woeful
I’m a woeful blogger, but I’m still here, I’m still blogging (even though the blog has been idle over the last while), I’m spending the summer finishing a dissertation, prepping two classes, and hopefully traveling, and hopefully I’ll be a bigger presence on my own damn blog.
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jobs
I’ve done abysmally badly on the job market this year. Bad to the point where there’s a very good chance I might be working a non-academic, dead-end job next year (book store, coffee shop, the like) just to pay the bills.
To be clear, I didn’t apply to anything and everything I could have. I have a salary in mind that I won’t go below (the number’s different for jobs or postdocs). There are areas of the country I’m not willing to live in, my concern being less geographical and more refusing to live somewhere else that’s in the middle of nowhere. I won’t adjunct, except at an institution close to where I am now. I’m not going to move somewhere for a one-year (or one-semester) gig with a paltry salary and no benefits. And, since I’ve spent this year living in an area where I’m enjoying life a bit more than I did last year, I’m in no hurry to leave. Add to that the fact that I have moved every 2-11 months over the past 10 years (moving in and out of dorms, moving to and from another country twice), and it made my selection process pretty easy. Since leaving home at 18, I haven’t spent a full year in any single living situation (dorm room, apartment, etc). This peripatetic lifestyle has grown tedious, and among many other things, is a pretty significant factor in my perpetual singlehood.
All that said, I applied to a fair few things, and all I’ve gotten is a steady stream of rejections (actual and wiki). No conference or phone interviews, only one request for additional materials. It’s not that I’ve been rejected once folks have looked at my meager “additional materials” (although now they’re not so meager). It’s that I’m not standing out in any fashion. Being black isn’t helping…so much for affirmative action. And, to be an elitist for half a minute, I didn’t go to my graduate institution and work with the advisor who’s made my life so unpleasant not to make it to the “more materials” phase of the job search at more than one institution.
Given the emotionally cataclysmic events of last year, I’ve remained pretty calm about the whole thing. I’ve already seen my institution for what it is: an institution sitting on its laurels, convinced of its own inherent worth (as though students learn simply by breathing the air) while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing to establish even a baseline of graduate instruction. It’s an institution that prizes itself on its “generosity” to students, but yet nickels-and-dimes students and seeks out ways to claw back money from its students. (Yeah, it’s a sore point with me that I wrote the department a check for $1000 of my own money for reasons they fabricated.) All the while, the institution repeatedly refuses to deal with basic and significant graduate student concerns, on the grounds that the money that they’ve provided makes up for every other failing. After all, since we get so much money, it’s okay when “computer errors” mean that we get our money two or three days late; it’s okay that they say one thing about funding and mean something else, and when you go in to figure out why suddenly you’re down $5000, they use funky math to insist that the money lost is somehow a gain. No folks, I’m really not kidding.
So I saw the institution for what it was, and the fact that I’ve done so poorly on the market (despite the fact that a faculty member mentioned to a seminar several months ago that the name of our institution puts us automatically into the top 20 — number, not percentage — a fact that I never believed for a minute and now know to be hilariously untrue) hasn’t really surprised me. What does surprise me is that some of the people that I’ve known for years, who have watched me be dicked around for years, who say they would never recommend someone work with my advisor, who go on and on at length about how I’ve been done so wrong — what surprises me is that these same people are now completely undone by their similar lack of success. Suddenly I’m the one listening to rants against the department and the university, as though my own horrific experience didn’t somehow suggest that there was something rotten going on.
I don’t really know what to make of this. In some respects, I feel vindicated. It wasn’t just me, it wasn’t just my personal failings that made me vulnerable to the piss-poor treatment I received. Nope, there’s been something funky from the start. There are systemic problems that allowed my situation to occur and for it not to be resolved appropriately (and although things are better, the underlying assumptions about my performance haven’t gone away, nor have the implications that I’m woefully behind my colleagues). So on that score, this is good.
