| D-Day |
[24 May 2012|10:42am] |
Well, today's the day and I feel... odd. It's a strange combination of feeling totally unprepared, totally overprepared, and not sure whether I care either way. Of course I'm feeling nervous and anxious - that pit-of-the-stomach gurgle never goes away - but after reading through my opening remarks again this morning, I feel pretty confident that if I can write like that, I can at least burble out an answer to most of what my committee sends my way. The things that make me feel most nervous are, I think, strange things: I'm more afraid I won't be able to answer a question asked by a colleague than I am afraid that I won't be able to answer a question asked by a professor. I'm nervous about getting choked up as I give my acknowledgments - this would be an expression of weakness I don't want to reveal before this "exam" begins. I'm concerned about needing to pee in the middle of the 2 hour defense, which is not something anyone else has asked to do. And I'm worried because I'm last of my little cohort to do this: spring defenses started on May 1st, and everyone has passed with flying colors of varying brightness. I don't want to be the one who screws up the team batting average. I know I won't, in my head. But in my body, my stomach and my throat and my trembling fingers aren't so sure.
As I wrote on Facebook a little while ago, I feel like I'm floating on the support and love of my friends and family. It feels great. But it also makes me feel oddly disjointed, disconnected, almost numb. I can't begin to imagine what my committee will ask me, despite how much I've thought about it. That means there is no way of anticipating what's to come, which means I'm floating through deep fog. And the weather - sickly wet with chances of thunderstorms this afternoon - doesn't help. I'm not one of those people who says "everything happens for a reason," but there is something fatalistic about the weather today. It helps to look at the forecast for the rest of the week, which promises sunshine is on the way, but why is it today of all days that storms are predicted?
I've compared the dissertation process to a DIY wedding where the doctoral candidate is the bride who has done absolutely everything herself: sewed, hemmed, and altered the dress, cooked the food, decorated the cake, booked the venue, invited the guests (some of this is actually accurate for the defense as well), and felt nervous each step of the way, hoping everything would turn out well. It also gives us the same kind of bridezilla syndrome some brides experience, because this is the most important thing in a PhD candidate's life right now, and it will never be as important to the other people involved as it is to me. My committee members are probably just reminding themselves they have an appointment at 2pm. They might not be done reading the document yet. They might not have come up with questions yet! At least one of them will probably show up wearing jeans. My friends and colleagues who might attend perhaps haven't decided yet whether they will be spending their afternoons sitting in a conference room listening to me try to ramble my way through answers. Yet to me, it's all I can think about. It's all I can focus on.
I'm not really nervous about not passing. That's what is so odd about this. If my committee didn't feel I was ready, they wouldn't have let me get this far into the process. I'm nervous about how much I've built this up. I'm nervous about looking like a fool in front of my friends. I'm nervous about showing my nerves. And that one's just impossible to get around! And as the hours stretch ahead of me, I only have more room to get more nervous. Or more excited. It all depends on how I decide to feel about the fog...
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[11 Jan 2012|07:00am] |
In dream, I
cut paper snowflakes
imagine new addictions
While my family moves to Morocco
Counting
Their
Shoes.
I erupt
In an arid fog of coughing
And nothing that surrounds me
Reminds me of home.
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| more scheduling stuff.... |
[21 May 2011|05:21pm] |
Made my deadline! Emailed the chapter to my adviser Friday afternoon. I'm not thrilled with it, and I'm sure she's going to find lots to complain about, but since she's traveling this month it will be a few weeks before I hear anything more about it, and possibly longer than that. To celebrate, I went to a local winery called Sweet Cheeks with some friends and shared wine and snacks, as well as picking up a bottle of my favorite: a blush wine reminiscent of strawberries called Rosy Cheeks. I decided during my first term of writing that a bottle of this wine would be my reward each time I finished and turned in a chapter on time. Once I drink this one, there will be three empty Rosy Cheeks bottles on my shelf. When I finish the dissertation, there will be six. That means I'm halfway there!
