want to see this visitor. I have been, in fact, looking forward to solidifying some plans related to this person visiting, and think that this visit will be an excellent idea to pursue. That said, when the plans hadn't really materialized a week or two ago, I just figured that the visit would occur in July. When I was back from my travels. You know, because I follow the whole two-week rule with booking plane tickets. I just assumed that everybody followed that rule. Not so, apparently. But so I had an idea in my head of how such a visit would transpire, but apparently the Visitor had another idea, and so now, here we are.

What does this mean, in concrete terms?

In the next week, I must:

• make an appointment for beautification and go to said appointment (this was going to happen the following week, but want to look beautiful if am having out-of-town guest and also must look beautiful for trip which follows close on the heels of said guest.)
  
• laundry
• household chores like washing the floor, cleaning the bathroom, etc., that one must do when visitors descend.
• grocery shopping.
• Get M-K's nails done.
• procure supplies from the wine store.
• write conference paper (thank GOD! I finished that novel)
• call to have maintenance person come look at A/C as is making strange knocking sound. Also have maintenance person fix drip in kitchen sink.
  
• Make packing list for big trip.
• Clean out car and get car washed.
  

Ok, that doesn't sound like that much when written out - clearly can accomplish all of this in one week's time, right? RIGHT?

There are other factors that are making me wig out a bit, but let's just say that those factors are probably totally outside of my control so I should just focus on the list and let those other things take care of themselves. Because there's nothing I can do about those things. And to think about them just makes me a fool. I know this. Lather, rinse, repeat, as necessary.

Stately, Plump, Buck Mulligan Was a No-Show

Though I did spend my Bloomsday lazing about the house, and dude, I was here at 4PM, and nothing, nada, zilch. May need to change my traditional Bloomsday celebration to include going to a beach with a fireworks display and trying to pick up pervy dudes that I see on the beach. Barring that, I may need to give a talk at a library in which I offer insane theories about Shakespeare. Or go to a funeral. Or a whorehouse. Clearly, however, the lazing about the house business does not produce the desired result. This is my report on this, Bloomsday 2007.

Poetry Friday - Marge Piercy

"Noon of the Sunbather"

The sun struts over the asphalt world
arching his gaudy plumes till the streets smoke
and the city sweats oil under his metal feet.
A woman nude on a rooftop lifts her arms:

"Men have swarmed like ants over my thighs,
held their Sunday picnics of gripe and crumb,
the twitch and nip of all their gristle traffic.
When will my brain pitch like a burning tower?
Lion, come down! explode the city of my bones."

The god stands on the steel blue arch and listens.
The he strides the hills of igniting air,
straight to the roof he hastens, wings outspread.
In his first breath she blackens and curls like paper.
The limp winds of noon disperse her ashes.

But the ashes dance. Each ashfleck leaps at the sun.

Reading Break

Well, the reading, it zooms. And I get the reason why the first third needed to kick my ass the way it did, and I'm feeling the pleasure that I've not felt in a really long time of slogging through a book that I *must* read and that challenges me in ways that little I tend to read now does.

That might sound odd, but since finishing with the PhD - really, with comps, if I'm honest - I don't do this kind of reading very often. And I am rusty. Why don't I do this kind of reading? Well, the fact of the matter is that when one teaches undergraduates, one does not tend to choose this sort of book to assign to them, because they will not slog through that horrifying first hundred pages or so. This book is long, and it is weird, and it is hard. And it's not long and weird and hard in the way of more canonical texts, so one can't really use the spinach justification for it. Or if one does assign this sort of book, one assigns those that one herself was taught (thus, the spinach justification). And, if one is me, one thinks of her courses as her own private book clubs where she chooses all of the readings, and so one tends to assign books that she enjoys, at least most of the time, and this book, while it is affording me immense pleasure now, is not really a book that I'm "enjoying" in the way that I tend to enjoy most of the books that I teach. And when I read for pleasure, I read garbage. And when I read for work, well, it's rare that I encounter something that kicks my ass like this book has.

It's funny: one of the things that I have long felt that I got out of grad school is the ability to read anything. No text seems utterly impossible to me now. I mean, there are those books that I own but have never read or finished reading because I'm not motivated, but it's not because I think that I cannot read them on my own. But it's easy to forget that some texts are more possible than others, that some texts still have the power to really fuck with me. And as much as I've struggled with having that experience with this particular novel, I think it's a good experience to struggle through at this particular time for me. I'm trying to think through some complicated shit, and sometimes in order for me to think through things that are complicated, I need to accept the challenge of something that itself is complicated but that, ultimately, will have the power to illuminate the complicated things I'm trying to think through. Does that make sense? I felt that way when I struggled through Kant's Critique of Judgment. I felt that way when I struggled through To the Lighthouse when I was 18 years old. I felt that way when I struggled through Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge. But it's been a long time since I've felt this particular sensation - the sensation of trying to connect dots and to make sense of things that are just beyond my natural grasp. And it's easy, when one is not a student, not to set those challenges for oneself. Not that one doesn't set goals for oneself, but generally I've managed my intellectual life since the dissertation through the setting of attainable goals - goals that stretch me but not too far. That's pragmatic, and that's a good way to think about goal-setting. But it doesn't allow for the same kind of pleasure in totally unexpected discovery that reading this novel has given me. Is giving me.

So I'm kind of intellectually exhausted, but it's a good exhaustion, not unlike the kind of exhaustion that one feels after a really intense physical workout. So. On to read about 60 more pages, so I reach my goal for the day, and then I think I may need to read some Judith Krantz or something to bring myself down. (Told you I read crap :) )

Note: I know it's irritating that I'm not saying which book I'm reading. It's just it would totally identify who I am, and so I'm being willfully vague. Also, I know it's annoying that I'm doing all of these pretty content-free posts today, but it's helping me to process the reading and to take necessary breaks to let my brain chill, and none of my Inner Circle of Phone-Talking People has read this book, and so I feel bad blabbing on and on to those people about it - also have avoided the phone today because am trying to meet the pre-arranged reading goal, and it is impossible to read and to talk on the phone at the same time (tragically). But so I apologize for being irritating and annoying. But you know what? When I'm done I may need to do a post about how I always feel irritating and annoying when I'm in the zone with research and how I feel the constant need to apologize for such, which I ultimately suspect is more irritating and annoying than me talking about my work. What's the deal with me thinking that using my brain makes me an irritating and annoying person? I don't think others are irritating and annoying when they are focused on their work, so why do I think that about myself? Yes, that's something to ponder.

STILL Impatient, But Now At Least Have Reason for Impatience

Well, I think that The Book was doing it to me. On purpose. You know, as in, this is a book about how fucked up people are/the world is in late capitalism, and so I (the book? the author?) have to make you fucked up and impatient and grasping and unable to do anything but scurry around without clear purpose only to BLOW YOUR MIND when it all starts coming together about a full third of the way through.

So one might wonder why I gravitate toward books that make me feel the deep sense of impatience and despair, as I always have done, but I do think that it has something to do with the intense pleasure that then comes when it all clicks into place. That said, there's clearly a sado-masochistic streak at work here. I mean, seriously: there are people who work on things that they just love. Why don't I - and why have I refused to - work on things that I love without this deep ambivalence? Why does that thought disturb me, whereas slogging through things that make me crazy make me feel like I'm doing something worthwhile? And why can't I realize that it's the books that do this to me, and so I let the impatience and despair seep over into other parts of my life, making mountains out of molehills, etc.? I've been doing this for over 10 years, so you'd think I'd be able to distinguish between the impatience and despair produced by narrative and actual impatience and despair. But no. Not me. It all gets blurry around the edges with me. I suppose, though, that the benefit is that when I get past the impatience and despair part that the woohoo! feeling also seeps over, so there is some compensation.

Ok, so back to reading. It's still dense, it's still tough going, but now, well, any impatience I'm feeling is registering more as excitement.

Still Impatient, But Also Somehow Productive, But Also Kind of Enraged That I Must Do Work

I have channeled my impatience into productivity, it seems. I met with my insurance agent to make sure my coverages were in line with what they should be, I got some reading done, I spent some quality time at the pool (and am considering going back to the pool, as it is HOT AS BALLS and I can't imagine doing anything but lying around and swimming when it's too hot to lie around), and I had a decent lunch. Yes, all in all, a pretty good day considering how cranky the whole enterprise started off. The problem is that all I want to do is to be on vacation. I don't want to have to do work - even if "work" in this case is reading what is really a very interesting novel. I want to read magazines and hang out and have fun. Is that so wrong? I keep trying to remind myself that I will have complete freedom to do just that as soon as it's July, but somehow this is not making me feel any better. I suppose I'm having a slight problem with delayed gratification right now. I mean, Jesus! It is SUMMERTIME! Wasn't this what I was waiting for all academic year long as I slogged along? Isn't now supposed to be the Time of Gratification? Not the Time of Postponed Gratification? The whole thing makes me feel like one never just gets to have the gratification but is always waiting around for when it will come only it never comes because instead one always has some novel to read or some article to revise or some book to write or some conference paper to deliver. This is not my idea of a good system. No, it is not. I want to be lazy, dammit! Lazy!

