Sixth Gear

 

For some reason, I feel like my life has shifted into sixth gear lately. I’ve spent two months doing almost nothing, and now, suddenly, I’m doing everything. Everything, I tell you.

I just:

submitted two book reviews for publication

found a conference outlet for my latest paper (which I’m co-authoring with a friend, so fun)

developed, wrote, and prepared to submit an abstract to aforementioned conference

found a publication outlet for a paper I’ve been holding on to for a few months

began expanding said paper to fit the publication requirements of above outlet

found a conference outlet for a paper I wrote back in May

developed enough(ish) knowledge of French to transfer all original text citations in May paper to French

collected supplies to create an amazing-beyond-amazing birthday gift for one of my best friends – though it may be a bit of a belated birthday gift at this point. (I apologize, friend.)

drafted a version of my personal statement for PhD applications

I’m not sure what kicked my mind into overdrive, but I’m kind of grateful for it. I like to feel productive, and simply typing out that list (let alone actually completing the tasks) is 900 times more productive than I’ve been all summer. I think it may be the fact that summer is drawing to a very quick close that has inspired my recent bout of accomplishments. Nothing like a fast-approaching deadline to get a chronic procrastinator going, right?

I also became a redhead again – a fiery redhead. It’s a bit crazy, but it’s a fun change. The vote is still out on whether it will last longterm, but for now, I kind of like it. I think.

 

Again and again.

Once again, I’ve let my bog lapse off into nothingness for almost a whole month. Summer is just crazy for me; I don’t know how to handle having nothing to do. Rather than making me more productive, it just puts me in a rut where I don’t want to do anything. I need structure and schedule in my life. I spent the last four years of my undergrad completing what should take a person about 8 to 10 years. I lived for structure, pressure, deadlines. Now, I just sit around. I read a little here and there and get myself addicted to a new TV show every week.

It sounds blissful, but really, it sucks.

So, today, I decided to break out of that rut. I revised and submitted a paper for publication. Wooohooo. Only 3 more to go. I also made plans to begin a weekly study session with a friend of mine in order to prepare for the GRE subject exam in the Fall. Sounds exciting, right? Well, it is to me.

PhD applications, here I come!

Sometimes it just doesn’t work out the way I want it to.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ve been a bit absent on here over the last few weeks. Before I dropped off the face of the earth, I had resolved to be more proactive about blogging – I promised myself I would write something (anything) every day. For a while, I was pretty good at following my resolution. Then, it happened. I skipped one day here, another there, and suddenly weeks had gone by and I’d barely posted anything. Now I’m sitting here feeling guilty about it again.

Sometimes I just feel a lot of pressure, pressure from all sides of my life, every aspect. Part of it comes from my choice to attend graduate school. Graduate school requires work. Work has deadlines, and deadlines create pressure. But, I really don’t think school pressure is my problem. I’ve felt school pressure since I entered kindergarten. I think it’s been more personal pressure that’s been bogging me down lately. What do I mean by personal pressure? I mean the pressure I put on myself for no reason, the anxiety I create because I don’t know how to feel secure in myself or my abilities, the need I have to constantly prove myself (again, for no real reason).

I’ve been wondering a lot lately if all this anxiety may come from the fact that I feel like so few people in my life understand what it is I have chosen to do. This life I’ve decided to lead is not normal, not really. Is it just a way of postponing the real world? Maybe. Is it a way to escape the job market? Perhaps. Is it something that requires all I have and more? Definitely. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just burning out, but then things like the conference I attended and presented a paper at this weekend confirm my desire to be here and remind me why I ever thought this was a good idea. Maybe all I need is to be surrounded by people as crazy as I am more often.