So since I'm thinking on a small scale for now, to prevent myself from lapsing into terror and anxiety again (three weeks till summer is just not a nice time for all that), here's my next plan:
This coming week (Week 9): read my adviser's revision comments on Chapter 2. Revise it. Distribute copies to the rest of the committee no later than Tuesday of Week 10.
Monday, May 30th and Tuesday, May 31st: write a paper proposal or two and submit them to the CFP (call for papers) for the New Chaucer Society's 2012 conference in Portland. I'm chairing a panel there, so I know I'm going, but it would be nice to present something as well. That way, if I'm still able, I can get some travel funding from my department. They'll shell out if you're presenting, but not if you're only presiding over a panel.
Last half of Week 10: work through and finalize an article I've been fussing with for the last six months. I get so upset about article rejections (I've had two now, both with fairly cutting critiques) that I am reluctant to finish and send the damn things. I need to just polish it, send it, and cross my fingers that this time I get a request for revisions rather than a straight-up rejection.
Finals week the grading sets in furiously. I will have 39 papers of 5-6 pages and 39 final exams. Tremendous, but doable. The final exams, in particular, I can tear through quickly.
Then, on June 12th, I will have the distinct pleasure of watching my sister graduate from college. It's a little surreal to consider, but I'm delighted that I can be there for it. Plus, it will be fun to be back in Davis for a day.
That's the plan... for now...
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| Scaling back |
[12 May 2011|11:38am] |
The immediate result of my previous entry - a realization about how comparatively little time I have left in this program and how much I have to do during the short year that remains - was near paralysis. Since my meeting with my adviser, I have had one-and-a-half productive writing sessions, two or three shit writing sessions, and two near panic attacks. One was brought on by the simple and honest observation to myself that the chapter I am currently writing is not as good as the previous two, which sparked a runaway train reaction into the presumed ultimate failure of my dissertation, my graduate career, and my life. The other was yesterday during a brief meeting about a seminar I will likely participate in next year about the academic job market. The professor conducting both the meeting and the seminar was explaining everything that goes into going on the market, and doing so in a tone that was at once cheerful and fatalistic. When she asked for questions at the end of the meeting, there was a static silence. She seemed confused by this, and when we assured her we were just taking it all in, she rushed to explain how it wasn't all bad, but we probably wouldn't get jobs the first year round, but we should try anyway, but that it was a lot of work, and we should write really good dissertations and publish articles, and that there were jobs out there, but that the job market was not in very good shape. At least that's what I heard - a lot of words jumbled together that contradicted themselves but ultimately painted the glass not just half empty, but near dry. And I got a little overwhelmed. Oh, and then my laptop picked up a virus, which means I need to figure out how to deal with that.
The panic passed, but two hours this morning of collapsing my current chapter into an 8 page "conference" paper I will present at a Works in Progress panel tomorrow afternoon convinced me: the forest of the big picture is really big, and really dark, and really scary. I need breadcrumbs. I need single steps, at least for the moment. One tree at a time.
So here are the trees for the next week, for my own sanity:
Today (Thursday): finish WIP paper, make handouts for WIP. Figure out tomorrow's lesson plan, potentially without a laptop.
Friday: teach, attend WIP, attend following Wine and Cheese reception.
Saturday: Give yourself a day. Go to a garden store for supplies, work out in the garden (even if it's raining), go grocery shopping, clear up the house so your space is organized. Better organized space = better organized life.
Sunday: work on the chapter for 3 hours
Tuesday: work on the chapter for 3 hours
Thursday: work on the chapter for 3 hours. Determine whether completion in the next few days is viable. If so, turn it in sometime between Friday and Sunday.
Breathe.
Isn't that enough for now?
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| Timeline of terror |
[05 May 2011|08:40am] |
Alive and kicking, albeit in a strange disconnected, dissertation-y kind of way. I write this morning before I turn to the section of Chapter 3 I must get through today to share a terrifying calendar of the next year of my life.