Ok, rant over. I'm going to go do work now, even though by "do work" what I probably mean is "take a nap."

On Lacking Patience

Do you ever have those days where you wake up with a bee in your bonnet and you decide that you're instantly impatient with everything and everyone, that you're suddenly stressed out by things that you've not even been thinking about the day before, and that it's high time for you to figure out EVERYTHING in your life, even though to do so is impossible because many parts of your life are not solely within your control? Yeah, that's how I woke up today. So, I decided to send an email in which I was both a nag and an insecure freak, to wander around the house whining and moping to myself, to email another friend, and now to write this post. And my cat is yowling for no apparent reason, and I am impatient with him as well. So there. I'm thinking I probably have to channel this impatience into something positive, like work, but the thought of that makes me want to punch somebody. I hate channeling non-work energies into work. Hate. It.

It's On

Ok, just got off the phone with my friend J. Big plans are in the works, my friends, big plans.

Now, in case you don't have my summer plans in the forefront of your minds, let me remind you that I will be in the UK for two weeks in July. The thing is, the Man-Kitty stays with my parents when I go on major trips, and so I'm flying out of Hometown, which means that this will be a combo sort of a deal, in which I fly out of Hometown, do my World Traveling, and then return to Hometown where I will remain for about a week in order to visit with family/friends. Now, A. is in Hometown, as is J. My mother has already claimed the Friday and Monday of my Hometown visit for herself, but the weekend is (somewhat) free for some shenanigans.

And shenanigans there will be, my friends, shenanigans there will be. J. and I discussed it all tonight, and a plan is in motion that will have us rocking it old school like we did during the summer when we first became friends. First, we will spend the day at the beach. (And J., the Tannest Woman Alive, already has a contingency plan in place in case the weather does not cooperate. Her answer? "Well of course we'll go tanning! and maybe to the mall or something!") Then, we will go beautify ourselves, and we will go out that night. Our other friend H. will be out of town, so we won't have anyone to keep us in check. (We refer to H. as "Grandma" generally.) And when J. and I get together? Yeah.... it promises to be one wild day/night. And A. will be there, and probably Vision Board Sister, I suspect. And maybe we'll make A.'s Accidental Husband be our chauffeur for the evening! Woohoo! Love the Hometown friends!

Of course, I'll need to rest up sufficiently after my trip in order to rock it out that night, as remember: I'll be spending the final 10 days of the UK trip touring around with G., and that will involve (if past travels with G. are any indication) a good deal of drinking and craziness, too, in addition to the sight-seeing and walking, etc. And what am I going to take to wear on my trip? Must start thinking about my packing list!

And then, when that is done (you'll notice I'm not mentioning that I also need to write a conference paper before I do any of this traveling, but that's because I'm not facing that right now) I come back to MOUNTAINS of work, but also potentially a visit from Mountain Man (if he gets his shit together to just buy the ticket, which is annoying, as I'm clearly all about the planning of social engagements months in advance right now, even though I should be nicer because remember how long it took me to buy my ticket to London? Yeah that took like a month before I finally bit the bullet and did that, so even while I actually get it, I'm all "do as I say and not as I do" right now).

But so yeah, the conversation with J. tonight really lit a fire under my ass and has gotten me quite excited about the month of July, which I've not really allowed myself to be until now as I've been trying to focus on the work that I need to do in order to make July happen. But screw that! Maybe what I need is the motivation of all of this fun in order to accomplish things! Maybe this whole, "I'm going to be all responsible and thoughtful about work" business is totally not the way of Crazy! Indeed, perhaps the only way for me to actually do the work is to think about the pot of Crazy at the end of the rainbow!

Happy Wednesday! Hurrah!

Well. So first of all, last night I went to bed at a reasonable time. And then I slept for an age, and had some wicked cool dreams, and then I looked at my comments to last night's maddened post and the song that I'm obsessed with was revealed to me! Hurrah!

And so now I need to take this feeling of overall well-being and energy and translate it into a productive day! Which I will do! As I am feeling quite... chipper!

So, on today's agenda:

1) I need to go into the office briefly.
2) I need to read (which I'm feeling too chipper to do, honestly, but I know I need to do it).
3) I've got dinner plans with BFF. But maybe I'll try to turn those into lunch plans? We'll see.
4) It's sunny and glorious outside - perhaps I should go for a walk? If not that, perhaps I should force myself into the gym? But it's so gorgeous outside....
5) The pool? I do love the pool....
6) It's the Macy's one-day sale today... am thinking I want to shop, even though I don't know what I want to shop for.... Perhaps I need more jeans? (This is a ridiculous thing to think I need, I should note, as I really have a lot of jeans).

But so yes, that's what's on the agenda for the day.

Little-Known fact about Crazy: I can't really whistle. I COULD whistle quite fabulously before I lost my two front teeth - my grandfather taught me - but then he died, and I lost my two front teeth, and then now I'm the sort of person who can only produce one sad little tone when I try to whistle.

And now, because it's been a while, I'm thinking that you all need to see my Glorious Man-Kitty. Isn't he the most darling kitty-cat ever? With his little paws and his glorious tail? And the sweet little expression on his face?

In Which I Realize I'm Approximately 12 Years Old

Except for that the 12-year-old me didn't have the technology that I currently have, and so the 12-year-old me would have made different choices than the ones that I have made in this matter, and those choices, while time-consuming, would have been more sensible, more enjoyable, and perhaps even less time-consuming than the choices that I have made in this matter.

So. The deal is this. I heard this song that I thought was totally awesome on the radio like a week and a half ago. And then I heard it again yesterday. And it's, as I mentioned, totally awesome. But the radio, it did not tell me on either occasion the name of the song or the musicians that have created this masterpiece.

And, since I only heard it one-and-a-half times, I don't really know how it goes. I know that it includes vocals by a man and a woman. I know that there is some sort of totally catchy line about "something something me and you...." that is repeated over and over again. But this, apparently, as well as some meticulous research into the "modern rock" charts, has not gotten me any closer to my goal, which is to discover what the fuck this song is.

So, my dear readers, perhaps the above rings some kind of a bell for you? Perhaps you know what I'm talking even though it is totally vague and stupid?

In the meantime, I have decided to kick it old school and to listen to this radio station where I heard the melodious song played until I hear the melodious song again. I don't believe I've listened to my radio in my home - other than to NPR in the morning when I get ready sometimes - since approximately 1998. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

If this doesn't work, I may need to call up the radio station. But I feel like that is the nuclear option, as I am 32 years old and not 12 years old, and it just seems wrong to call up the radio station with this query. Also, I'm not certain that this radio station actually has DJs. I mean, there's a reason why I never know what stupid song they're playing - it's because they never talk in between songs. Maddening! This is a maddening difficulty in which I find myself!

A Typical Tuesday in Summer

So. I did go back to sleep this morning after I posted, and I woke up rejuvenated. So then I decided that I would go to the pool, but that I would take the book I *must* finish this week so that I'd be working even though I was at the pool. But then I also took this week's Star Magazine with me, and so you can guess how much "work" I got done. And so then I came inside, and I talked to BFF on the phone and we made dinner plans as well as plans for later in the week, and then I called Mountain Man back, because he'd called me while I was out frolicking in the sunshine, and now I'm writing this blogpost and contemplating whether I should just suck it up and take a nap before embarking on reading or whether I should try reading and fall asleep "by accident."

So yep, that's what's going on with me.

Before I sign off, though, I would like to respond to a couple of queries that readers have left in comments.