I’ve also been wondering if it may just be the town I live in that has me bogged down lately. I have very little ability to go places, to get out of my house and just enjoy small adventures. I have no car, and I don’t trust the bus system near me. It’s not always safe to walk around at night, and I feel trapped sometimes. Then, when I start to feel trapped, I start to imagine my life in different places, places I may want to move to while I pursue a PhD. And, immediately when those three little letters cross my mind, anxiety hits full force. I can’t help it. Perhaps, this anxiety is residual pain from my last experience with graduate school applications which, although it ended on a positive note, still haunts me. I know it’s silly, but sometimes it’s just hard to let go.

About a week ago, I was able to spend some time with my family. We drove all around the northeast and midwest, and I left school completely behind. It was wonderful, five little days of bliss, but it wasn’t reality. And, it certainly wasn’t sustainable. Sustainable. That’s an interesting word, and it brings up a lot of memories in my head. My ex-boyfriend used to talk about sustainability all the time. It drove me a little bit crazy because I believed anything was sustainable if I worked hard enough at it; if I wanted something to continue, I just made decisions that would enable it to continue. Maybe that’s naive. Maybe it’s optimistic. He used to tell me it was silly not to think of the sustainability principle, that to believe things would work out on their own was setting myself up for disappointment in a way. We never really agreed on this point, but lately I’ve been thinking about it more and more. I’ve been wondering if my path is sustainable, if I can keep doing what I’m doing, trusting in the world to help me along and believing I can make things happen for myself, and get where I want to be. Maybe I can. I used to believe I could, but what if I can’t?

What if I’m just incredibly good at feigning competence? What if I’m just a great actress? What if someone finds me out?

In the past, at times like this, I would run across the courtyard, drink some tea with my best friend, and feel better. Sadly, as much as I might want to, I can’t run to Florida in 5 minutes. I’ve had to learn to live without my support system, a support system I thought I’d never be able to leave behind. Saying goodbye to my supports was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and sometimes I feel like I’m constantly doing it over and over. I know that things can never be like they were, but sometimes I just wish they could. This past summer was one of the best times of my entire life. For several months, I simply felt happy, all the time, despite all the craziness going on around me. I felt like nothing could bring me down, like I could conquer anything with my support system at my side. Then, I began to lose them one by one. I moved. Relationships changed; others ended. I felt like my life was completely out of my control, and I’ve been fighting to regain that stability ever since.

In my class tonight, I heard a presentation about the destabilization of centers in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. At the time, I was merely intrigued by the interesting scholarly implications, but now that I think about it, I’ve been fighting my own battle to regain stability for a while now. Like Criseyde, when I felt overwhelmed I ran to where I felt safest only to find that even there I was not entirely safe, that even that seemingly stable structure could also collapse.

I guess I’ve just been feeling tired lately, tired of searching for happiness and not finding it where I thought it would be; tired of looking for security, and feeling abandoned again and again; and tired of wanting my life to be something it isn’t and may never be. It’s exhausting living like that, and I’ve decided I don’t want to do it anymore.

I want to post consistently again. I want to use this forum for what it’s always been – an outlet. I want to make the changes I’m scared to make and try the things that terrify me. I want to let go of feeling like I need validation and security from others.

I want to trust myself again.

Oh, dear. How time flies!

It has been a while since I’ve had time to breathe lately, and I apologize for my absence from the blogosphere. It’s hit that time in the semester when my days are spent at the campus coffee house, my nose buried in books, from sun up to sun down. For some reason this semester I am feeling like I have no motivation. I was talking to a few of my friends over the past few weeks about the fact that we all feel as though we’re stuck in MA-Limbo: done with undergrad, but not yet settled in a PhD program. I recently started working on my list of schools to apply to this summer, and it’s been a weird experience. I feel like I just got here and already, I’m planning out my next step and deciding where to move next. It’s hard to feel settled at all. If I thought last summer was bad, it’s nothing compared to now.

Now, I’m in limbo, but I have legitimate and intense work to complete. Now, I must work to get out limbo, not just wait. It’s not that I resent the work; I love it – really. It’s just hard to maintain my focus when all I want to do is start the next chapter of my life, the one where I will be settled for a few years once again. I miss feeling settled.

Oh, those application blues.