Background: this term I am drafting the third chapter of my dissertation (last term was Chapter 2 and fall term was Chapter 1). I'm steamrolling along, which is good news, and intend to have the current chapter done and handed in to my adviser just over two weeks from now. Yesterday I met her for coffee and, after an hour and a half discussion in the sun which left me with half my face sunburned (not to mention the "awesome" half sunglasses tan...) and my brain windburned with the speed at which things are going to start happening from here on out.
In June, as soon as the term ends, we're going to pack up and head down to CA. We'll go to my sister's college graduation (I'm so proud and want so much to watch her walk that stage), and then after visiting with N.'s parents we'll take off to North Carolina, where we'll spend a week in a big beach house with my extended family. My plan is to bring nothing but sandals, sundresses, a bathing suit, and fluffy novels. And maybe a notebook, in case genius strikes. And sunscreen. By July 1st, we'll be back home and summer work will begin. Here's how that will go, as my adviser sketched out for me yesterday:
July: research and read for Introductory Chapter (this will set up my theoretical and conceptual framework for the whole dissertation)
August: write the Introductory Chapter
September/October: work through revisions on first three chapters (assuming my committee has returned them all to me by this point)
November: work through revisions on Intro Chapter
December: research for Chapter 4 (moving into superhuman territory with saints and possibly Levi-Strauss)
January: write Chapter 4
February: research and plan Chapter 5 (probably the trickiest, in which I take on Bertilak from "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and the loathly lady from "The Wife of Bath's Tale," and discuss how their transformative powers affect their human or not-human status)
March: write chapter 5
April: Revisions
May: defend dissertation
June: graduate
These last two are the really scary part. I have, on average, been taking three to four weeks to write each chapter, which means this month by month plan is totally doable. But in the middle of creating this calendar, my adviser looked up at me and said "Maybe you can defend in the first week of May." I almost fell out of my chair. The first week of May! That's exactly one year from now! I mean, the latest I would defend would be one year and one month from now, but still! Talk about putting things in perspective!
Then she said "well, maybe the second week of May," and I calmed down a little. This will all depend not only on when I'm able to complete my work, but also the schedules of four busy people, which usually means things don't happen as quickly or as soon as I plan. The whole project, after all, must be submitted to our graduate school some time before the defense - I think three weeks before - and at that point it must be completely finished. No changes can be made between then and the defense, though afterward there are always revisions. My suspicion about the way this will work out is: I'll submit the dissertation to the graduate school and committee during the first or second week of May, and then three weeks later I will undergo my defense. Somehow that doesn't seem so scary. After all, I'll have spent a month previous revising, and what do you do after you revise? You turn it in.
So... yes. That's my next year, planned out. That's why this vacation in June is so important - because after it everything is too real. Let's not even think, just yet, about what will happen after that whole defense-and-graduation thing. All I can look forward to right now is walking the stage, seeing my beaming family in the audience, going out to dinner with them, my adviser, N.'s family and adviser, and then, that day or the next or the next, the party. The party is a plan of several years involving several grad students who plan to finish at the same time as me. We want to rent a picnic shelter in a local park, buy some grillables, invite EVERYONE (the whole department, local friends, families, staff, professors) to come, bring sides and drinks, and then just hang out and relax and celebrate our achievements. Again, not looking forward. Just celebrating the now-that-it-will-be-then. That's it. The next day, under the ministrations of ibuprofen, water, and ginger ale, we can think about what comes next. Or not.
That got longer than I intended. Maybe that means it's a good writing morning. Hope that doesn't mean I spent all my writing juice here. Guess we'll see...
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| Tri-annual update? |
[08 Dec 2010|09:23pm] |
As Seamus Heaney translates it, "Hwaet" is "so." I have sometimes felt irked by this, because the Old English word "Hwaet" seems to connote something heavier - more weighty. "Listen" might be more appropriate. But as I thought about how I would start this entry, as I considered the proper word to use for the tone I wish to convey, the first word I thought of was "so." Maybe Heaney isn't so far off, at least with that one choice.