On the other hand, it’s profoundly depressing that people watched my graduate career almost go up in flames through no fault of my own, sat by while I was victimized by a professor and virtually accused of stealing thousands of dollars by another, and saw how the supposed go-to person in the department cared more about minimizing hir discomfort in directly addressing the situation than protecting me, a defenseless grad student — that people saw all that, somehow made it in their eyes all about my failings, and continued to assume that all was right in the department. As long as they didn’t have to deal with any of the bullshit, everything in the department was right. The institution wasn’t a right fit for me, they said, without wondering how things could get so bad. Only now that they aren’t getting jobs is there something wrong in the department.
It’s yet another bitter pill to swallow. Thank goodness there are only another 6-8 months of this bullshit.
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things I’m learning about myself
I’ve written before about my “writing process.” To recap: when I am first drafting a chapter, I spend several weeks reading through my sources and taking notes. (For various reasons not worth getting into, my dissertation is structured in such a way that each chapter really is a blank canvas and I read the set of sources relevant to each chapter as I go along.) As I’m reading the materials, thoughts and arguments come into view. Around the time that I’m roughly 70-75% through the material, I have a fairly strong sense of the argument that I’m going to try out. I then rush to pick and choose the most key pieces out of the remaining 25-30%, and then get writing as soon as possible.
So while I am constantly working, and while some of that work involves “writing” (there are long paragraphs in red strewn throughout my notes), there is a distinct shift when it comes time to actually commit to writing the chapter. Notes are printed out and piled up. A few handwritten, rough outlines appear. My thesaurus makes its way onto the table.
In other words, I have a distinct chapter mode. And I’m in that chapter mode right now. And given that I’m writing in slightly less than ideal circumstances (i.e. no office or carrel or other private space that isn’t my bedroom), some things have become clear. First, I work best in complete isolation. I need to be able to control the heat. I need to control the volume on the television. For the most part I work in silence or with my headphones in but occasionally some background television noise is desired. But not just anything will work. Food Network or HGTV are ideal, Diane Sawyer banging on about herself on OWN is not. The volume setting of 2, or 3 at a push, is fine. 7 is unacceptable. I should not be able to follow along word-for-word with ear plugs in.
It also turns out that when I’m in chapter mode, I get irritated incredibly easily. My roommate’s job is in a bit of a lull right now, and she’s constantly at home. This does not work for me. We end up spending hours a mere few feet away from each other b/c there’s only one space in the house to work other than the bedroom. Today, I’d made breakfast around noon and was getting ready to sit down to work when my roommate unexpectedly waltzes in. My mood plummeted instantly, especially since I already knew she’s taking tomorrow off. The TV was loud, in part my fault b/c I’d set it that loud when I was relaxing before sitting down to work.
Other things happened today that are even more tedious that what I’ve just described, but suffice it to say, I gave up and my irritation and anger levels were out of control.
So, things I’ve learned about what I need when I write: complete isolation, competence from the people I interact with (not my roommate but a library staffer), a steady supply of coffee and food, a large table to spread out my materials, and most importantly, a room that I can sit in for hours at a time that has a door that shuts between me and the world. I used to think that having a man in my life would be ideal during chapter mode but now I’m not so sure. I was in chapter mode last summer and proceeded to permanently wreck an on-off situation I’d been in for three years.
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it turns out
…that french toast made from the homemade brioche you made earlier in the week is a delicious breakfast.
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writing struggles
I’m working on another chapter of the dissertation at the moment. This is my second(-ish) pass at the material, and it’s just not coming together. Writing it is like pulling teeth, which is unusual for me. Although I’ve had many lulls in my dissertation writing, my lapses are usually depression-related, meaning that I struggle to work at all. The problem I’m having now is of a different order (although, as with everything in my life, depression is still the emotional backdrop).
I want to be working. I want to be working on this chapter. I even have a deadline. I’m supposed to present this work at a workshop. The workshop critiques pre-circulated papers, so this cannot be a collection of ideas pasted together for a 20 minute talk. (I’ll get to the scheduling of this workshop in a minute.) In other words, I have incentives to finish this piece. Also, this is a crucial chapter, one that does the most significant work of proving the argument of the dissertation. I want to be writing this thing.
