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I hadn't done a lot of theory or critical reading as an undergraduate. I took one theory survey course, and I guess there's nothing for it but to plunge in, enter conversations, and get used to it.
But, you know foreign words and concepts and terms are being thrown at you and you don't have any grounding in any of these conversations. It was kind of tricky at first for me to kind of read through some of the stuff I was being asked to read through.
In general, when I read for graduate school I feel challenged, stressed, anxious, put-upon, as well as inspired and interested.
I think most of my stress stems from the fact that I don’t generally remember the fine details of a text—be it theoretical or fictional; I’m more of a “gist” kind of reader who gets a large sense of the total picture.
The fact that this creates anxiety in me is probably because I assume other people are remembering everything. This has less to do with a lack of intelligence and more to do with a lack of confidence.
So, I came to this PhD program with a kind of chip on my shoulder about having to read theory at all... All these theories and I thought, This is all just stuff that only pinheads read--eggheads read, rather. It's there to make people feel smart.
It was mental ***. It was something to further make everybody more elite.
The first few weeks of grad school for me were quite rough, as I really had to figure out the way people talked about things—had to catch up on the background that it feels like all other students in the English department have:
those survey classes, that uber-basic “this is how you look for symbolism in the narrative” ***.
You know, what we do at the end of the day, you know, we kind of read books and talk about them. And write. Two of those three things are extremely introverted, isolated events. The reading and the writing doesn't happen in a committee, by and large.
That's not... That's... That's part of the gig... And yet it's frustrating.
Starting out as an undergraduate, and reading simply for pleasure and being able to just *** through anything that I read... Always reading very quickly and being able to understand almost everything I read...
That changed when I entered graduate school, as I expected it would. But the reading in the PhD for the reading year has been very, very different. Reading over 250 books, trying to cram it all into one year...
And understanding the point of reading so many texts, and understanding so many texts in an arch has been something that's been somewhat of a challenge for me. And not always a pleasure. Not like the reading that I used to do.
You know, I'm a fiction writer, so you know, I go into classes and read these huge Pulitzer-winning books across the ages and so on and so forth. They have to me what feel like capital "T" themes--these huge issues of class, race, and gender.
It's great, and yet of course, it's intimidating.
The most important thing that I've gleaned from this is learning how to read as a community--within myself, within the community of other graduate students--and putting each text in community with other texts.
I think that's really what has shaped and defined how I've learned to read.
It was a beautiful, sunny day and I was on the second floor of this coffeehouse, and these different disciplinary divisions kind of gelled--came together. It was a convergence--an apotheosis, almost--of things that had been studied in vacuums before.
for me converging and really forming the whole of my experiential knowledge and my reading scholarship. It was really just a miraculous moment.
The thing about literacy in graduate school for me--it's all about, you know, getting outside your comfort zone. The whole point of being here is, I think, to think harder about something that's bigger than you.
I think particularly with writing, I'd be gripped by this panic everytime I'd go into finals week about how I didn't know anything, and I wasn't any good, and it was all a lie--I should be kicked out of graduate school. I just didn't know what I was doing.
I felt like I would just kind of write something and somehow magically get an okay grade in the class.
I wish that we could learn more about our professors' and colleagues' reading and writing strategies and practices than we do. The problem is that these activities are private.
So I'm out there, I'm working, I'm feeling respected, I'm feeling like I'm in the profession... and I come back to defend my dissertation and I felt like a kid again. I don't remember there being a time, except when I was finished with something...
...that I felt anything other than stress. [Laughter.] You know, just a lot of anxiety about what I was doing, why I was doing it.
It’s important for people to be aware of the multiple identities grad students have—and how some of these identities are easily lost and forgotten under the pressure of grad school’s responsibilities.
You get so obsessed with trying to break up the readings and the writings that everything else in your life drops out. And then, for me, you know, having a healthy relationship with my family and friends is what keeps me sane. So if I let that drop out...
I start to get shaky. I'm like, I need to have a weekend with friends and family, and then of course I get backed up on work.