( So. )
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| Is this irony? |
[17 Nov 2010|08:18am] |
Anyone else find this amusing?
When I first address the LJ webpage, it advertises itself as "LiveJournal: A Global Community of Friends Who Share Your Unique Passions and Interests."
Dictionary.com (I know, not the most authoritative, but give me a break here) defines "unique" as "1.) existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics: a unique copy of an ancient manuscript. 2.) having no like or equal; unparalleled; incomparable: Bach was unique in his handling of counterpoint."
So... umm... eh?
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| !!!!!! |
[28 Sep 2010|03:56pm] |
Today is Day Two, Week One, of Fall term. A ten week term.
I met with my adviser yesterday. Great meeting. We set a deadline for Chapter 1 of my dissertation.
We decided it would be due on Monday of Week 8.
OMG. Monday of Week 8. I have 24 hours less than eight weeks to research, read, and write the first chapter of my dissertation.
Here we go!
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| Fighting to Break Through |
[20 Sep 2010|11:40am] |
By Friday, to meet my goals for the week/summer, I must complete, correctly format, and submit a 1300-1500 word "essay" on women and memory for consideration in a journal about Early Modern Women. I'm not an early modern scholar, and I don't have a prepared essay, per se, about women and memory.
I have the Wife of Bath. A 25 page paper about her. To meet these word requirements, it needs to be approximately 4 pages. Oh, and it needs to be about memory.
Trying to sort this out in my head as I relearn to think again:
What the Wife of Bath teaches us about memory, specifically in the way she tells her story about her violent interaction with her 5th husband, is the covert nature of women's memories. Or at least she provides an example of how women's memories can be covert. She hides well behind her storytelling, and it is only in a few slips and inconsistencies that we come to suspect she is perhaps not telling the whole truth. That said, however, as a reading audience (and keeping in mind, of course, that she is a created character and never actually lived a life or experienced any of these things Chaucer is writing about at all) we cannot know for certain what is "true." Is it possible that Jankyn gave her the bridle and the reins in their marriage and awarded her sovereignty? Is she lying to us about the outcome of the fight so it projects a happy ending that never happened? Or, perhaps most covert of all, has she managed somehow to alter her own memories of the event so that in her mind, this is what "really happened"? (Sidenote: interestingly, this would make her eerily like the Pardoner, who gets so excited in his sermonizing that he forgets telling the pilgrims his relics are fakes, and tries to sell them access anyway!).
It seems what I have to do here is focus exclusively on her fight with Jankyn and how unlikely it is that her tale of control is just that: a tale. Then I have to cross my fingers and deflate my chest and assume they won't choose mine, because it's not really about memory and it's not really about an early modern woman. It's an exercise to help me learn to cut and tweak, and it's practice in deadlines and formatting and getting writing again. Those are valuable things too, right? It's not all publishing, it's also practicing the process and learning how to make a quick and dirty job look presentable.
So here we go...
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| Tenuous thoughts had while falling asleep drunk... |
[05 Sep 2010|12:02pm] |
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Judith Butler does a decent job explaining why personhood is important, and suggesting, though not detailing, the horrors and alienation of being denied personhood as a result of gender identification. The situation is Precarious. But, as Cary Wolfe points out, one of Butler's problems is that she stops at humans. Yes, our lives and rights are precarious. But what about animals, or, in my case, what about more fantastical figures we aren't sure how to categorize? What about giants? What about Saints? What are these "people" and how do we talk about them? What is at stake for us, for them, for our understanding of texts and how those texts impact and were understood by their readers, if we don't figure out a better way of talking about these interstitial figures? Their situation becomes even more precarious and threatened, in a way, if we deny them personhood/humanness and just lump them in with animals or monsters. They have clear human features and/or behaviors, in many cases. Sometimes that seems to make us push them even more resolutely into the animalistic/monstrous category. But shouldn't those similarities strike us and push us to map their existence differently? What's in between animal and human? What's in between human and divine?
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| 3 days left... |
[08 Aug 2010|08:30pm] |
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... summer term can't end fast enough.