But every time I sit down, very little gets done. I took all of Christmas off and only got back to work yesterday. But I was determined to work. What happened? I wrote maybe all of ten sentences. Today? Much the same.
This is unusual. Normally, when I’m writing a chapter, I get words down pretty quickly. I don’t struggle to string words together. I’m more than happy to just get the ideas down on paper and then shape them later. But not this time.
The key issue here is “getting ideas down on paper,” and here is where I’m stuck. I don’t have the ideas in the form they need to be for me to work quickly. I started writing too early.
To be clear, I generally don’t distinguish between (1) reading sources and taking notes; and (2) writing a chapter. It’s all “writing” to me. But for this post, “writing” is the latter, actually getting a chapter down on paper.
I’ve written before about how I’m not ready to write until I’m ready, by which I mean until I’ve read enough sources carefully enough that I have a clear sense of the argument and the stages required to set up and then prove the argument. Once that’s clear in my mind, then I can start writing, even if I haven’t read all the sources. (That last point is crucial: I’m not aiming for reading every scrap of document I have, just enough so that I have a clear and detailed grasp of the events, the players, the crucial moments, as well as a detailed sense of how to build the argument.) Once I know what’s going on, I can generally bang out a draft in a week or two.
I’ve also written before about how this has caused problems with my advisor who, without bothering to ask me how I work, where I am with my sources, or even discussing work/writing methods, decided that I should be writing in large chunks of prose daily. (Again, even without asking me whether I’d read the sources required for any given chapter, which I still haven’t done for some of the chapters.)
I haven’t backed down from my position on this. I know when it is that I should start writing a couple thousand words a day, and that’s when I know what the fuck is going on. But this workshop deadline put a cramp in things. I was in contact with the professor running this seminar over the summer, and it was my understanding that I’d present sometime during the spring. (No date was decided, and I’m not even sure that a month was named.) But then at the beginning of December, this professor decided that my work must be paired with the work of someone else, who has a research trip planned that would force me to present this month, initially in early January.
And so I started trying to write the chapter. It’s been a disaster. It turns out, funny enough, that in fact I cannot just start writing when I don’t know what I’m writing about. It turns out that I started writing way too early and have subsequently sat around spinning my wheels. Too panicked about the deadline to stop writing and go back to the slow and laborious work of reading through hundreds of pages of handwritten government files and newspaper articles, but too ignorant of the events, the story, and the politics to write the damn thing. (I should also note that this chapter is particularly complicated; it looks at three discrete events that happen over the course of forty years, twenty years between each event. My source base for this chapter is also unfortunately thin in ways that weren’t obvious until I was back from the archives, especially for the first two events. I have lots of “material,” but that material isn’t as revealing as I’d hoped. And the secondary literature that helps establish the political background crucial to the argument doesn’t really exist, something else I didn’t realize in the archives. All of which is to say that this chapter was always going to be a challenge, but it’s made much worse by the fact that I started writing too soon.)
I don’t really disagree with the idea that we should start writing before we’re ready or that we should write every day. But what that looks like varies widely. When I’m not laid low with crippling depression, I do work daily. And I call that work “writing” because that’s what it’s in service of. (Here, I’m following some of Paul Silvia’s advice in How to Write a Lot, see pgs. 18-19.) It would have been great if I’d read all of my sources during my time in the archives, rather than grabbing them (via digital camera) and then reading only those relevant to the chapters I wrote during the time. But, in the absence of any guidance and with a project where the chapters don’t really relate to each other, that’s what happened. Until all of the chapters are drafted, each chapter will require a significant outlay of time before I can bang out a chapter. And, given what I’ve learned with this chapter, trying to rush that process only drags things out further.
As for the workshop, I told the professor that early January wasn’t going to work. I suggested February. The professor emailed me today, saying that the person whose work mine absolutely must be paired with has until the end of the month now. Given that this is a precirculated gig, the end of the month really means the 20th, and it’s just not going to happen. I don’t really know how I’m going to handle the situation. I don’t want to be ungrateful or bitchy, but I also won’t turn out shoddy work that’s going to take as much time to fix as it took to fuck up.
