Well hello, morning.

Today was the first day of the rest of the semester. I have this strategy that I follow every semester. During the first few weeks (basically as long as I can manage it), I let myself sleep in in the mornings. During the very first week, I don’t even set an alarm. SSShhhh, I know. I can’t believe it either. It’s my little secret. And, now, yours. Once I determine that my reading list has gotten out of control and that my productivity level needs a good shot of adrenaline, I start the daily library trek. That’s right, 8 AM, hello wonderfully vacant first floor reading room with the tables near outlets and the big, bright windows.

As we walked to campus this morning, I mentioned to my neighbor that it seemed colder than usual today. She questioned this statement, saying she didn’t notice any difference. As I wondered why I would notice it and not she, I realized that it’s the first time in a long time since I’ve walked to campus so early in the morning. First day of the rest of the semester, indeed.

Back at UCF, I could usually bribe one friend or another to join me during these library stints, but I haven’t found a dedicated library buddy here at Seton Hall. It makes me a little sad (not to mention a little terrified of my impending crazy cat lady doom) to spend my days alone in the library, but I know I’m doing this to achieve my goals and to get myself where I want to go. It’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make right now.

That being said, I may have finally decided on a shortlist for applications. It’s exciting and terrifying all at once. I may share in a few days, we’ll see. In the meantime, if you happen to hear of a university with a fantabulous Medieval lit program, let me know.

Survival.

After yet another night filled with anxiety about my chosen path in life, I spent today at the library trying to catch up on reading and to get my head back on straight. After about an hour sitting in a study carrel on the top floor of the library, I was freezing and decided to head outside to read. The sunshine helped me clear my head. What it did for my reading, well, that’s another story.

Later in the day, when I could no longer focus my eyes on the tiny black and white print of my page, I headed to the University Center for some lunch. I got my sandwich and walked outside to find a table. Seton Hall seems to be trying to make the most out of their air conditioning units because everywhere, I mean everywhere, on campus was freezing cold today. Anyway, I found a spot at a picnic table on the raised patio outside the University Center and sat down to enjoy my lunch.

Just as I was starting to relax and enjoy the beautiful day, I overheard a bit of the conversation going on at the table next to me. I looked over to find two kids, maybe first or second year students, dressed in what I can only call classic “teen rebel phase” clothes – ripped up jeans, heavy metal band t-shirts, chains, and dreads – yet it wasn’t so much their outfits that worried me as what I heard them saying.

The one guy was telling his girl friend (girlfriend or girl who is a friend, who knows) that he was so annoyed at being in school, that he saw no purpose, he didn’t care, classes were stupid and a waste of time, and that he could be doing much better things with his time (what those things might be, he did not say). The girl agreed and continued on to complain about the fact that her professor was angry at her for having turned in a paper late and that she couldn’t believe her class was being quizzed on reading assignments. “How juvenile is that?” she asked. “Of course we’re going to fail those.” The guy agreed, shook his head, and started collecting his things. The two left the patio smoking cigarettes and continuing their diatribe about higher education and professors.

As they walked away, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad. Here I was at an institute of higher learning, one prized for its dedication to the liberal arts, and students could not see the value of it. In fact they believed it to be a “waste of time.” I wanted to run after them and ask why they were here at all. They were definitely over 16 and had, presumably spent time and money submitting an application to attend this university. Seton Hall doesn’t just let people walk into classes off the streets. If you think it’s such a waste of time, why come?

Disheartened as I was, I then started to realize the hypocrisy of their situation even further. How could they sit there on those benches and eschew the very system of higher learning they so vehemently believed unimportant while supporting by their very status as students. Isn’t their agreeing to attend, to even deign (as I’m sure they see it) attend class, a willful participation in the very system they wish to undermine? I wanted to ask them all these things and to see if they had considered the fact that their very presence on this campus took that opportunity from someone else. Seton Hall does not have a 100% admittance rate.

I may sound bitter, and perhaps I’m putting too much blame and spite on these individuals, but I simply couldn’t believe the ideas coming from them. From their conversation, I could understand that they are here, receiving a college education, because they are supposed to, because it’s what one does after high school. In essence, they again are playing into the very societal system to which they so, apparently, object. Then I started to think about their professors. I bet that these two students completed (or are completing) English Composition. I bet that some of my classmates were (or are) their professors, some of my classmates who spend their nights grading, their weekends devising lesson plans, and their free time striving to make the material accessible and relevant to students. Had these two kids ever considered that?

Again, perhaps I’ve jumped on to a high horse or a soap box, but I look at the world in which we live today, in which English and Humanities professors, departments, and schools are faced with the task of justifying their existence, in which education has lost its place among valuable assets, and I can’t help but feel a little defeated. We live in a world where people largely feel entitled to receive what they have come to expect yet refuse to work for it. It’s painful, painful to see that by and by our universities are filled with students who admit they have not done the work asked of them, who complain that professors dare to expect greatness and original thought from them, who see the process of education as a burden to bear before they can move forward, who view learning as a waste of time they could be spending on “better things.” No wonder education has lost its standing in this world. No wonder the value of gaining knowledge for knowledge’s sake has lost all value. No wonder we are producing more and more people who cannot read or write. How can anyone expect our universities to survive in such a climate? How do we, as academics, survive in a world that calls us useless and devalues our contributions?

I fear that universities cannot survive the masses of students who view higher learning like the two sitting beside me. Then the scariest question arises: can our universities survive without them?

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.

Pressure makes diamonds.

Ever since I can remember, people have told me that “God won’t give me more than I can handle.” I appreciate the cliché, but sometimes I also wonder who God thinks I am. How does he look at my life and myself and say “Yeah, she can handle this”?