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| Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. |
[31 Jul 2010|02:59pm] |
So I sent in the abstract. I sent in a 421 word abstract for a paper on Baudrillard and Chaucer's Pardoner's relics, to a proposed edited collection on Postmodern theory and medieval texts. It's a perfect pairing. It sounds edgy and sexy and all those things, and since it's just an abstract it's acceptable (I think? I hope?) that the argument isn't perfectly developed yet. If this person in charge knows her stuff (depending on how many submissions they receive), I almost feel like it should be a shoe-in, though I've learned by now not to expect acceptance.
I also had to send in my CV. Here's where it gets sad. I don't have a PhD yet, I haven't published anything yet (not for lack of trying), and I haven't even taught a literature class yet, much less a medieval class. The most impressive things on my CV right now are two "guest lectures" I did for my adviser's Chaucer class last winter term. It makes me chuckle that I can list these and have them sound cool and professional, which makes me wonder how many professors and lecturers with long, impressive-looking CVs have carefully worded similar low-key things. I also have a conference presentation listed that was just an end-of-term reading-of-everyone's-papers from a seminar two years ago. But because it was done in conference style, I can list it as such.
So I've started the waiting period, and I'm doing what I always do: holding my figurative breath. The deadline for this abstract submission isn't even until August 20th (I got it in early because I'm a graduate student and they probably won't accept many pre-PhD submissions, if any), but I've already done everything I can. Because I know me pretty well by now, I know what the pattern will be. For the next three or four days, I will check my email compulsively. Every time I open my in-box and am told I have a new message, my stomach will clench and fly to my throat, my breath will catch and my cheeks will get red, because I will expect it is related to my little submission. It won't be, but that's what I do. I will get excited, sternly tell myself not to, and whisk back and forth between deciding I have no hope and feeling twinkles of unearned achievement. Will they think it sucks? Will they think it's great? How name-based vs. interest-based will their selection process be? Should I have sent this in at all? Do I even have the slightest prayer? What if they accept it?! What if they reject it?
Just breathe.
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| Seems like my posts here... |
[20 Jul 2010|08:38pm] |
... come only once in a blue moon anymore.
Quickly, because my eyes are tired from staring at various screens and pages all day; by the end of this week I hope to:
Do a real update here,
Do a food blog update at http://shornrapunzel.wordpress.com/
Get some reading done for much needed revisions to a proto-article ( ! )
Go to the coast with dog and husband.
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| long time gone... |
[06 Jun 2010|10:13pm] |
It's been a long time since I did a tipsy post on here. So here you go. No spelling fixes. No apologies.
Watched Shaun of the Dead (whoops, fixed a typo without thinking about it, must not be as tipsy as I was anymore...) with some of my favorite oeple from the program: D., M., and Ph. And Sarian19, of course. He lives here. We had pizza. I love that movie, and I love these people. I don't make close female friends very often (flashback to high school ,when it was usually me and four boys, or me and five boys, going to dinner, going to Disneyland, going to mini golf. Never a date, just lots of male friends), so having these people around is really really nice. I know nice is a dead word, but I mean it in the s4ense it meant before it was oversed. Overused. Nice.
Back to the gring tomorrow. Got two responses (out of three) on my diss. prospectus. Ignoring them till tmorrow. Then will process. tomorrow starts finals week of the term, which means it's almost over. Will try to write more (and more frequently) then.
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| Stopping for a second to breathe |
[25 Apr 2010|05:48pm] |
Too busy. As always. But just for a moment:
Excellent weekend =
Friday night at our usual happy hour spot with good friends. We had dinner at home and then went out, which meant we didn't have to worry about spending money on food. Plus, I snacked off of other people's plates. No shame here.