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the new year
Not a lot to say, really. I’m laid up with a 24 hour stomach bug, which is just loads of fun.
I don’t really do resolutions and I’m not going to start now. But 2010 was a pretty horrid year, and so 2011 can only be better.
I don’t care what it takes, but this will be my last year in grad school. And whether I get a job, or a postdoc, or I sign up to work at Starbucks, 2011 will involve the largest amount of change in my life since graduating from college.
Happy New Years to all!
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a rant
So this is a minor, minor thing but it’s irking me so I’m blogging about it.
I’ve got fat fingers. They don’t really look fat; they’re long so that mitigates the fatness aspect. And I think what makes them “fat” is more the size of my knuckles than anything else.
I wouldn’t care about my fat fingers except that they’re so big that they don’t fit into rings. By rings, I don’t mean expensive rings that get sized. I mean the cheap rings that you buy at the Gap or Target or Express or at a street fair or at Camden Market or Covent Garden.
This wouldn’t be a problem either, except that I really really love those kinds of rings.
So for the past six years or so, I’ve been on the hunt for a cheap ring that I like that fits my fingers. And I’ve had little luck. I bought a wood ring in Puerto Rico six years ago that fit and a few months later it fell down the air conditioning vent in my house. A friend of mine bought me a beautiful glass ring and that fits nicely but it’s just one ring and it’s not the kind of ring you wear daily. That’s really what I want. A ring that can be worn daily. The same friend bought me a wooden ring that’s gorgeous but doesn’t really fit my finger. On days I really want to wear it, it rests between the first and second knuckle, which isn’t really the best of looks, but I felt bad. I loved the ring (I’m an especially big fan of wooden rings) and she was convinced it would fit.
Last week, I purchased a cheap ring at my favorite clothing store. It was a wide chain silver band that had a slight bit of give/elastic so whereas size 9 usually doesn’t fit, this time it did. This ring was gorgeous. I put it on my wedding finger, which is where I tend to wear what few rings fit. (Combination of not liking to wear rings on my right hand and my middle finger being beyond hope, sizewise.)
I got compliments on this ring. It looked amazing.
I was out of town this weekend and enroute home, I took my ring and watch off to go through the security checkpoint at the airport. I put both of them in the bin along with my other stuff. The bin tipped over in the scanning machine. Both objects fell out. They only found my watch.
Yes, folks. TSA managed to lose my possessions in the space of a yard. The woman waffled on about how they could give me a claims form (as if, for an $8 ring) but failed to give a good reason why they can lose my shit in the space of 30 seconds and in the distance of 1 yard in what is for the most part a contained space.
So I’m thinking…fine. I’ll buy another one at the store. They had at least two more of my size when I was last there.
Oh but no. My branch didn’t have it. They called another branch that didn’t have it. And I traveled to another store today, which didn’t have it. I really don’t have time for these trips to other cities but the store’s rotating out its jewelry and so the window is closing. Can’t buy this thing online either.
Again, I know this is minor. But it’s very symptomatic. When I finally get something I want, something random and shitty happens and then it vanishes. I had the perfect ring for 4 days and now I’ll be searching for the next six years for another one.
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waning motivation
It turns out that trying to write a chapter (technically revise but the first attempt was woeful so really I’m doing it from scratch) that you know has no business being in your dissertation and will be dropped from the diss the second you defend is bloody difficult.
I could not have less desire to do this if I tried.
And trust me, if I could jettison this chapter right now, I would but I can’t have a three chapter diss and I don’t have time to come up with another case study, let alone research it, so I’m stuck with it. Not to mention, I’m wary of making choices that make it appear that I’m doing less work lest I come in for more false criticism that I’m lazy and not worthy of being a grad student at my institution.
I’ve been reading William Germano’s From Dissertation to Book over the past few days. Just like planning my acknowledgments, thinking about publishing a completed diss is extremely useful, given my situation. Germano makes a ton of good points and breaks down thorough revision processes. He also talks about how to be a good writer, which I appreciate. It’s something I think about constantly. One of Germano’s points is that one of the problems inherent to dissertations that must be fixed in a book are their haphazard structures. “Dissertations often grow piecemeal, inside the heads of inexperienced writers,” he writes (81).
