Vaguely drunk posting

[sleepymaggie]

Last night I read an article over on websnark about what happened at Something Positive the other day. The guy writing was drunk, from celebrating his birthday (another january birthday) and because of the drunkness the guy was being blatantly honest and self-reflective.

I'm sorta drunk right now -- not really really drunk, because that leads to an inability to type -- but drunk enough to have some truthiness let loose.

I am unhappy with my schooling. I don't think I'm dumb. I think I'm totally capable of doing this graduate school thing. I also know that I disagree with a lot of my fellow grad students' opinions on practically everything. I also disagree with my prof's a lot of the time. This is disconcerting. I don't really want to disagree all the time. Sometimes I just want to discuss and work through things -- but it seems like we're beginning from such fundamentally different starting points that discussion isn't even possible. This is depressing for me.

I really want to like school. I really want to have productive and useful conversations in class. I really want someone to engage with me in discussion. I really want to say something and not have people immediately change the subject.

Yarg and blarg and blarg. I am demoralized and discouraged, and every tuesday night only makes it worse. My war and peace class isn't all that bad, but damn if feminist methodology doesn't make me want to walk into traffic.

Comments

[citabria]

Have you spoken with yoga_matt or dr_pretentious about this? I suspect that they might have had similar experiences, at least at times.

But also, {{{hug}}}

[sleepymaggie.livejournal.com]

Thanks muchly for the hugs. I have commiserated at least to dr_pretentious through livejournal.

[sleepymaggie.livejournal.com]

I changed my mind midsentence -- hence the "to" instead of "with" there.

[dreamingkat.livejournal.com]

is transferring to a different school with people who are at least somewhat compatible an option at all? I don't think you should go somewhere where everyone is clones, but there has to be schools with more diverse professorship and students.

[sleepymaggie.livejournal.com]

The thought has crossed my mind -- but at this point it seems pretty futile. I'm in my last semester, either because I will graduate or because I will be moving back home. If I can't manage to finish this mess this spring, I'm throwing in the towel. Its just not worth what's left of my sanity.

I think some people are just not meant to do the grad school thing -- its not that we're dumb or lazy or anything like that, we just don't fit with the paradigm or something. Like I said in the post, we're just starting from a different place than the mainstream of academia. What I take this to mean is that, even if I transferred, I would still be in the same boat because its ultimately going to be the same mainstream.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The people I know who made it all the way to the end of the doctorate and still think it was the right thing to do are the people for whom being a professor (complete with writing scholarly monographs, attending committee meetings, grading papers, the whole shebang) is the Number One First Choice Life. If life as a professor, complete with the somewhat less fun bits, is not the steady-state daily life you desire more than any specific other, then the sacrifices grad school constantly imposes aren't worth it.

My friend who has the spiffy tenure track gig at MIT, and is living the life he always dreamed of, and finds that it really is approximately as cool as he hoped it would be, is now of the opinion that, for him, the sacrifices were worthwhile. But even he still remembers that they were sacrifices.

If there is a different kind of life you would prefer to be living, then you can take your dissatisfaction with grad school as permission, and free yourself to go live that other thing. Even if the other thing is really difficult, and the odds aren't in your favor, it can't be that much harder or more unlikely than building a lifelong career as an academic.

If there isn't--if life as a professor is the thing you desire--then go for it. You can take a year or two, or more, to do something else, while you try to figure out where the program is that would not suck for you, and who the mentors are whom you could trust and respect. A year or two, or more, out of school, means less poverty at the dissertation stage. A break is not defeat, any more than setting down second-choice goals in favor of first-choice goals would be.

[sleepymaggie.livejournal.com]

but thanks very much for your thoughts

[virginhuntress.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry that it isn't what you hoped it would be... it's a VERY disappointing thing for an intellectual like you to go through.

I guess the only thing I can say on a positive note is that you are not just gaining book knowledge, but gaining some real life exp. too. I know that it sounds really cheesy, but hear me out.

In real life, you will have to face a LOT of people that will disagree with you, and if you had a really easygoing, wonderful experience in grad school, you wouldn't be nearly as prepared to face people in the scariness that is reality.

I dunno... I guess that with my own experiences it's good to just try to see the positive in even the shittiest of situations...otherwise you're just going to burn out.

Hope this didn't make you hate me...*hugs*