Saturday was spent in Portland being good capitalists. Powell's, Buffalo Exchange, used music store, IKEA, and Kenny and Zuke's Delicatessen for lunch. Expensive, but they make their own pastrami and it is illegally good. I had a reuben with pastrami and it was grilled perfectly. The pastrami was a little big for the bread, which meant the edges of it got grilled and crunchy, oh my. Their red potato salad as a side was excellent too; green onions or chives, maybe a caper or two, and some kind of vinegar for perfect tang. Now I want summer to arrive because it made me dream of BBQ food.
Raced home after a frozen yogurt from IKEA in time to go to a small backyard gathering at a colleague's house. Lackluster sausages, but good conversation and decent wine.
Today was a catch-up day with not nearly enough hours. Finished grading papers, popped in some laundry, took the dog for a ramble along the Willamette River, gardened for an hour, and am now assessing what I have time enough to do this evening. I need to read some things for my dissertation prospectus, read some things for the class I'm sitting in on, write a few emails, and tidy up the house a bit. Oh, and finish laundry.
Garden report:
Broccoli growing fine, despite some ragged-edged leaves from slugs tasting it.
Lettuce growing well and starting to actually look like lettuce!
Dill growing slowly, which is to be expected. I'm just glad it's growing. Every other time I've planted dill I've killed it.
Peas getting taller, also as expected. They are so dependable.
Radishes (new trial crop for us this year) just sprouting. Gave them lots of water to drink up.
Planted a row of kale seeds in a shadier spot against the garden fence. They like sun, but they also like cooler weather, so this is my compromise. We'll see how they do.
Okay, pause for breath complete. Now back to the rush and bluster that is my life as of late.
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| Dissertation Cogtation! |
[10 Apr 2010|09:30pm] |
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The term is two weeks in and already I’m completely exhausted. Part of this is not getting sufficient sleep, part of it is a teaching/class schedule that is not terribly convenient, and part of it is that I’m just thinking so damn hard all the time that I’m somehow expending physical effort with my mental endeavors.
With the heinous exam over, the task for this term is the dissertation prospectus. This is a document of approximately twenty pages. Ten pages are a proposed bibliography (to start with!) that I will use to research and write the dissertation, and ten pages are an explanation of my argument and brief outline of the dissertation itself: which texts I intend to use, how my chapters will go, how everything fits together. For a document of undetermined length and an argument I don’t have pinned down yet, this is an intimidating task. Add to this, as usual, a teaching position and a philosophy class on Judith Butler, which I am sitting in on. In the case of the teaching gig, I’ve done it before and, despite this being a particularly bright group of students who I want to do a good job for, it is just a composition class and in between essays I don’t have to work particularly hard for it. The Butler class, on the other hand, makes me think so hard that I leave each two hour session with a headache brought on by convoluted sentence structure, complex arguments, and so many ideas not yet fully formed that they feel like they are jamming together under my skull making it expand. This is all exhausting.
But here’s the good news: halfway through reading for the Thursday session of this class, I realized something major about my dissertation. I had been trying to sort through a lot of ideas about theory, about mind/body dualism, about food and sex behaviors and how they control textual representations of bodies, and how to separate this from ideas about reason, logic, excess, and the state of the soul that have already been discussed for hundreds of years. I realized that what I really need to concentrate on is hierarchy.
( Click for more, if you’re interested in my current plan. )
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| exam... |
[12 Feb 2010|10:36pm] |
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PASSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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| Exam Day |
[12 Feb 2010|06:51am] |
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Slept in fits and starts all night. Woke with a bellyful of butterflies. Spilled oatmeal on my pajamas. Must be the big day!
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| Whiny Complainy-pants |
[07 Feb 2010|08:01pm] |
Following close on Nick's heels, all I can say is that this continues a pattern I've been feeling for the past week. A month ago, I schedule my oral exam for 1pm on Friday, February 5th. Exactly one week ago, I found out that due to a conflict for one of my committee members, my exam needed to be changed, and it will now be at 12:30pm on this Friday, February 12th. Exactly the opposite of what has happened to Nick, and yet similarly stress/panic/anger inducing. This doesn't at first make sense, since it gives me extra time, but there's so much more to it, and all of the levels of this irritation are making me feel both grouchy and completely unjustified in my annoyance.