My first two weeks of graduate school have been somewhat of an emotional roller coaster. While I feel fulfilled and happy and excited and satisfied on the one hand, my other hand is shaking under the pressure and feeling a little overwhelmed and scared and anxious and nervous. Lately, I’ve been besieged by a multitude of feelings and emotions, feelings and emotions that I have had ample time to investigate over the past two weeks. Perhaps this level of introspection arises from the fact that I have yet to begin working.  I was hired, yes, but I’m still in the paperwork phase. At first I loved all of my free time. Now, I’m remembering why I killed myself with an impossible schedule in undergrad – free time leads to more hours of worry.

I’ve been settling in quite well here, but at the same time I feel as though I’m receiving so many messages that say “Don’t stop and get comfortable here,” “Don’t get too attached,” “Decide where you’re going next,” and “DO IT ALL RIGHT NOW”! The pressure has been building, and because I’ve had so much time to contemplate just how much pressure I’ve been feeling, I’m already beginning to crack. Is it not enough to deal solely with moving hundreds of miles away from my home, my family, my friends, and my boyfriend? Must I also tackle planning the rest of my life RIGHT NOW? According to my school’s advisers, yes, I must.  I must make plans and figure it all out immediately.

In my previous post, I talked about my tendency to plan and the fact that I’ve been struggling with my compulsive need to know the next five steps in my life. Today after a frantic and rather ranting discussion with my boyfriend, I understand that it’s okay to plan as long as I don’t lose my hold on the present. He tells me that I need to stop worrying about what comes next and just live. I agree, but I also know that I will always be a worrier. He says to look to my generally successful past to assure myself that I have carved the best possible path for myself. I agree, but I also know that I have a hard time trusting myself.

See the thing is, I’ve been feeling a little conflicted about my choice of specialization. In my Hurricane-Irene-make-up class on Friday, my professor asked each of us to introduce ourselves and to state why we are currently here pursuing a graduate degree in English. Simple enough. I listened to my classmates as they spoke and lost track of time as I delighted in what a diverse and interesting group we are. Before I knew it, the class was staring at me, and I had not planned my speech. I began talking saying what came to mind and found myself recalling my experiences at UCF‘s Writing Center: “I worked at UCF’s Writing Center for two years and fell in love with working with college students and their writing… Oh, and I love Medieval literature.”

When I finished speaking, I realized that for the fist time my interest in working with students’ writing came before my love for Medieval knights, ladies, castles, and magic. What? Haven’t I spent the last two and a half years killing myself to study Medieval lit and expended all of my efforts getting to Seton Hall to do just that? Aren’t I staring down the woman whose research influenced my outlook on the whole discipline and calling her my professor? Where did this interest in “college students and their writing” come from? I freaked myself so thoroughly that I’ve spent this entire weekend stressing over how to choose a PhD field of study.

After chatting with (aka venting all of my worries and troubles to) my boyfriend tonight, I feel better. He helped me see that, yes, I must choose a field for PhD study, but choosing a primary field does not mean I must abandon all other interests. I can study Medieval literature and work with students. I can become a medievalist (or a medievalismist, as my undergrad thesis adviser called me) and still teach composition and writing (perhaps even direct a Writing Center), and it will be that very second interest that makes me, well, interesting. I am a human and not a machine. My mind and interests and passions will inevitably be multifaceted, and I should not shrink from them – I should, in fact, embrace them all.

Once again I have come to the end of a post in a much more cheerful attitude than I began, but I also know that my worries are not entirely dissolved. They are there, still, beneath my confident facade and my nascent sense of trust in my own abilities. I leave you all with the same quote that my boyfriend shared with me:

The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!

–Randy Pausch

I know that I want this, this life in academia. I know that it is right for me. I know that I can do it and that I do not need to sacrifice any of my many interests in order to be successful. I will inevitably face disappointment and will definitely face setbacks along the way, but as my boyfriend pointed out, that has never stopped me before now.

So it is with a confident, but not cocky, voice that I say I trust God’s evaluation of my abilities and that I trust myself to make the right decisions. It is also with steady legs that I say, “Onward.”

 

What’s in a plan?

Last night I arrived at my Shakespeare class a few minutes early, and my professor began asking me about myself.  I told her all about UCF, its massive size, the English Department, living in Orlando, and my fear that the temperature in NJ has already dropped into the low 60s during the afternoons.  We eventually got onto the topic of my plans beyond Seton Hall.  I explained that I wanted to pursue a PhD and to become a college professor.  At this point the rest of my classmates began to arrive, and we ended our singular conversation.

As it happens, last night we did not participate in a “normal” class; rather, two directors of the Library came to discuss the many resources available to us as graduate students.  Because I’d already investigated these resources on my own, my mind began to wander.  I started to think about what Dr. Weisl said at our New Graduate Student Orientation: “You really need to start formulating a plan for your theses and plans after graduation.  Four semesters will be over before you realize it.  Don’t wait until the last minute to figure things out.”

This simple advice could possibly be one of the worst things I could have heard that day, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since.  I’m sure her advice was well intended and I’m sure that many of my classmates probably needed to hear it.  I, however, began planning my steps for post-SHU-graduation the day I decided to attend.  I’ve told you before I’m a planner.

Anyway, beset by a bout of nervousness and slight homesickness last night, I took to planning again.  Now I have a clear picture, something I can visualize in my head and work towards for the next two years. After tearing my plan from my notebook to pin above my desk as motivation, I began to wonder if perhaps I plan too much.  I felt uncomfortable.  Am I limiting myself with this plan?  Am I forcing myself into a box?  Am I setting myself up for failure, disappointment, problems?

I suppose I’ll never know the answers to those questions and for now I should probably stick to what I know – planning in comfort, planning to ease my nerves, planning for the future.  Let’s hope it all works out.