First off, Kyri asks:

"Dr. Crazy, I am considering a PHd in Clinical Psych. I have a BA, an MPA and will be completing a JD in December 07. I honestly thought law school was it. I thought it would provide me the requisites tools to contribute to the "fixing" of society. However LS has left me with more questions than answers. I have never been intimidated by an academic pursuit, but the psych PhD makes me nervous. Some of the anxiety stems from the dismal acceptance rates. The other 85% is the by product of my own ignorance. I'd appreciate any advice. I have a few questions:
1. How do I deal with relatives who believe the BA was plenty;
2. How difficult is the Phd? In your opinion, is the JD comparable or a walk in the park?
Thanks"

Here are my initial thoughts, but remember, I'm not a Psych person, so readers who know more about the specifics of that discipline would be welcome to chime in to answer this question. But so anyway, what does Dr. Crazy think? First of all, I think that grad school doesn't necessarily leave a person with more answers than anything else - it only provides ways of thinking about things that you wouldn't otherwise have. I know that I thought it would give me answers, and I was disappointed in that. But so 1) how do you deal with the relatives? Well, I think part of it is that you just have to accept that some don't - and won't - get it. Be prepared to explain why you've chosen what you have over and over again (it helps to have a short 2-sentence sort of answer prepared, esp. as you will need to repeat it over and over again), and be prepared to change the subject to topics about which you're less sensitive. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter whether everybody "gets" it - just that they respect that it's your decision. As for "how difficult is the PhD" well, again, it would be good if people who are in the field you're considering chime in to answer that. But here's what I think: The PhD is very difficult, but not... well, I didn't find it intellectually difficult or like it was too hard in terms of the work. Yes, it was challenging, but the intellectual challenges were good challenges. What made it difficult was the length of time and personal energy that one must commit to pursuing the PhD, the sense that one doesn't really know what one's doing or that one is thrown into the deep end without knowing how to swim, and, to extend the metaphor, that one is completely immersed in this world that is separate from the "real world." My sense, in comparing that experience with the experience of friends who got law degrees, is that getting the PhD was more consuming over a longer span of time, but maybe if there are people who've done both who can comment about that it would be a good thing? I may just be exaggerating the importance of my experience :)

Next, Sisyphus asked:

"Do you still have that course-release -advising thingy that you talked about at one point? Or are you teaching your full load?

Which is just a way of leading up to: dang! How do you keep track of all the different impending deadlines? Do you ever completely miss one?"

Well, as for the first question, I am no longer doing the thing I did last year for course releases, but I did get a course release for research for the fall. This means that I'll be teaching 3 courses, 3 different preps and one of those courses is a comp course. As for spring, I suspect I may need to do 4 courses, but I'm going to try to wangle some things with what I'm teaching and # of preps to make it more manageable. We'll see how that goes.

As for deadlines... well, I'm pretty good with juggling them and with meeting them (ish). I think I have my background in writing for my high school and college newspapers to thank for that. But remember: deadlines are negotiable. So I have been known to finesse deadlines that are less important when necessary. The thing to remember is that you can't focus on all of the deadlines simultaneously. I had a teacher once who said it was good to think about having a Wheel of Neglect, i.e., you have a big wheel that is not unlike the wheel at the end of the Price Is Right. All of the things you need to do get a slice on the wheel. And so you decide which is the most important, and you deal with it, neglecting other things on the wheel. When you've done that, you spin the wheel and move on to the next thing. So, for example, I made that big list of all of what will need to be accomplished in the next six months, but I'm not constantly thinking about all of those things. Instead, I spin the wheel and so all I'm thinking about right now is reading the novel that I need to read in order to write my conference paper. When that's done, I'll write the conference paper, and then I'll go on my trip. When I return, I'll see what has developed with the other deadlines, and I'll spin the wheel again. What most often gets neglected is stuff related to teaching, but that's in part because ultimately the teaching stuff has to get done, and so if I focus on it, then it can expand to fill up all of my time. By focusing on the research stuff, that means that I end up being more efficient about the teaching stuff. (This may just be an excuse for my tendency to procrastinate.) But so do I ever just blow a deadline completely? No. But have I asked for extensions or negotiated deadlines so that I can have a deadline that I will actually be able to meet. Yes.

Oof. Head Cloudy after Night of Wine Drinking

Everything gets a bit fuzzy after Naomi left last night. And now my head, oh, it hurts. Maybe will return back to bed. This might provide me with some clarity, I'm thinking.

I Am, I Am, I Am....

Superwoman?

Somebody recently said something about me being a superwoman, or thinking I was a superwoman, or something. It may have been Infatuation, actually. But so I've been thinking about that comment a bit today, and thinking a bit about how I've conducted my life over the past few years, and I don't know, I suppose I'm feeling the conference come-down and so I'm feeling ruminative.

But so I don't feel like I'm trying to be some sort of superwoman. I really, truly don't. Most of the time when I decide to do stuff, I don't think a whole lot about all of the other things on my plate. Case in point: when I was asked to do a review this weekend, I immediately thought Yes! Yes! Yes! And I did kind of consider my schedule, but I never really think, "Oh, I shall be a superwoman and be super productive." Rather, I think, "Ooh! I'd really like to do that! Can I fit it in? Why yes, of course I can!"

But I'm coming to realize that some people do think that I'm a superwoman of some kind, or that I'm trying to be one. Medusa has remarked that I have more energy than most people (which again, is not something I believe about myself, as I have other friends whom I think are more energetic and much less lazy than I am - you know, those friends who work out at 5 AM and who are always scheduled within an inch of their lives and who have palm pilots and things and who only call you up when they're in transit from one engagement to another). Grad School Prof at this year's MLA seemed to think I'd done this exceptional thing by doing any of what I've done in the job I'm in (and this would be GSP who TERRIFIED me in my first semester and whom I really didn't say more than hello to out of that terror after that first semester, and I was, quite honestly, shocked by his praise, as really, I just thought I was doing what I was supposed to do). But so is Crazy a "superwoman?"

Well, as in the REM song, I really do think I can do anything. I also think I know what's happening. BUT, that's not my point, if you get what I'm saying. I've never been consciously trying to write my way out of my current job, nor do I take stuff on out of... I don't know... out of anything other than interest. I'm ambitious, and I am careerist to some extent, but I don't do what I don't really want to do. The problem is, I want to do a lot and so I do do a lot, which I suppose isn't really a "problem" except for that it means I over-commit myself.

But so I'm thinking about all this because I'm thinking about what lies ahead in the next six months. Here's what's going on:

1. In the next two weeks, I've got to read a novel and write a conference paper.
2. Then I go to England, give the papers, and then I go off traveling with G. (which will be, I think, an actual vacation, now that I think about it, and I don't think I've had an actual vacation since I went to Hilton Head with friends after my first semester in college. Yes, this is a "visiting a friend" thing, but as we're traveling around, I don't think that counts as just a visiting thing, but rather as a vacation thing.)
3. I return home, and I then will have to deal with the book manuscript.
4. I will also have to deal with syllabi for the fall (though, my procrastination of last week by working means that I will have less of that to do than I might have done. See? Procrastinating with other work! It is the way of the superwoman!)
5. I have revisions do for a collection essay September 1, and so that will need to be done simultaneously with working on the book/syllabi.
6. The review is due October 1, and so in the early weeks of September I need to read the book and then in the final weeks to write the review.
7. The other short essay is for Spring 2008, so I suspect the deadline for it will be in October or November. Luckily, it's a teaching thing, and so it need not be super-research-intensive.
8. Did I mention the book manuscript final deadline is in early December?
9. Oh, and the MLA paper. Yep, I'm writing one of those. Gotta do research for that prior to December, even if I don't write it until the book is delivered to the publisher.
10. And did I mention that I've got a new prep this semester? Oh yes, there is that, too. (Going to work on prepping/reading ahead during/after the trip abroad, but it will still be more work than a semester in which I didn't have a new prep.)
11. Oh, and I've got another new prep in the spring, and really, I've got to start working on that in the Fall, too, really, if only to figure out book orders.

So yeah, it's going to be a BUSY six months. Oh, and there is that Fake Boyfriend hanging around. Now, as he is Fake, he only becomes an issue if he becomes Real, really, which while not outside the realm of possibility, if we look at my past history (and his, to be honest), the likelihood is that he will not, in fact, become "a real boy." But if he did, in fact, become Real, this would complicate matters, as it would mean some necessary travel during the fall - or if not travel, hostessing. But as I've got an internal deadline set on the Fake Boyfriend business (Aug 31, in case you're wondering), this will not stretch out indefinitely. Probably should mention the deadline to FB, but there just hasn't been a good time to do so as yet. Dammit. FB called me up and interrupted my blogposting. You can feel free to chastise him in comments.

Random Bullets of the Grand Return Home!

Well, my faithful readers, I have returned to the Man-Kitty and to the Home of Crazy, and I am feeling both exhausted and totally energized. I'm so glad that I went to the conference this weekend! Hurray! But, so here are some highlights:

• I saw my friend Anne (whom I've known for years but whom I also know from the blogosphere) and it was great to catch up with her. Aside: she thinks that I should write a novel that captures the essence and spirit of Dr. Crazy. Would people read such a novel? What are your thoughts?
• My paper went well (I thought) although I was a bit discouraged in the immediate aftermath because nobody asked me a question. But then, last night, I introduced myself to a Fancy Person and apparently the Fancy Person had been in the audience and she liked my paper! And said something specific about it and so clearly wasn't just being nice! (Although she was being nice, it should be noted.) But at any rate, yay! The positive response to the work! Hurray!
• It looks like I'll have two small publications emerge from the conference, one just a review, another that is teaching-related. I am a very productive scholar and I am seen as a person who has things to say! Yippee!
• I am feeling very focused on work, and I feel like the next six months will be very productive and important work-wise. I'm not sure where any of this will take me, and I'm not sure how I'll do all of what I've got on my plate, but I'm truly excited and I really needed this boost.
  