After a wonderfully helpful meeting with my advisor yesterday, I am back in the PhD application process full swing. Yay me. Read: sarcasm.

However, I am feeling so much more at peace with the whole process and the whole idea of PhD study now. Thank you, Dr. Weisl. You are awesome. I now have a strategic plan rather than horrendously overwhelming ratings lists, darts, and a map.  I’ve also decided to up my number of applications from 7 to 12, so I have a lot more room to play with middle of the road schools.

Also, with the help of Peterson’s wonderful search tool, I found out that one of my top choice universities has a relatively high acceptance rate. Hooray. A great program and an apparently great chance of successful admission. How wonderful.

Last year my attitude could be summed up by this:

This year, I feel so much better a la:

In a few words, I’m ready to get started all over again.

(Although, I wouldn’t turn down a chance to study at Hogwarts.)

So, you want a PhD in the Humanities?

I first saw this video around this time last year when I was beginning my graduate school applications. I literally laughed out loud several times while watching and for several minutes after it ended.

I’d almost forgotten about it until a friend and classmate of mine mentioned it before class on Wednesday.

Here it is. Enjoy.

#grad student problems

I have been working on a case study for one of my graduate classes for about two and a half months now. I’m working with Beowulf - yay medieval – however, despite my incredible interest in the depictions of women throughout the poem (especially Grendel’s mother), I continue to hit road block after road block. My original idea was so overdone that within an hour of beginning my research, I had to abandon it. From there, I read and read attempting to inspire an idea or original thought. Nothing.

Every time I feel the muse of literary studies has struck, I get this incredibly excited feeling and run back to the databases for some focused research – only to find that someone has beaten me to it and already published an article with my same thesis. Boo. So much for original thought. I’m sure the fact of Beowulf‘s immense popularity in English studies is no help for me right now, and I fear that I will read and read and read and never see anything that hasn’t already been seen. Is there a light at the end of this tunnel?

In some sense, I feel like this problem is a microcosm of the larger experience of PhD study. Doctoral students hunt and hunt and hunt to make a tiny contribution to the collection of human knowledge, a tiny bump at the edge of the collected work of billions who have gone before them. It can be discouraging (and I’m not even looking for a dissertation-worthy new idea, just a measly little conference paper idea). Scary. Yet, I suppose that part of the enjoyment comes from the frustration – the desire to leave my own mark (however tiny) in the field I’ve chosen to dedicate my life to. No one thinks exactly like I do, so eventually, my mind will notice something someone else hasn’t. Eventually it will happen, and my tiny bump will begin to form. I may not see it yet, but much like my attitude toward gaining admittance to a PhD program, I feel that life and fate will guide my thoughts. I believe that it will happen, that I can change the world, that I will find what I need to continue.

On that note, I’m back to the databases for some reading. Wish me luck and creative thoughts.

And then I woke up.

I’m a big believer in fate.

Those who know I come from a religious background might question this, but fate can take many forms. Does it matter if God, gods, or bundles of sticks are controlling things? Not really. I have my own beliefs in the behind-the-scenes of it all, but the essential and important part is that I believe in fate.

Not the kind of fate that means I have no free will or that my life is predetermined by my saved or reprobate soul (sorry Calvin) or the kind of fate that one can ruin by making the wrong choices throughout life (sorry ancient gods of yore). I just believe that life presents us with situations and events that we need. They could be as simple as getting stuck in a rain shower with no umbrella to remind us that we should be more organized or as complex as a relationship meant to change our lives and alter our perceptions of the world.

I believe that fate will take me where I need to be in life. This place may not be where I envisioned it to be, and the path may not be the one I planned out for myself. Yet, I know and truly believe that it will be what is right for me and right in my life.

It seems easy, right? Just believe in fate and all will be great. Well, no. Like I said, I don’t believe that fate will simply hand me everything I want. If I want my life to go a certain way, I need to work for it. If I do, fate will make sure that I get where I’m supposed to be.