I wish grad school did a better job of teaching students how to balance their lives. Part of grad school’s purpose is preparing students for life after school, whether it’s in the academy or in industry, but the focus in grad school is WORK. Work. Work.
We’re taught to put our lives on hold and to focus on our identity as students.
One really challenging period for me--and challenging for everyone--was the fall that September 11th happened in 2001. Our professor tasked us with an assignment that was to develop sort of bioterrorism brochures--information about what to do, how to
advocate the public, how to react in the case of a bio-attack. And I just felt like it was so insensitive and inappropriate. I was getting really frustrated, to the point where I remember sitting in his office almost in tears, thinking that it was not fair
and insensitive to be doing this kind of a project. And it just didn't seem realistic. And my professor is very good at sort of leading you in the right direction but not telling you the answer. I didn't know it at the time, cause like I said I was mostly
just really upset about the whole thing, but I look back now and realize how important that project really was. Some of your most important times as a writer, and for me now as a professional writer, is having to write quickly and efficiently about things
that are happening right now.
New problems occurred when I got accepted at a PhD program in the US. Although I feel I am doing the impossible, such as writing complex final papers and a dissertation in English-- which is just my foreign language, it’s not even my second language,
my mentor keeps on saying “You do not sound academic.” The whole idea of becoming a member of the “discourse community” and “being one of us” and “selling your product to OUR disciplinary community” was pretty annoying in my first year...
So I’ve been working hard, though I’m still not sure if I sound more academic. I think I’ll realize this ONLY when I get published in a good peer-reviewed journal or get recognition by my colleagues.
Sam and I met pretty early on in our graduate school career because we were both in the same office. So we've taken six classes together, and a lot of that has been deliberate. We've actually chosen to take those classes together because it's allowed us
to really work together. As both teachers in Professional Writing, now we've been able to collaborate a lot outside of class and really develop a really neat friendship.
I am required to work with others within my cohort and with 2nd year MFA students because every semester we have a workshop--so that's eight people. We are learning about craft and also reading and critiquing each other's poems.
What I really love about this program was that--especially with the teaching practicum--it allowed me to interact with other students, Master's and PhD students who had teaching experience. So I could learn from them. In that sense, it was very
collaborative in that we've always been exchanging lesson plans, and ideas for assignments, and also just the typical teaching war stories and how to survive those.
I have been delighted by my students’ respect for one another, their thoughtful feedback, their willingness to consider other points of view and engage with various perspectives. Every day, they remind me of why I am in graduate school,
why I love writing, and the type of student and continual learner that I would like to be.
I just wanted to respond as a student who is not in the English department. Comparative literature is an interdisciplinary, so we fall kind of outside the edges of the English department. It is difficult to become part of the community.
Even though I do a lot of medieval studies, I'm not really a medievalist with the other medievalists. Because I'm on a fellowship, this semester I'm not teaching comp. As a new student in the department,
I haven't had the benefit of those default, built-in networks. Not that those networks are always amazing and wonderful, but that there's a place to start, and a place to jump off from.
I did my undergrad and my Master's in the same place, and my adviser for most of that was great. But he was kind of a playwright already, and I was a drama person at that point, and he had this kind of process that I guess I tended to emulate, where he
would be like, "I go through a dark time in the winter where I just don't talk to anyone, and I do my writing, and then I have something." And I don't know how much that influenced me in terms of how I write, but I have that picture in the back of my head.
Like, "Here's a time where there is no sunshine, so I shall write things." And no one can see me... which works very well, but especially as an academic where I'm seeing, "Oh I need to publish. I need to go present things."
I should really talk to people about this kind of stuff, cause I can't just be standing in a corner somewhere, reading my paper.
I actually had to admit at one point, you know, someone else is going to have to help me out. I feel like that’s the way we should be. It’s all a negotiation. Everybody’s really winging it to some degree all the time.
Really, the people to be suspicious of are the ones who can’t on some level admit that they struggle with literacy all the time.