• I caught up with lots of acquaintances, including one of my cohort from grad school whom I was completely surprised to see, and had fabulous conversations and all in all a very intellectually stimulating and enjoyable time.
• I also met another person who knows me from the blogosphere, and she was fantastic! Love my blog and the way that it brings cool people into the Circle of Crazy! People are so interesting! They work on such interesting things! It is fabulous!

I do believe that's all I have to report for the time being. Now, the pool calls. I need to relax and to recharge in order to be the dynamo that I plan to be in the coming weeks! Next stop, the United Kingdom!

A Blast from Crazy's Past

Long before Crazy was a blogger, Crazy was a diarist (and still is). But what this means is that I have a "record" stretching back lo many years, and I can consult with it when the mood strikes me. Here's what I wrote upon having completed my first ever academic conference:

[Warning: the tone of this makes me want to DIE. I was in a very lame place voice-wise at this point in my intellectual development.]

"I can't express to you effectively what yesterday [the day I gave my first ever conference paper] or what this weekend has been -

I know I'm on the right path intellectually but I don't know how to reconcile it w/sex. I wonder if I'll ever actually get to have sex (again). I hate First Love. I never want to talk to him but I know I will. The knowledge of that lack of control is debilitating.

I think my greatest flaw is my ego. I'm so greatly flattered [sic] - even by a greeting - that I can't see what's true. I don't care what's true. I care only about the praise of me. God, that sounds pompous. [At least I knew I was pompous and ridiculous at the time.] Maybe all I'm looking for is mutual appreciation - to praise and be praised. Not that that is bad necessarily but shallow unless juxtaposed with something more meaningful. I am so tired and I do not look forward to driving for 11 hours. Tragedy. I'll sleep the first three while Mentor drives, wake up, drop her off at the Cracker Barrel, buy cigarettes & food, and go home. More upon my grand return to Home State."

The sad thing is that I think what I said about me and flattery remains true, and I still think that I'm just looking for somebody who flatters me and whom I will flatter. Pathetic. Also, don't you love the comment about First Love? Clearly, I was not dumb, as I knew I was stuck with him for all eternity. And also, the use of the words "grand return"! It is as if the me-then and the me-now are in total sympathy (even if the me-then was a total douchebag).

I also had this habit, at this point in my journal keeping, of copying insightful quotations into the front and back covers (I still do this a bit, but it's fallen off). Anyway, I shall leave you all with some things that I thought were really evocative when I was 21-22.

"Ultimately our differences were: I believed in true love, he believed in wives and mistresses; I believed in happy endings, he in cataclysmic ones; I thought I was in love with him, he was old and cynical enough to know I wasn't. I had merely been deluded into this belief by my other belief, the one in true love." - Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle.

"A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail." - Marge Piercy, from "For Strong Women"

"I am still dreaming of your face.
Hungry and hollow from all the things you took away.
I don't wanna be your good time.
I don't wanna be your fall-back crutch anymore."
- Everclear, "Santa Monica"

(I've got to say, I love the last one, as it is SO what a 21-22 year old would think is "deep" or "meaningful." It also gives one a sense of the relative time period of my musings in a way that the other quotes just don't.)

The Grand Return

So, the paper is done (all but for minor tweaking, which I always do immediately before, and a couple of read-throughs), I have decided upon outfits (and also overpacked with some other options), and now all there is to do is to straighten up the house and vacuum.

I am excited about this conference, and strangely nervous. I think part of it is that I've not been in so long because... well, how do I explain it.

This conference was my very first conference. And the author on whom it focuses was my first love, in terms of literature. My first real adult literary relationship. Now, I might have had crushes before that, books that I really liked, authors I enjoyed, but this author... yeah, this author marked my transition into adulthood, and then later, into academia. And when I fell for this author, I fell hard. And so the fact that my first ever conference was a conference focusing on this author, well, it was a pretty big deal to me. And it was a pretty heady experience, too, because I'd just finished my undergraduate degree, and so was still more an undergraduate than anything - wide-eyed and impressionable and clearly not the graduate student that I would become at later conferences. I followed my mentor around like a puppy, and all of the Eminent Scholars (or so I saw them at the time, and some of them actually are, I suppose, but really, anybody who was a professor someplace was an Eminent Scholar to me at that point) took me under their wings as this little enthusiastic fledgling. The grad students at that first conference looked at me with derision, and looking back, I really can't blame them. I somehow had access to the Important People that they didn't have, and I was too stupid to recognize how lucky I was to have that. I thought (because I was totally naive) that this was just how conferences worked.

But so then, well, after attending the conference for a few years, I began to feel like I needed to get out of dodge. Part of this was because I felt immense pressure to be a "This Author" scholar, and I resented that pressure. I also started to feel like the kind of work that I wanted to do wouldn't really be valued in the context of all of those Important People who had taken me under their wings. (I should note that this feeling probably had no foundation in, I don't know, reality, but it's how I felt. I think one might characterize it as the academic version of teen-aged rebellion.) And there was another problem: the turn that my work had taken meant that I wanted to work on authors who don't necessarily stand for the same things as "This Author."

[I realize that it's annoying that I'm not specifying the specific authors I'm discussing here. It wouldn't be hard for any of you to figure it out, but I really don't want this little meditation to be google-able with those names. I'll try to be as clear as possible as I continue, but forgive me if I sacrifice clarity at some points in order to maintain some non-google-able vagueness.]

But so what do I mean, they don't "stand for" the same things? Who says what a given author "stands for" anyway? Well, see, here's the thing about working in literary studies. Who a person chooses to work on, which authors one chooses to identify with or to be identified with, does, to some extent, define one. And so what often happens is that a bunch of people who work on one author also tend to work on a collection of other authors who "stand for" the same sorts of critical things.

So let's say, for the sake of argument, that one works on Ezra Pound. What connotations go along with Pound? Well, there's the whole fascism association, and he's seen as being anti-feminist, etc. So if you work on Pound, you might also work on Eliot, maybe Hemingway, and you're all about the "dick lit." Similarly, let's say you work on Joyce. That might indicate that you're an "Irish" person, and so you're also likely to work on Beckett and Seamus Heaney and John Banville, or it might indicate that you're interested in the proto-postmodernist stuff in Joyce, and so you're also interested in Pynchon. See what I'm saying? If you identify strongly with one camp, it means that you're going then to gravitate toward working on a certain and specific collection of other authors. And it also means that the scholars who fall into those categories get a certain reputation, and the conferences that they hold get a certain reputation, and so one might hear people say things like, "Oh, I'd never go to that conference! I've heard that it's terribly misogynist and not open and welcoming and collaborative in the way that This Author conference is!"

But see, I wanted to go to that conference at a certain point. I resented being locked out, even if that locking out was only in my own head. But once I did attend that conference, and all of the horror stories I'd heard were revealed to be ... well, grounded in a small little tiny bit of truth, but not ultimately true, I didn't know how to negotiate my love of that conference with any prior commitments I had to This Author. Complicating this problem further was the fact that I felt like what I was doing critically had more value in terms of that conference. Complicating this even further is that that conference is like the mother of all single-author conferences (and is featured in David Lodge's Small World) and happens in fabulous locations, and includes free drinks receptions in palaces and things, etc. So, I became a traitor. And I didn't go to This Author conference for years.

Some of that was logistical. But some of it was also that I didn't know whether I could be at home with the This Author people anymore, because the stuff that I'm doing with This Author goes against the grain in a lot of ways. Now, one thing that's helped in the past few years is that I've developed relationships with a couple of senior scholars who also bridge that gap between This Author and That Author. They haven't chosen, and so I don't feel like I have to choose, either. I've also been doing good (and well regarded) work on The Other Author, which has given me confidence that I didn't have as a graduate student, when I defected from This Author. And, slowly, I've been returning to the This Author fold. I had a publication last year in This Author journal, and I've reconnected with some This Author people at MLA.

So this Grand Return is more of an intellectual Grand Return for me. I doubt that anybody else really noted my absence, but for me, that absence was a really big intellectual deal. It signified my becoming my own scholar, and not the scholar that others wanted me to be, and it signified me divorcing myself from that fledgling undergraduate I was when I started on this path. That said, I never abandoned This Author. I just couldn't work on This Author in the context of the This Author scholars and do the kind of work on This Author that I wanted to do.