Perhaps an example will help clarify some points:

When I was applying to colleges for my undergrad studies, I had my heart set on moving out of state. I knew that CUA was the place I needed to be. I could feel it, and I wanted it so badly. I made sure that I got myself into a position come high school graduation to make this dream a reality. As much as I knew CUA was the place I needed to be, I knew that UCF was the place I did not want to be, the place that would be a terrible life decision. I’m sure that many of you are laughing right now. See, I lost hours and hours of sleep trying to figure out why I couldn’t commit to CUA. Everything had worked out like I’d planned, but something was stopping me from sending in my deposit check. Then, I woke up one morning knowing that I needed to attend UCF, knowing without a doubt that I needed to be there. I sent in the deposit check that afternoon.

I joke around sometimes, saying that I was divinely inspired to choose UCF for my post-secondary education. It makes for a more exciting tale that way, but the truth is I have no idea why I suddenly changed my mind. Fate.

I suppose there’s no saying that I wouldn’t have found a best friend in Washington, DC or that I wouldn’t have succeeded in my classes. I’m sure I would have. I may even had to chance to study abroad and to fall in love with Medieval literature, maybe. I’m not sure what about my life at UCF was so fated for me to experience, but I know that I don’t regret it and that, for whatever reason, I was meant to be there. I am who I am today because of it.

This belief in fate was difficult to hold on to when applying to graduate schools. I watched dream school after dream school turn me down, say I wasn’t good enough, thanks but no thanks. I thought I’d run out of options, that my dreams would have to wait. Then, I realized that I had all the power in the world to make things happen the way I wanted them to and ended up at a school more perfect than I believed was possible.

I don’t know exactly why I’m here. Maybe to prove to myself that I can leave everything behind and start all over on my own, far from home. Maybe to meet someone who will change my life. Maybe simply to adopt the cutest little black kitten so that he will have someone to love him for the rest of his life. Maybe, like my time at UCF, I’ll never know.

It’s been difficult remaining firm in my faith in fate as I begin to prepare for another round of PhD applications. I’d wanted to be done with this whole process, but I’ve been trying, truly trying, to approach it from a better place this time. Maybe it won’t work out the way I want it to, but it will work out the way I need it to.

Magnetism.

I read an article today about gender theory, and while I understood almost nothing (thank you, by the way, literary theorists of yore, for always choosing a three-syllable word when a one-syllable word would suffice; you make my life so very much easier), I found one particular sentence rather interesting:

Knowledge, after all, is not itself power, although it is the magnetic field of power.

– Eve Sedgewick, “Axiomatic”

This line stuck out to me so much that I even copied onto the back cover of my notebook so I’d be able to come back to it later. I suppose later is now.

The simple idea of stripping knowledge-for-knowledge’s-sake of power seems rather simple, yet our society appears to hold the opposite view. Children are expected to attend college because it gives them knowledge which gets them a better job. People pursue higher degrees to accumulate more knowledge, and we bestow them with fancy titles like Master of Arts or Doctor of Philosophy. Knowledge seems to hold some sway, at least in the general population, but I find myself asking the same question Eve Sedgewick introduces in the line I quoted: is simply acquiring enough? Shouldn’t we go further, do something with that knowledge we’ve accumulated, change the world?

It is in our actions and in our exercising our knowledge for the betterment of others that we gain true power – in how our actions, and very lives, affect those around us. Although this train of thought takes me down a very different passage than I’m sure Sedgewick ever intended or thought her work would transport a reader, I feel my meditations are especially applicable to my current position in life.

Over the last few days, I’ve come to understand just how important friendship is. Friendship, like Sedgewick’s knowledge, is magnetic at times. What draws two people together from across a library table, a crowded coffee shop, a classroom, or a world? How do we manage to find friends who seem to know us better than we know ourselves? How would we ever survive without this powerful, magnetic, magical (to quote a dear friend of mine) bond with another person?