I certainly feel this way about my project. I can tell that my project was developed poorly. It’s clear to me now that projects should perhaps just maybe be constructed around a question or series of questions, not around four or five randomly selected events. And, because that’s so clear to me now, I wonder why nobody mentioned that this was going to be a problem before. And then I remember that I’ve never actually had a conversation with anybody about how to structure a dissertation, or how to structure this dissertation, nor has anyone asked what the core question of my dissertation was.
Huh.
It’s amazing, when I think back, the numerous times when some fucking guidance would have been nice. Maybe I wouldn’t be saddled with this chapter that I know doesn’t belong in the dissertation but there aren’t really any other options that don’t add time to the process.
But, as it turns out, it’s really hard to force yourself to spend months/weeks writing 50 pages of twaddle. And actually, I’m not even writing right now; I’m reading fucking sources that I failed to read the first time I drafted this thing. (And here’s another thing, perhaps this chapter wouldn’t be such a chore if I hadn’t been forced to waste valuable research time to write the damn thing to please people who are convinced I’m worthless.)
Also, I’d like to make an announcement that when no guidance is given, no punishment for going astray (even when the astray-ness isn’t made up) can be meted out.
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checking in
So I’ve been working. Working a lot. I’m focused on finishing the dissertation, come hell or high water. I just wrote a chapter that I’m extremely happy with. It’s fab. It of course needs more work but I feel like it’s pretty damn close to the finish line. Certainly it’s closer than any of the other chapters.
I threw myself into that chapter and worked on it virtually nonstop for six weeks. And now that I’ve finished it (or at least put it aside), I’m back to my old dilemma. I know what chapter I’m going to work on next. I know what all needs to be done and when. But I just can’t get it together. I’m burned out. I’m exhausted. I’m lonely. And I’m pissed.
See, although I’m no longer in the crisis mode I was in last year and I no longer feel like I’m being attacked daily, the situation is still ongoing. That point was driven home to me a few weeks ago. So I’m still writing in a hostile situation and writing to please somebody who will remain convinced of my worthlessness as a scholar. I use my anger at the situation and at the department for abdicating their responsibility to defenseless graduate students to fuel my writing. But once I’ve brought a chapter in for a landing, all of those crippling feelings come flooding back into my newly void headspace. All the rage. All the frustration. All the sadness for the years of my life that were needlessly miserable. All the anger that my finishing will validate my department and various professors. All the anger that I will never get the credit I will deserve for finishing against all the odds: a complete lack of training in my field, a first year that was catastrophic intellectually, exams I should have failed, complete intellectual abandonment by my advisor et al, and the lies and attempts to kick me out of the program on baseless charges. I will never get the credit I will deserve for getting through all of those things without any family support (in fact at times family undermining) and without a partner. You know all those acknowledgments pages in which people say they couldn’t have done it without their amazing family (and then comes a list of ten or so people) and their amazingly supportive partner? Well I don’t get to thank myself in my acknowledgments for having the strength to put up with six years of utter crap and still come out with a PhD that people actively do not want to give me. All of that effort? Silenced.
And I know that that’s what’s going to happen. And it’s happened to me before. It’s an ongoing part of my life as the child of my parents, who both pulled variations of this theme, whereby my success confirms their worth as parents, despite the constant roadblocks they’ve placed in my way and that I had to go to untold emotional lengths to get past (and by get past, I mean to be able to function). So I’ve been there, I know how horrible it is, I really don’t want to do it again, but I know it’s coming.
And so that’s why I’m having difficulty working at the moment, even though I want to. I’ll snap out of it soon and then I’ll work feverishly. And then I’ll finish something and it’ll happen again. Fun.
(And yes, I know I’m speaking confidently about getting the PhD, even though I’m many months away from finishing a diss. But I’m the only person who believes I’m going to get the diss done–I think I’ve got some friends who aren’t convinced either but they won’t say anything–and if I start doubting it, then the forces that don’t want me to finish will win and that’s not happening.)
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lines ever more unclear 