Two or three weeks ago, my adviser (and chair of my exam committee)'s mother was diagnosed with cancer and needed a couple of surgical procedures. Her mom is older and not in great shape mentally or physically, and my adviser is her primary caretaker, executor, all that serious stuff. So she had to be there for her mom. Understandable. Both procedures went fine, though my adviser is understandably stretched by all of her commitments, both in real life and in academia, and given the number of emails that have gone unanswered, the meetings that haven't happened, and the questions she hasn't responded to, the result of this stretching ends up feeling like she has forgotten about me. Now, you can see why I feel like a bad person: the woman's mother is ill. She is super busy teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses. She is the director of the medieval studies department. She has obligations. And yet she also has an obligation to me. I haven't been asking particularly much; just emails returned and a moment or two to schedule a meeting so I can ask some last minute preparatory questions. You'd think with an extra week we would be able to figure this out. And yet it has taken until today to pin down a time that we could meet, and only because I sent yet another email that she eventually got around to answering. Rawr.
As for the other, and more obvious, issue here, it's an extra week! Given his situation right now, Nick would kill for this (or at least maim)! And yet this too is a negative thing. Here's the thing: last Sunday, I went out to breakfast with a group of girlfriends (it was great, and most if not all of them unexpectedly brought me good luck gifts - mostly chocolate products). It was lovely, and I got home feeling a sense of zen. I had plotted out my days for the week to follow, permitting myself one or two exam related tasks per day and no more. I felt - perhaps not ready - but prepared. Mentally. I had been operating with February 5th as the day of days for a month. In the quarter system, that is at once an incredibly short and a very long period of time. I was in a zone I felt comfortable with. Then I got the email letting me know that my exam time needed to change. This completely threw me off. I had given up reading already, deeming it more important to spend time with my exam paper and some heavy note studying, and now I suddenly had seven extra days that I didn't know what to do with. Should I read more of those items I chose to skim? Should I go back to the books for which I deemed the introductions enough? Should I work on the paper and try to cut it down, even though my adviser told me it was fine? Or should I, as several Influentials have advised me, take it easy and try to ignore the exam for a few days (ignore? how do you ignore a thing like this?!)?
With so many new uncertainties, my state of zen is gone in an explosion of re-instituted anxieties. I don't know what to do with myself. I was supposed to be either done or broken by now. I planned things out so that I would be ready by Friday, but I still have that damn Puritan work ethic that doesn't allow me to conference rationally with myself and agree that I am ready, I don't need to do more, I can sit back and wait for the days to tick by. I can't stop working. When I stop, I feel guilty. When I stop, I am barraged by the fear that my committee assumes I will spend this week continuing to read and study, and therefore they will expect more of me during the exam itself. When I stop, I feel the edges of panic, even though I know, and have confirmed several times, that I have a firm grasp over my material and can answer questions about my project and time period adequately.
And yet, when I do study, I don't accomplish anything. I sit and read my notes, and feel the information sliding off me like so much ooze. Nothing is sticking anymore. I either have it or I don't. Nick told me today on our walk with Lucy that I probably am absorbing information, but I haven't accessed the key to unlocking what I've absorbed yet. I think that's probably true. The worrying thing about that is, I suspect the key is the exam. Since I cannot simulate that situation, I cannot find out what is locked away in my brain to find out whether it's enough. It's the enough-ness that worries me. I've done a lot. Have I done enough?
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| Bready photo goodness |
[04 Feb 2010|05:29pm] |
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I don't want you to think that my food blog has replaced LJ as my primary internet-life-updating-function. That honor belongs entirely to Facebook. Further, the exam I have to take next Friday is consuming most of my life this term, as it did last term as well. Thus the absence. I tried updating according to reading and writing thoughts I was having, but that falls flat of an actual update. So, not to provide a replacement, and not to lamely convince you this counts as an update, but just to entice you and reward you with a photo (yay, photos!), ( I offer this: )
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shornrapunzel's journal