In the Middle Ages, people believed that everyone had invisible darts of light shooting from his eyes. They believed that when we found a person with whom a strong relationship was possible, our eye darts would connect with his. The idea of friendship (or love) at first sight seems especially well founded in this idea – this idea that assigns a supernatural power to human relationships, that takes human relationships to a magical level, a level beyond our control or understanding.

Friendship changes people; it changes worlds. I know that my friends bring out the best in me, for if they didn’t, I wouldn’t bother maintaining the relationship. I would not and could not be the person I am today without the influence of friendships both past and present, and I hope that others can say the same about me. It’s a scary thing, friendship. Trusting another person with a piece of yourself, asking that person to keep it safe, to keep you safe. But, in being a terrifying thing, it is also a beautiful thing, a magical thing. Like knowledge friendships can be accumulated and stored on shelves (or Facebook profiles), left to be admired for their quantity rather than quality. Yet, in doing so, we erase the very fabric of the relationship – change it at its core – for it is no longer a relationship, but a title.

Friendship is a powerful force, yet, like knowledge, it must be cultivated, worked for, maintained, and exercised. Friendships cannot exist in a vacuum. They are meant to change lives, to change worlds.

I count myself lucky to have friends across the nation, and even some across the world, for whom I am willing to cry, to whom I am willing give my time and trust, for whom I work and strive to be a better person. Friendship is work, yes, but in the end, when you’ve met the right people, those who are willing to give all same effort, that work becomes magic.

Let there be more magic in the world. Let it start with you and circle back to you.

This is a strange time frame I’m living in.

Over the past couple weeks, ever since that fateful speech by my adviser at Orientation, I’ve felt myself kick into overdrive. I feel like I’ve been rushing everything and running too far ahead of myself. I’m not new to this feeling, but I’m also not the best at understanding timing. Beginning something to let it sit unfinished when I know that I can finish it (especially if the deadline is far in the future) is nearly impossible for me. If I get going on something and there aren’t any major impending deadlines, I’m kind of unstoppable. It seems backwards, but the longer I have to complete something, the more gung-ho I am about actually getting it done, and getting it done quickly.

Enter: graduate school. A two-year Master’s program, followed by a 3-to-5-year PhD program. An adviser telling me to plan ahead now. And the fact that I have several months to finish up finalizing my applications. So what have I been doing? Researching, researching, researching. It’s become a problem, maybe, like a secret obsession. I tell myself it keeps me driven, and it does. Figuring out what I want next for my life helps me focus and understand that I’m working towards something bigger than what I have right here.

Then I struggle with the idea that I may be moving too fast. I’m not sure what I want yet, why rush it? I should slow down, let things play out, right? However last night, as I was filling out my new academic planner, I found a section in the back titled “Future Planning.” Perfect for me, right? It has all these little boxes for each month during the next year after my planner ends (aka – next September and on). I started filling it out and realized “Ask for letters of recommendation” fell under September, “GRE Subject Exam” went into November, “PhD applications due” landed in December, and “Graduation” filled in the box for May.

I suppose I could add “Move to _______” and “Begin PhD School” under August, but I just can’t bring myself to go that far quite yet.

Some might say “That’s still a long way off,” and I will understand, believe, and agree with them. But, I’m staring at the proof right in front of me – major things are coming sooner (maybe) than I think. Everyone says life moves faster the older one gets, and my own experience over the last month and half certainly proves that. I’ve already been in classes for a month! I feel like I just moved in yesterday. 26% (almost 27) of this semester is already gone. I’m already booking flights to head home for Thanksgiving.

When I look at all I have to do, it doesn’t seem likely that it will fit in the one little planner that I have, but those pages at the back remind me that it must. My next planner will be filled with deadlines; I have only this one to prepare. Laid out in front of me like that, I feel justified in my obsessive need to figure out what I want after Seton Hall, but I’m still not sure how to handle that fact. For now, I suppose I will stick to spending days in the library trying to power through my GRE Reading List and to looking up author biographies every time I read an interesting article about myth, or magic, or the Middle Ages.