Goals for this Week

To Read:

Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England  by Sharon Marcus.  As of right now I'm only about 50 pages from finishing, so I hope to finish it before bed tonight.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.  I'm about 250 pages into it and having a bit of a hard time pressing forward.  I need to just push myself and get it done.  I also need to be better about summarizing and taking notes.

The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common  by Alphonso Lingis.  A book I should have read years ago for a seminar but which I didn't.  Looking forward to it.

The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, which I love.


To Write:

Notes on Between Women.

Headnotes for at least two of my lists.

Finalize my theory list.

Emails to my committee members.

Capable.

So this year, I'm on my own.  Where school is concerned, that is.  I'm out of funding until I pass my exams (which I should have passed ages ago).  So I'm paying my own way this year.  Which means I'm dependent on financial aid.  Can't pay tuition without a loan.  And yesterday--yesterday I got this horrible message form the financial aid office telling me I wasn't eligible for financial aid due to insufficient academic progress.  Mind you, this is one day after I put nearly $4,000 in tuition on my credit card, depending on my loan to come through to pay it off.

So I panicked.  For about 45 minutes.  Just sat on my bed with thoughts of failure and not being able to finish my program whirling through my head.  It was miserable.

And then I snapped myself out of it and got to work.  Prepped a brief lesson for my classes.  Got to school to teach.  Let my students out a bit early each hour so I could make phone calls while campus offices were open.  I made an appointment with the ombudsman to begin the appeals process.  I emailed a faculty mentor to get her advice.  I emailed the chair of graduate studies to alert him to the situation and ask if we could meet to discuss it.  I called the office that helped me procure a leave of absence last year to see if they could help advocate for me.  I did everything I could think of to set an appeal in motion and get my ducks in a row.

Everything except talk to the financial aid office, that is.  Because they never answered their phone, there was no voicemail option (even though their phone said there was), and no email option (even though their website said there was).  It was very frustrating.

So first thing this morning I went to campus to visit the financial aid office.  Where I discovered there had been a clerical error.  Their computer had not registered that I was on academic leave last year and so had disqualified me.  Three minutes and it was fixed.  I should get my financial aid award tomorrow.

And I am proud of myself.  A year ago I would have had a massive panic attack had this happened.  And then just given up.  Six months ago, I would have melted into a puddle of tears.  But yesterday I did what needed to be done.  Calmly and rationally assessing the situation and finding alternatives.  Nary a tear.  It felt lovely.  It's so good, after years of depression, to feel like myself.  To be capable and productive.

So here I go.  Back into the breach, prepping for exams which I will take in may or june.  And next year I will write two chapters of my dissertation, with a third during the summer, so that fall of 2011 I can go on the job market.  And June of 2012 will see me robed to receive my third degree.  Just watch and see.

Accomplished.

So I haven't posted in a while, and the excuse of having been out of town only covers for part of it. So here's an update of what I've accomplished in the last few weeks:

• Appointments with two professors, one of whom I'm quite hopeful about working with.
• Finished reading Middlemarch, which really should merit a party. It was wonderful, by the way.
• Read Gaskell's Cranford and discussed it with my women's reading groups.
• Roughed out my C list, which was a bit of a beast.
• Emailed all four professors I hope to work with to make appointments to discuss C list (sent them copies of all three lists).
• Made an appointment to meet with one of my professors this Friday, May 23.
• Set up RefWorks folders to track my research.
• Kept decent hours (although there are never enough hours to do all the work).

I feel pretty good about those accomplishments. My new goal: read more regularly.

Why this blog?

A little over a year ago, I decided not to return to grad school. Not for the first time. I'd taken a quarter off (also not for the first time) for various reasons, one of which was that I had not finished an incomplete in time to receive funding for the fall quarter. But not finishing that paper was simply a symptom of much larger problems--problems to do with deeply rooted insecurities and depression. So I'd taken the quarter off and as my deadline loomed to finish the work and as I felt more and more stressed in the face of not having completed it, I decided that I'd had it with the strain of earning a PhD. I notified my department and started taking steps to pursue other options.