But so now, this brings me to the conference paper that I have written. I'm insecure about it. The paper itself really is a "grand return" - it focuses on a novel that was the first by This Author that I'd read and that was the focus of my first publication. After that publication, I'd abandoned this novel. Partly because I'd decided that I loved it too much to dissertate about. Partly because it was the part of my Grand Bid for Freedom, moving away from work on this particular novel. But so now, I'm working on it again. But what I have to say about it? Well, first of all I think that it may contradict what I said in that, my first publication. I also think that what I have to say about it has the potential to piss some people off. And, on top of all of that, what I have to say about it relates intimately to all of the work that I've been doing on The Other Author for the past 3 or 4 years, and so I'm afraid that if people think I'm full of shit that all that other work is full of shit, too.

But I really don't think I'm full of shit. I think I'm doing something that's really interesting. Something that is ultimately all part of the Next Book that's in my head (and that will remain in my head for a good long while, should I remain in this particular job, because jesus, one book is more than enough to be going on with if this is where I am and if this is where I remain). But slowly, through all of the work I've been doing in the past few years, I'm coming to a theory about something - a theory that is at one and the same time a theory of creativity that is rooted in the body but also that gets out of the binary opposition between masculine and feminine. And maybe I am full of shit, but if I'm not, then that is fucking interesting. So, that's what I've got to keep thinking about. How what I'm doing has the potential to be really fucking interesting. I've got to stop with the angst that others won't like it. I've got to stop feeling like an impostor and a traitor, because really, I am neither.

Why Is This Who I Am?

Because I'm the sort of person who, when she has real, legitimate things that she should be accomplishing, decides that rather than accomplishing those things, which MUST be done, she will instead spend the afternoon giving one of her syllabi for the fall a complete overhaul. It's like a sickness, this thing I do with procrastinating by doing unnecessary work, which also in the end makes more work for me later on as well because in the process of overhauling I always end up making changes that make work for myself.

I am also, however, doing laundry, which does mean I'm accomplishing something on my to-do list.

On Feeling Like Blogging When One Has Nothing of Substance to Say

Ok, so I'm in the mood to write a blog post. I am in this mood because a.) I feel chatty, b.) I don't feel like polishing my conference paper or like checking off any more to-do list items, c.) I don't feel like watching TV or a movie or something (especially as I just got back from seeing the BEST. MOVIE. EVER. - Knocked Up), d.) I don't feel like reading any books or magazines, e.) I would enjoy reading some blog posts, but my bloglines cue is woefully empty (because apparently other people don't feel like blogging as much as I do in the summertime).

I'm sick of writing about professional identity crap and the grad school stuff. I think I've said all I've got to say for a while on that. And I don't particularly want to moan about my to-do list, as I'm in too good of a mood for that.

So what's a girl to do? What do I want to write about?

I suppose I will do a post about random things that occur to me, and maybe some will be interesting.

1. Katherine Heigl
First of all, as I noted over at Medusa's blog, I am clearly beautiful because I used the ever-so-accurate celebrity face recognition technology and it said I resembled her (as well as many other beautiful people, like Kate Winslet, Heidi Klum, and Karolina Kurkova, to name just a few). Second, it occurred to me while watching Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up that her gift to the small and big screens is that she's this gorgeous creature and yet it is somehow believable that she will totally fall in love with dudes who are just average joes. And it makes sense, even though it totally doesn't make sense at all. How does that Katherine Heigl do it?

2. A. and I had a great conversation the other day about showering.
First off in the conversation was that I have this thing where I don't really believe in showering with other people. Not as a universal, but as I told her, it's on my list of things I'm "saving" for marriage. Call me crazy (and I know you all do :) ), but I think some things are special, and the coed showers are among those things. But then we were talking about showering alone, and it occurs to us that for those of us who tend most often to shower alone that we have absolutely FILTHY backs. Because you know nobody really washes her own back. Maybe the top of your shoulders, maybe the lower back, but the middle of your back? You know all you do is rinse it off. Even if your mom bought you a back-washing implement of some kind, you know it just is a decorative touch in your shower at least 360 days out of the year. But THEN here's the other thing: even if one chooses to shower with a buddy, probably one doesn't do that every day, and so even if you do that your back is probably not terribly clean. The only people who probably shower together ALL THE TIME are "lovahs" who use sensual massage oils regularly, and they have to shower together all the time in order to wash each others' backs because if they didn't they'd get terrible back acne from all of the cherries jubilee flavored gunk that they're rubbing all over each other. And we'd rather have filthy backs than be those sort of people.

3. You know, I say I suck at handling criticism, but actually that's not really true.
Or, rather, it is kind of true, but what I realized upon reading a reader's report on an essay of mine is that I've improved in this area, and so I have to thank my dissertation adviser for toughening me up on that score, as ultimately nothing has ever hurt my feelings more than his criticism. In the reader's report experiences I've had, I've totally been able to detach and to see the few good things in the midst of all of the "wow, you really fucked this up good and proper" that surrounds it. It's like when diss. adviser would write up his evaluations of my work (and he did write them up, just like reader's reports, referring to me as "lastname" throughout, which I think was the most horrible part of it because it was so cold and cruel feeling at the time) I initially only saw the bad stuff (which is why I cried like a baby when I got my comments on a seminar paper for which I received an A) but after he did this over and over again, and refused to say nice things about my dissertation except for when I broke down and said to him outright, "I need you to say something that's good about this, just this once," I became the sort of person who could see such seemingly brutal comments as helpful and as a demonstration that the person actually read what I fucking wrote. And so now, it's like I'm this whole new "I can take criticism" person, even though I'm not naturally that person because naturally I just want people to praise me constantly. And not only that but I'm now also the sort of person who can take that kind of "advice" and just run with it and I'm not in any way committed to my original vision once the reader gets a hold of it. This may seem like a bad thing, but I think it actually is the key to the whole publishing thing. Just have absolutely no commitment to your ideas! Just do what they say! Most of the time it makes for a cooler paper, it turns out. This has all been a total revelation to me. I should note that this terribly zen approach does not in any way translate into my personal life, and that if people criticize me in a personal context I become incredibly combative and quite difficult to handle. The word "tantrum" might be appropriate to describe my usual way of "handling" such situations. I blame the fact that I'm an only child. I also might be a little bit of a spoiled brat.

4. That Prince. He's really a musical genius.
You know how I know that this is true? Because even when people who aren't Prince sing songs that he has written, it is always awesome. I heard "Manic Monday" on the radio today, and wow, it's fabulous. And just think of all of the awesome covers of Prince's songs: "Nothing Compares 2 U" (Sinead O'Connor), "When You Were Mine" (Cyndi Lauper), "If I Was Your Girlfriend" (TLC), and, perhaps the most awesome of them all, the trio The Be Good Tanyas' blue-grass-y rendition of "When Doves Cry." I'm telling you: all those people who thought that Michael Jackson was the musical genius of the 80s were so totally wrong.

5. Dude. People. Don't bring your dirty-footed bare-foot clearly able-to-walk toddler to a yuppified place with restaurants and a movie theater and a bookstore in a stroller.
Children should have clean feet and they should wear socks and shoes (or sandals or whatever) in public. I'm not saying that you should go the route that my mother did throughout much of the 1970s and put your kid in socks and sandals, but that does not obscure the point that one should wash the feet of all children, and put children who know how to walk in shoes of some kind. Anywhere in public. Not just at the yuppified places, though it really does stand out there. Oh, and another thing. Don't let your 7 year old with those roller-skate tennis-shoes come to the same establishment shirtless and to skate along in the street where cars are. Just saying.

6. Woohoo! Good news!
Just found out I've got 20 mins. for my upcoming conference paper, not 15! Thank you, Goddess! The stars are aligning all in my favor! Hurrah! (This is such a boon, mainly, because I have this whole "I should have been an actress" thing where I actually slow down and get into the whole "reading of a paper" thing and I love the attention, so I really need the full 20 minutes for a paper that should only take 15 to read. I should note that I'm not a rude panelist, and I make every effort to keep to time, even if it means I have to write only 6 pages.)

7. I'm thinking Summer 2007 is going to be awesome, and perhaps even the reprise of The Summer of Love.
There's no real reason for this, other than that Naomi went on a date (when she's been totally out of the pool in recent months), A. has her Accidental Husband, who does continue to win Emotional Cave-dweller of the Day Awards, Disney Heather is in l-o-v-e LOVE.... And Crazy? Well, Crazy has a Crazy Fake Boyfriend kind of. And no, it's not a Not-Boyfriend, even though I do realize that the distinctions are fine. And no, I'm not going to go into this anymore on the blog, but let us just say that my life is like a bad made-for-tv-movie. In not-made-for-tv-movie news, a friend from grad school may have fertility-treatment-assisted babies by week's end! I'm telling you! Summer of love!

