Musings from the Depths: Week One
And thus begins my first week of graduate school--a clogged toilet and an exploded pen. Liquids and solids refuse to go into or come out of containers with any sort of regularity, including the food I'm not eating due to nervousness, the coffee and water I'm spilling on my shirt, and the general mayhem of packing my bag for class and teaching. I'm fumbling already.
All the nervousness is forgotten temporarily when I walk into my office. "Why is my desk breathing?" I ask my one of my many officemates. It's not some hallucination or a flashback stemming from some drug experimentation, my desk sounds like it's breathing, or there is a cd player behind the wall with cd endlessly cycling and reading error, or maybe the ghost of a graduate student trapped in the walls whose excessive smoking habit had them later placed on a respirator.
And there are many ghosts on campus with me. My friends, colleagues, and cohort who have all left to pursue whatever other goals they had planned, and oddly enough a ghost of myself. One more eager, energetic, open, and malleable than the woman here today. I find myself in class speaking with ghosts of Taiwan. I find myself unwilling to speak up and force my way into conversations with boisterous theater students debating the preoccupations of critics despite my ready and waiting contributions. Instead I sit and think about how my silence grows ever louder. Can I re-inhabit the ghost of myself, will I find that the new casing still holds many of the same skills? How do I incorporate these changes into my academic self? In the course of readings on the Apollonian (mind)/ Dionysian (body) split in the world of opera, I consider how the supposedly Apollonian experience of graduate school has felt more Dionysian. I feel hyper-aware of my body. It is is caffeine-fueled and exhausted, nervous, sweating, hot, cold. My stomach is, in turns, in knots, convulsing, releasing. I look forward to moving more towards the sun.
The first week is finished now and I turn to processing the distressing amounts of material laid before me. I feel rushed in conversations with friends and loved ones calling to check on me. How can twenty minutes seem at once so long and so short a time? I do feel hopeful that I will settle into the pace and begin to feel more at ease with my abilities. Until then...
All the nervousness is forgotten temporarily when I walk into my office. "Why is my desk breathing?" I ask my one of my many officemates. It's not some hallucination or a flashback stemming from some drug experimentation, my desk sounds like it's breathing, or there is a cd player behind the wall with cd endlessly cycling and reading error, or maybe the ghost of a graduate student trapped in the walls whose excessive smoking habit had them later placed on a respirator.
And there are many ghosts on campus with me. My friends, colleagues, and cohort who have all left to pursue whatever other goals they had planned, and oddly enough a ghost of myself. One more eager, energetic, open, and malleable than the woman here today. I find myself in class speaking with ghosts of Taiwan. I find myself unwilling to speak up and force my way into conversations with boisterous theater students debating the preoccupations of critics despite my ready and waiting contributions. Instead I sit and think about how my silence grows ever louder. Can I re-inhabit the ghost of myself, will I find that the new casing still holds many of the same skills? How do I incorporate these changes into my academic self? In the course of readings on the Apollonian (mind)/ Dionysian (body) split in the world of opera, I consider how the supposedly Apollonian experience of graduate school has felt more Dionysian. I feel hyper-aware of my body. It is is caffeine-fueled and exhausted, nervous, sweating, hot, cold. My stomach is, in turns, in knots, convulsing, releasing. I look forward to moving more towards the sun.
The first week is finished now and I turn to processing the distressing amounts of material laid before me. I feel rushed in conversations with friends and loved ones calling to check on me. How can twenty minutes seem at once so long and so short a time? I do feel hopeful that I will settle into the pace and begin to feel more at ease with my abilities. Until then...
posted by CJ at 8:07 AM
5 Comments:
Do you ever get the impression you are thinking too much? At least, thats what everyone tells me is my problem. Maybe you could just try not thinking for a bit. All those other morons seem to be riotously happy, right? Try it on for size; next time you hear a sexist joke on TV, have a good old laugh at it, it wont do anybody any harm.
Seriously tho, good luck, and remember not to take all of that grad school bullshit too seriously. The best times were always the silliest and most drunken. I think.
-eoin
obsessed about starting school again - yep, sounds like a typical PhD student to me :)
My unsolicited advice - you can't expect to go back to the student you were before. That was a couple of years ago - you've changed, even if you don't realize it. A PhD student has more at stake than an MA student (now academia has become a "career" of sorts -- and a 4yr+ commitment!) - but we often sacrifice fun in order to be a PhD student - agreed with Eoin - chillax and enjoy the ride
Hmm. You single handedly convinced me not to go on for my PhD.
Ok, that's a lie. But one that I can repeat to my mom, removing the blame from my own intellectual inability and laziness.
How about *telling* a sexist joke in class? That will really get the ball rolling.
And if all else fails, there is always a karaoke night out in order to break some ice.
I miss karaoke in BG.
-e
Sorry Cassie. But maybe it will break you away from some absolutely riveting reading--you've been "memed"--sorry don't know how to link it here, but check out my blog from September 6th.
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