I knew I still wanted to teach, so I looked at available jobs in local community colleges. And I started filling out an application for a private school head-hunting firm. Applying for jobs requires letters of recommendation, so I contacted my supervisor for teaching and my academic adviser to ask for letters. And I called an old professor, J, from my years as an undergrad. He was the closest thing to a mentor I'd had. And we stayed good friends after I graduated and went on my way. He wasn't in when I called, so I left a message: I'm dropping out. I'm looking for a job. Would you write me a letter?

A couple of days later, J called me back. I wasn't looking forward to this call. I knew it would be difficult. He's always encouraged me to pursue my PhD and to teach at a university. And I was right--the conversation was not an easy one. But it was an incredibly rewarding one. In that hour spent talking while I sat in the shade on a friend's driveway, J recounted his own grad school experience to me. The hours spent shooting trashcan hoops instead of working. The guilt of knowing that his wife was supporting him while he made no progress. The self-doubt that constantly nagged at him. The power games his dissertation chair played with him. All in an effort to make me understand that I'm not alone in my discouragement and frustrations with grad school.

At some point in that conversation, J passed on advice someone had given him. "It's like being lost in the wilderness. Whatever you do--no matter how unsure you are about which way to go--you have to keep moving. Because if you sit down, you'll never get out of the wilderness. You just have to keep moving." That advice resonated with me. I knew I simply had to do what needed to be done--that nothing else could better prevent the negative, self-destructive thought cycles I caught myself in. And in the year since J shared that advice, I've heard it from several others--from Seymour, who started this program with me nearly 5 years ago; from 'The Dean' (JP) and 'The Doctor' (RAF), who Seymour introduced me to and who have been an amazing source of support; even from new acquaintances I don't know all that well. I intend this blog to help in my effort to keep moving.

And how will it do that? I anticipate it helping me keep moving in two key ways:

Obligation: If I know that others know what I'm supposed to be doing and how well I'm fulfilling those obligations, I'm much more likely to act. In other words, I don't always do so well when only accountable to myself. By making my progress public and easily accessible to those who may care, I'm applying a bit of pressure. I've particularly got The Dean and The Doctor in mind, as they have effective pointy figurative boots with which to give me a kick. But if any of the rest of you want to join in the prod-Amy-to-finish exercise, please feel free.

Recognition: One of the destructive thought cycles I find myself in is thinking I've accomplished nothing. This often happens because I think on a large scale about my projects, rather than thinking in terms of the small daily steps that must be taken. I find that when I have some means of recording what I actually accomplish each day--no matter how small it is--I'm able to break that cycle and continue moving. So this blog will not only communicate to others what I'm doing, it will also force me to recognize my own accomplishment. Something I need any help I can get with, as I'm my own worst critic (who isn't, really?).

I'm not entirely sure exactly how this will end up working. It's just an idea that occurred to me this afternoon as I was working in my office (yes--I spent most of my Saturday working in my 8x10 office; yay me!). I have a few ideas about what I can do here that will help others help me and that will help me recognize what I need to do and what I have done. A few things you'll see here:

• Goals for daily reading. I'm prepping for my qualifying exams, which translates to a lot of reading. I'm going to try to set a goal each day and report on whether I met it.
• A weekly (maybe daily?) task list of things I'd like to accomplish. This may show up on the side bar. Or it may show up in an entry. I haven't decided yet.
• Reading notes. I really need to start keeping track of what I'm reading for my lists in a more organized fashion. I doubt these will be of interest to many people other than me, but hey--if you really want to know what I think about surveillance in Villette or preconception in Middlemarch, feel free to peruse.
• Reviews of useful works of criticism.
• Lists of useful web resources.

If you have suggestions for how I can make this blog a useful tool, I'd love to hear them. And if you have suggestions for useful research management devices, I'd love to hear those, too.

Wish me well as I renew my commitment to this venture. It's time for me to start moving out of the wilderness.