It's a Wonder What a Good List Can Do

So, I've been feeling a bit at loose ends with work stuff, and all of that came to a head yesterday with my minor meltdown PMS feeling of freakishness and doom. You know, the problem is that I can really handle things much more efficiently and with much less drama when I'm really busy - and part of that is because I then become very committed to scheduling myself. Part of my problem over the past couple of weeks is that I've been very unscheduled, and - much like little children who don't have regular nap and bedtimes - I get fussy when I don't have a routine. I also start feeling all angsty and inadequate and incompetent and stuff.

(Note: this was something I felt periodically during graduate school and felt most of all during the dissertation-writing phase of things when I had a fellowship and wasn't teaching; I had not yet learned that I had to be very regimented in order to actually be happily without a schedule that was imposed upon me.)

But so anyway, I've not been scheduling myself adequately since the semester ended. At first that was good because I needed some down time. But the end result is that I've been Ms. Cranky Pants much more than I'd like over the past week or so.

But so anyway, yesterday I committed to making a list of things to do, and can I just say that this list only ultimately took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to complete? Sure, it was a list of piddly odds and ends, but I had built them up in my head to be this colossal mountain of odds and ends that I could never complete. So I'm feeling much less cranky and fussy and well, lte's just say it, crazy today than I've been feeling. This is a good thing. And I'm beginning to get psyched about my upcoming conference, and I'm also psyched to hang with BFF this afternoon/evening. Speaking of which, I'm famished. I believe I shall call BFF and see what she thinks about hanging out right now.

Is it wrong that I love this?

So, I wrote to a friend today the following (though it was in the context of a longer email, I hope obviously, as I don't just generally come out with the insecure enunciations with no context):

" Am feeling incompetent, weird, disorganized, stressed out, and ridiculous all at the same time."

Here's the reply I received:

"but you're actually competent, weird, disorganized, stressed out, and quite nice.

all at the same time. "


While of course I did resist being called "quite nice," I've got to say, it's one of the favorite things somebody has said to me in a while. Although I feel like I'm not really all that disorganized either, just that I'm "creative" in my organization.

***

In other news, I made my big to-do list tonight for the next three days, and I also worked out this afternoon, and so I'm feeling much less freaked out and much less stressed out. We shall see whether this feeling of calm and tranquility carries over into tomorrow.

The Good Stuff

So, after the past couple of posts about the transition from undergrad to grad school, I feel like I should do a post that is more... positive. I also feel like I should note that I'm NOT saying that the way things are (however that is, and it does vary widely by institution and part of the country) is the way that things should always remain, and that I'm NOT saying that my experience with stuff will apply to every single person who attends grad school or who reads this blog. These posts originated out of the ways that I'm seeing my own student's experience replicating my experience. Part of that is because, like me, this student took no time off between undergrad and grad school. [Aside: one reason why students from institutions like my current one don't take time off is because they can't afford to go into repayment on loans or because they fear that family pressure will mean they'll never go back. Taking a "year off" is a luxury that only a certain type of student can afford, or that only a certain type of student thinks that they can afford.] Part of this is because, like me, this student made a major leap in terms of quality of program between undergrad and grad. So will the experience be different if one has made or makes different choices? Most likely. But I suppose that my impetus to write about my experience in the way that I do is because those were the things that I never heard when I was making my decisions about graduate school or when I was suffering through graduate school myself. And I feel like hearing those things would have made me feel better or at least would have helped me to understand my position in ways that were helpful to me. So am I trying to advocate for grad school being a harsh and horrifying place? No. Am I trying to dissuade people from pursuing graduate education? Well, no, except that the last thing the world needs is more unemployable PhDs, so I'm not encouraging people either. I'm just trying to talk about (and to think through) certain aspects of how one's identity as an academic is formed, and I'm trying to flesh out for myself how those things that have formed my academic identity have affected who I am now. That's it.

But was graduate school a "bad" experience for me? Hell no it wasn't! Was it hard? Sure. Was it emotionally draining and confusing and complicated? Yep. But it wasn't "bad." How can I say this?

• Graduate school gave me the tools to think and speak in ways that I never would have learned had I not attended.
• Graduate school was a luxury. I was able to read widely and deeply, to think long and hard, to focus on things that made me see the world in a new way.
  
• Some of my deepest and most lasting and most important friendships originated in grad school.
  
• Graduate school taught me that I am capable of original and insightful thought and that I am capable of meeting goals that were impossible for me to imagine at 17, when I had to work my ass off to explain to my mother that it was even possible for me to attend a 4-year university rather than "taking a few classes at community college" and living at home.
• Graduate school made my world bigger. It meant leaving my hometown, moving to two different and bigger cities, and making a new life for myself in each of those, without the safety net of family and people I knew for years.
• Graduate school taught me who my friends were and it taught me who I could count on in the life that I had before. People who couldn't hang with me becoming hyper-educated were quickly weeded out. That was a good thing.
• Graduate school meant that I had the option of becoming a college professor - without it, I would not have the life I have now, and I like the life I have now. I like having some control over my day-to-day schedule. I like having autonomy. I like teaching, but I also like that I get to have a life of the mind, too. I like that some of the hardest work I do can be accomplished in pajamas.
• Graduate school, and specifically my years in my PhD program, were not only times of study and stress but also times of Big Fun and Partying and Dating and Dancing and Craziness.
  

So if you need a positive spin from Dr. Crazy, there it is. It doesn't erase the other stuff I've written about recently, nor do I think it's particularly helpful to anybody, but I don't want to come off like some Debbie Downer who only sees only Doom and Gloom in this process or who is aggressively, at one and the same time, reinforcing the status quo about how grad students are treated and discouraging people's dreams or something. I'm not saying that my version of this experience, whether positive or negative, will be everybody's version. It's just Dr. Crazy's version. And the more versions we get, the better off we all are. I really do believe that.

Can't Thing of a Title to Express My Angst

Ok, so today has been... weird. Not bad, not at all, just weird.

1. I got an email from a reader who had figured out my identity (not tough to do, I know) and who wanted to alert me to a potential professional opportunity. A.) I love my readers! B.) I should totally just be out as Dr. Crazy because people really do respond to Dr. Crazy positively, but I have enough junior faculty paranoia still not to take that step. C.) Why is it that when I'm alerted to opportunities - not even actual things but just the possibility of something happening that might be good should I do some things - that I freak out?
   
2. I got readers' reports back on a collection essay that's been languishing away for a good long while. Much work to do to address the reports, but although I was very fearful about the criticisms before reading them, I actually felt pretty good once I did read them.
3. The combination of the above two things has actually made me into a crazy ball of stress, realizing all of what I need to accomplish between now and when I go away in July, and then all of what will be waiting for me to accomplish upon my return.
4. Oh, and I glanced at my evaluations from the spring. Not as bad as I'd feared they might be. But still, just looking at them somehow added to the stress, too.
5. Now it's time to go to the gym and sweat out some of this stress. And then I need to make one hell of a big list so that I actually do some of the things that are stressing me out.

Random Bullets of Monday Late-Morning

• First of all, Horace is trying to put together a compendium of posts related to grad school, so if you have one (or more) or if his call inspires you to write one, be sure to forward him the link.
• I'm busy trying to decide whether to go for a walk in my neighborhood or to go to the gym. Benefits of walk in neighborhood: time spent outside on gorgeous day that isn't too hot, workout will be easier. Benefits of gym: will actually do real and vigorous workout. Might I mention that I don't feel like working out at all?
• Have already decided that I will put off going into the office until either this afternoon or tomorrow morning. This may be unwise decision making, but that is who I am.
  
• I really need to do laundry. When will I be inspired to do that?
• I believe that is all for now. More after I've done something with my day.
  

Done-ish with that Conference Paper

It's true. Although I accomplished little today (other than being cranky with the PMS, paying bills (which also makes me cranky), eating chocolate, reading Star Magazine, watching the America's Next Top Model marathon, upsetting a friend with my crankiness, apologizing to friend for said crankiness, talking to another friend who did manage to make me a little less cranky for a second and a half...) I did also force myself to write all but the conclusion of the conference paper, and I've got a solid 7 pages, and I've made notes about the conclusion but have decided that I should let the thing sit overnight, print it out, edit what I've got, and then write the conclusion from there. That said, if I for some reason could do nothing but print the paper out and go to the conference, I could spend 1/2 hour right before making last-minute changes, give the thing, and feel like it was a totally acceptable paper. Which means, if you're me, that you have (basically) finished writing the stupid paper and that you are done(ish) and so now you can focus on other things.

What other things shall I focus on this evening? Well. It's funny you should ask. I believe I will focus on watching the MTV movie awards, giving myself a mani/pedi, and making my to-do list for tomorrow (which will also make me cranky, but whatever).

Sorry to be such a grump. I have this fantasy that someday I won't be a complete bitch 3 days before I get my period, but I think that is just a fantasy.

Getting a Late Start

Ok, so it's nearly 1 PM and I've done... yes, that would be absolutely nothing yet with my day. The problem is, I just want to be lazy. Is that so wrong? I mean, really. I know that the thing that I should do is to make a list and to then do the things on the list. What I'd rather do is not make a list and vaguely consider what maybe I should be doing and not do any of it. This is really not the way to take care of one's business. Maybe I'll go take a little nap and that will give me the energy that I currently appear to lack? (I should note that I just woke up from my first nap of the day, which I took from 10 AM to 12:25 PM.)

More on Becoming an Academic

I wanted to follow up to my post from yesterday morning in response to the conversation that's cropped up in comments and perhaps to clarify my position a bit.

But before I get on with the clarifying and the responding, let me just say that I'm really glad that people have found something that resonated for them in that post - or really in any of the posts that I do on this here blog. It's funny: I never thought when I started blogging that I'd be at it 3 years later, and I certainly didn't think that I'd have anything to say that people thought was insightful or even just worth reading. I don't edit much in this space, and I certainly don't draft posts and return to them later to polish them. And, as a friend of mine recently said of Dr. Crazy, "you're one long-winded bitch," and so I'm often amazed that people slog through some of what I write here. But so anyway, thanks for reading. And thanks for thinking about the stuff that I write. It really does mean a lot to me.

Ok, so now with that out of the way, let's get back to this whole becoming an academic thing. First of all, I want to clarify that I do not think that professors at grad institutions are maniacally plotting the destruction of grad students' identities. I think that perhaps it came across that way, and I really don't think that's true at all. I think that if this process is one of degrading and rebuilding that it's not because there's some diabolical master plan at work to fuck people up. I think that even though people do get fucked up as part of the process, that the process itself isn't designed to fuck people up. If that makes any sense.

See, here's the thing. How does one become the sort of person who decides that graduate education is for them? Well, by and large, a person has to have been the sort of person who was a good student. Now, being a good student includes many characteristics, some of which I will list: wanting to please one's instructors, being good at following directions, being good at understanding expectations and meeting them according to a recognizable set of rules. Now, the problem, as I see it, is that these characteristics aren't necessarily ones that serve graduate students well. At least in my PhD program, what instructors wanted was not for pleasing them to be at the top of my list of priorities, to follow precise directions, and to do my work in response to the recognizable set of rules. Rather, what they wanted of me was for me to stop being the good girl and to become a thinker. They wanted me to have my own ideas - not just ideas that would please them - and they wanted me to make a case for those ideas under my own steam. They wanted me to push myself. They didn't want the perfectly crafted, perfectly appropriate response to the material - they wanted originality and nuance, even if I missed the mark a little bit. Now, we say we want that of undergraduates, but the reality is that if an undergraduate follows all of the directions and does all of the work and maybe has an insight or two, that produces an A. Especially because there are a lot more bites at the grading apple, just being more than a little bit competent and being very organized and excited about school can get a good student far. Not so, in graduate school. Yes, you still need to be competent and organized and excited, but when your entire grade comes from one long paper and a presentation, the fact of the matter is, you need to be sort of brilliant, too. And when you've spent all your life hitting markers that have been clearly laid out in front of you, that demand is confusing. How can I brilliantly respond to the assignment "write a seminar paper about something in this course" when there is no assignment sheet? No prompt? When I don't know how to even think about how to go about proposing an idea of my own? I've always been a good student, so now I don't know who I am!

For me, this is the primary crisis that graduate education causes. And it's not a process of "hazing" at all - it's not really about "oh, only the great and the good and the lucky get to become part of this elite club" but rather it's about something more fundamental to what true scholarship is: it's about requiring people to move beyond being "good students" and toward being actual intellectual subjects. The problem is, nobody actually explains that this is what is happening. And when faculty suggest to students that they might think about graduate school, they fail to mention that being a "good student" will no longer get them where they want to go. In fact, they tell students that because they are such good students that they should go to graduate school. THIS is where the process of fucking up the professoriate begins.

And the fact of the matter is that even if every requirement was presented with a strong rationale, and every seminar gave explicit instructions to graduate students about the exact expectations for student performance, I'm not sure that it would help much to ease that transition from being an acolyte into being a master. Because, that, really, is what we're talking about. Moving from being the submissive to being the dominant. And graduate school is the liminal space between those two categories, and that is going to fuck with anybody's head.

The other thing that I wanted to talk about is more personal to me, I guess, though I suspect some of you will share this experience, too. I think the second major thing that made grad school such a breaking down of who I was before has to do with the fact that I did not attend an elite undergraduate institution and that I do not come from an educated family. Most of the people I went to high school with (a public high school, in a border suburb) did go to college, but they went to college for degrees that easily translated into jobs that took them right back to our hometown. Even those who sought further education tended to go to law school, and so they went right back to our hometown, they live five minutes from their parents, and everybody got married by 30. Some people got married and divorced and married again by 30. But the point here is that what graduate school meant in a very real way for me is that I can never go home again. That's not to say that I am not close with my family or that I don't maintain friendships with people from high school or college, but graduate school meant that my life was going to be very different from the life that I was expected to have. And so if my identity upon entering graduate school was effaced and replaced with something else, there really wasn't another option. In order to survive not as the smartest girl in the mediocre state university classroom but as the rough-around-the-edges-waiting-list-admit to very good PhD program at Fancy Research University, I needed to learn how to "pass" with all of the children of academics and doctors and lawyers and politicians, the best and the brightest, who were my peers. And in learning how to pass, I also had to bury parts of myself that didn't fit in with that crowd. Again, there was no way for me to avoid doing this. If I had resisted, the strain would have been too much and I would have had to drop out. In taking the path of least resistance, I had to become a completely different person, at least for a time.

Now, one of the great things about the job that I have is that it has allowed me to get things back that I had to bury during graduate school. Whereas my working class background was vaguely shameful in graduate school (parents who make politically incorrect jokes, a mother who says things like "it don't work" and "ain't" on a regular basis, extended family members on welfare, etc.), it's now an asset, because my students come from those kinds of backgrounds, too. And my colleagues really value me, too, in large part because of this hybrid identity that I now have. Yes, I'm an intellectual, but I'm no longer passing. Well, most of the time. Sometimes one still has to pass, like at MLA :) But this job helped me to figure out who I am again, and really, I'm not interested in losing that, which may mean that even if I make another run at the market that I won't be any more successful than I was this time around. Ultimately, having this job means that I don't need to be whoever "they" want me to be. And I think that's something I value about having gone through that process last year - I value learning that I'm not interested in leaving this job at all costs. Some prices are just too high to pay - and definitely too high to pay twice.

But that's the thing. In saying all of this I'm not advocating the way that graduate school tends to fuck up people's lives as a necessary evil, but I also don't know that there is any solution to that problem. I don't know that one can arrive at a formula for valuing people's personal lives in balance with the intellectual demands that the profession makes. I don't know that a person should leave the kind of intensive training that graduate school offers without being changed in some deep and crucial way.

The question then becomes, for me, how to negotiate the new identity that one attains through that education. Graduate school may strip a person down in ways that are painful, but one can't go on with one's life moaning about that forever. One can't even go on with one's life in graduate school if one can't get over that fact. So how does one get over it? Well, for me, it's meant coming to some kind of acceptance and reconciliation of these two halves of my life - the professor part and the "this is where I come from" part. It's meant trying to take the good from both, rather than being all about trying to reject the things about both that are stifling or bad or whatever. It's meant forging friendships with people who "get it" so that this new identity is not ultimately isolating but rather something that actually brings good things into my life. And, I suppose, it's meant working pretty hard to think about all this stuff so that I don't become one of those professors who tells my "good students" that they should really think about graduate school without trying to advise them about the seriousness of the decision, not only financially and intellectually, but also personally and emotionally.

So are academics fucked up? Yeah. Does part of that trace back to experiences in graduate school? Yeah. But it also has to do with having nearly complete autonomy over one's time, going through intense periods where there are too many people and too much face time and then intense periods of isolation when one is writing and one doesn't see enough people in order to be healthy and normal, having to move to Egypt-land for the elusive tenure-track job and so you only know people you work with, and any number of other things. These things fuck a person up. Are people from some backgrounds more fucked up than others by these things? Yes, I think they are. Are people who are single more fucked up by these things than people who are married and have kids? Yes, I think they are. But it all doesn't come down to graduate school, why the professoriate is fucked up. It comes down to a whole host of factors that have to do with choosing this life. Is it worth it? Again, I'm going to say that most of the time I think it is, because at the end of the day, I really believe that it's important to explore ideas and to open up new ways of seeing things and relating to the world and to spend time and energy really thinking about things that matter. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.

Update

• Conference paper? 1/2 done
  
• People I've spoken to on the phone at length in the past 24 hours? 5
• Emails written in the past 24 hours that have any meaning and importance? At least 3
• Wine? Yes.
• Conversations with mother about online person with whom Mother has some concerns? 1
• Number of times I've questioned my sanity related to above? 467
• Number of Linda Ronstadt songs I count among my favorites? 4
• Times I've thought the iPod Shuffle was psychic: 35
• How tan I am, on a scale of 1-10: 6
• How many days I've worked out this week: 3
• Number of people I wish would call me right this second: 1.
  

Remembrance of Things Past: Becoming an Academic

God, how pretentious I am to allude to Proust in a blog post title. But whatever, it came to mind, and it really does work as a headline for what I want to write about, even though what I want to write about has absolutely nothing to do with Proust.

But so anyway, the two... things (I know, awesome word choice) that inspire this post:

1. I have been back in touch with a former student who is finishing up her first year of an MA program. She's wigging. Like seriously wigging. You know the drill, oh people who've been through the first year of an MA program: What does it all mean? Why am I doing this to myself? Why did they accept me? How am I supposed to please these people? Who am I? (And for those of you in English) Why do people even study literature anyway? Poetry makes nothing happen! The whole fucked up drill. Clearly, they're doing their number on her - by the time she's done she should have a raging case of impostor syndrome (if she doesn't already) as well as to feel like somebody beat the shit out of her. I warned her, but those warnings, oh, they go unheeded. But so anyway, I've tried to give her some uplifting advice, and also to ease her fears about a seminar paper she's writing.

2. Inspiring thing #2 is that I'm hard at work on my own paper, a paper for a conference that happens every year but that I've not attended in 8 years. This conference was my first conference (when I was but a babe of 21), and this conference generated my first publication (thank you, undergraduate thesis adviser who edited that collection), and it was really my first entrance into the profession. And I went to this conference year after year, and then I bailed. Because I had to. Now I'm making my grand return (a return that will only be grand to me, but whatever). I should also proudly note that I've got a solid page and a half of said conference paper written, and pages of notes, so this bastard should be done in the next day or two.

[Aside: The Run DMC song "Tricky" just came on the iPod shuffle. Wow, is that an awesome song.]

But so anyway, both of the above have had me thinking a lot about this process of becoming an academic - my process, the process of my student - and about how one wakes up one day and suddenly those things that once seemed so HUGE - a seminar paper, a conference paper - now feel... small. How did I get to this point? Am I glad that I'm at this point?

I've long believed that the thing that graduate school does, really, is to break you down and to turn you into a completely different person. That this, and not what you read and not the ideas that you have, is the point. Sure, you pick up some skills along the way, but really, my experience was typified by the total abasement of who I thought I was in favor of this person, "the academic," that being admitted to graduate school meant I was supposed to become. Perhaps that's overstating it, but that's how it felt. I am not the same person that I was upon being admitted into my MA program. In large part, that's because if I would have stayed that person, I would not have survived.

As I watch my student progress through this process, I see how it is working on her, in ways both good and bad. When one thinks, "I'll go to graduate school," one really doesn't realize the physical, mental, and emotional toll that graduate school will take. One thinks of it as an extension of undergrad. Except that most undergraduate education is typified by a model for education that is about fostering the development of students, about bringing out the best qualities in them, showing students how to find those things within themselves that make them great and to hone those great things and to praise students for their accomplishments. It's a model of celebration, not a model of degradation. Graduate school? In my experience, well, graduate education is more about degradation. Graduate school was not about becoming the best me but about throwing all of that out the window and becoming somebody else. In fact, I was supposed to learn that Undergraduate Me was unsophisticated and reductive and a little bit stupid, and so really, I should be embarrassed to have been her. Undergraduate Me had to take a long walk off a short pier and Graduate Student Me had to replace her.

So the first thing you "learn" is that you suck. Or that maybe you had some raw material that was interesting, but that ultimately, the raw material on its own wouldn't get you very far. So then you "learn" to talk the talk. You have the same crappy ideas, but you learn how to use words like "deploy" and "bifurcate" and "performativity" and "liminality" and "always-already" and you throw some of those in for good measure, and they dress up your crappy ideas enough to get you through. But you still feel like you suck. But then you read more, and all of a sudden you're not dressing up your crappy ideas with those words but you're actually thinking in those words, and your ideas become more complex and you begin to become secure that you're not only talking the talk but also that you can walk the walk. And then you make fun of those dumb first-years who are SOOOO pedestrian. And you learn to talk yourself down in order to really make yourself look more productive and intimidatingly smart. And you only make jokes that include the wittiest of references, and yes, it's all very tedious, but that's how you survive.

And then, if you're me, you finish with this phase, and you begin to remember who "you" are again. And while you throw off some of that pretentious bullshit, you can't fully be the person you were before. You come into a new being, that is both you and not you - not you, and not-not you. (See what I mean about learning how to talk the talk?) And you wake up one day, and you're writing a conference paper for a conference that you first attended 11 years ago, when you were a lass of 21 and when you'd only just graduated from undergrad and had only just been accepted into an MA program. And you remember how that first time you were so NERVOUS and how you had no idea how to write a conference paper (or, in that case, to edit down some crap from your thesis into a conference paper), and you were afraid of all the Important People who might be in the audience and who might Rip You to Shreds? And then you realize who you are now, that you're a person who is no longer freaked out. The only angst you have comes from the fact that you have an idea that's too big for a 15 minute conference paper, and so you've got to write "tight" and that's irritating. And sure, Important People might come to see you speak, but you know those people now, and you know that they don't generally Rip People to Shreds. And even if they did, you were already Ripped to Shreds in graduate school, and so you know how to put the kibosh on that sort of thing either by making the haters feel small or by disarming them with charm and humor. And so really, writing a conference paper now isn't some Huge Mountain to climb but rather a vaguely interesting and also vaguely irritating chore.
And then you think about your former student, and the seminar paper she's writing, and you talk to your BFF about it and you both come up with about 4 different approaches that would have the potential to be totally interesting, all of which you're fairly certain that your former student won't take, but you also know that she's got to do it her way, that she's got to move through it to the point where, as a person who has become "an academic" she can sit laughing with her "academic" BFF that they would totally rock out an A on that seminar paper in a student's MA program if it were their assignment. Guffaw! Chuckle!

See, that's the thing. All these hoops you jump through - at the time they seem tiny and ringed in fire. And then, as you leap through them, and look back at them, those hoops seem wide and danger-free, like easy targets. But the problem is, when you're looking forward to those hoops, you can't see them from that future perfect vantage point. You don't realize that when you will have jumped through them, that jumping through the hoops, meeting those seemingly arbitrary goals, hitting those markers, will give you confidence. And after you do those things, you're no longer the bright-eyed undergraduate who thought, "Oh, I'd really like to go to graduate school. I really love books." And in some ways you miss being that bright-eyed undergraduate, but you can't get her back. You know too much.

And so what is my hope for my former student? I don't know. I hope that it doesn't change her in ways that do an irrevocable violence to her. I hope that she can come out feeling like she knows who she is, or like she's equipped to find out who she is again. I hope that she doesn't get beaten down to the point that she can't pick herself back up again. I hope that at some point she realizes that all of this is part of it, and that the feelings of insecurity or inadequacy that she feels are not because she is inadequate or because she is not up to the task but rather because that's what graduate school makes you feel. I hope she learns how to demand the help that she needs from the faculty in that department without feeling ashamed or embarrassed. I hope that she comes through it basically in one piece.

***
Addendum:
I wrote the bulk of this post last night, and I was interrupted by a friend who called up late - a friend who is also a professor, but who already has tenure - who's going through a bit of an existential crisis related to all of the "what's the point in being an academic?" "nothing matters anyway, so why even bother?" "why do I care about teaching people who don't want to learn?" etc. So the shit that goes with the decision to become an academic, it doesn't end. No, the choice to become an academic affects one for a good long while, in ways that can really fuck a person up. And as much as I feel like I'm pretty well adjusted given everything, I don't want to come off like I'm not all fucked up, too. Because I am. This career fucked up romantic relationships I had in my 20s and into my 30s. It means that I have friends scattered all over the country and the world and yet I have like only one real, true friend where I live, and really, a person needs friends and support where they live. It means that my family will never really understand what I do for a living and I will always feel guilty for living far away, for not having a husband and a kid (not that I'll never have those -hope springs eternal- but that I haven't figured that shit out already, like a "normal" person, at the wizened old age of 32), whatever. That's not to say it's all bad, but it is fucked up nonetheless.

But would I trade what I've chosen in order not to be fucked up in those ways? No, I wouldn't. And maybe that means that they really did a number on me, that I was naive enough to believe the lie. But what I'd like to believe is that it is ultimately worth something, to have become this person. And most of the time, I do.